I always go out of my way to impress Hasidim. It doesn't always come
off; the first time I wandered into one of their neighborhoods,
accompanied by a couple of shiksas, we stopped at one of their little shops and Shiksa
#1 purchased a can of kosher apple juice, priced at 85 cents. She made
a silly error in arithmetic in the process of paying, thus prompting a
devastating glance from the Hasidic
shopkeeper, whose opinion of us was confirmed. I've managed to make up
for this terrible incident in the years since; whenever my landlord
comes by, I make sure that classical music is playing and my basketball
is out of sight. Being neurotic is a lot of work.
The
Hasidim provide a nifty public service to local history buffs by way of
the historical continuity they bring to the table. The occasional
conflicts that have arisen between the Orthodox and the artist'n(Yiddish
for "hipster") are somewhat akin to the conflicts that arose some
twenty-three hundred years ago when the Seleucid Empire introduced
Hellenism to Judea, bringing nude gymnastics and pragmatic polytheism
to a people intent on aesthetic understatement and unadulterated
monotheism. Today, the philosophical dispute goes on - the occasional protest by conservative community leaders angered by the post-modern humanism of their newish neighbors, a row over a bike lane and the moral degeneration that it will inevitably bring.
But that's the sort of thing that makes news; the great majority of our Hasidic
neighbors don't seem to be particularly concerned with our nefarious
bike riding and naked limbs. And their more self-concentrated
neighborhoods on the Williamsburg-Bushwick pseudo-border are worth checking out; walk down Broadway to the Marcy stop and take a left, and you're suddenly in a Chaim Potok novel, which is a nice change of pace from the John Kennedy Toole
novel we currently inhabit. The bakeries are rather swell, the fish
markets are a fine resource for foodies, and there are plenty of places
at which to purchase white, button-down shirts. And you'll be
well-received as long you keep the secular humanism to a minimum; dress
decently, for instance, and refrain from mentioning in conversation
that our women folk are almost universally bisexual.
Brief, Non-Self Indulgent Portion of This Column
Lumenhouse, the admirable multi-use art studio at the intersection of Park and Beaver, will serve as the sole venue for the third annual Bushwick Film Festival, itself held between August 28th to 30th; notoriously nice co-founder Marshall Coles
is pumped, specializing in cinematography himself. For the next month
and possibly long, they're also offering major discounts on the use of
their photography studio. Lumenhouse has done great work in promoting the arts in Bushwick; keep an eye on their event calender, as the place could still use your support.
Notes from the Outside World
Conspiracy theories tend to get a bad rap. That's a shame, as the
underlying concept behind such things - that a portion of human history
is the result of covert corroboration by two or more parties - is
demonstrably true. Egypt under the pharaohs was largely a conspiracy
among priests and dictators to maintain control over a population in
part through metaphysical deceit, and that general model has been
replicated to some extent or another among entities ranging from Ur to
the Holy Roman Empire to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Insomuch as that billions of our ancestors and contemporaries have had
their rights stripped from them by way of secret agreements among
clergy and party bosses, it's hardly unreasonable to give into paranoia
every once in a while, for much the same reason that you get your
brakes checked or would if you had a car.
But most
prominent conspiracy theorists aren't content with healthy skepticism,
being inclined to connect everything with everything else until
everything is all nice and connected. This makes for good reading, at
least. The finest book in this particular genre is The Biggest Secret by David Icke,
who served as spokesperson for the British Green Party until he
reported being contacted by a spirit who explained to him that he was
supposed to save the world from something or other, at which point he
was promptly and understandably fired. The threat turned out to involve
a cabal of reptilian humanoids native to "the lower fourth dimension"
and operating by way of secret societies and an interlocking
directorate of bloodlines dating back to the priesthood of Babylon;
today it holds collective control over banks, nation-states, and
everything else other than the publishing company that put out The Biggest Secret.
Chief among the world's reptilian meta-families is the House of
Windsor, the members of which are particularly vicious by virtue of
their full-blooded lizardness.
Queen Elizabeth is so keen on human sacrifice that, instead of simply
slitting the throat of a living victim as called for by the family
ritual, she once "went crazy, stabbing and ripping at the flesh" until
nothing remained but shreds or what have you. This report,
incidentally, comes from one of several women who claim to have been
used as mind-controlled slaves by the reptilian in-crowd since
childhood. Some of her other claims are more dubious; Senator Patrick Leahy is said to
torture children by stabbing them in the eyes with needles in order
that he might feed off the resulting negative energy, as if anyone from
Vermont would do such a thing. Another hypno-slave
recalls an incident in which George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton brought
her to the woods, turned her loose, and hunted her down with dogs. But
they didn't actually kill her, which is just as well insomuch as that
she is able to report that Bush pointed to her and told Clinton, "She's
mine. But then, she always has been."
Even in the face of stabby lizard queens and perhaps Patrick Leahy, Icke counsels against the violent overthrow of our fourth-dimensional shadow tyrants. "What we do not want is a
witch-hunt against everyone who carries these family names or the
reptile race in general," he writes. And he advises forgiveness, reminding us that our covert reptoid
adversaries are "imprisoned on the lower Fourth Dimension by their own
attitudes and until they open their hearts they cannot escape" and
concluding that "the reptilians need love more than anyone;" this point
is illustrated by an M.C. Escher print of two lizards trapped within
one of his improbable geometrical inventions. The Biggest Secret is filled with such fine pictures, thanks to Icke's casual approach to intellectual property laws; as we are told in a back-of-the-book editorial note, Icke
couldn't be bothered to track down the copyright status of the various
illustrations used within, having been more concerned with "the urgent
need to put this astonishing information before the public." Above all,
he is a hero of fair use.