I woke up extremely early for me this morning. It is chilly these mornings in NYC, low fifties as I type on this, but, you can feel that the temperature is going to surge one of these days, the weather jokes (read: folks) predict 93 by Monday, and you can sense the heat already building up in the air and it's two or three days off, so you know by the time it gets to be 93 it's gonna be HOT--and, trust me, in New York City, 93 degrees is like living in the pits of Death Valley--93 degrees bouncing up off concrete and darting at you off the reflecting Plexiglas panelings that disgrace most of the sides of these "new world" plastic and concrete slab hi-rises going up like fort walls around my little corner of this world becomes 193 degrees (yes, I exaggerate to make a point) at street level--or in an apartment without air conditioning, like my apartment--I hate air conditioning--so you can bet my apartment on a 93-degree day will be like walking into an F-ing oven--it will be 100 degrees in my apartment by 4 in the afternoon--though I do have 5 medium-size fans running 24/7 and they do keep the air flowing, unless the humidity is so high and the air is thick with hot water, then my fans blow futilely against that humid air--leaving the room drowning in watery stifling heat.
There was once first a radio show and then an early television show called "The Life of Riley." It came from an old Irish-American statement, "Why Clancy, that shanty drunk from the worst neighborhood in Limerick, comes to this country, becomes a bootlegger in Boston, and now, he and the misses are living the life of Riley, they are." My friend named O'Reilly tells me that the Rileys in Ireland are considered the highest class of Irish (remember now, my friend's an O'Reilly), the ancient king class--and Ireland at one time had so many kings they constantly fought for control of the whole island, until the Vikings came along and turned the Irish into half-Scandinavians--and God it shows so wonderfully in their young women--so, it became a saying over here when a shanty Irish got respectable that finally he was getting to live a life like the ancient O'Reilly clan enjoyed--a life of no worry, of ease, of wealth, and of great achievement. The Riley in "The Life of Riley" tried to live like a king (it was later developed into "The Honeymooners" by Jackie Gleason, an Irish-American (did you know most teevee shows are based on a handful of successful situations--either comic situations or anticomic situations?))(I love messin' with parentheses)--as I was babbling, Riley tried to live like a king, but nobody, his wife, his kids, his job, his friends, and especially his nextdoor neighbor, respected him as such. So Riley was always getting involved in things far above his head--you know, he was the king of his castle--only for them all to come crashing down around him--knocking him off his imaginary throne and dumping him right back into his living room easy chair. When such things happened and came down around him, he'd look at the camera with a hangdog face and say, "What'a revoltin' development this is." (Again, Jackie Gleason in "The Honeymooners" copied this expression of self-defeat with his famous cry, "I gotta biiiig mouth!")(Another of my friends, she's so damn smart, tells me Jackie Gleason played Riley in the original show--later he was replaced by the "Hairy Ape" actor, William Bendix (he totally misacted out the "Hairy Ape" (Eugene O'Neill) character, by the bye).)
So what revolted me this morning when I was up early with nothing to do? I'll tell ya--you see at one point in this early-to-rise boredom, I flipped on the old teevee to see if anything interesting was running (knowing of course that there wouldn't be anything interesting running--unless Wei Lana was wearing a certain little pink Yoga suit she wears on the PBS Yoga guru's constantly running early-morning-hours show)--and first up pops the CBS Early Morning News (controlled by Les Moonvez who plucked out the hottest Asian talking head chick, Julie Chen, and married her sweet ass--lucky bastard; unlucky for the former Mrs. Moonvez, except she got a sweet divorce settlement, I'm sure). The CBS slick-ass talking heads were jolly as hell this morning. Since they are not yet superstars, they can jive and yuck it up like they are all old buddy-buddies and shit--except you know these people hate each other in reality because they are all auditioning as they work for better slots within the network news show biz industry (yes, folks, it's an industry) so even while they're on air they're competing with each other--and trust me, it's a dog-eat-dog business--and it drives many of these talking heads to drink--and of course a little social cocaine, too. If they're lucky, they'll end up like Katie "the high school cheerleader" Couric, who, by the bye, is a bust when it comes to ratings--she ain't even a good Baba Walters. Or the babe talking heads, a mixture of really slim hot Asians, lightskin blacks, and whitey-WASP blondes, maybe they'll get lucky and Les Moonvez will kick Julie Chen, and she's beginning to look a little dog-eared, if you catch my drift, the hell out--ship her out to do the news in Salt Lake City--and marry her. Eventually getting divorced from old Les would be better money than Katie Couric makes (what's the latest, 30 million a year? Isn't that ludicrous?).
