City Life, Iggy Pop and Snowmen

It’s tourist season in New York – Around where I work the place is crawling with them today – I guess they are in town for New Years but it makes getting anyplace on foot an exercise in keeping that resolution not to wack people on the head with a ball pean hammer. As a public service to all New York visitors I’d like to suggest a few tips before you come to the big apple:

1). You’re spending a fair amount of change to get here, and New York’s expensive (yes I know) but before you get here for god’s sake GET A MAP! And at least one decent guide book. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve seen wandering the streets these last two weeks with a blank look on their face like they were just snatched from a cornfield drugged, probed and then dropped in the middle of herald square. Come on. You dressed yourself, you can’t be that stupid. Read the guidebook figure out what you want to do and do it. We’re busy people here.

2) You walk up or down stairs just like at home. Every night this week I’ve bumped into someone who, upon reaching the subway stairs, apparently forgets what to do next.

3) If you must walk seven abreast down the street at least do it at a reasonable pace – it’s been like driving up a narrow mountain road behind a slow 18 wheeler these days. It’s this more than anything else stretches the ball pean hammer resolution to the breaking point.

4) Yes that’s the Empire State Building. Really.

5) The cabs with the lights on top are available – this is actually not a joke. Hell I’ve even seen natives try and flag down engaged cabs. And off duty means off duty. And because New York is New York, Cabbies go off duty at 5 pm so it’s impossible to get a cab then.

I’m late to the party on this but I still find Carnival Cruise lines using Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life as a theme song to be very odd. It’s not as depressing as the use of the Who’s Happy Jack as a theme for a Hummer – and lord did that ad send all the wrong messages about things 1) it’s better to cheat 2) show you independence by driving a huge expensive clumsy gas guzzler – or as wrong Wrangler using Fortunate Son as the theme for their jeans. I mean did anybody listen to the whole song? That first verse is about flag waving hypocrites not good old American boys in jeans – they are using a Steve Miller theme now in ads that look, if memory serves, just wrong somehow. I think it’s the models they used, none of them look comfortable in jeans, being outdoors, or touching a woman).

Anyway back to Lust for Life – which is a great song by the way. One DJ said it is the perfect song to start a lease breaking party with (I’ve got speakers that shake walls – so if I ever have to do that on she goes). So the Carnival commercials use the drum intro and then Iggy and Chorus singing “Lust for life”

What they leave out is this little bit:

Here comes Johnny Yin again
With his liquor and drugs
And his sex machine
He’s gonna do another strip tease

Hey man where’d you get that lotion?
You skin starts itchin’ once you buy the gimmick
About something’ called love, yeah love love love
Well that’s like hypnotizing chickens
(That is one of my all time favorite rock and roll lines cause it’s just so odd and cynical at the same time – well done Mr. Pop)

Well I am just a modern Guy
Of course I had it in the ear before
‘cause of a lust for life (oooo) - © Iggy Pop/David Bowie

And so on.

The song later describes Mr. Pop as tired of beating his brains on Liquor and drugs and being worth a million in prizes for his torture film.

Not quite the family friendly Atmosphere that Carnival is trying to convey – unless your family is a bit off.

I’m not begrudging Iggy the cash Carnival spent on the song – it’s not like he’s rolling in the dough.

Still I’d like to see someone do an advertisement using another song on the cd that I’m fond of: “Some Weird Sin” I think a restaurant setting might work.

Random Neural Firings:

Seems Saddam is going to hang sometime soon – which I think is going to turn out to be a mistake. Not cause I have sympathy for Saddam, but because this gang of clowns hasn’t put a foot right in Iraq ever and I’m sure this will end up turning a despised dictator into a martyr and a symbol for the both the sunis and shiites to rally around.

Senator Lieberman seems to have forgotten he was against the war just before the election and is now jabbering like a magpie in the Washington post about how we need more troops in Iraq. To quote the last line of this junk “Rather than engaging in hand-wringing, carping or calls for withdrawal, we must summon the vision, will and courage to take the difficult and decisive steps needed for success and, yes, victory in Iraq.”

I’m going to say something rude: “Fuck you Joe. Just fuck you.” Far better men and women than you are going to be killed and wounded in a futile chase after ‘victory’ in Iraq. And stop lecturing the American people about their need to toughen up. The message was sent to you “get out”. This combination of arrogance and clueless ness makes me blood boil.

W has once again decided to lecture the American people that we don’t know what the stakes are in Iraq. Every time he does this, I am reminded of the quip that “he talks about things like he’s talking to an idiot because that is the way they are explained to him.”

Saw an old British Hammer film the Abominable Snowman – for it’s time (56) it’s very well done, while it’s obvious most of it is done on a sound stage they do try to make look as read as they can. The story is pretty straightforward – exhibition goes up the Himalayas to catch the Abominable Snowman and are sorry they do. It being a British film there is a half a brain in its head and it’s not terrified of people talking. The only problem here is that they never have a full shot of the Snowman and people have a tendency to talk over each other – while this was the director’s idea to make it seem more like real life, (as some one quipped “Nobody Listens and if you try it for a while you’ll find out why”) it makes it hard to follow what is going on here sometimes.

Over the weekend – Destroy All Monsters – and resolutions.

Peace love weird sins