Inspired by Geekadelphia’s post of Bro for sale down at 6th and Washington, I bring you some shots I just had to take during a recent trip to the very same supermarket. Why buy bro when a beautiful 2 lb. chunk of purple meat is only $1.30 more per pound? And nothing accompanies a plate of meat like a well-prepared plate of NY Uteris. MMM…MMM…
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Years ago I was coming back from one of the greatest vacations of my life. After a year of non-stop work and school, I spent a week living in the woods of New Hampshire inside a converted 1-room school house with a woman I shared a deep and growing affection for. It was her family’s land and we spent many peaceful and spiritually nourishing days in the idyllic setting.
Then a few of my friends drove up from Philly, picked me up and took me off to Maine. For another week we played like children of Eden in moss covered forests and ancient New England beaches. At night there were fires and beer and good food and good company. I could have stayed there forever.
But then we drove home. After 12 hours of travel and an unexpected detour through Queens, we pulled into a North Jersey rest area. Then I wrote this review of New Jersey for epinions.com.
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Next time you’re feeling pretty optimistic, pretty secure and certain of yourself. Next time a glimmer of hope and an overwhelming sense of beauty encompasses what you perceive in that state to be your soul, go to New Jersey. For New Jersey is a true test of faith. Jesus himself would sink like a barrel of nuclear waste in an encephalitis filled North Jersey bog.
The last time I visited, I was thrown into a deep and horrible state of despair. Standing at Thomas A. Edison rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike was more than I could take. The smog of the nearby refineries hung like death in the air. The lights of New York City, glowed just beyond the horizon; the tops of the World Trade Center towers barely out of sight. I stood there, the power lines humming, tractor trailers idling, bad music playing, surrounded by desperate people living for God knows what purpose.
What purpose? If you can find it here, if you can see through the concrete and the haze, if you can just feel yourself through it, then maybe you can find it.
But it’s too much. I can’t see the beauty. The dream turns to a spinning and strung out nightmare. Forever repeating in deafening frustration. Even the tears in my eyes are tainted. Dirtied by the air.
I have always had to leave New Jersey to regain hope. I just try to forget that it’s there. Maybe someday it will fit. Maybe someday it will all make sense. Maybe I’ll understand its necessity then. But not today.
—
Addendum: Over the past few years, I’ve actually come to see the beauty in New Jersey. It was a slow transformation, but it happened. Now New Jersey is one of my favorite states. The place has undeniable character. It’s subtle and desperate and sad.
I’ve been going through my brain for old stories from the animal ER where I used to work and here’s another one:
Being a premier institution of animal care and research, we’d attract a lot of celebrities. Socks the Clinton’s Cat was a patient. So was Oprah’s dog and the husky puppy from the Sixth Sense. Best of all though, was the day Fabio came in. I’ll regret it until the day I die, but I totally missed out. He arrived on my day off, donned doctor’s scrubs and wandered the halls for hours. I may have missed him, but I heard stories of his exploits. Best of all was this one:
To hear it correctly, you have to imagine yourself as:
Early 20′s, female and rail thin. You’re not unattractive, but you’re not drop dead. You’re a brunette with medium length hair and have got a little uniqueness going with a few piercings. Otherwise you’re dressed like all the other Vet Techs, which is in dog piss soaked scrubs. You’re going about your day as usual: catheterizing cats and inserting valium suppositories into seizuring dogs’ anuses, when you get word that Fabio is in the building.
Turning around, you see him in all his glory. His long blond hair takes on a green hue in the fluorescent light. As he approaches, you see the lines in his aging face and note his enormous man-breasts. Then you realize that he’s approaching you. No one else is within 10 feet. Suddenly you feel like a kitten being cornered by an intact Northern Italian Mastiff. He says “Hello” and you respond in kind. Then – no joke – he drops this line:
“I am only here for one night and I would like to make it a night of passion.”
Confused, you do the only thing you can, which is to politely decline, leave as quickly as possible and once the creepy feeling goes away, laugh about it for the next 25 years.
