Review: "Out for Justice" (1991)

There are many great NYC movies. Out for Justice is NOT one of them.

But while it's a very DUMB movie, it's also a very FUN movie. Lemme 'splain why:

Steven Segal, one of our great screen thespians, plays a goomba cop from Dyker Heights, Brooklyn named Gino Felino (yes, that's the fellow's name). Anyway, Gino's from da' neighba-hood and he's determined to bring down a goomba mobster named Richie Madano who's murdered Gino's goomba partner Bobby Lupo. (It's a movie that consists entirely of Goombas, many years before "Jersey Shore" mainstreamed them.) Anyway, the whole movie consists of Gina prowling around Brooklyn, lookin' for Richie, committing much violence along the way. "Anyone know why Richie did Bobby Lupo?" is Gina's constant, unanswered refrain, usually delivered before hurting someone really bad. Then he finds Richie, more violence ensues, and it's over. Complex it is not. 

But, you see, Gino's not "out for revenge" -- oh no, he's "out for justice." All of his violence is justified. This was the early 1990s, after all, when crime in NYC and the nation was very high, so the idea of ultra-violent cops delivering punitive justice was a more palatable idea than it is today. Capiche?

The plot of this movie is secondary to the numerous scenes where Segal demonstrates his superior abilities at beating people up. There's a small subplot where Gino gets back together with his estranged wife -- "Are we talkin' reconcilliation, ova' here?" is a real line -- plus we learn that our hero is also an animal lover (the movie ends with his puppy urinating on a man's head which is played for yucks and is one of the more lighthearted moments in the film). Shockingly, this stupid but very entertaining movie boasts a great cast (other than Segal): Jerry Orbach, Gina Gerson, John Leguizamo, a pre-Sopranos Dominic Chianese and a pre-ER Julianna Margulies are all in it. And there's also a great early Beastie Boy's song -- "No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn." 

This is a great movie to watch with a bunch of your friends while drinking heavily and yelling at the screen. In fact, there's no other way to watch it.

Enjoy.

"Out for Justice" (1991) Opening Scene

Okay, I promise, this will be the last Out for Justice post ever on Mr NYC. This is the opening credits for one of the best bad NYC movies ever made. They just don't make movies like this any more than are this balls-to-wall politically incorrect, nasty, and fun. Today movies take themselves much too seriously. But back in 1991 some movies still had a sense humor.

Review: "Sea of Love" & "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989)

The fall of 1989 was an eventful time -- not unlike now. Communism in Eastern Europe and the Berlin Wall were collapsing. Apartheid was drawing to a close in South Africa. Here in NYC there was a legendary election raging between three men who had and would be Mayor -- Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and Rudy Giuliani. And our movie theaters saw the debut of two classic NYC crime thrillers: Sea of Love and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Watching them again after 30 years, they more than hold up -- they are examples of great storytelling, brilliant acting, peaks in the arcs of historic careers, and wonderful NYC movies. Despite being thrillers, and being very different movies, they have one big thing in common: they are studies in the trials and tribulations of becoming middle-aged.

Sea of Love: Al Pacino stars as a Manhattan cop named Frank Keller. He's a classic movie detective: getting older, divorced, drinking problem, wondering if he should "put in his papers" to retire at "his 20" (years on the force that is), and generally depressed about his life. Meanwhile he's investigating a series of murders -- men who had answered personal ads turning up dead, shot in the head. The latest victim had a 45 record playing when he was found -- "Sea of Love." Frank and his new partner Sherman (investigating a similar murder in Queens) start an undercover operation where they will place a personal ad in the paper, meet up with women at a restaurant, and then take the glasses from the dates to swab them for prints. They hope that this will link them with the killer. But then Frank meets a woman named Helen on one of these dates -- and they fall for each other, hard. Suddenly Frank finds a new unexpected love, a new joie de vivre, but there continue to be more murders and Helen starts to look more and more guilty -- until he finds out the truth and solves the case. (I remember the tagline for this movie: "He's found somone who's either the love of his life ... or the end of it!").

This movie was a big deal for Al Pacino -- his career had been in decline for most of the 1980s, after his triumphs of the 1970s and early '80s (think The Godfather to Scarface period). Sea of Love was his comeback, a big hit that started the next act of his career. Meanwhile John Goodman was breaking out from Roseanne and his performance as Sherman made him a big movie actor too. Ellen Barkin was a star then too, and few performances are as sexy and frightening as her's in this movie. What's fascinating about this movie is that, while it's certainly a sexy thriller, it's also a working class NYC movie, set largely on a still-then middle-class Upper West Side. It's both extremely familiar and also exotic -- it's about becoming middle age, trying to find a new happiness, figuring out life, working hard for a living while also trying to find excitement and thrills. 

Crimes and Misdeameanors: Woody Allen has made nearly 50 movies, many of them great. This may very well be his masterpiece. Woody has directed numerous comedies and a few dramas but this was his first movie to combine both comedy and drama. In fact, the movie contains two stories -- one comic, one tragic -- and the endings of each make them come together in a way you wouldn't expect. The drama centers around a man named Judah (played by Martin Landeau who got an Oscar nomination for it), an extremely successful eye doctor who has recently overseen the opening of a new opthalmology wing at a hospital. But Judah has a dark secret: he has been conducting an affair for a few years with a former airline stewardess (a scary Angelica Huston) who is making increasingly desperate demands that Judah leave his wife or else she'll confront his entire family about his adultery and also reveal his financial chicaneries. Judah calls up his brother Jack -- a dissolute character with underworld connections -- who sets up a hit to kill the mistress. Will Judah get caught and the scheme unravel? You need to see the movie to find out! Meanwhile, the comic story concerns a man named Cliff (played by Woody), a struggling documentary filmmaker who also has a failing marriage (although no mistress) who is making a TV special on his very successful brother-in-law, a pompous Harvey Weinstein-like producer named Lester. One of the producers on the TV special is a woman named Hailey who both Cliff and Lester fall for -- will she choose either man or reject both of them? Again, you need to see the movie to find out! And how do the stories relate, one makes them link-up? Again, only Woody Allen would make the connecting character a rabbi who's going blind ...

