JOE STRUMMER TRIBUTE SHOW

So I went to the Joe Strummer tribute show at Irving Plaza a few weeks ago. I'm not really sure why other than it seemed like something to do on a Monday night that didn't involve standing in a bar and drinking many beers. As it turned out, that did happen, but that's another story. For those of you out there cuddled up with your Dave Matthews and Big Head Todd CD's, Joe Strummer was the frontman of The Clash, one of the most influential rock bands of all time. Strummer died at the end of 2002 at the age of 50 of a sudden heart attack and the rock world mourned.

Now a bunch of Brooklyn and Brooklyn-signed bands got together and decided to cover some Clash songs and Strummer solo stuff and bring the whole love fest to Irving Plaza. Apparently there have been a bunch of these across the country. These shows raise money for some charity or other, but this is not often the point of these things. While I certainly can't claim to be an aficionado on the band or the man, I own all The Clash stuff and remember dancing to some Big Audio Dynamite song at an eighth grade dance way back when.

The first thing I noticed was the age of the crowd. I often go to shows where the kiddies are few and far between, but this bunch made me feel like a toddler. Some of them saw their best days in the late seventies and peaked with the advent of the Members Only jacket. Little groups of balding men milled around and talked about their punk days over cans of Bud and nicotine stained fingernails. I felt like I was crashing the party--until I remembered that the bands that were going to be on stage were of my generation and they were the ones I was here to see.

Things started off calm, and then The Detachment Kit came on. I have to say, unfortunately, this was the one band I was really psyched to see. Their album, They Raging. Quiet Army., is one of my favorites and certainly seems like it would be impressive live. I would live to regret my enthusiasm. The band takes the stage, and the lead singer, Ian Menard, has a white sheet of paper taped to the mic stand. I could hear murmurs from the crowd. I wasn't quite sure what the hubbub was about. They played a second song of their own without incident, but in between the second and third song he says something to the effect of, "Um, it sucks that Joe Strummer is a dead guy, but it's great that he made music." I cringed--and then the death nail: a second sheet comes up and is taped to his mic. The band starts in with Spanish Bombs and the cans of beer start flying. The lead singer, reading the lyrics directly off the sheet, ducks a flying can of Bud Light that hits the stage with a thump. A second full can hits the drum kit square, another skidding off the drummer's crash cymbal. Suddenly, and without warning, a stocky, bald man in his forties jumps onto the stage, gets Mr. Menard in a semi-headlock and begins to punch him in the face.

Now I'm slightly clueless, but I still couldn't figure out why this guy is socking one of the artists in the head. A couple roadies run out from the wings, security jumps up on stage and the drummer leaps over his kit to join the melee. In the process the guitarist broke a string, which stuck out from his instrument like some crazy whisker and the drunk puncher was shoved off the stage by security. Meanwhile, the drummer stood at the front of the stage taunting the crowd screaming "C'mon motherfuckers" (or something) and had several more beers winged at his head. The guitarist stood around looking dazed and confused. The video screen and curtains finally came down with the drummer still asking for all comers. We never got to hear the end of Spanish Bombs. Still not sure what the hell was going on, I was clued in by those patrons around me who said he got what was coming to him by disrespecting the memory of Joe and making light of the guy's work. I guess they don't understand the punk aesthetic--snottiness is expected.

So I see poor Ian hanging out later on, sheepishly hiding his coat rack-like frame in the corner of the merch table. The guy is six-foot-something and couldn't weigh more than a buck twenty. He looked genuinely embarrassed. I guess he knows not to fuck with drunk old men anymore. The rest of the evening was much less eventful, and it seemed like several of the bands cut their sets short. I guess they were afraid to perform anything that wasn't 100% spot-on. The guy from Clem Snide did play the banjo with his teeth and some crazy-ass Ukrainian guy from a band called Gogol Bordello played the guitar until his fingers bled. He actually got the biggest ovation of the night. Yeah, blood!

It's nice to see people get passionate about music, but what ever happened to spitting and giving the finger? Or is that what you do when you like the band?

