Bad Advice

I love this.

I can't believe I only found this today! Two of my favorite musicians playing together. And in a move that no doubt thrilled Jesse, Bruce is backing HIM up! Yay, Jesse! Another hardcore kid done good.

And to get totally Allure mag on your ass for a minute, you know how people are supposedly seasonal? Like depending on your coloring, you're an "autumn" or "winter" or whatever? Yeah, I don't particularly buy that crap either, but I've always thought of these two as summertime singers. Well, Heart Attack, Hope and D Generation were maybe more winter, but Jesse's solo stuff is drinking-beer-on-the-boardwalk music.

Happy Memorial Day!

Holiday Hijinx

I couldn't locate the video for my favorite You Am I song, "Please Don't Ask Me to Smile," so this one will have to do. "Heavy Heart" is also an amazing song and the random Japanese subtitles are a bonus. It's just that PDAMTS is all about having bad teeth, which is one of the reasons I've been in such a mood lately.

I haven't been sleeping much, have no energy, no sense of humor . . . . this situation is kind of kicking my ass and I need to fix it. I forced myself to get up and out this morning and I'm going to go see Felicia Sullivan and Ms. Heather read stories about Brooklyn this evening at Matchless across the park. So it's not like I'm a shut-in. Just a bit of a whinger. (I'll never say "blimey," or insert the letter "u" where it doesn't belong, but I do prefer "whinge" to "whine.") 

Yikes.

I've lived in Williamsburg for 15 years now and only once has someone tried to rob me (knock wood). I believe I told that story elsewhere (he didn't get anything because I am a crazy lady), so I'll spare you. But ever since the condos started going up and the rich people started moving in, the neighborhood has seemed much more violent. You'd think all the Bugaboo strollers and smug couples in their matching athletic gear would make it feel safer, but you'd be wrong.

I used to toddle home at 4am and never worry about getting jumped. Now I get nervous in the afternoon—and it's not just me being paranoid. Other long-time residents report the same feeling. It's a new, nasty, malevolent vibe that must come when you move haves into a neighborhood formerly populated with have-nots. Gentrification's growing pains.

Happy Birthday, Morrissey!

I was very excited to see this poster on Bedford Ave (where else?) this evening. I think it's great that the kids are celebrating the Mozzer's 50th. My only problem with it is the open bar: Colt 45? I really don't think that's an appropriate celebratory beverage for this esteemed gentleman. Pimm's Cups, yes. Champagne cocktails, certainly. But no malt liquor, please.

You talkin' to me?!

Today the Daily News ran a great story on Marie Grasso, the bitch who nearly knocked over my building while demoing the cabbage factory next door. Apparently she is not only a total hottie (nice bathrobe!), but a huge scofflaw, owing the city over a million bucks in fines! Yet she still gets city contracts! Great job, Mikey B. Something tells me Marie Grasso isn't tearing down buildings in your neck of the woods.

The reason she gets these fines is because she is such a scumbag that even the incompetent building inspectors can't ignore her. And believe me, they try. We must've called 311 a hundred times and got very little action. She hires people who don't know what they're doing, doesn't provide hard hats or any other protective gear, and just generally doesn't give a shit. Her company ripped out all the phone and cable lines from our building because they were "in the way" and then just shrugged it off. If you want to read about our hell, you can here, here, here or here. I feel sorry for the people she screwed over badly enough to actually have a building inspector take their complaints seriously. They must be missing walls!

This is the kind of story that makes me really miss Bob Guskind and Gowanus Lounge.

The one funny part of the whole equation, is that looking at the photo, I'm pretty sure she's the woman I met at the site who claimed she just "worked" for Marie Grasso. She's like bulky, unattractive version of Vicki/Nicki on One Life to Live.

Happy Anniversary!

So me and the Large Greek have been together for FIVE YEARS now! It hasn't always been easy—like now, when he's out of work and I'm working from home and we're both trapped together in a 600-square-foot apartment all day, with very little money, 24/7. But aside from some bumps, we've been doing pretty well. So we decided to celebrate this milestone, not by going to Spain, like I originally wanted (hello, economy crash!), but to Jersey City. The recession is all about compromise, people.

It only costs $1.75 to get to JC (as opposed to $600+ to get to Espana) and because I pulled the old "it's our anniversary" card on the reservations person at the Hyatt, we got a good rate on a great room. Here's our view:

Pretty fantastic, especially as the sun went down and the lights went up. This wall was basically all glass, which excited the man to no end. In fact, upon entering the room and seeing this vista, the BF inexplicably dropped trou and mooned Manhattan. Then he started dancing around pantsless! I asked him what he was doing and he explained that it was special "hotel glass" and that we could see out of, but people couldn't see into. Er, no.