Woody Allen is not only one of our greatest directors -- he's also probably the most brilliant screenwriters of all time (he's been nominated for more screenplay Oscars than anyone in history). The Crimes and Misdemeanors script is perfect -- specifically the way that these seemingly unrelated stories are interrcut and made to relate to each other, the tightness and swiftness of the plots, the enormous amount of character development and emotional complexity in a few lines of dialogue, it is simply the best kind of storytelling you can ever encounter. The major overarching theme of this movie is seeing -- looking at what's in front of you and also trying to see something that may or may not be there. This is a movie, in some ways, about people who are looking not only for love but also for mercy and justice and order in the world -- a kind of God -- and not finding it. I remember reading that this is the movie where Woody looked for God and "found Him not there." This movie won't make you find God (in fact, his absence will only be confirmed) but you will certainly see a truly great movie by one of NYC's best filmmakers.

NYC Leads an American Spring

Like many great things in America, it began right here in NYC. 

A month ago, Wall Street was quiet. The streets of America were quiet. For the American power elite, everything was as it should be. Things were looking up! The political parties they had bought and the government they controlled were duly bending to their will. The hated President Obama's approval ratings were tanking and it seemed like only a matter of time before he would be replaced by their favorite whore, Mitt Romney. The richest 1% and their conservative Tea Party allies -- who only have contempt for the poor, the unemployed, the young, the dispossessed, the unlucky, basically anyone who isn't them -- were on the ascendant and these hated "others" seemed to be withering away. The country was going the power elite's way -- with them owning and controlling everything and the rest of us literally and metaphorically dying. Good times were here again! 

Then the streets of NYC came alive and America soon followed.

And the American power elite is freaking out!

It's impossible to guess what the Occupy Wall Street movement will lead to. The American left has a poor track record of grabbing and holding onto political power for very long and affecting huge change. The American right is better at it since they're better financed, better organized, and, in many ways, better motivated. It's easier to get motivated when your afraid of losing something concrete (namely, huge wealth and a privledged position in society) then it is to get motivated about gaining something abstractly better (namely, closing the gap between the rich and poor and a better job). Machiavelli wrote about how the enemies of reform will attack more fiercely than the advocates of reform will fight for their cause since the enemies have a clearer idea of what they'll lose than the advocates have of what they'll gain. This is largely what the power game throughout time has been all about.

But at the moment the other 99% are striking back. The advocates of reform are on the march! They're organizing, making noise, and drawing attention to the grotesque economic disparities in our country and how our government is owned by and operated by the rich few instead of by and for the regular many. The poor and the middle class have done something that they usually have a huge problem doing -- changing the national dialogue, forcing the media to take notice, and scaring the heck out of our bought and paid for government. Right now it's called Occupy Wall Street but it's turning into an American Spring.

Oh, and is the power elite scared! The right wing/Tea Party/Republican Party/Big Media are having a conniption. They're swinging wildly, saying stupid things, unable to comprehend the power of the sleeping giant that's been awoken. 

For example, the loathsome Republican Congressman Peter King recently said, "It's a ragtag mob." It even reminds him of protests in the 1960s which he didn't like since "it ended up shaping policy. We can't allow that to happen." I guess Peter King thinks civil rights and ending the Vietnam war were bad things! Such stupid, thoughtful statements are pure gold for Occupy Wall Street and makes Mr. King the epitome of a useful idiot. Keep up the good work Congressman!

The right wing counter attack has already began and hopefully Occupy Wall Street will ready the counter-counter attack -- and hang their opponents with their own words. Mr. King's words are a good start. So are those of pathetic presidential hopeful Herman Cain who said that if people are unemployed and not rich then it's "your fault." Yeah, try running for president saying that. See how many votes you get. Also wonderful is scumbag Congressman Eric Cantor who has called these protestors as "growing mobs" -- mobs that hopefully will turn into voters and will throw the likes of Eric Cantor out of office.

Mayor Bloomberg -- that billionaire-best-friend-of-the working stiff -- has called the protests "ridiculous." He thinks that people being upset about how their government and society is screwed up is just pure silliness. Yes, tell an unemployed person that he or she is silly -- and then count yourself lucky to walk away without a bloody nose.

Even worse is Bloomberg's girlfriend, the supremely arrogant Diana Taylor. Oh, this is one screwy broad. She recently said in an interview that President Obama has "a lot to learn," apparently because he doesn't completely (only mostly) sell his soul to business and has the temerity (again, only somewhat) to care about people who aren't multimillionaires like her. And Ms. Taylor says that she would have run against and beaten Senator Gillibrand last year but just didn't feel like it. See, she didn't just want to be one of 100 senators, that wouldn't be any fun. This kind of elititest, arrogant, "I'm rich so I know better," screw everyone else kind of stuff goes on and on in this interview. And in the end, Ms. Taylor thinks that what's wrong with America is that most Americans are morons. As the brilliant Alex Pareene of Salon writes: "Mayor Bloomberg, partner diagnose what's wrong with America: You." 

