Here's a slightly revised version of that column with a few stylistic tweaks.
Notes from Bushwick
* I ran into the goofy Ecuadoran
fellow who sells weed on my block the other day; someone had thrown out
a frame containing a rather nice modern art print from some gallery,
and he was taking it home. His plan, he said, was to throw out the
print and use the frame to hold a large Scarface-themed jigsaw puzzle that he had successfully completed.
*
My basketball was flat last week and I couldn't locate a pump; a
neighborhood kid advised me that they would inflate it for free at
Modell's, the sporting goods store on Broadway where I'd originally
bought the ball. When I arrived, an employee showed me the pump and
said I could do it myself. Being incompetent, I accidentally got the
inflation needle stuck in the nub. So I told the manager what had
happened and asked if he had any pliers; he said he'd pull it out for
me, but at some point during the process he seemed to have gotten it
into his head that I had claimed the needle to be my own instead of the
store's, as if I was trying to cover up my misdeed. "Next time, be
straight with me," he said. I tried to explain that he must have
misunderstood me and that I'd clearly stated that it was their needle
I'd gotten stuck, not mine. "No you didn't," he said, more in sorrow
than in anger. "But that's okay. Maybe you'll go out and beat somebody
in a game today." Incidentally, I didn't. And now the ball's getting
flat again and I have to find another way to inflate it that doesn't
involve me having to interact with that fascist weirdo manager. Perhaps
I should just go buy a pump. Anyway, fuck Modell's.
* A Puerto Rican couple on my block keeps dressing all three of their kids in matching Michael Jackson t-shirts.
* 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 Bushwick enclaves,
accompanied by a couple of shiksas, we stopped at one of their little
shops so that Shiksa #1 could purchase 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 glance from the Hasidic shopkeeper whose
opinion of us was thereby 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.
*
Actually, Modell's is a pretty decent store insomuch as that the prices
are reasonable and whatnot. It's just that the manager hurt my feelings
that one time.
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; co-founder Marshall Coles is
rather pumped, as he specializes in cinematography himself. For the
next month (and possibly longer), they're also offering major discounts
on the use of their photography studio. Lumenhouse has done a swell job
of promoting the Bushwick arts scene, but the place still needs your
support; keep an eye on their calender of upcoming events.
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.