If you're a huge Howard Stern fan like me, then you remember when the Gary Love Tape was revealed to the world back in June 1999.
Back story: Howard's producer Gary made a tape to his on-again/off-again girlfriend back in 1988 begging her to come back to him. The tape remained a secret for more than a decade when a caller to the show revealed -- and Gary confirmed -- its existence. It was finally played on the show and became a classic moment in the history of Howard Stern.
Looking like Daryl Oates, talking into a microphone and video camera, the love-lorn Gary's tape is a hilarious, gut-busting mix of desperation, narcissism, and male entitlement. It's egomania run amock. He tells his ex "This is what I want" and "I feel like my professional life is at a 9" -- pronounced noine -- "and my personal life is at a 2." Then he says "I miss you man" and that he might be open to "mmmmmm-marriage."
This from a guy who was apparently cheating on her left and right. Fortunately, Gary matured from this and wound up marrying a great (other woman) and having a family.
It's amazing, after watching this, that any woman wants anything to do with any man. We should all probably be in jail.
P.S. The Gary Love Tape inspired a great rendition of Bruce Springstein's "Secret Garden" known as "Booey Maguire." It's beautiful, touching, and funny as hell.
I was obsessed with radio as a teenager -- my childhood dream was to become a hotshot DJ/personality who was as funny and wild as Howard Stern, as thoughtful and smart as an NPR host, and as souful as Allison Steele. Oh, and I wanted to play music -- lots of different kinds of music, from the Beastie Boys to Led Zepplin to James Taylor to King Missile to Mozart to Bing Crosby, whatever I thought was good or funky at the time.
Basically I wanted to be a free form radio host.
I tried my hand at it in college -- I had a short-lived free form radio show that was on at 6 AM every Tuesday. No one listened to it and, after one semester, I didn't have any more time for it (although I still have tapes -- yes, cassette tapes, remember those? -- of my old shows).
But it made me appreciate just how hard it is to do a good, entertaining radio program, free form or no. Sitting behind that microphone, talking into the ether, trying to entertain everyone and no one, might seem really easy but it's not. It's hard, brutal work, it demands everything of your brains and emotions. And knowing what kind of music to play takes some skill -- fortunately I had a friend who gave me all sorts of weird music (like Shonan Knife!) that gave my show some hipster cred. Otherwise, I was an awful DJ, a blithering, unfunny mess. It was an acid test of my total lack of natural performative talent. In part, that's why I started this blog -- it allowed me to do something creatively free form that more suited by meagre skills.
Free form radio barely exists anymore, if it ever really did. College and non-profit radio are the only places it ever really thrived. Even 25 years ago it was a strange offbeat thing. In these days of consolidated corporate ownership and public radio mega-organizations, the idea of free form radio is more unthinkable than ever. It doesn't really exist at all.
But there used to be one huge, great exception.
For roughly forty years a guy named Vin Scelsa hosted the ultimate free form radio show in NYC -- "Idiot's Delight." This show bounced around the NYC airwaves for decades, starting at non-commercial WFMU, migrating to commercial radio at WNEW and K-ROCK, then to its natural habitat on college radio at WFUV where it ended its long run in 2015. It was the ultimate free form show -- a quiet, well-spoken, very informed guy, Vin would play lots of different kinds of music and interview singers, musicians, filmmakers, writers, cultural leaders of all stripes. The show was never about Vin -- in fact, he was very unassuming. Instead, his focus was always on the music or his guests, and that made it wonderfully rich.
I started listening to "Idiot's Delight" on K-ROCK back in high school. I remember it was through this show that I first discovered the filmmaker Kevin Smith who was promoting his first ever movie, Clerks (I didn't understand why "37" was so funny until I saw the movie!). I remember it being such a great, relaxed, extremely interesting conversation -- the kind you hear on every podcast today but was unusual to hear on the radio, or anywhere, back in 1994. In fact, the show was basically the forerunner to podcasts with long form, intelligent, in-depth interviews.
Vin was a great host and always featured interesting guests and topics -- and he had the time to do it. On K-ROCK, the show was on Sunday nights from 8 PM until 2 AM so he had lots of time. This show was a miracle and it's unbelievable that it was ever on commercial radio -- then or now. I miss it to this day. I never understood, but always loved, Vin's intro to the show. He would state, simply, at the start of every show: Respect the elders. Embrace the new. Encourage the impracticable and improbable. Without bias. This ... is "Idiot's Delight."
P.S. I actually tried to interview Vin for this blog but he never answered my emails. Maybe, if he sees this post, he'll change his mind.
The second post I ever did on this blog -- way back in March of 2007 -- was about how I heard a young tourist on the subway talk about her desire to see "dope-ass graffiti." (I hope, for her sake, she did.) And I concluded this post by asking:
"Is graffiti, "dope-ass" or otherwise, something maybe we here [in NYC] take for granted? After all, it's something most New Yorkers find offensive and barely tolerate. And yet ... would we miss it if it ever went away? Is graffiti, at the end of the day, the only truly urban art form, the city speaking back to itself? That, dear city-dwellers, is one to ponder on."
In another post, in July of 2007, I also said that the best graffiti you could see in the city was on several buildings in Queens, easily visible from the 7 train. In 2007, my words about graffiti were merely speculative muses and observations. In 2019, my words about graffiti are business.
Today, in NYC and other cities, graffiti and street art of all kinds is actually welcomed. It makes neighborhoods more interesting, more tempting to the wealthy people who want to buy property in them. Some developers are actually creating dedicated walls and spaces for graffiti. The graffiti artist Banksy is one of the most famous artists in the whole world and his work sells for millions. Long gone are the days when graffiti was a scourge of urban decay -- today, it's a symbol of the urban Renaissance (although 5Pointz, the area I mentioned in 2007, is long gone). My how times have changed.
The Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance continues to be an utter tool.
He didn't prosecute Harvey Weinstein in 2015 when he had clear evidence of the movie producer assaulting women.
He didn't prosecute Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump when he had clear evidence of their real estate fraud.
He loves prosecuting small-bore, powerless people but the rich and powerful, under his reign, always skate.
And now he refuses to the review the cases of former prosecutor Linda Fairstein -- or current prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer -- who wrongfully prosecuted and convicted the so-called Central Park Five. This is outrageous -- if they railroaded these kids, who knows how many others these two also wrongfully sent to jail?
Vance isn't up for re-election until 2021 and, if he's smart, he won't run again and instead leave office and go into obscurity. I predict that, if he does run, a lot of people will challenge him -- but hopefully one very strong reformist candidate will emerge and beat him.
Manhattan needs its own Ken Thompson/Eric Delgado/Tiffany Caban like DA ASAP! By the way, The New York Times and Senator Elizabeth Warren have endorsed Tiffany Caban for DA so, I beg you, people of Queens, please vote for her on June 25!!
For decades the real estate industry has controlled NYC by controlling its politicans -- both at the city and state levels.
Campaign contributions and cynical pressure groups (like "Jobs for New York") have made politicians cower and give landlords and big real estate companies whatever they wanted at the expense of renters and ordinary people. For years they have tried -- and, in some cases almost succeeded -- in getting rent control and stabilization abolished. Renter protections have been systemically weakened over the years, most notably back in 1994 and 1997 (read all about it here). So when the state legislature this week passed massive new tenant protections it was a huge historic victory for renters and ordinary New Yorkers after decades of being trampled on: security deposits will be limited to one month, tenant blacklisting and illegal evictions are criminalized, rents regulations are no longer tied to income, more apartments will remained rent regulated. These are amazing, great changes -- and show, now more than ever, how elections have consequences. Ironically, bizarrely, we have an extremely greedy NYC real estate monster to thank for these new laws: Donald Trump. If that psycho hadn't been elected president in 2016, it's quite possible that the Democratic grassroots wouldn't have turned out as strongly as they did in the 2018 elections, leaving the Republicans/IDC corrupt coalition in power in the state senate. Thanks Donald!
She's best known today as the mother of uber-newsman Anderson Cooper (product of her fourth marriage) but Ms. Vanderbilt had a life worth a novel or two -- in fact, she was allegedly the inspiration for Holly Golightly in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Gloria was born to wealth and married wealth -- several times. She acted, she models, she wrote, she designed clothes, she was a socialite in the vein of Brooke Astor and a grande dame, a great lady of NYC, like her friend Jackie Kennedy (who died 25 years ago last month).
She was a true Renaissance woman and apparently also quite the lover: Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra were just a couple of her lovers.
I think what separates the Gloria Vanderbilts from the "socialites" of today was the idea of refinement, elegance, conscientious beauty -- dare I say it, "class." She was the last of her kind, the last of the grand dames of NYC, and she will be missed.
If you've ever seen the 1991 movie New Jack City about the Harlem crack wars, you might be surprised to learn that the main character -- a violent but extremely smart drug lord -- is based on a real-life 1970s Harlem heroin gangster named Nicky Barnes.
Like John Gotti -- in fact, years before he came to power -- Nicky was a "celebrity" criminal. Nicky dressed fancy, appeared in public at hot spots around NYC, and loved to tease the Feds that they could never bust him. Nicky became known as "Mr Untouchable" -- until, in the late '70s -- he was busted and spent years in prison before vanishing into the Witness Protection Program. (Barnes has been dead since 2012 and, only now, is his death becoming public.)
It's hard to imagine that, today in NYC, criminals would dare to fashion themselves "celebrities." The city has become so safe and square, policing has become so sophisticated and tech heavy, the media is so obiquitous and diffuse, any big shot criminal would be caught and sent to jail ASAP if he (or she) dared live a public life. In a way, big time criminals are doing the inverse of what everyone else is doing -- instead of living on social media, instead of gleefully giving up their privacy, professional criminals have never been more DL than ever, totally on the QT.
An OG like Nicky Barnes couldn't and wouldn't exist today -- in NYC or anywhere.
P.S. A couple of interesting things: besides being the inspiration for New Jack City, the character of Nicky Barnes appears in the moving American Gangster, about Barnes sometimes rival, sometimes partner Frank Lucas (who just died too). Also, there was talk back in the 1980s -- after Barnes went to jail -- of making a movie about him starring Eddie Murphy, but obviously it never happened. There was also, apparently, some talk about basing the plot of Godfather III around Barnes-inspired character who gets involved with the Corleones (Barnes did get involved with the Italian mob thus increasing his wealth, power, and protection).
RIP Nicky. We'll never see your likes again -- and that's a good thing.
Last night there was a lively debate amongst the various candidates running for Queens District Attorney. You can watch it here.
This is a very important election because it will decide how and which crimes are prosecuted (or not) for possibly a generation. In NYC, elected DAs often stay in office for decades -- they're not supposed to but they are rarely ever challenged and they rarely ever lose (the Brooklyn DA's race in 2013 was a big exception). Mayors, Governors, and Presidents come and go every few years but DAs stick around. So whoever wins this race will probably be in office for a very long time.
This debate got a little odd when some of the candidates started talking about "crack McDonalds" and how prostitution has become such a serious concern because "even" white girls are doing it. Also, one candidate appears to believe that David Paterson is still governor -- that must please him.
Watch it for yourself.
My choice in this race is Tiffany Caban and I urge everyone in Queens to vote for her.