Yes, you, me, and those Americans outside of the rich elite, those of us without powerful connections, those of us who just want to work for a living and live a nice life without killing our souls, yes -- we're the problem! Someone all of us blew up the economy in 2008 -- not the bankers on Wall Street or their employees in the government who let it happen. And these people wonder why Americans are pissed and what Occupy Wall Street gets bigger and more powerful everyday. 

As I've said, I have no idea how Occupy Wall Street will play out politically or if it will change anything. Sadly, big money has a way of shutting down even the most forceful people powered organizations. But hope springs eternal. 

In June of this year, I wrote about how happy I was that gay marriage was legalized in New York and how unthinkable this was just a few short years ago. But I also wrote about how the next front in the war for social justice, now that the war on gay people in New York was won, was ending the war on the middle class and the poor. I held out hope then that something might happen on this front, I just didn't know what it might be. Sadly, I had no good ideas myself. 

But Occupy Wall Street was just the spark I was looking for, and hopefully it will only continue to get more powerful and, a year from now, affect the elections and government policy. Hopefully something good for the middle class and the poor is coming and enemies of reform will be crushed. The tide is turning on the power elite's war on the rest of us.


Here in the streets of NYC, the battle has been joined.

One of Them Days

While America debates health care, Obama's speech, and the predictably stupid Republican hysteria over it, New York City has awoken from its summer doldrums and is heading into a busy fall.

Where to start?

Well, tonight is something called Fashion's Night Out where there'll be lots of parties being held around town featuring lots of celebrities (including the Olsen twins tending bar somewhere and Vogue matriarch Anna Wintour holding court at a mall ... in Queens!). All this sexy partying is in order to kick off Fashion Week here in NYC. I guess if you're beautiful enough and have lots of money (plus you don't have to work tomorrow) then you can go out tonight and help the fashion industry celebrate itself. For the rest of us ordinary New Yorkers, we'll stay home and sip a nightcap.

And talking about cash, look at who's going broke! Atlantic Yards is a mess, the purchase of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town is turning into one of the biggest real estate debacles in city history, and Tavern on the Green just declared bankruptcy. You know the economy is in trouble when the New York City real estate industry and one of the highest grossing restaurants in the whole country are hurtin' for cash.

But not everyone is doing bad. One New Yorker is movin' on up. Judge Denny Chin, the guy who sent Bernie Madoff to the pokie for the next century and a half, is to be nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. This is the same court where Justice Sotomayor served until she became a US Supreme.

Here's an idea: it's rumored that Justice Stevens (who's pushing 90) is going to retire soon. And Judge Chin -- who has an amazing life story plus the added bonus of being the guy who sent Bernie Madoff to work in a laundry room and watch his tuckus in the shower room for the rest of his life -- is widely respected and only 55 years old. He'd be a great pick (Denny, not Bernie) and would be the first Asian American on the court. This could help Obama and the Democrats rally the Asian vote the same way Sotomayor helped with the Hispanic vote. Sending Judge Chin to this court now might be the White House's way of getting him onto the Supreme Court within the next year or so. Chief Justice Roberts was on an appeals court for only two years before going to the Supreme Court so there's a precedent for this kind of. It would also be another New Yorker on The Court. Hope this happens.

Of course, tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. We will all observe it in our own way.

Also, tomorrow marks the return of Radiolab, the great, great WNYC show. Tune in tomorrow at 3 PM on 93.9 FM for one of most imaginative radio shows ever made.

Oh, and next Tuesday is Primary Day. Mr NYC's endorsements will follow soon.

Interview: Natalia Singer on the 1980s

It’s shocking at how popular the 1980s remain. After all, Roseanne is back on TV and a big ‘80s icon, Donald Trump, is now president (unfortunately). Sure, since the ‘80s we’ve had lots of changes: 9/11, two Iraq Wars, the fall of the Soviet Union, a black president (after two Bush presidents), the Internet, the IPhone, the OJ trial, the Great Recession, marriage equality, social media -- but, if you look at all the 1980s nostalgia around us, it’s clearly the decade that won’t die.

We still love the ‘80s … for reasons I can’t quite comprehend.

Natalia Singer has a few thoughts about that decade – and many more. She literally wrote a book about it, a memoir about her life as a young woman in the Reagan era. Now an English professor at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, Natalia’s personal journey through that time was intertwined with its political and social changes. In the first of three amazing interviews, Natalia tells us about her book and her 1980s experiences, her life now, her thoughts about New York, and her visit to Rajnesheepuram, subject of the fascinating new documentary Wild Wild Country.

You wrote a memoir, Scraping By in the Big Eighties, about your life as a young woman in the 1980s. What inspired you to write a book that's personal but also sociological?

Thank you for this excellent question. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to tell this very personal, raw, intimate, and sometimes harrowing tale within this larger political and sociological context because I saw the two as inextricable. I was inspired by the work of George Orwell, James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Virginia Woolf, and Susan Griffin—writers who saw their lives within the larger context of history informed by a lens of race, class, and gender, and who provided a rich template for how to make the personal political, and vice versa. I read their work while I was telling my own story because my story is not only about what happened to me at various key moments in the 1980s but about what happened to us as a nation as the social safety net I had relied on as a child began to unravel under Reaganomics.

As the daughter of a single mother who was disabled, I would probably not be alive were it not for the social safety net. Lyndon B. Johnson’s dream of a Great Society “where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled” had yet to be fully realized when I was growing up in a working class neighborhood on the West Side of Cleveland, but my family of three was able to rely on Medicaid, food stamps, Aid to Dependent Children, and a thriving public school system in which my honors track classmates and I went on to study at topnotch universities. I was able to get free legal aid during a family crisis, 3% student loans, fee waivers on college boards and applications, and, as a student and then a young adult, affordable rent.

