Not-So-Divine Comedy

Adventures of an editor and freelance writer in NYC

26.9.05

Anti-War

The National Park Service no longer gives official estimates of the size of marches in downtown Washington, but from the roof of the Hotel Washington on Saturday morning, there seemed to be at least 75,000 anti-war protestors swarming around the White House. Of course, even before the event organizers had finished dotting the last ‘i’ on the placards screaming ‘BUSHIT!’ and setting up the main stage on the lawn near the Washington Monument, the whole thing had morphed from an anti-war protest to one pretty much anti-everything Bush. Everyone from aging hippies to hipsters to kids waving the Iraqi flag, from a gaggle of old ladies calling themselves the “raging grannies” to teenagers in black playing anarchist – they were all out there, to rail against the war, the deficit, African poverty, even the repeal of Section 8 housing vouchers.

Taken in conjunction with the administration’s falling poll numbers, not to mention the general anger over everything from rising gas prices to FEMA, one thing is clear: The state of the union is officially Pissed Off.

Minutes before the march, on a grassy space near the main stage, a small group of people are putting the finishing touches on 75 flag-draped cardboard ‘coffins.’ A woman whose daughter had been with the Navy at Annapolis is busy making the red, white and blue on every box militarily crisp. “It’s important to get it right,” she says. Behind her, a protestor in a yellow shirt brandishes a megaphone and roars for volunteer pall bearers for a “dramatic theatrical event.”

“I don’t like what he’s saying,” the woman says, before going back to pin the edge of a flag to the cardboard.

This is not the first time that John Lake, standing nearby, has done one of these events, in which the crowd bears the line of coffins before the eyes of crowd and media to represent the dead. He was at the RNC last year, where he says more than 4,000 people volunteered to carry the boxes aloft. For him, it’s all about getting the troops out of Iraq; everything after that, he believes, should be up to the Iraqis themselves. “When Mt. Saint Helens blew, it took down all the trees. In a year they grew back. These things happen naturally,” he says.

On the main stage, the first of the day’s speakers begins to whip up a crowd that doesn’t need much prompting. When Cindy Sheehan gets up to speak, they explode in a flurry of sign-waving and cheering. A man on stilts wearing a ratty Uncle Sam outfit and a Pinocchio nose teeters above the Raging Grannies, who are busy letting the press snap their photos.

Some of the protestors are familiar faces. The men in Bush, Satan and Cheney masks, making their way up 15th during the march with world globes aloft and slugging from oil canisters, made an appearance nine months ago at the inauguration, taunting the crowd trying to file through the C St. underpass.

The atmosphere then was as bitter as the January cold; the proximity of dejected protestors to bling-laden Texans trying to squeeze their way through the security tents was too much for many. A few thrown rocks at the 7th St. checkpoint resulted in two lines of riot cops stomping in to cordon everyone off. Today, though, there seems to be a sense among many protestors that Bush is now on the run. “We’ve got him surrounded!” someone in the crowd yells at one point.

But Bush himself is under a mountain in Colorado, monitoring the hurricane Rita relief efforts. Nonetheless, the Secret Service has snipers on the roofs. A line of well-trained horses, ridden by equally well-trained Park Police, keep the crowd from spilling onto Independence Avenue, south of the White House. Behind a waist-high gray metal barrier stretching the length of Pennsylvania Avenue, a line of DCPD and Secret Service in riot gear stand at attention, watching impassively as the crowd heaves and surges and whistles and roars a few feet away. A lone helicopter chatters overhead.

There are the counter-protestors, as usual, but not in massive numbers. A fat man on the corner of 15th and Pennsylvania screams through a megaphone that all assembled are headed straight to the fiery pit, while his companion holds up a sign saying, among other things, ‘REPENT.’ He is there in the early morning; by the time the main march rounds the corner, people breaking off to climb statues and the sides of nearby buildings, he is gone. Billionaires for Bush, decked out in evening wear, conducts an ironic sing-a-long in a corner of Lafayette Park.

