Samhain, Sham-hain
Yeah, yeah, we know the 31st is supposed to be dedicated either to worshipping our Dark Master or to Gen-X candy reminiscence-fests. But as far as we're concerned, it should be celebrated as the birthday of Mr. Nightingale, the poet who Died Young and left a Pretty Corpus. All hail, Mr. Keats. When I think of autumn, I think of you.
Announcement
The Gotham Editorial staff are overjoyed to announce that today, October 27, 2001, Theresa Claire will make an honest man of Bill Tipper in a ceremony here in the Fairest Borough. Despite all of the grim news in the paper, a preposterously festive spirit has, for the moment, descended over certain portions of Brooklyn. Many of our dedicated Filers have arrived to be with us; others, though half a world away in body, are here in spirit.
Those of our readers in possession of wombats are urged to put a white ribbon around their necks, give them an extra portion of dinner, and let them stay up an extra hour tonight.
Entranced by the bitter harmony of your lips, I gaze beyond reason to find the oasis of your ruptured soul.
Don't know why I've been laboring over my wedding vows, when all along I could have been simply making use of The Surrealist Compliment Generator. (Thanks to Deb S.)
Today in perambulating the city we came past the great and solemn facade of the U.S. Post Office at Eighth Avenue and 34th Street. Its long neoclassical visage stares rather grimly at the Madison Square Garden's I'm-Just-An-Arena stylelessness. A huge American flag hangs in front of the central columns; above them the famous legend about neither-rain-nor-snow-nor-gloom-etcetera-will-yadda-yadda-appointed-rounds. Stirring stuff, save that no one stirs beneath them. The place looks monumental in the very worst sense of the word.
The decay of the post office (like the failure of American mass transit) is one of those national shames which we brood on darkly; the inefficiency Wombat File staffers have put up with in sleepy southern burgs is nothing compared to the spectacle of a dying institution that any visit to a New York P.O. can offer. And it bugs us all the more because the idea of the postal service, like that of the national ritual of Election Day, is one of the hoary institutions of American democracy of which we are hopelessly fond. There is something about the uniformed post-person which seems basic to the idea of a Good Country to Live In. When politicians and free-market visionaries propose that we simply finish the work started by FedEx and privatize the entire postal system, we hear the death-knell of the idea that government ought to do...hell, something, anything really.
So we've never wanted to give up on the postal service, always cherished a silly dream that one day there will be a renaissance of professionalism in the mail-carrying class, that the Brezhnevesque aura around the clerks at the Grand Central Station will diminish eventually. That others will realize that it is important that the market not directly dictate whether a person can afford to send a letter to his family from across the country.
But after the government lets them down like this, we don't know how much of a recovery is possible. A thousand and one things about the current crisis make us nervous. Looking at that oft-derided (but hard to forget) "Neither rain nor sleet..." line, highlighted by the Indian-summer blaze of the afternoon -- we felt too deflated to remember to worry.
In the dream he is throwing a party with an indeterminate number of male friends at a rented house outside of the city. As the sun sets (creating the ominous twilight typical of his dreamlife) he realizes that there is no beer and he must go to the beer store before it closes. But within the store all is chaos -- his order of two cases has been jumbled by the clueless staff. He is anxious that his guests will arrive and he won't be there to greet them. And where are his chums? He tries desperately to assemble a motley assortment of off-brand beer from the nearly-empty storeroom. He doesn't know how he's going to get the loose bottles back, and the staff are no help. Finally, his friends appear; they have brought an unpainted pine coffin to carry the beer in.
This weekend, I visited the Arcazaar, advertised to me by friends as an "Inflatable Mosque" but in reality a giant soft plastic artwork pumped full of air (and screaming little kids) and brightened by sunlight forcing its way through not-very-opaque colored panels. New age music made things potentially tranquil.
”...the worms that spired about his bones...”
Last night we were doing our patriotic duty by consuming a standard, hourlong serving of domestic network television programming, and during this mediocre episode of a medical drama we saw a monumentally revolting/delightful commercial. It featured a new instant-ziti-with-sauce-n-cheez, and used the latest in digital technology to animate the little tubicular bits of pasta themselves. As a happy family whipped through the E-Z steps to turn the packaged product into home-cooked meal, a pair of appallingly worm-like zitis narrated the process; twisting about and chattering with glee about the satisfying dinner they would soon comprise. One had a chirpy male voice-- the other was a sultry female. Their little circular “mouths” waved in a horrible fashion.
At the commercial’s close, they reared up on end, covered now in melted red and yellow goop, for a final comment:
Male worm-pastoid (lasciviously): ”You look good enough to eat!”
Female (lubriciously): ”Get in line...”