And then Ronald Reagan happened. Watching him hasten inequality, exasperate America’s racial divide, roll back reproductive rights for women, kill the ERA, declare war on America’s unions, poison our air and water, all during a militaristic buildup that was frankly terrifying: I wanted to tell that story too and how it affected me personally. I wanted this book to dig deep to the marrow, to hit bedrock emotionally, but also to reach out to engage with others as a literature of witness.

I am a very political writer and I always look to find common cause with my readers. Writing for me is a form of resistance, and it’s also a way of building communities. I also teach the memoir, and I have always been really irritated with the way the American memoir relies on the conversion narrative (dating back to The Confessions of St. Augustine) married to the Horatio Pulled-myself-up-by-my-Bootstraps Alger myth. In other words, in hard capitalism, we like stories about people who suffer and fall and then rise—through self-determination alone. I wanted to write about what happens when you don’t rise because someone else’s boot (and presumably, bootstrap) is being held against your neck. I wanted to critique the mentality that says that we, as individuals, can do and be anything—an ideology that became very popular in the eighties as Ronald Reagan did everything in his power to hasten inequality and systemic racism and sexism.

But I also wanted to write a book that would bring all our disparate struggles for justice together—to unite us, not divide us. A quote I go back to repeatedly from Susan Griffin to inspire both my writing and my teaching is this one: “Any healing will require us to witness all our histories where they converge, the history of empires and emancipation's, of slave ships as well as underground railroads; it requires us to listen back into the muted cries of the beaten, burned, forgotten and also to hear the ring of speech among us, meeting the miracle of that.” Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life.

It seems like Eighties nostalgia never ends. I remember Eighties nostalgia starting in the 1990s! GLOW and Stranger Things are the most recent examples, and now Roseanne is back (it first premiered in 1988). You might even call Donald Trump's presidency (both the man and his reactionary agenda) a piece of ‘80s nostalgia. Why do you think this decade seems to hold so much power over the common imagination – and has it become almost self-destructive?

Donald Trump was a big joke in the Eighties. He was The Donald, a symbol of 80s-style materialism on steroids, and, for the people who had to run into him in the city and at all the clubs where he groped women, a shallow icon of male white privilege. He is and always has been a vulgar con man.

I am mystified as to why people are nostalgic about that decade. I spent most of those years in terror that we’d all be killed in a nuclear war—that we started. When I think of the Eighties, this is my montage: Jimmy Carter putting up solar panels on the White House and Ronald Reagan taking them down; Reagan’s myth of the Welfare Queen; first-strike nuclear capability; AIDS spreading unchecked because of our president’s neglect and homophobia; televangelism and Tammy Faye Baker’s mascara clumps; “Just say no;” $10,000 gold-plated nuclear sub toilet seats; the HUD scandal, the Savings & Loan Scandal; the Stock Market Crash of 1987; Iran-Contra; U.S. sanctioned torture and human rights violations in Central America; the Valdez oil spill in Alaska; the rise of the prison system and disproportional incarceration of people of color; I’m just getting started. Trump represents a continuation of this mass destruction.

But, I will say this: the Eighties had excellent music! The Pretenders, the B-52s, The Clash, some of Madonna, Sting, The Smiths, Cowboy Junkies, 10,000 Maniacs, U-2, Radiohead, The Talking Heads, Roxy Music, The Cure, Blondie. Who wouldn’t want to have an Eighties dance party and rock out to these songs again?

Talking nostalgia, what are your favorite memories of the 1980s (both personal and otherwise) – and your worst?

Before housing costs were insane it was possible to live in a gorgeous place, pay very little rent, and sort of eke out a life working part time and making art the rest of the time. This ended before the decade was over, but I still remember my $170 apartment in Ballard in Seattle, and my friends, Cindy and Dawn, who had a Thompson Street apartment in the Village where I stayed when I came to NYC and slept semi-comfortably on the floor (even if my head was in the bathroom and my body in the little hall in front)! Until 1985 I lived in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, and then Port Townsend) and it was easy to scrape by on restaurant work, a little writing and editing, and to spend long, rapturous weekends hiking the Hoh River Valley or camping at Third Beach near La Push of bicycling and whale-watching in the San Juan Islands for very little money. Those memories are imprinted on me for life. Up on the coast, I met people who lived in trees—literally—and they functioned in a post-capitalist economy by bartering, foraging, and just hanging out. And in NYC and in LA, in those years, I met many people who got by just fine because of rent controlled apartments, free clinics, community gardens, and luck.

Low points—too many to count but I did list a few under 4. This is the decade in which we see the rise of homelessness and food banks, the backlash against feminism, increased police brutality, and the hard core resurgence of a kind of militaristic masculinity that seemed already passé in the seventies but came back with a fervor then—a harbinger for Trumpism. The ecological disasters—Valdez and Chernobyl. Industrial farming: get big or get out. Basically, it was a nonstop nightmare. 

What are some of your favorite music, movies and TV shows from that decade?

I didn’t watch TV in the eighties at all. I watched a ton of TV as a child, then stopped in college and didn’t really start again until the late '90s. I gave you a list of my favorite music from that era above (should have read all the questions first!) In the Eighties I watched a lot of foreign films by Werner Herzog and Peter Weir. I also liked Hannah and Her Sisters, A Year of Living Dangerously, and of course, The Big Chill. 

Thanks Natalia! In our next interview, Natalia tells us about her 1982 visit to the now mythical Rajneeshpuram, the Oregon site of the Rajneeshee cult, the subject of the hugely popular and controversial Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country.