Further down the street, another man with a megaphone is busy bellowing: “Get this straight: Terrorists are bad. America, good. Christianity, good.” A protestor sneaks up behind him and holds a sign saying, ‘RIGHT WING BIGOT’ over his head. A group of college Republicans verbally battles it out nearby with anyone willing to engage. “I don’t like deficit spending, either, but we have to do what’s necessary,” one of them says when asked about how the administration can keep spending on Iraq, hurricane rebuilding and the recent highway bill.

Al Sharpton makes an appearance just after 1 p.m., striding down Independence with an entourage in tow. He says nothing, but his 4’11” assistant more than makes up for it, yelling, “Get back! Get back!” at the crowd swarming behind. This same assistant, apparently, booted photographers out of a Louisiana refugee shelter when Sharpton made an appearance down there a few weeks ago, and seems apparently intent on repeating the same performance up here. No luck. Photographers and gawkers buzz close. A black Secret Service SUV on some undefined mission roars down the street with a man in a suit running behind, stops, and then takes off again, rounding the corner.

The march, meanwhile, keeps swarming up 15th St., part of the circuit that will take it in a tight circle around the downtown core. A light rain falls, briefly, and then stops. People fall out of the crowd, sitting on the traffic medians or the middle of the street, climbing on top of cars. The riot cops stand at loose attention beside their cars and buses. The anarchists give up and head for Starbucks, where long lines of protestors are already forming for their early afternoon latte break.

In the Hotel Washington, a few photographers file past the tables of people having lunch to snap some bird’s-eye view shots of the crowd. At these heights, it’s still somewhat business as usual. People are here for the conference, not the protest, and you have to wait ten minutes for a table. A woman drives a Segway down a hall.

Back on the street, past the student groups pumping their fists and the theatre people carrying a giant effigy of Wolfowitz as a bloodthirsty Roman emperor, past the protestors in front of the White House screaming, “The People’s House!” and the New York Times photographers taking shots of them, past the lines of cops on horseback and bikes ringing them all in, life continues on. Buses and taxis zip back and forth. People cross 16th St. bearing big bags of shopping. But from blocks away you can still hear the crowd roar.

23.9.05

Basic Math

The New Orleans levees are breaking down again. A bus loaded with geriatrics and oxygen tanks explodes in a greasy ball of flame on a Houston highway. Turn on the TV and see that big Red Ball of Death on its unstoppable march for the Gulf coastline. But that’s okay, that’s just fine, because your federal government is on the job. A dispatch from Texas, via CNN:

The two National Guard tanker trucks, each carrying 5,000 gallons of gas, were sent at daybreak Friday to help thousands of people who had run low on gas while trying to evacuate, said Chief Master Sgt. Gonda Moncada, spokeswoman for the national guard.

Moncada said that 10,000 gallons of gas might not be enough to help everyone who needs it.


Let’s see: 10,000 divided by an average of 15 gallons of gas per car equals 666 cars. Now take a look at the parking-lot that was formerly dozens of miles of highway heading out of Houston.

16.9.05

Still Alive

I want my MTV

I am always early to everything. When I was younger, it was a neurotic impulse to show up to any event a half-hour early; now I usually arrive a more sedate five minutes before show time. When I caught the cab from 94th down to Times Square last Friday morning I overestimated the time it would take the refugee from Alpha Centuri behind the wheel to screech and power-slide fifty blocks. I ended up in front of the Viacom building twenty-five minutes before my press escort was due to pick me up, twenty minutes before I was supposed to hook up with my photographer.

So I went for coffee. Whenever I’m in Times Square, I always have to resist the urge to crane my neck upwards to all the screens surrounding me – I have to fight to not look like a tourist. I found the first Starbucks and ordered something called a Chai latte that tasted vaguely sweet and then walked around for a while, earphones blaring David Bowie, soaking up the bustle and the steam.

The story was ‘inside MTV.’ The climax of which, hours later, I got to stand on the little piece of tape marking the blind spot for the swinging cameras of Total Request Live, surrounded by shrieking little kids. After almost being accidentally elbowed in the head by Elijah Wood and watching the MTV staff making cement for Shakira to make hand-prints in for pop posterity, went to visit my NYC editor down the street. We ended up having drinks at the Algonquin.