LONDON PART DEUX

So, where was I? Oh yeah, we went to England so we could throw shit at David Blaine. We brought some rotten tomatoes, a twelve pack of raw Sabrett hot dogs and a thirteen pound small mouth bass. We figured this would both disgust and tantalize the man who had pledged to stay in a box suspended by a crane near the Tower Bridge for 44 days. Unfortunately our booty didn't make it through customs, and I was branded a lunatic and almost banned from the European continent. It turned out I had to merely stay at least one hundred yards from Mr. Blaine and sign up for some anger management courses. This British Channel, Sky One, which seemed to be somewhere on the sliding scale of quality between E! and The WB, broke into their programs to show updates of this serial model-dater looking sleepy, then groggy, then suicidal. For fear of being wrangled by Interpol, this is the best picture I could get of our friendly magician:

After finally seeing this guy emerge and cry his eyes out like a big f'n baby on national TV, I have even less respect for people who think making spectacles of themselves (without being drunk) constitutes magic.

So we move on to drinking--naturally. England is a country of many pubs and bars. We went to places called things like The Crown and Two Chairmen, The John Snow, The Endurance, The Dog and Duck, Alphabet, and The Electricity Showroom. These places ranged from typical English football-watching pubs to trendy East Villagey-type bars to local beer and darts joints. There was lots of beer, lots of wood and lots of smoke. The best part? No tipping! No longer did we feel obligated to give a twenty-five percent tip to a person behind a bar for popping the top on a bottle. No longer did we have to put up with empty-headed, flirtatious barmaids who think they're going to suck an extra dollar out of some dorky dude in jeans and white sneakers. It's a win-win situation for all of us--except the damn smoking. Oh, and everything closes at eleven o'clock. Nothing like an early closing time to encourage raging alcoholism. Dinking starts hard at five and continues through dinner until you stumble out of the bar in time to catch the nightly news. Of course, we f'd it up every night and end up having about three hours to pack in six hours of drinking. Damn us Yanks. Plus, these wacky folks let your bring your beer outside. Now that's progressive.

The one weird thing about England is the lack of human interaction. Yes, Mr. Hipster got no love. Not a look. Nothing. People in New York are constantly looking around at other people. They're people watching. They're checking each other out. The Brits don't look at anyone. There's no staring or even sideways glances. I checked with Mrs. Hipster, who, despite wearing the "come hither" low-riders, didn't even warrant a "hey baby," a wolf whistle, or even a creepy eyebrow wiggle. Very odd, indeed.

All in all, visiting London is very much like visiting NYC. Granted, the food is much, much worse, the bars close five hours earlier, the prices are even higher, most everyone is white and has the same haircut, the people walk even faster, the buildings are older, and the citizens have funnier accents. Go for it, and tell 'em you know David Blaine--they love him.

LONDON

So, we decided to take a trip across the pond. I stocked up on Snickers and gum, because everyone to a person warned me that the food in England is absolutely atrocious. I begged off bringing the ten or so Ben Sherman shirts I own in order to not look like an American asshole who went to London to stock up on English-made shirts on the cheap. The only dorky move I made in retrospect was lugging my fifty-pound Doc Martens with me. Oh well, it's hard being intercontinentally hip.

The funny thing about London is that it's essentially an older, smaller version of Manhattan. There's a theater district, a financial district, Chinatown and even a porn/sleaze district that is being squeezed out by the ever-growing surrounding hipster neighborhood. The place is packed with bars and restaurants and streets full of gawking tourists like myself. We, of course, decided to stay in the decidedly familiar 'hood called Soho. I highly recommend Hazlitt's Hotel, the cool, old-school joint we stayed in. With no elevator, crooked staircases and very funky rooms, it's like staying in a very nice, very expensive, version of your friends' studio in the West Village.

A view askew of Soho from our room window

We flew into Gatwick Airport, which is apparently somewhat akin to flying into Newark when visiting New York City. Either way, we found London way more user friendly than New York right off the bat. The porters for the Gatwick Express were friendly helpful and spoke fluent English! Unfortunately they didn't help me power-lift Mrs. Hipster's gargantuan bag onto the train, but it's my job to absorb another hernia, not theirs.