Justice Delayed. Justice Denied?

As another presidential election grinds to a close, let's go back to those halcyon days, those days of yore, that lovely memorable time -- the year 2004 -- when another president was running for re-election. That's right, I'm talking about when George W. Bush, without a doubt one of our greatest presidents, was seeking a second term to continue his magnificent work governing this country.

In that year of wonderful peach and prosperity, Bush's Republican party held its convention right here in NYC. It was only three years after some trouble had occurred but obviously the then-POTUS's party didn't want to politicize the event so it was only a mere coincidence that the party held its convention here. 

And when they did, for some totally inexplicable reason that only highly-paid psychiatrists in Austria could figure out, thousands upon thousands of people turned out to protest the convention, the president, his party, and situation in the country in general. They were mad for some reason, and they had the chutzpah to let the world know.

This resulted, naturally, in mass arrests. The NYPD went medieval on the protesters, sending in provocateurs to turn them violet and then caged them in their thousands, beating them up, throwing them into pens unfit for human habitation. No, never the mind the misfits on Wall Street who were quietly plotting to blow up our economy -- these were the people who were arrested. 

And, unsurprisingly, they sued. 

Now, eight years later, justice has been served. No, not on the arrested protesters but on the NYPD.  A US judge has ruled that they were arrested without probable cause, clearly violating their 4th Amendment constitutional rights. 

So it only took a decade for some justice to be smacked down. Too bad it took so long.

Anybody Seen Ritchie?

Over the years something'll pop up in the NYC tabloids about Richie Akiva. He's a big club owner/party promoter/nightlife guru whose run clubs like Butter and 10Oak and others. 

Richie has a lot of celebrity friends, was part of Leo's "pussy posse", dated an Olsen twin, and he's just one of the best-connected happening party guys in town.

He's also something of a criminal.

Last year he was busted for driving without a license. He's been involved in all kinds of lawsuits, accused of ripping off former business partners, and now he's been arrested for beating a guy in the head with a metal pipe.

Egads.

Richie's got some problems. It reminds me of that movie I blogged about a few years ago, Out for Justice, which is all about a crime boss named Richie who the heroic cop is looking for -- "Anybody seen Richie?" is his constant refrain.

Here's a interesting postscript: I actually went to school with Richie Akiva way back in the day. We were in 9th grade together but then, I recall, he vanished -- he was kicked out. (I remember it was from Richie that I first learned the term "herb" as being a pejorative.) He wound up a private school for rich juvenile deliquents.

And that's the thing -- Richie's a rich kid.

He was born into a wealthy family who set him up in the club business. He walks and talks, dresses and behaves like a badass, but he's really just a spoiled brat. And it looks like fate is catching up with him.  

Mr NYC in China

In 2008, when this blog was less than two years old, I made a trip to China that I blogged about here. 

It was the second time in my life that I'd gone to China and, for literally years afterwards, I've been meaning to do another post about my first visit. 

The problem is that my first visit was in 1985 when I was eight years old and we were there for a month. So I don't remember everything about it and couldn't, I feel, do a post justice.

But, finally, I will do a post -- picking up random shards of memories from long ago, providing impressions, of my first trip to China 40 years ago with my dad.

What I remember is that, back then, China was still coming out of its first years of hardline Communism. Mao had been dead for less than a decade, and the country had yet to experience the massive economic growth and wealth that defines it today. I remember everyone riding around on ringing bicycles, most people living in small thatched houses like huts, and lots of people walking down the street eating out of rice bowls.

It was, obviously, a very different world from 1980s NYC. Whe started our trip in  Shanghai and I don't remember much about it except that, in the hotel lobby, they were playing Madonna's "Like a Virgin" in Chinese and that there was the first of several-to-be-encountered pitchers of boiled water in our room.

Later on we visited cities like Chongqing and also saw the amazing, historic Terracota Warriors that had only been discovered 11 years earlier in 1974. 

I remember we went to Beijing and saw the Forbidden City for the first time -- and then one night ate Peking Duck and went to the Chinese circus.

I remember walking around Tiananmen Square, four years before the exploded in deadly riots.

I remember seeing pandas in the zoo for the first time, also the Summer Palace. 

I remember we stayed somewhere at a hotel by the river and they would catch fresh fish from the river and serve it in the hotel dining room -- and I'd mash it up into rice and cover it in soy sauce and it was delicious.

I remember we took a cruise down the Yangtze River for more than week, and I'd stand at the prow, pretending to pilot the boat like any eight year old boy would.

I remember long, long train rides where we'd stare out the windows at farmers with huge water buffalo worked the land.

I remember visiting the house that my family built in a city on the sea back in the early 20th century -- and lots of Chinese school kids doing exericess on the beach.

I remember lots of rescheduled Chinese domestic flights on CAAC, the official Chinese airline, that everyone joke stands for "China Airlines Always Cancels."

I remember long drives where I would listen to tapes of "The Chronicles of Narnia."

I remember ending our trip in Hong Kong which was still a British colony at the time. The streets were even narrower than NYC, the wealth of the city fully on display. One day we went to the Royal Yacht Club for a drink -- that was cool! And I remember the huge, gorgeous harbor and the huge boats on it, glowing on the water at night. 

I remember that, on our trip home, we flew from Hong Kong to Tokyo and then, flying westward, I remember that my last view of Asia was the gorgeous Mount Fuji shining bright in the night sky.

I remeber that Beverly Hills Cop was the movie being shown on the flight and, after it was over, that another movie called Iceman started but then I fell asleep and, when I awoke, we were back in NYC.

And I remember when I got back that I told everyone about this amazing trip I took -- and no one really cared.