Cut back to the medical program, in which Eric La Salle was pretending to pull a dying man’s ribcage apart with his bare hands.
You're looking at a first and very amateurish attempt to redesign the File; here in the Brooklyn back offices we found a copy of this book, and although we haven't really learned much yet, we are having fun with tables, yes sir.
The pic on the upper left is of an inflatable spaceman doll, which some casual Dadaist had propped on a WALK/DON'T WALK sign a couple of blocks from here. We snapped this picture at night, and a good thing we did: by morning, some greedy Gus who didn't appreciate the perfect placement of our silver friend had made off with it.
It must be raining in Edinburgh: Rory is waking wet today.
Ceremony
At about six this morning we were awakened by the loudspeaker on a police cruiser outside of our window, apologetically telling everyone on the street to move their vehicles.
The cause, I discovered later, was a funeral today at the beautiful neo-Gothic Catholic church that stands just about 50 yards from my front door, for one of the lost members of Rescue Squad 1. The squad is located just around the corner on Union Street. I heard the bagpipers warming up and went out to find at hundreds of firefighters in full dress uniforms, waiting for the procession to begin. There were firefighters from Baltimore, Chicago, and other cities and towns besides the many from New York City firehouses.
They were milling around, chatting with each other and shaking off the cold as the bagpipes warmed up a block away. Many of them had that slightly old-fashioned brushy mustache that seems like an optional part of the uniform. One guy who had come to the city with the Worcester, Massachusetts force had left his black tie on the bus; I went up to the apartment and found him a spare. It was nice to feel slightly useful.
The procession was one of the most stirring things I’ve ever seen. All of the uniformed firefighters turned and stood at attention as the procession passed in review; the pipers played flawlessly and then marched past to the sound of muffled drums. The sun shone between quick-moving clouds; the leaves in the trees hissed in the wind. A old fire truck from perhaps the 1940s carried the flag-draped casket. As the body was removed from the truck and carried inside the church, the body of firefighters – a long line five deep that stretched for more than a city block – held a salute.
They remained rigid at attention for a long while in the chilly breeze, as the mourners passed into the church. Then the firefighters finally dispersed into small bands, walking up to Seventh Avenue in search of lunch or a beer, or huddled with each other; like one bunch that gathered in front of my stoop, grim and genial at the same time.
Detritus
Lost keys have their own peculiar kind of sadness.
I’m almost never without my keys, and when I am, I feel somewhat naked and helpless. That’s only moderately practical; I could easily get my neighbors to let me into my building; my girlfriend, of course, has her own keys to our place; and the locksmith could let us in easily if both of us somehow lost ours. In any event, the place is hardly a bank vault.
The fear of losing my keys has little to do with the practical inconvenience it might cause me; it's more that my keys are tokens of myself. They are signs that I have a home and thus a legitimate place in society. I used to have a cardkey at the office, but the connotations were not very strong. A cardkey is just a pass, a thing that can be rendered inert in the same way an expired college ID ceases to mean anything.
But a physical, metal key always carries around its sheer weightiness: it is one of the few icons we carry that connects us to the industrial world; we get keys “cut” by a man with a machine which is closer to the technology of the 19th century than to the 21st, and it happens at the hardware store, a place full of objects from the world of physical labor. Its symbolic value – the familiar sign of access, of power and sometimes of privilege, even honor (the “Keys to the City” is an image with which we are all familiar, even though none of us live any longer in cities which are locked up at night, and “gated communities” don’t generally give out access passes to honorees) – stems from this; the key is a sign, however muted, of the ancient and involved craft of civil defense. I think of the city-states of Tuscany, of medieval moats and portcullises, of Robinson Crusoe and his palisaded cave.
Most of all I think of the lock that this key once fit, was cut to fit. Does that lock still exist? That strange little involuted cave that requires its inverse partner in order to function? Of course there are copies, sometimes many copies, of the same key. So it doesn’t matter to the lock, which (although it balks a bit at some of the replicas) will shake hands with any key that presents the right shape. So, this key, this particular key, whether an unused spare or the regular key on someone’s chain, doesn’t really matter.
Which makes it, in the end, even sadder.
We hate to make any further posts concerning "new features" --but you may now comment on any post by clicking on the [comment] link. Thanks to BlogBack.
This story proves what sane people have always believed in their hearts: that no good could come from the idea of filling a greeting card with confetti.
Wombats in the News
In 11th grade, All The Presidents Men was my favorite nonfiction book. I've finally gotten into the paper they made famous, although with some admittedly less exalted journalism: a review of William Vollman's big fat new historical novel.
Heather Champ wants to know all about that stupid thing you did. You'd better tell her.
Here You Go
The Gotham Office is proud to announce the release of our new, low-bandwidth Universal Internet Meme. Use in good health.