—
The next day, hearing that Fabio was coming back to pick up his dog, I brought in my Fabio CD for him to sign. I’m not at all ashamed to admit that I own a Fabio CD. Years ago I bought it for $2 in a bargain bin and it was worth every penny. But sadly, Fabio arrived after I’d left and I never got it signed.
*note, I’d planned to upload a song from the fabulous CD so that you could hear why I love it so much, but my drive died and now the disc is stuck in my computer. All I can do is share my favorite line:
“I hear a solo and I think of a duet.”
Having solved the Toynbee tile enigma, I thought I’d turn my attention to another long-standing Philadelphia mystery. Is Mumia guilty?
After years of research: Hell yes, he’s guilty as shit.
Here’s what happened. Mumia shot Faulkner. The city of Philadelphia had a strong case… but decided to make it stronger by coercing witnesses, making up a confession, cherry picking a judge and rigging a jury. Corrupt? Yes. Does it make him not guilty? No.
But here’s the problem. I’ll spell it out by continuing to ask myself questions and then answering them.
Should he get a new trial? If you’re worried about the criminal justice system and justice in that respect, then yes he should. But would he walk if he got a new trial? Absolutely.
Mumia’s got enough top notch legal support available to conjure up enough confusion and reasonable doubt to walk. Add to that the clear corruption in the City’s original case and 30 years of distance from the event and they’d fail miserably in any new trial. So if you’re worried about a man doing time for a murder that he committed, then he shouldn’t get a new trial… even though the first one was a sham… even though he’s guilty.
But anyway, what new information do I have to offer? Here’s my personal run-down of the event:
I never liked the idea that Mumia was sitting in his cab at 4AM waiting for fares, when his brother just happened to get pulled over half a block away. Here’s what I’m convinced happened. Mumia and his brother, William Cook were together in the parking lot at 13th and Locust. What business they had is unimportant, but could be interesting. I always wonder why Mumia doesn’t admit to being together in the minute before the shooting, (his brother’s made no statement at all about anything that happened) but I’m convinced that they were.
Mumia’s brother leaves. He wants to drive east. Locust is a quarter block south, but the wrong way up 13th for that quarter block. Instead of heading all the way up to 13th to Chestnut, he figures it’s 4AM, so he jets that few dozen feet the wrong way up 13th and makes the eastbound turn on Locust. From where Faulkner is sitting on Locust street, all he sees is a car headed the wrong way up 13th and pulls him over.
The next most important fact is this:
At 3:51 and 8 seconds, Faulkner radios in and says: “I have a car stopped at 12th, 13th and Loucst.” He calls for a wagon… which makes me think there are 2 people in Cook’s car. The call ends at 3:51 and 23 seconds.
At 3:52 and 27 seconds, a witness to the murder is at Juniper and Walnut… several blocks away reporting the shooting to police.
That makes the time of the incident, really, really short. There couldn’t have been more than 45 seconds between the time Faulkner exited his car, Cook exited his car, Mumia was shot and Faulkner was killed. What happened?
The car is pulled over and Faulkner gets out of his patrol car. I’m guessing that things go wrong from the start. Maybe both men get out of the car as Faulkner approaches. Maybe there’s a physical confrontation. Either way, Faulkner loses control quickly and when Mumia comes out of the parking lot across the street, it’s a surprise. I’m guessing that Mumia had his gun drawn and that Faulkner, seeing this, fired first. I’m guessing that the second man ran, Faulkner tried to take cover and Mumia fired at him, hitting him in the back. Then Mumia approached and knowing that he had already shot a cop and is also seriously wounded himself, made sure that Faulkner was dead.
Why am I convinced that Mumia is guilty? I hate to get all Smerconish on this site, but Mumia’s version of events just doesn’t make sense. First off, he doesn’t explain how he was shot with any bit of credibility. In his version, the shooting occured before he got out of his cab. How the hell did he end up with a bullet from Faulkner’s gun in his chest if the man was already dead? But he also claims that he was shot by an officer… presumably Faulkner? After the shooting? Huh? And when exactly did Mumia fire 5 bullets?
His version seems tailored to causing confusion in a second trial. With the city case already full of holes, Mumia adds a few more to the narrative… which his lawyers will explain away with more corruption from the city. Suddenly you’ve got such a big mess and a little reasonable doubt.