China really is just amazing -- and it's more than a country, it's a civilization with a history we can't even begin to understand. You should go.

And if you want to understand the 20th century history of China, you should watch the 1987 Best Picture Oscar winner The Last Emperor about how the long, long, long reigning Chinese monarchy fell and it led to decades of war, leading to the Communist revolution and country that exists today.  

I hope to go back to China one day -- and blog about it better then!

They Get Away With It

Once upon a time, in an era that was a little more innocent than our own. F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly said to Ernest Hemingway, "The rich are different than you and me." To this Papa replied, "Yes, they have more money."

If you read the tabloids every day, you see sob stories of rich and famous people getting divorced or arrested or being forced into rehab. You read about their miserable lives and think to yourself, "See, just goes to show you: money doesn't buy happiness." So you might be forgiven if you think that Ernest Hemingway was right.

But the rich really are different than you and me. They live by a different set of rules. The laws that apply to regular people don't apply to them. If you think that being rich means you can get away with things others can't -- you're right.

The recent financial crises just illustrates this beautifully. The always brilliant Matt Taibbi has a new article called Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Taibbi meticulously breaks down why so many of the people who blew up the economy two years ago, forcing lots of people to lose their jobs and homes, haven't been prosecuted, haven't gone to jail. He reveals the truly incestuous, disgusting relationship between the financial industry and the government agencies that are supposed to regulate them. Obviously the government doesn't regulate the financial industry at all. The relationship is totally hte inverse with the financial industry totally neutering the government. As Taibbi points out, the worst penalties these malefactors of great wealth ever get are pathetic little fines, almost always paid out by the companies and not borne personally by the perpetrators. None of these guys are ever sent to jail, forced to share a cell with a six foot five, 300 pound, heavily tattooed biker gang rapist. If they did, as one of the people quoted in this article points out, these financial shenanigans would cease immediately.

One of the most truly loathsome financial criminals that Taibbi writes about is Merrill Lynch CEO John Mack. And guess what? Mack, who the article points out is probably guilty of massive insider trading, is a big time political donor. Right now Mack and other such reptiles are shopping around for a Republican candidate who they think can defeat President Obama in 2012. Oh, they're having such a hard time of it, they can't find a candidate they really love who is "electable." Apparently he and others like him think that Obama is too tough on the financial industry (never mind that Obama, like all politicians, is completely beholden to the industry) and is looking for a potential occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who will be an even bigger kiss-ass financial criminals. 

And you thought that you had problems in life.

Of course the only financial criminal currently rotting in jail is our own Bernie Madoff. And why? Because he had the audacity not only to steal money from people but to do it from other rich people. Obviously he had to be punished harshly for that. But ripping off millions and millions of ordinary people? The people who did that got off scott-free. And even Madoff isn't suffering too much. He was recently allowed to give an interview to The New York Times and is even given access to email in the pokey. So I guess life in prison isn't all that bad for him. If it were up to me, Madoff and all of these other scumbags would be in cells with the aforementioned rapists -- or sitting in 23-hour-a-day lock down in a Supermax.

Of course, injustice isn't always a matter of money. It's also racial. The vast majority of people busted for pot possession in NYC are black and Hispanic. But who actually uses the most pot in NYC? White people! 

Taibbi ends his brilliant article with the following depressing true observation:

"The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy. They're attacking the very definition of property — which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone's claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality."

Memo from NYC

From a native New Yorker to the undistinguished junior senator from Arizona Jon Kyl: you sir, are a hypocritical, dishonest scumbug.

I would call you nastier names if I hadn't been raised with such good manners.

As you may know, US Solicitor General and current US Supreme Court-designee Elena Kagan is sitting through her confirmation hearings this week. Like most Supreme Court hearings these days, it's basically dull political theater, with the Democrats and Republicans being faily predictable in their rhetoric towards her. But one comment by Senator Kyl really pissed me off.

This creepy senator with a creepy name (I can't trust anyone whose first and last name comprises a total of only six letters) said that Ms Kagan's background is "unusual" for a Supreme Court nominee (presumably because she's not a white conservative Republican WASP male like Jon Kyl) and that her life and career "draws from a world whose signposts are distant from most Americans."

Chief amongst these "distant signposts": the fact that Elena Kagan is from Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

As you might imagine, this snide, cynical "observation" drove me nuts. Not only is yet another unimaginative piece of divisive cultural warfare by Republicans but it also show what an anti-Semite Jon Kyl is. Because when the not-so-good Senator talks about the Upper West Side being "distant" from most Americans what he's really saying is "it's a place where a lot of Jews live. And, you know, those Jews aren't like most Americans unless, you know, they vote Republican."

What a douche.

Really, Senator Kyl, can't you do better than this? And whoever came up with the idea of "distant signposts" is really a moron (and the worst kind of moron too: a moron who thinks he or she is smart). What the hell does "distant signposts" mean anyway? Please!

Also, saying that Elena Kagan's experiences are somehow foreign from those of most Americans is dumb. Do you think it was easy being a short, homely Jewish woman trying to make it in legal profession in the 1980s? (Well, the bigoted Senator Kyl probably thinks it was easy for her but not most sensible people.) Struggling to attain your success is the most admirable American attribute there is. He should be praising her for it, not casting aspersions.

But here is where Senator Kyl's dishonesty and hypocrisy really gets to me: this man is, himself, a child of privilege and power -- he's the son of a former US Congressman. And Kyl spent his pre-political career as a high-powered lawyer and lobbyist.

Senator Kyl, is that actually the resume of "most Americans?" Do you think your life experiences have been a little bit, you know, less than ordinary?