Always trepidacious about transportation in strange cities, we were very pleased with the crazy large taxis and their Cockney drivers. Even better was the London Underground (a.k.a. "the Tube"). Ever stood around waiting a million years for the damn 6 train? Not in London. The trains actually come on a regular basis, are easy to navigate, and even supply a little countdown clock letting you know when the next train is coming. A pleasant man strolls the platforms with a device that broadcasts announcements that, despite the funny accent, are still way easier to understand than the garbled gibberish vomited by our crappy subway speakers. Here's their version of the Metrocard:

So, where did we go on our adventures? Well, besides pubs and restaurants, we did the tourist thing and checked out some of London's thrilling sites.

Ticket to the Tower of London where we got to hear a Beefeater tell us about a ton of poor chaps and lasses who got beheaded

Guide to Portobello Road, the world's most overrated and annoying antiques market, where we found nothing of interest

Anyhow, as with all of my diary entries, I've stayed up way too late and petered out right when things are getting not so interesting. Perhaps one day I will share with you all the rest of my stay in merry old England, but for now you will just have to be stuck believing that all we did was troll The Underground, peruse some really old joints and sleep away the day in our fancy-schmancy hotel. Yes kiddies, our adventures in the Soho Club G-A-Y will have to wait for the second installment coming soon...

NEW JERSEY STATE FAIR

You evil, evil carnies! What do you have against us common folk? Is it our Banana Republic clothes or our Supercuts haircuts? Do you hate the fact we live in homes without wheels and sterilize our needles? Whatever the problem, there's no reason to torture us in your deadly spinning machines. You laugh and wheeze and hack as we drool while being whipped about to the oh-so-ironic refrain of Electric Avenue--"Oh no!"

Let's back it up. We started off the night in Edgewater, NJ at a cool, little shack of a restaurant called Tess & Joe. I've never been to Edgewater, and probably won't be back soon, but there are great views of The City right across the river, and what appears to be an incredible amount of sweeping gentrification that is undoubtedly making everything in the area so absurdly expensive that the older residents are being forced into the homes of their offspring, sending "The Greatest Generation" back into the role of child, and their aging hippy children into the role of caregiver and/or resentful landlord. Ha! In any case, there was a really cool Post Office building for sale right across from the restaurant that looked like it could be easily converted into a gnarly loft space. The restaurant itself was decorated like what I'd imagine a sea captain's basement would look like. We ate lobster and I had a nice appetizer of mussels in white wine sauce. We were the youngest people in the joint by about a lifetime. Luckily, old locals always know where the good places are. Remember what I ate, as it will come back (literally) into the story later on.

After using a forest worth of napkins trying to get the melted butter out of every crevice, we headed out for the New Jersey State Fair at the Meadowlands. Hesitation isn't a strong enough word to describe my feelings when faced with the pukies (not my word) in the parking lot. What are pukies you might ask? Pukies leave rusting appliances on their lawns. Pukies wear shorts with work boots, wife beaters and those wrap-around, multi-color shades that are only seen at NASCAR events and Lynyrd Skynyrd concerts. They generally have a cigarette hanging free from their lip, a rockin' mullet and have all sorts of shit hanging from the rearview mirror of their one-primer-colored-door, early-eighties Cadillacs. Anyway, the folks were scary.

Despite my initial trepidation, I decided that this would be one of the better people-watching experiences I've had in quite a while. So, we went to the box office and bought our ticket--and without any stupid TicketMaster charges!

And here we go with the evil carnies. We bought our tickets and jumped on the first ride we saw. Unfortunately we didn't look at the man with the track marks, ponytail and missing teeth running the thing from his little booth. The twenty-year wake-and-bake routine in his trailer had obviously taken its toll. He started up the ride right as Eddy Grant started singing. The shit flipped and flopped. The thing spun and dropped. The lobster in my stomach started its journey back to the sea. My mussels tried to muscle their way up my esophagus. My ridemate actually drooled on me. The carny's cackle was barely audible over the loudspeaker, but we saw his beat-red, scrunched face clearly on one of our one thousand dips past his control booth, tears of joy streaming down his cheeks as he laughed himself into a coughing fit. All the while, his riders were holding back their sausages, funnel cakes and frozen Cokes. The ride went on forever. Normally this would be a good thing, but my screams of "evil carny!" said otherwise. The carny finally composed himself long enough to stop the damn thing and we all staggered away with the taste of ocean in our mouths and hatred in our hearts.