I told him I didn't think that was the case, but he was not to be dissuaded. I finally got him to pull up his pants and change into his swim trunks. We hit the pool, the gym, and then had a fab dinner on the roof of the Iron Monkey. On our walk back, I pointed up at the hotel and showed him that you actually could see into the rooms when the curtains were open. He laughed, not the least bit embarrassed. That's my boy!

Separated at the meth lab?

Doesn't Daisy of Love look an awful lot like a slightly less herpetic Christy from Intervention?

Happy Mother's Day

Mother's Day is always a big bummer for me because my mom is dead. So I went out this AM and bought myself some lilacs. They were always her favorite flower, so I figured that was a nice way to remember her. Here are a few other memories in no particular order:

• My mom was a really great singer (trust me, it doesn't run in the family), but when she got cancer, one of the symptoms was a severe cough. The hospital let her out for a weekend so she could do a gig at Danny's Skylight Room that she'd scheduled a few months earlier. She was super worried that she'd cough during a song, but she didn't cough once during the whole show. Old friends from Rochester were there, as well as some of the homeless guys from the shelter my dad and her volunteered at. We were all so incredibly proud of her great accomplishment.

• I wish she'd had a different mom than the one she got stuck with. My grandmother was always horrible to her—physically and emotionally—and as a result, my mom had seriously low self-esteem her entire life. She thought she was fat and ugly (she was neither) and when my grandmother finally croaked, my mom felt guilty for not loving her more. I wish my mom had loved herself a lot more than she did.

• I was the oldest of five kids in six years and when I was five, we moved from Rochester to Lefrak City in Queens. Obviously, seven people in a small apartment was kind of stifling, so my mom always took all of us on long walks and we'd always end up lost, over by that giant steel globe in Flushing Meadow Park.

• During that same time period, my mom took me alone (which was a big deal when there are five kids) to a pet store near Alexander's. She bought me one of those little turtles and a plastic bowl with a fake palm tree in it. A couple months after I got it, I came home from kindergarten and found it dead, stuck to its little island. Years later she told me that that had been about the sixth turtle—they kept dying and she kept replacing it, unbeknownst to me. But after a while, she just couldn't keep doing it and decided that it probably wouldn't scar me too bad to experience the death of my little pet.

• My mom and I had a very tumultuous relationship. So fraught with fighting and horribleness that one of my sisters actually blames me for stressing her into the cancer that eventually killed her. While my rational brain knows that this isn't true, there's part of me that sometimes believes it. We both apologized to each other when she was sick, and I truly feel like we both made amends, but I wish we had gotten along better and that she was still around for me to know.

UPDATE: My pal Diane Mapes wrote the most moving Mother's Day essay I've ever read. I'm still in tears, so read at your own peril.

My Secret Boyfriend Ate Dinner with the Prez Last Night!

My pal Julie is a White House reporter and so every year she goes to the big White House Correspondents Dinner. There are always celebs in attendance, but this year, because Hollywood actually likes this president, there were tons. Those handsome bitches from Gossip Girl were there. Also, Kate Winslet! Padma Lakshmi! John Cusack! Wanda Sykes! But the only one I really cared about was the Belz.

I know how to pick my favors and so even though I'd had an unsettling makeout dream featuring Chuck Bass only nights earlier (call me Mary Kay LeTourneau), I asked her to please, please, please, get me a photo of Richard Belzer. And boy, did she deliver:
Not only did she get me a shot of him in his Nehru best, she was also quick-witted enough to snag a photo of his footwear. Go, Belz:
What a snazzy dresser!

I also saw on Gawker that blogger Ana (pronounce it "ah-nah," please) Marie Cox was there, leg-humping all the celebs. How the hell did she get invited after her idiotic diatribe of less than a month ago, which suggested we abolish the White House press corps? Did the people who issue invites not read that piece?

Memory Lane gets an Overhaul

Last night, my friend JR Taylor took me to see the New York Dolls at the old CBGBs/new(ish) John Varvatos store. Now I love the Dolls, but I was a little hesitant about going back to a place where I spent a good portion of my youth. Especially now that it's been turned into a spendy men's clothing store. Check out this chandelier, though—pretty sweet, right?

I don't know what I was worried about—that the scent of urine would remind me of that Minor Threat show and I'd burst into tears? That the sweaty crowd would somehow conjure up memories of pre-Buddhist Beastie Boys antics? Nah. It's so far removed from what it was—and in case you were wondering, I didn't get to check out if they were able to destankify the bathrooms—they had porta-potties out front so we didn't soil the fashionista facilities.

The band were, as usual, amazing. David Johansen is still one sexy bitch all these years later and they sounded great. Pretty good acoustics for a pants store. The crowd was a curious mix —very heavy on the cautionary tales: elder punk rocks with raisin faces and bad dye jobs. In case you were wondering, leather pants should be outlawed on anyone over the age of 28. An aging ass just can't handle them gracefully.

Note to self: work harder at aging gracefully.