Afterwards, Ian and I did a sort of NYC-in-ten-blocks tour: We had the famous thin pizza, saw the neighborhood political march, passed by a filming of ‘Law and Order,’ swung by the riverfront, and then back to the train station, where I caught the 8:50 back down to D.C. I spent the train-ride writing; spent the cab ride writing; booted up the laptop and got to work when I finally got home in the absurdly early hours. Fifteen hours later the story was finished, and I crashed asleep for a few minutes on Ben’s couch after uploading it to my NYC editor.

Happy Monday, Motherfucker

Call them Big Shot Publicity: the kind of New York firm with a roster of the movers and shakers, players and groundbreakers. Close your eyes and you can imagine their offices, stark wood and gleaming chrome fifty floors up, and assistants with mouthpieces scrambling like ants in Armani. They represent your cover-boy or –girl for whatever issue of the magazine you’re working on at the moment, and they’re late in getting you the email interview they promised a few weeks ago.

Monday morning and you’re in absolutely no mood. You want to be in bed. You want to be in bed with someone else, but your ‘someone else’s seem to be in New York, or Chicago, or in relationships, so you’re stuck holding the pillow. You’ve had a Red Bull and a cup of strong black tea so far, and that’s not enough. Back in the day, all of three years ago, you used to bounce back from the weekend’s chemical stimulation in no time; now you feel empty, hollowed-out. You dial the assistant-to-the-publicist at Big Shot. No answer. You try the main number.

“Hi,” you say, pile-driving the cheer into your voice, “is [publicist] there?”

“What’s this about?” Whatever assistant-to-the-assistant picking up says.

You mention the interview.

“I’m going to transfer you to her assistant,” the assistant-to-the-assistant says.

“I just tried her assistant. She’s not in.” Tone like: do not fuck with me on this.

The assistant-to-the-assistant transfers you anyway, and – Holy Smokes, Batman! – the assistant actually picks up this time. “Hello, this is…”

“Hey, it’s Nick. Any luck on the interview?”

Pause.

“Well, unfortunately there’s been a bit of an incident with the talent…”

As in, the talent just crashed their brand-new Diablo into a bridge abutment. Or got arrested in Oklahoma for cocaine possession. Your Rock Star or Movie God in major-league legal trouble, it’s as American as apple pie or the lone gunman on the roof. But it doesn’t solve my problem. I probably already know what the ‘incident’ in question was, given my near-religious reading of Salon, Gawker, and every other site that uses the Web, that ultimate telecommunications marvel of the modern world, to instantly broadcast photos of supermodels shoveling Bolivian marching powder up their perkily enhanced noses.

Flipping back in time-space to NYC last week, four hours off the train and locked down finally in my seedy hotel on the Upper West Side, a girl I know curled up with me, and for some reason I find myself talking about how much this actress made last year versus that actress, and how much of a gross percentage of box office gross another star demands per picture.

She turns head so her chin is resting on my sternum, cocks an eyebrow while still keeping her eyes shut, and says, “Do you spend all day on the Internet?”

Pause.

“Um, sometimes.”

Jack

Jimmy Bedford is master distiller for Jack Daniels. With his southern-fried accent and the cell-phone clipped to his expensive slacks, he could just as easily be any other Tennessee ol’ boy done good – Colonel Sanders, if he shaved the beard and went into alcohol instead of chicken. “You hang around a place long enough, eventually they think up something for you to do,” he says when someone asks him how he got into the job.

He was at the Press Club last night, before Bradley went and showed me his photos from New Orleans. Bedford had his assistants bring out three different kinds of Jack, poured each of us three glasses, and had us absorb the quote-end-quote “vanilla and caramel favors.” To someone who almost never drinks hard liquor, save for the occasional screwdriver or rum-and-coke, it pretty much tasted like burning. But he was nice enough to sign over an unopened bottle to me – a trophy that could go up next to the plastic severed foot signed by Chuck Palahniuk – and afterwards Sylvia wanted to watch the end of the Yankees game, so we trotted over to the fratboy Disneyland of the ESPN bar to watch. Then came home, and crashed out.