So here comes the news. I'm suddenly interested because the teaser leading into the newscast said a new development in our little man billionaire mayor's plan to charge a traffic toll to get into Manhattan from 86th Uptown on Downtown south, a truly stupid, absolutely stupid plan--a rich's man plan for the plebes, who this little asshole hates--he hates the poor, and you better believe he hates blacks, except as bodyguards and all these politicos feel safe with big black dudes as their bodyguards (all about the size of that dude Puff Duddy made a bad rap record about)--but anyway, Tiny Mike--he's short in body but long in bank accounts-- wants cars to pay $8 to come into Center City Manhattan and $21 for trucks, though he cheaped down on that one saying some trucks if they were environmentally fixed could come in for same as a car--such bullshit logic, though he's countin' the bucks and cares nothing about how this won't solve the congestion problem, a problem by the way he has help create due to his insane development projects, his cross-street one-ways you can't get off of until you reach a certain avenue that causes huge long backups of traffic that end up blocking boxes (intersections) up and down Center City Manhattan--but, Little Mike is determined to have HIS cake and eat it, too--F the citizens of New York City--he wants us out of here so really rich and important people can live in Manhattan in all the new hi-rise, zone-changing, community disrupting, tacky, ugly sloppily built with imported immigrant labor that works for half the hourly wage an American construction worker works for--of course, your building's liable to come pancaking down one day, like those South American hi-rises do say during an earthquake like Mexico City had a few years ago), which by the way bring more people who drive automobiles (rich people don't ride public transit) into Manhattan--all these hi-rises have parking garages built in their underground guts--private garage chains and not for the building's tenants--come on, it's ignorant; and our billionaire mayor is a very ignorant man, like most New York City mayors usually are, the most ignorant of men; like most politicians are--the most ignorant of our men and women.
So I stayed and watched this news. They opened with the chick head saying, "Eva Longoria is feeling great today...stay tuned and we'll tell you why."
Eva Longoria is a teevee star--oh, I'm sorry, she's a film star, except she's really an ex-soap opera slut-role player who lucked out and made the "slut role-playing" big time by hitting a slut role on the sluttiest teevee show there was once upon a time, "Desperate Housewives," which is, let's face it, a pretty honest look at how most American white wives behave out in the great white-gated communities around the richer parts of the US--why they act just like they're the grown-up-now kids from "Beverly Hills 911" or whatever that stupid show was called--the sluts grown up and living with their fabulously wealthy husbands in the fabulously wealthy gated-community of White Slutland. Now what did Eva have to do with being the headline on the CBS Morning News?
I happened to accidentally watch the end to last night's San Antonio Spurs/Cleveland Caviliers playoff game for the NBA championship. I'm totally not interested in pro-basketball--basketball, though a true American sport, never interested me because I couldn't play it--I wasn't tall enough, so screw it. Baseball, now there's my sport; and I learned how to play baseball damn well--though I was such a procrastinating little jerk as a teenager my disposition blew any chances I had of making it in pro baseball. I couldn't take orders--hell, I'm a SOCIOPATH. Anyway, I watched the end of this basketball game last night, and it was cool, Cleveland was making leaps and bounds gains and got within one of winning the whole thing, when boom, off went the horn and the Spurs were the champs.
I left the game on to do something and when I came back to it, there was a chick running out onto the floor and a grabbing one of the Spurs's players and leaping up in his arms and then wrapping her fine legs around him. The cameraman zoomed quickly in on the incident and the announcer glowingly said, "There's Eva Longoria going to her man...." Hey, that's what the talking head chick was talking about, Eva Longoria is banging one of the Spurs! No they're not married, just banging each other for a couple'a months now--which in Hollywood is a long-term relationship. And, by the bye, up close and personal, Eva Longoria is a very average looking, aging, by the bye, babe.
