The Electric Egg Cream

Once the fastest commercial jet in the world, in 1999 setting a New York-London speed record of 2:59:59 that still stands, this British Airways Concorde was temporarily “airborne” today. Suspended above the Hudson River, the airliner is carefully being placed upon a pier next to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum after a year’s absence while the museum underwent renovation.

“‘There she goes — the Concorde is airborne!’” cried Intrepid president Bill White as a huge barge crane lifted the sleek 71-ton jetliner, cradled in a special harness, 50 feet into the air and deposited it deftly onto the pier. The crane, the largest of its kind in the northeast, can lift 250 tons.” (Newsday)

A study at UCLA has found that the Internet is actually “good” for the brain.” (And all this time, I was convinced that I was losing my mind because of it.) Researchers there have determined that internet surfing, like “solving crossword puzzles” (or uncapping child-proof bottles, I may add), can reduce “brain shrinkage” and related misfortunes due to aging. Lead researcher Professor Gary Small said: “The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerised technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults.” (BBC)

Speaking as a still reverberating Baby Boomer on the Road to Peaceful Nonexistence, strutting and fretting his moment upon the stage for 54 years now, computers and the Internet never cease to amaze me. When I was a child, the only laptop that I owned was an Etch-a-Sketch, and computerization usually took the form of FORBIDDEN PLANET’S Robby the Robot and LOST IN SPACE’S B-9 Robot; that’s where it was at and we presumed that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’s HAL the Computer was where it was going…which, arguably, wasn’t too good.

Computers and the accompanying Internet, apparently being taken more and more for granted by kids of all ages, are the most remarkably complex and revolutionary inventions of human civilization. People have a device at their fingertips that should not only exercise their growing or aging minds by using it, but should allow them an endless intellectual challenge in trying to analyze how they’re using it so conveniently and suddenly in the first place.

The Times Square U.S. Debt Clock was erected on February 20, 1989 in those happy-go-lucky days of Reaganomics when prosperity seemed just a dream away and when credit lines were multidimensional. Built by the late and greatly forgotten real estate mogul Seymour Durst it was designed to call attention to the less-than-happy side effects of Reaganomics: a mounting national debt in excess of $2.7 trillion.

Costing $120,000 to build and install, the Clock measures 25-feet wide, weighs 1,500-pounds and contained 306 bulbs (more bulbs were added in the intervening time, of course) to cast its monetary illumination through everyone’s eyes. Durst told reporters he had no plans to ever remove the clock. “It’ll be up as long as the debt or the city lasts,” he said, adding, “If it bothers people, then it’s working.” (Time)

Yesterday, the Debt Clock was rendered obsolete, thanks, LARGELY, to the machinations and greed of this current and most misbegotten of all presidential administrations in American history. The Debt Clock now stands at  $10,149,875, 434,832  (the first ten is “trillion”). This was reported all over the media not only for the absolutely incredible sum of the nation’s debt in the aftermath of Bush & Co., but  because the Debt Clock  “wasn’t designed to allow for any more digits.” Less than twenty years ago, be they ever so happy or unhappy, it was “beyond anyone’s imagination that the debt could increase by any more digits.” (Yahoo News)

The wonders never cease in my tiresomely fashionable Park Slope, Brooklyn neighborhood. Little surprise they “clepe us” liberals and gentrified-beings (which, I interpret, means post-yuppies living in a state of suspended post-modernism) and with “swinish phrase” soil our routine pretensions, making us “traduced and taxed” of other neighborhoods. (My apologies to Hamlet. Like him, verbose speculator of ceaseless inaction, I’m also all dressed-up with nowhere to go. )

Now that I’m done with that superfluous intro, on with the post.

A short distance from this very computer desk of mine, where I sit posted from sun-up to the next solar eclipse, stands the chic and exclusive Medusa Hair Salon. Why it adopted the name “Medusa” is unknown to me, but I’ll leave that to students of abstract art and of Greek mythology to figure out. But speaking of Greek mythology sets a convenient segue into Greek literature and to the comedy of Aristophanes…and to this Theatre of the Absurd presidential race, something that wild if ancient playwright would be proud of.

A poster in Medusa’s window proudly advertises “Updos For Obama” and for a mere $75 (a mere giggle within the hysterical laughter of  today’s economic comedy) you can be updoed silly. A fanciful play on street artist Shepard Fairey’s campaign image featuring Obama sporting Sarah Palin’s overnight sensational beehive hairdo tells passing girls that they could be the first on their block to be a clone of a once forgotten former beauty queen, an unknown mayor of an unknown town in Alaska, and even less known governor of Alaska.

Happy customers can be backcombed all over the place, safe in their happiness that proceeds will go to the Obama campaign. But for added comic relief and general merriment, every backcombed patron will also receive a free entry to a Sarah Palin lookalike competition. This event will occur at a party on October 18 where the winner will receive prizes such as a bottle of Palin Syrah and a $25 donation to Planned Parenthood…in Palin’s name.