The rest of the evening was spent riding the worst haunted house ride of all time that lasted about thirty seconds, seemed to be missing some stuff and featured a dude in a Scream mask who lazily followed the little car and I believe said "boo" at one point. Heroin is bad, folks. I noticed one ride, The Crazy Mouse, was propped up on wooden blocks. It was a roller coaster that spun around like the teacups ride, but rode the rails like a roller coaster. Certainly frightening. I still have a couple scabs on my left elbow from being thrown against the restraint bar on one of the turns. Gee, I'm really glad the asshole carny told me not to put on the seatbelt. We saw "the world's tallest horse" for fifty cents. We expected a stuffed equine, but the thing was real--and he was damn tall! The tallest in the world? I didn't bring my tape measure or almanac (or wherever they keep stats on big animals), but it was certainly the tallest horse I had ever seen. I suppose most people hanging out at the Meadowlands don't have a ton of experience with farm animals--which was evident by the freaked out children in the petting zoo. There was a point where we started hatching a plan to free all the poor, imprisoned animals (including the ancient, very sad-looking elephant), but decided that being beaten by a bunch of drug-addled, nomadic carnies wasn't on the menu for that evening. We passed on "the world's smallest horse" but did enjoy the patter: "See the world's smallest horse! A cup of water and a handful of straw is a mighty meal for Tiny Tim, a horse so small not even a baby can ride him!" Now, that's a carnival classic.

Needless to say, we probably won't be back at the State Fair until, well, at least next year, but I will always remember our carny friend with the broken leg in the golf cart with what I can only call a super-mullet, and his sidekick with the broken arm and tattoo of a mermaid that took up her entire back. I wanted so badly to ask them on which ride they messed themselves up, but I don't speak freak.

LAKE GEORGE, NY

Nothing says "vacation" like a trip to The Adirondacks--home to countless sleepy vacation villages that come alive with family trucksters and zinc-oxidized tourists once the upstate New York weather turns a little less frigid. Separating itself from the crowd, with more arcades, two-dollar t-shirt shops and tchotchke stores than any other is the world famous village of Lake George.

Not growing up around any lakes, I was unaware there was a huge difference between lake vacationing and, say, any other vacationing on earth. While most people from New York City go to The Jersey Shore, The Hamptons or Florida, Western New Yorkers, Canadians, and the generally land-locked folks of Upstate New York flock to these mountain oases for a week of fun in the sun, salt water taffy and a couple rounds of miniature golf. While this picturesque postcard may give you the sense that Lake George affords vacationers white sandy beaches and that lovely 50's aesthetic we came to enjoy in movies like The Flamingo Kid, our "beach" was actually about seven feet of trucked in sand. While there was no beach to speak of, our resort did have its share of shorefront docks and nice rolling hills overlooking the lake.

Sitting by the lake listening to all the motorboats zoom by is actually quite relaxing. Going to town is a whole different thing. Stuffed with skee-ball joints, backscratcher and paperweight shops, and even The Alien Encounter, Dr. Morbid's Haunted House, The House of Frankenstein Wax Museum and The Great Escape. There is also your share of fudge/ice cream/candy stores and your obligatory small-town pregnant teen. As with every tourist town whose population multiplies exponentially during the high-season, the locals seem to just be hanging on until the cash flow once again starts streaming in. Some of the businesses were flush with cash from the thousands of Americade bikers that rolled through town the week before we did. The leather outlet looked especially picked-over. It also looked as though several of the businesses in town didn't make it through the off season. It must be a tough road only making money three months out of the year.

Regardless, we had a few good meals at places like the Montcalm for dinner and The Lone Bull for breakfast, but the majority of the places around have views of the lake, beer in plastic cups, and buffalo wings and poppers on the menu. Now you know.

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