I once hung out with a very famous pro-basketball player (an ex-New York Knick). We met playing bid whisk together up at a club on Columbus Avenue in New York City, a disco, but they had bid whisk tables along a back wall and it was a prominently black club and blacks love bid whisk, a kind of a wild form of pinochle, so, hell, it was a lot of fun if you knew the game and I was pretty good at it since I had learned to play bridge with my second wife who was a quality bridge player. So I got in with this whisk-playing crowd of blacks and, shit, it became not only fun but I met some big-time blacks at those tables and one was this basketball star (he had gone to a college that was in my college's Missouri Valley Conference so we had that in common since he remembered my college's team very clearly). I ended up partnering with this basketball star one night and after that we became kind'a good friends.
One night, this dude took me out to his Rolls-Royce and we got in and shit it was like a den in that Rolls--he had everything imaginable in that backseat, including a teevee, a telephone, and a bar. We immediately busted out his finest cognac and started knocking 'em down like my pal could knocked down a jump shot from anywhere outside the post. The more bombed we got we got to talking about women and this dude told me all about how he got messages all the time from movie starlets and soap-opera chicks, and even famous political chicks and socialite wives in NYC. He took out his little black book and opened it and leaned over and showed me a name and number in it. It was the number of a very famous white woman--I mean, a-top-of-the-news-everyday white woman. "I banged her a couple a nights ago," he boasted, "while her husband was in Washington, man." "Son of a bitch, dude." "Watch this." And he dialed her phone number and she answered the phone and he started talking to her and then he handed me the phone to me and I heard her talking briefly and knew it was her all right and she was saying "...my featherbed's still so rumpled from the other..." and that's all I heard. He said she had silk sheets on that featherbed, too.
So, there ya go; the biggest news they could find to lead off with this morning on CBS was Eva Longoria feeling great. As the people in Palestine were being blasted to kingdom come and Hamas was kicking the dogshit out of their righteous opposition (Fatah), blowing up their headquarters, etc., yet, that wasn't even mentioned in this morning's news, or if it was, I had switched over and was watching the Arizona-hick evangelist, Don Stewart, by then; Don being one of my favorite teevee rich evangelists, and Don is a protege of the great old, fine-sot, evangelist, A.A. Allen --"From Miracle Valley, Arizona." A.A. was found dead in a San Francisco hotel room in the sixties sometime--he had drank himself to death--"a blessed miracle"--and Don Stewart was one of A.A.'s youth ministers at the time--and now he's rolling in the clover (read: greenback dollar bills) with his own "ministry"--the evangelists like to try and legitimize the voodoo they do so obnoxiously. How could you believe in a God who blesses such white trash as Don Stewart while he lets an innocent man die on Death Row just up the road from Don and his phony miracles. "Watch out, Don, that bottles calling to you, man."
All of this reminded me of Riley and his "What a revoltin' development this is."
And what a revoltin' development the world is in now.
Hot Damn, Another Civil War
Well, the Bush Babies have successfully divided Palestine into two factions now, Gaza, now under Islamic rule of Hamas, and the West Bank, still under the control of Fatah. Condo-Leasing Rice is wetting her big-mama panties she's so thrilled over this division.
So now, let's see, we have created a Civil War in Iraq--we've divided it into three states now, Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurd--plus we are building the umpteenth billion dollar Green Zone embassy, which will be home to the US occupation forces who are planning on staying in Iraq now for "generations" as one fop politico put it and like in South Korea as Georgie Porgie ("Our Never-Honestly-Elected "precedent"") Bush is saying. Plus, the Taliban are reemerging big time and deadly in Afghanistan, so one assumes now that mess will end in a Civil War, too.
God how we love Civil Wars. Civil Wars divide countries, you see, which makes them more easier to control in a global market sense. We love dividing countries like pie--the biggest and best pieces of course going to the overweight US.
And, hey, how about Lebanon now; another Civil War is developing there--with the US recently sending in it's Syrian-trained death squads (remember, John "Death Squad" Negroponte is over there now) down into the Palestinian Refugee camps in Northern Lebanon and then arming up the Lebanese Army to go in and get into an endless fight with these forces, the innocent of course once again displaced or at best killed on the spot--it gets them out of their misery, folks.