The Gotham office is spending the day taking time out with the people who understand us the best: Mr. Preserved-Gator-Head, Shrinerman, El Wrestlerito and the Wee Nun.
Felicitations, dot-da-bombloggerified Womb-at Fyle! Just in time for the Internet Revolution! I would be happy to turn my students lose on you with a design charette (for extra credit, of course) for a new LaF (Look&Feel), should you feel the need for a supercybersized Halloween costume-brand dealie.
OzzieWombatter: your photos were a revelation. You are like unto a god. Have you checked out Peter Carey's new book about Sydney? Mixed review in the the Times but that's them and you're there. And to our ex-AstorianResident, thanks for that nice e-mail a while back, glad you are well.
I whisper this to the hole of the Wombat Wall: Hemingway is a scourge.
(Sorry, there's a bad writer crashing in my crib with galling taste in books. Had to get it out of my system.)
All right, we're still having trouble with the archives; either a problem in the archive template or a problem with where Blogger is depositing them on the new server. I'll figure it out: but for the moment, we have our uncertain and fragile memories to fall back on.
We have the new domain but the Blogger, she don't want to FTP there. Zut!
We Continue to Avoid Commentary on the War
This is a lazy addition, because Rory has already posted about this and you probably already saw it there but, kee-rist is Zadie Smith funny as hell and so forth or what?
And Now, Your Moment of Geek
It was irresistable: from the moment we found out about the Hobbit Name Generator we had to find out just who we are when we are in our hole. It's Mr. Burrows on our stationery, but you all can call us Bungo. (Found via harrumph!)
Personal note: At least one of us in the Gotham office was honored with the "Most Convincing Imitation of a Muppet" award by the William and Mary Theatre Department after his undertaking of the role of Woof in the musical Hair. This event makes self-comparisons with the halfling folk inevitable and bittersweet.
Venting
It's a beautiful day for some negativity.
- If you're going to broil the hell out of a medium-sized river's worth of salmon, please think about your upstairs neighbors and set up appropriate ventilation. I went to sleep last night dreaming that I had been condemned to work in the kitchen of one of these places.
- If you're going to piss off the love of my life by jacking up the price on her pre-wedding hairdo by about 40% without telling her first, don't do what the owner of this shop did, which was to call up later that day to try to convince her that this is the "way things are done in the industry," which implied, somehow, that if she'd got her hair cut at overpriced salons more frequently, she'd be OK with capricious revisions of quoted rates.
- If you are opening a restaurant -- not a club, but a restaurant -- think twice about employing your DJ pals to spin records at dance-party volume while your patrons enjoy your fashionably loose interpretation of pan-Asian cuisine:
"How's the Mussulman Curry?"
"WHAT?"
"How's the Mussulman Curry?"
"YOU"RE IN A MUSCLEBOUND HURRY?"
"NO, I...OH FORGET IT...."
The Wombat File makes a contribution to The Mirror Project.
Two reasons we wish we were carrying our camera around with us yesterday:
- Along with all of the other doubtless foul-smelling incense options being offered on a table on lower Broadway Tuesday afternoon, we saw a box of "Cannabis" incense, decorated with seductive green leaf-clusters. Is this a must-have for the dorm rooms of NYU first-year Phish fans who Don't Inhale but need the room to have the Aroma That Says You Are Down?
- Broken down in the middle of Seventh Ave. in Brooklyn, hood opened in the sad inverted manner of its kind, a dilapidated former school bus, painted a mesmerizing sky-blue with-lavender-highlights (now bleached to an almost Giotto-worthy color). A single, exhausted-looking face of indeterminate age and gender peered hopelessly from withing. Stenciled on the side was the unforgettable name of the bus company: Appropriate Transportation.
No doubt a million blogs will post the same link today, but you can get all the palindromes in the world over at MetaFilter today.
Feelings
The Gotham clippings dept. stumbled and didn't see his screed against Sontag a week ago, but Charles Krauthammer was beating the drums on Brian Lehrer's WNYC program this morning. Even at the station's reduced broadcast power, the stream of bile that came out of our speakers this morning was worthy of drive-time commercial radio in any major market. Charles K. opined that those who are interested in "understanding" the global context behind the Sept. 11 attack are lily-livered, whiny egghead...um...understanders who mess up the moral clarity (his terms, there) that all good-hearted people now understand in hearts which pulse redly with goodness. Yes, he added, some on the academic left sing a different tune, but thankfully "most Americans don't listen to professors, and they usually get along just fine without doing so" (that's a paraphrase, but it's pretty damned close).
We are not certain that it would be ethically right, but we believe that it would be very satisfying to punch Mr. Krauthammer in the mouth.