I’m back to writing on my Toshiba Tecra up in my loft bed. I’m indulging in one of my favorite pastimes, the watching of “railroad videos.” Right I’m watching one of rail photographer Mark Labrozzi’s productions called Trains of Erie County PA. Two hours of train viewing in Erie County, Pennsylvania, up in the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, just up the road toward Ohio from Buffalo, New York, “The Queen City.” The King City is, of course, New York City—we have a Kings and a Queens County here in NYC. I’m supposin’ here; believe me, I have no idea why Buffalo is called the Queen City, and, yes, I know, all I have to do is search the Internet and find out, but that’s kind’a the meaning of this post…I’m so damn lazy this morning—come on, I just admitted that I’m watching a 2-hour video featuring the trains of Erie County, PA. How lazy can you get?
Railroad videos calm me down. Like a lone wolf, I can sit by these isolated in most cases railroad tracks and watch train after train after train after train, all voiced-over with monotonous train-talk narration, “Locomotive 488 hauls a load of cars toward Selkirk, New York,” that sort of palaver. OK, I’ll admit it, to a normal human being these can be some of the absolutely, no-doubt-about-it, boringest films ever made; unless you were born by a railroad track and used to lay awake at night listening to Texas & Pacific trains passing across the fields outside your bedroom window when when you were a kid, growing up, those trains becoming a part of your psyche. That was my growing-up experience. The rolling of those trains over those rails and the energy emitted through the noise of their mightiness and the beat that rollin’ perpetuated in me is the energy and beat I still live by. The music I still like the best was the music written and arranged on railroad cars. George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was written on a train going from NYC up to Boston. Duke Ellington and his band had their own private railroad car and Duke’s area of that car was set up where he could compose and arrange while that coach moved from city to city. One of Duke’s finest compositions is “The Happy-Go-Lucky Special” based on the “Night Train” theme, “Night Train” an early R&B root tune written by a Saint Louis saxman Jimmy Forrest and the theme of my generation of musicians who were the children of Be-Bop and the Beats and the Cool and Peace, Brother and Sister and “Yeah, daddy-o, man, you got the go, man, go; and so’s your fine chick, too, doc jive.” Oh the jive cats. The jive kittens. The shades. The snappy, stringy-brim hats. The continental suits. The Cuban heels. The drugs. The poetry. The community. The hope, man, that sprang eternal from my generation.
So, I love trains and watching train after train after train pass along these filmed tracks up in Erie County, PA., currently digging out of a horror, freak snow and ice storm—blamed on that cold air coming out of Canada by our millionaire weather jockeys on our millionaire-produced
news that is mostly commercials. It’s cold as a witch’s teat here in the Apple today because of the wind. Cold and icy; drab and dirty grey.
And people with cars in NYC woke up this morning to find out early before the sun was barely up our little man billionaire mayor had sent his traffic squads out to ticket all cars that hadn’t moved to the opposite side of the street (“alternate side of the street parking”), which means if you have a car in NYC and you park it on the streets, you have to get up every morning and move your car from one side of the street to the other side of the street before 6:30, I think it is, or you’re subject to a ticket. Our trusting but stupid NYC residents with cars thought that surely after the blizzard that hit us yesterday causing the Sanitation Dept. to snowplow the snow off the middle of the street—the little man billionaire mayor was bragging how he was prepared for the snow storm coming and how he was going to keep the streets clean of snow—so these garbage trucks with steel-plates attached to their fronts come barrel-assing up your street and they pile the snow right the hell against your parking place, in some cases, piling snow so high up over your car that you literally have to dig like a mole on steroids to unbury the damn expensive thing. So, New Yorkers woke up, found their cars snowpiled in, and it was icy snow, too, and it hardened fast to a glassy concrete state, and also ticketed. When the traffic cops couldn’t put the tickets on the cars iced over windshields they stuck the tickets in the door cracks or whatever part of the car was snow and ice free enough to hold a ticket securely.