Don't just take my word for it. Take it from the great state of Arizona itself. I just came across a wonderful blog out from out there called Random Musings by someone who writes with a maturity Mr NYC could only hope to attain. This blogger writes: "If Kyl's political blood was any bluer, he'd be getting ready to star in the sequel to Avatar." I'm glad to know that at least one of Senator Kyl's constituents doesn't buy his crap and I think it also shows you that my complaints aren't just those of a typical New York liberal.

And speaking for the Upper West Side itself, Joe Conason just wrote a great article in defense of the Upper West Side. Among the great Americans who lived there: "Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, J.D. Salinger, Saul Bellow, Humphrey Bogart, Harry Belafonte and George M. Cohan, an Irish Catholic who won the Congressional Gold Medal in 1936 for composing "You're a Grand Old Flag," among other achievements. (Rush Limbaugh used to live there, too. And Joe Scarborough says he "loves" living there with his family today.)" (I exclude Rush Limbaugh and Joe Scarborough from the great Americans roster, they're scum just like Senator Kyl, but it just shows you how tolerant and diverse the neighborhood is.)

Oh, and let's not forget that the Upper West Side is where the TV show Seinfeld took place -- you know, one of the most popular American shows ever?

I think the only one who's most "distant" from most Americans is Jon Kyl and not Elena Kagan.

So if there's any justice in this world than Elena Kagan will become a Justice. And hopefully, one day, Jon Kyl's political career will go down the ... jon.

RGB RIP

Sad news for NYC. Sad news for America.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- child of Brooklyn, legal genius, feminist icon -- died on Friday, September 18th, aged 87.

Even if she hadn't spent more than a quarter century on the court (she was confirmed in 1993, after almost 13 years serving on the US Court of Appeals, so almost 40 years total as a federal judge), she would be a legend. Ginsburg blazed a trail as one of the few women graduates of Harvard Law of her era, then became one of the first female tenured law professors at Columbia. In the 1970s she advocated for gender equality in multiple cases before the Supreme Court, winning almost all of them. Then, as a Supreme herself, her votes and decisions on gender equality, gay rights, and other social justice cases helped to make America a somewhat better, somewhat fairer place. She dissented a lot -- such was the make up of the court -- but her voice was always heard. 

And she had a long, happy marriage to her husband Marty, a legal genius himself. I heard a story about Marty and Ross Perot -- after he and Ruth had moved to DC, he became a professor at Georgetown Law. Ol' Ross was have a legal problem and, during one lunch with Marty, Marty solved it for him -- saving the Texas billionaire a lot of money. Ross then endowed a chair for the man at Georgetown. But, in many ways, Marty built his life and career around Ruth, such was his love for her.

I found out about the death of RGB this past Friday evening as I was standing in a deli kiosk at Penn Station. I was holding a strawberry parfait thinking, "I guess I'll buy this and eat it on the train," when the TV above, tuned to CNN, showed "BREAKING NEWS." I've become a little cynical about "BREAKING NEWS" because so little of it is usually news but then I saw them say that RGB was dead -- and my heart dropped. I'll never forget it.

Rest in peace, Ruth. We didn't deserve you, and we were lucky to have you for as long as we did. 

Mr NYC in France, Holland & England

Memory is tricky. Some things we remember as clearly as a blue cloudless sky. Other things we remember only faintly or not at all. It doesn't matter how long ago or recently these events were -- we remember what we want to, for whatever reason, no matter how long ago. 

I think the memories that fade are those that can't be easily catagorized as "good" or "bad." We remember our traumas and our triumphs but rarely the things in between. 

As our movements in the outside world have been limited by the pandemic, as I've clocked more time at home than ever before, I've spent a lot of time thinking about trips I've taken in the past. Most of them I've blogged about here already but then, quite recently, my memory was jogged about a trip I had taken the summer befor my freshman year of high school. It was a five week student trip to France, Holland and England. For whatever reasons, I honestly hadn't thought about or remembered even going on this trip for years and years and years.

Until now.

I guess I didn't really remember this trip because I didn't like most of the other kids on this trip and there was lots of teenage nonesense (who wants to remember that?). And yet, as I thought about the trip again recently, I realized I didn't remember any of the other kids on it -- but I remember what I saw.

And what I saw was amazing.

First, France. We landed in an airport in Basel, Switzerland and took a bus across the French border to a small town called Argentierre. It was a small, picturesque country town. We stayed in a hostel up on a hill, with a stunning view of the Alps. We would then walk down into the town to get food and change money but we spent most of our time hiking the Alps and beholding the amazing vistas. After a few days we took an overnight train to Paris, emerging into the city in the early morning (in fact both of my trips to Paris, nearly 20 years apart, have involved my arrival by train). We stayed in an old fashioned stone building on a beautiful street with a courtyard, and we walked streets and over the bridges of this stunning city every day. One night we even ate in a Chinese restaurant. We visited the Louvre and, yes, saw the Mona Lisa; we visited the bizarre-looking Centre Pompidou (a modern art museum that is a piece of modern art itself), we walked through the Luxumbourg Gardens and strolled around at night, the city truly living up to its reputation as the city of lights.