The girls with the Palin dos may want to waltz, from salon to saloon, down to the nearby Patio Lounge and order an Obama cocktail (vodka,blue curaco and 7-Up) and wink to everyone and discuss foreign affairs. After that performance, the lucky pseudo-Palins may want to stagger into yet another nearby booze joint  called the Bier Kraft  where they could enthrall one and all with their tales of fearless moose hunts and tanning parlors,while downing a Hop Obama (Belgian-style white beer) for just $11.95 with profits (you’ve guessed it) going to the Obama campaign.

Fortunately, to maintain what’s left of my mental stability, I’ve given up on most of humanity as being hopelessly  insane; nothing really surprises me any longer in the best laid plans of mice and men…I’m into what must be my 200th rereading of HAMLET and sinking fast.  However, if Steffie, my profoundly prim and sensually proper wife from England’s green and pleasant land, ever decides to pull a Sarah Palin on me, I’ll shuffle on down to the Patio Lounge as Davey Crockett.

[I've searched far and wide for this purported Obama campaign image but have come up empty; if it doesn't exist, it should...having as much reason to exist as Palin and Obama themselves. My thanks to the Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn (via The Guardian, UK) for the particulars of this neighborhood story, where I reside in total ignorance and within my own suspended if thrilling post-modernism.]

Autumn in New York, as the Vernon Duke song goes, is often mingled with pain because the promise of new love is as inviting as that of autumn leaves: beautiful yet dying. The beauty of half-remembered loves and half-forgotten days are eternal in these glittering crowds and shimmering clouds that the wind carries through canyons of steel and assume a permanence through the dwindling vision of our minds and of our hearts. They are, indeed, the exotic lands that dreamers with empty hands sigh for because they are the lands unseen which our love created and aspire towards.

I descend into all manner of nostalgia and sentiment when autumn winds its way through this town. Hopeless romantic that I am, walking a steady if topsy-turvy course through cynicism and sentiment, logic and dreams, poetry becomes real again and prose too restrictive to describe the fleeting images of crowds that glitter and clouds that flow down sidewalks and pass skyscrapers.  T.S.  Eliot’s “time past and time future” are expressed in the presence of browning leaves and lingering hopes that rise upon a sun-glittered breeze that descends to rise again. As with the pages of old books, fading photographs and distant, half-remembered songs, they’re forever beyond but live within me.

Posted on TwitPic by sterfry: 10/9/08

Being a New Yorker, every time I see a crowd gathered around something, I usually suspect that either an accident or a crime  had occurred. Living all my life in a city where crowds are commonplace, the commonplace crowds becomes unusual when not in motion and unusually stationary; the worst is expected when people here actually mingle with one another. Even within my overpriced and underwhelmed Park Slope neighborhood, where I practice my blogging conceit and arrogance, this holds true.

Last Saturday, as my wife and I strolled along Eight Avenue and approached Seventh Street, the sight of crowded activity caught our wandering eyes and the scent of sweets enticed our olfactory attention as we inched closer to a makeshift scene of cakes and candies.

A “Bake For Barack” was in progress and home-baked treats were being sold. The sale featured Cupcakes for Change, Yes We Candies, End War S’mores Bar, Fudgeucation Reform Brownies, Love That Liberal Lemon Bars and No More Condoleezza Rice Crispy Cakes.

The Brooklyn Paper reports that even a McCain supporter was captivated by this delectable gathering. “He couldn’t resist us,” said Karen Shelley, one of the bake sale’s organizers and a Cobble Hill resident. “He thanked us for not trying to convert him or yell at him for supporting McCain.” The sale raised $585 for the Obama campaign.

I went with the Fudgeucation Reform Brownies and my wife just had to try the Cupcakes for Change and, together, it made for some very pleasant change and charming reform. We were both happy that an accident or a crime hadn’t occurred…with the exception of the nation’s economic plundering and its political malfeasance which helped inspire this bake sale in the first place.

“Sarah Palin/Live Here/See Wall Street,” reads the sign on one of many NYC building projects that is rising while the market sinks. It’s the city’s way of poking fun at Palin’s marvelous claim of being able to “see” Russia across the Bering Strait, her lack of economic credentials and nonexistent foreign policy credentials…while, at the same time, the developers promote the building project itself. And here you were thinking that New York City harbored cynical or ulterior motives; maybe Palin could fit into the Big Apple perfectly, but I doubt if the city has any Dogsled Parking spaces or Moose Hunting grounds. (Brooklyn Paper)

On a slightly different note, whereas it’s been “ascertained” that people west of NYC rarely give a thought to NYC, I’m certain that Sarah Palin rarely gives a thought to anything beyond her eyeglasses that’s not within her mirror. Of course, with the exception of her Russia-sighting ability which, of course, defies both the bounds of thought and of geography; but perhaps tanning beds enhance one’s vision.

Alas, some Mid-Westerners (or those to the west of NYC) seem to be more in a state of frenzied desperation over the cards the Republican Party dealt to them, than Democrats are over the paltry deal we received from our (mostly speaking for myself) reluctantly chosen Party. But the G.O.P. should be a little better composed in that they were dealt a Joker…I’m sure they’ll be victorious, insofar as jokers go. We in New York are always amused by the perverse in nearly everything…when the weather’s clear (and even when it’s not) we can actually see New Jersey.