People were bitching like hell. These tickets ain’t cheap and scores of New Yorkers were calling Sanitation and bitching about these tickets. Surely, they said, alternate side of the street parking had been suspended due to the storm. They got a big “F U” for an answer and then the little billionaire asshole mayor came on teevee and he was standing in front of a bunch of big tough-looking white guys—hunk types like firemen—all cocky and smart-ass and he jeered, “Hey, did you fools expect me to not keep my promise I was clearing the streets of this snow and something these brave men behind me can’t do if you disobey the alternate side of the street parking regulations that have been in place for many years now. If you want your streets clean, then you must let us do our job—let these men behind me do their jobs, which they’ve been up all night making sure your streets are clean and we have gotten through this storm in pretty good shape, I think. So F.U. New Yorkers. I hate all of your whiny complaining guts, you F-ing renters in those rent-controlled apartments—you’re no better than communists to me—and you people who make under 50,000 smackers a year, you know, we don’t want you in Manhattan anymore—you can move to the suburbs; I don’t give a shit about the suburbs, but Manhattan, now that’s mine, baby, and I’ve got designs for Manhattan. Why look at all the construction going on around you here. We’re letting the Commie Chinese develop 55-story luxury apartment buildings all over Manhattan, in every neighborhood, I mean literally thousands of these neighborhood-wrecking hi-rises are going up all over, every neighborhood and that way we are setting $2,000-a-month-a-room as the base rent for all of Manhattan. This way only people with money, like me—and we welcome foreigners especially because we know you Saudis and Japanese and Commie Chinese and Brits have all our money anyway, Americans have no money, well, myself excluded—hell, I’m a billionaire--I probably make 50,000 dollars in a matter of seconds—MONEY don’t bother me none, and excuse me mocking you in a venacular…but GOD, I hate poor people, and I don’t give a shit what your color or race or F-ing religion is, Manhattan is mine, dammit; I’m turning Manhattan into a rich man’s spa, a fun place—and elect me to another term and look what I have in store for you. In the meantime, pay your tickets and pay them on time or I’ll take your god-damn cars and sell ‘em for chicken feed to used car dealers at our monthly city repo auctions. Where’s my helicopter; I gotta fly to one of my Caribbean estates; I’m cold? God-dammit, where’s my helicopter!!”
I just turned off my railroad video. I’ve written myself into a coma.
I have to mentally prepare for a coming noise that has already been born and is rattling the bones of this old neighborhood as over on Sixth Avenue—the hottest real estate street in the city right now—these little bulldozer-like tractors with heavy artillery jackhammers mounted on their noses are demolishing a large parking garage getting ready to put up a god-damn 50-story hotel over there. There are no baffling buildings between my room windows and the site of that noise—it has grown already through its infant stage and is becoming a giant clumsy but extremely cacophonous child—comes straight-ass directly into my brace of windows--so I must brace for a year of construction noise coming my way. Yes, it’s two blocks away, but when you're on an upper floor in NYC noise travels as swift awing as the pigeons who clutter our lower skies and live under our eaves. I’ve had, oh, let’s see, about 4 months of a kind of peace back here in this once-solitudinously quite room now subject to a Dante Hell-like barrage of construction racket—the pile drivers, the truck noises all night long—you know, when these trucks back up those horrid beepin’ insults—and the jackhammering—at least a coming-year of daily noise to disrupt my need for peace.
A wolf-man has no peace ever. With the coming of morning or under that full moon at night, no time for peace.
Tomorrow, Congress is meeting--YES, it's a Saturday!! to vote on a nonbinding resolution that is the Dumbocrat plan on getting our troops out of Iraq--NOT ENDING THE WAR, but at least a start!! No mention of Afghanistan, the "good" war.thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
I was so lazy, I was late getting this post up--besides being out last night drinking with my musician friends uptown at the Dublin House.
By the bye, the billionaire asshole mayor had to apologize to all the people whose cars he ticketed like the lowlife weasel he is the morning after our worst snow storm yet. The mayor also said he was giving up on alternate side of the street parking for another couple of days. This mayor is such a noncaring son of a bitch. Why these bastards get into politics I can't figure out, except it does put them in a spotlite they love. Spot this, mayor! (I'm shootin' him the bird.)
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