Andy Jackson, that old flea-bitten Southern asshole, said "United we stand; divided we fall." And, by God, the US Army highly respects old Gen'l Jackson's wisdom--you know, he's an Army hero--a white hero--there aren't really many black heroes in the Army--yeah, OK, Colon's Pal--naw, he ain't no hero to the US Army--just another black dickboy to them. (Read about the first black to graduate from West Point--yeah, back in the late 1800s--see what the great white Army did to that poor honest bastard (Howard O. Flipper was his name).)
So we know that if we can divide a country we can rule it--and look at the little countries we're gonna get to rule over in the Middle-East now. Oh the Saudis are jumpin' for joy; so's Bin Laden; so's the Royal Family of Dubai; so's the new Dubai corporation called Halliburton jumping for joy. Hot damn, war is damn good; it's profitable, too. Hot damn, don't you just know it.
Don't Worry, Folks, the Stock Market Is Back on Track--Once Again Making the Rich Richer and the Poor Poorer
Yep, folks, Vegas on Wall Street is so happy today, pounding it's gorilla chest as it once again soared back up toward 15,000--and, yes, folks, it will get to 15,000, don't worry. Exxon-Mobil hasn't turned in another huge profitable quarter yet. But, hey, the Fed Reserve said, "There's no such thing as inflation...naw...." How about a "depression," rich boys?
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
Yankees-Mets Tonight
Oh boy, baseball season is becoming wondrous again, habit-forming again--holy shit, another thrilling season coming to a head--the Yankees are going after their 10th win in a row tonight--the Mets, losing these days, though it doesn't matter, they're still two games ahead of the Phillies who have just knocked Bobby Cox and his Atlanta team down into 3rd in that division. Don't worry, Mets fans, they're gonna win that division.
Clemons versus Perez tonight--it ought'a be a good one. Clemens can be tagged--he's 44 years old; but then, Perez can get tagged, too. It may be be a downeybrook tonight! God we hope so.
thestaff
for The Daily Growler
"Ain't This a Shame--and we only have ourselves to blame":
New Orleans turns to international aid
City has received only half of promised funds
By BECKY BOHRER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS --
The cash-strapped city of New Orleans is turning to foreign countries for help to rebuild as federal hurricane-recovery dollars remain slow to flow.Kenya Smith, director of intergovernmental relations for Mayor Ray Nagin, said city leaders are talking with more than five countries. He wouldn't identify the countries, saying discussions were in the early stages. But he said the city is "very serious" about pursuing foreign help.
"Of course, we would love to have all the resources we need from federal and state partners, but we're comfortable now in having to be creative," Smith said. He did not know if the city would have to overcome any obstacles if it got firm pledges for aid, but "we want to make sure we're leaving no options unexplored."
For months Nagin has complained bureaucracy is choking the flow of much-needed federal aid dollars to New Orleans - slowing the city's recovery. As of June 8, the city said it had received just over half of the $320 million FEMA has obligated for rebuilding city infrastructure and emergency response-related costs. The city has estimated its damage at far more than that - at least $1 billion. And that doesn't include other improvements - such as raised neighborhoods - meant to help build the stronger city promoted by Nagin and his recovery director.
Discussions with foreign representatives have been occurring off and on since the storm, but Smith said the city became re-engaged after a news report in April that millions of dollars in aid offered by foreign countries after Hurricane Katrina went unaccepted.
It wasn't clear how much of the $854 million in aid originally offered remained on the table. In Katrina's wake, Cuban President Fidel Castro's proposal to send more than 1,000 medical personnel to New Orleans was among the offers of aid.
The federal government accepted about $126 million from foreign sources and encouraged some countries to give instead to private groups such as the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice told a congressional committee last month.
Nagin said city officials are now trying to skirt the Bush administration and contact foreign governments directly "to see if we can get some of those dollars coming here."
Separately, Adam Sharp, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said Landrieu is working with the government of Saudi Arabi on ways it can help restore New Orleans' City Park.
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