Second, Holland. We took a train to, if I remember correctly, the Hague but we didn't see any of the international courts of justice. Instead, we got on bicycles and biked for several days around the most hilly parts of this otherwise very flat country. This was the roughest part of the trip for me -- by far. The bikes were big and metal and I had neither the size nor stamina for long stretches of biking (at one point we even biked past some royal palace behind a big gate). At the end of each day, at the various hostels we'd stop at, I would collapse from exhaustion (we did, however, spend one afternoon during our biking adventures at a topless beach -- that was interesting!). At one point, as we were biking, I had a really nasty fall and the skin from part of my left knee was dug out, exposing a vein. It took a long time to heal and I still have a scar to this day. Fortunately, we soon ended the biking portion of the journey and headed to Amsterdam. I love this town. Highly walkable, gorgeous canals, lovely and simple architecture. We went to all of the big museums (I don't remember all of them, sadly), and, of course, we saw Anne Frank's house which was moving, sad, and inspiring. And, yes, we strolled around the notorious Red Light District although obvious we didn't patronize it. Nor did we go into any of the pot cafes. However, I did go into some of the McDonalds and, not for the nothing, I laughed the loudest when the movie Pulp Fiction came out and the Vincent Vega character talked about Royales with Cheese and people in Amsterdam soaking french fries with mayonaise. I saw all that with my own eyes, a couple of years before Mr. Quentin Tarantino did!

Third, England. We took a boat to get there, a boat from Belgium. I don't remember where in Belgium we left from or where in England we landed at. But on the day we landed we took a boat to Cambridge and stayed at the university. Our home was called Sidney Sussex College (British universities are made up of a number of "colleges"), whose most famous alumni (in real life) is Oliver Cromwell and (fictional) is Sherlock Holmes. Again, memories of this time was scarce, but I remember we ate in these huge neo-classical dining halls and we rowed down the River Cam in punts which is a huge tradition there. Next we headed north to the beautiful Lake District where we spent days backpacking around the stunning hills and dales around the lakes, mist everywhere. We also visited Rydle Mount, the modest but gorgeous home of the poet William Wordsworth whose family still owns it to this day. Then we headed down to London and stayed at the University of London, a massive and rather dreary modern-y place. I've been to London several times since then and I honestly don't remember much about this particular visit except that we spent a lot of time hanging out in the city's parks -- including the infamous Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park where, on Sundays, people stand and kvetch about whatever's on their mind. One guy I saw spent his time shouting "I'm perfect! I'm perfect!"

After that, we came back to NYC.

And that's it. That's all I remember. But these vague memories of that trip, a long time ago, has inspired me to go back to France, Holland and England as soon as possible -- and to enjoy it properly this time!

Memo from NYC

Pope Francis rules.

Literally -- he rules the nation of Vatican City and the worldwide Roman Catholic church.

But he also rules.

When Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires was elected the 266th Supreme Pontiff in March, he made history as the first Pope from the Americas and the first non-European Pope in almost 1000 (that's right, a thousand) years. First thing he did: paid his hotel bill before moving into the Vatican full time. Then, instead of the lavish papal apartments, he took up residence in a dorm room. Instead of eating in his own private dining room, he eats in a cafeteria. But it's not all symbolic: he has said that his goals as pope are to focus the church's work on helping the poor, sick and elderly. Since then, he has said that he will not judge gay people, wants to reach out to atheists, and help single mothers. Also, he has said that the church shouldn't spend all its time obsessing over divisive social issues like abortion. Oh, and he's also rooting out the corruption in the Catholic hierarchy and bank.

Wow.

In less than a year, Pope Francis has shaken up the world's oldest organized religion and is refashioning it for the 21st century.

Recently, he published a "papal exhortation" which brilliantly dismantles the argument that raw capitalism is a force for good. Specifically, he says that no economic system should practice exclusion but be geared towards inclusion i.e. everyone should benefit from it. Better than President Obama or Mayor-elect De Blasio or any other politicians, Pope Francis brilliantly sums up the problem of economic inequality:
  "Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “Thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality."

He also makes an appeal to the essential nature of the Christian faith, that we must not worship anything else besides God and our fellow man. Money, in his view, as become the new idolatry:

"While the earnings of the minority are growing exponentially, so, too, is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. The imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation…. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules…. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule ... Money must serve, not rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect, and promote the poor. I exhort you to a generous solidarity and to the return of economics and finance to an ethical approach which favors human beings."

(If President Obama said stuff like this, he'd probably be a whole lot more popular.)

What amazes me and so many around the world is that this Pope not only preaches his faith but also lives it and uses it as the compass for his work. He walks the walk while he talks the talk and is getting the job done. Like a truly great communicator, he is striking back at a world where money rules and insists that only our common humanity must rule.

Naturally, conservatives hate him. Oh man, they are out there calling this Pope a Marxist and all sorts of mean nasty stuff. But in doing so, they expose their true nature. They are not really religious, they are not truly people of faith -- they worship money, power, materialism, and themselves. They see religion as a tool to divide people, to acquire power and riches, not to improve humanity.

Case in point: former President Bush. Supposedly the most openly religious president we ever had, he always droned on about how much he loved God and how He had saved him. But his presidency exposed his true loves: war, tax cuts for the rich, eliminating worker protections, denying people health insurance, screwing up disaster relief, politicizing the justice department. This is a man of faith? This is how his faith led him to govern? He was never really a man of faith, he was a man of power. I always remember that annoying smirk on his face proved to me, more than anything else, what a fraud he was. What kind of a man of faith smirks?
 
Not this Pope. Whenever you see Pope Francis smile, you see a man genuinely motivated by his faith. When you're the real deal, you don't have to fake it. His manner of living and his work prove it. He's an inspiration.

Now I'm not Catholic or particularly religious. I still disagree with the Catholic Church's doctrines on gay marriage, abortion, contraception, and the role of women. Pope Francis isn't changing any of this and it'll probably be generations before any future pope does. But Pope Francis is talking about the most important issues facing the world right now and he's doing it brilliantly. He is showing what a true man of faith is all about. And in these trouble times, it's amazing to see.