The whole Mumia’s gun didn’t fire the fatal shots argument is bogus. It’s not based on foresnics, it’s based on a cursory examination.
The Mumia is innocent because he was an intellectual and worked for NPR and got fired and was a radical and kept it real argument is just stupid. If anything, a revolutionary minded angry mother fucker is more likely to kill a cop than some random asshole sitting in a cab at 4AM. That’s not a knock on revolutionaries, it’s just an observation. What would Che have done?
I guess were lucky that people argue his innocence, instead of extolling the virtues of his guilt.
Way out west of 50th street lives an old, dear friend of mine. We’ve been friends for years, but don’t talk much anymore. Actually my emails, calls and texts go unanswered. He’s not ignoring me, we’ve just gotten kind of shitty at things like keeping in touch. He’s also a largely nocturnal creature and tends towards reclusiveness. When we lived together. it was a lot easier.
But anyway, about a year and a half ago he gave me a couple of albums of his music. He recorded them in the basement studio of a friend. Back then, I asked if I could post them here and he enthusiastically agreed. If I were rich, I’d buy him a full-on recording studio. Until then, I’m forced to spread his self-produced work on my meager little website. First up is the acoustic album “everly.” Next will be the electric “jinx.”
If someone asked me the value of our friendship and put me on the spot to come up with some stupid answer, I’d say something about how he taught me the true power of humans. We are far more powerful than we can either comprehend or control. That power only appears to us in that imaginary space between our 5 senses. It’s the place where reality is made and we control it more than we think:
everly:
(favorites *’d… but don’t skip the rest)
hell
heaven knows *
radius
scratch *
the roys I jinx *
shield *
everly
—
* note: for avid readers of this site, he’s the one who built this.
Long ago I worked in an animal emergency room, triaging incoming calls, registering dying animals and milking their owners for every heartfelt penny that they had. It was the most god-awful job in the world, but the hours were good for school and it paid 100% of my tuition. One other benefit was the stories that I walked away with. Unfortunately a combination of heavy drug use and general memory repression/purging has wiped many of them from my brain, but a few of them stuck. Like this:
—
* One note. I’m a reasonably intelligent person and during my 5+ years triaging calls, learned to recognize pranks. This guy was legit. I’ll write the dialog from memory:
—
Week 1:
(phone ringing)
me: Veterinary Emergency.
caller: Hello, yes. My cat is sick.
me: What’s going on with your cat?
caller: He died last week… Well I thought he died. He wasn’t moving and wasn’t eating or breathing. I buried him in a shoebox in my yard.
me: umh…
caller: But I could hear meowing. I could hear a faint meowing coming from underground, so I dug him up. Is there something you can do for him?
me: Is your cat breathing now?
caller: I don’t think so. But I could hear him meowing. At first he was stiff, but now he’s soft again. Does that mean that you can help him?
me: I’m sorry, but it doesn’t sound like there’s anything we can do for your cat.
caller: I wrap his little paws around my neck. I’ve been wearing him around my neck. He’s soft again. There must be something that you can do.
me: (eyeing co-worker, pointing at phone) Like a necklace? When did you bury him?
caller: Last week. But I heard him meowing.
me: umh… and when did you dig him up?
caller: Three days ago. He’s soft again. Isn’t there anything that you can do? Can you bring him back?
me: I’m sorry, no.
—
One week later:
(ring, ring)
me: Veterinary Emergency.
caller: Hello. I think there’s something wrong with my cat.
me: (oh shit!) what’s going on with your cat?
caller: Well, I thought he had died, at first he was stiff, but now he’s soft again.
me: I think I talked to you last week.
caller: Yes. I’m sure that you can bring him back.
me: How long since he last ate.
caller: His eyes are gone, but I think I saw him breathing.
me: Sir, there’s nothing that can be done. I’m sorry but your cat is dead.
caller: I’ve been wearing him. I wrap his little paws around my neck. Most of his hair is gone, but isn’t there something that you can do?
me: no.
caller: Can you put a doctor on the phone? I’m sure that he was breathing. His eyes are gone, but I put my face up to his little face and I can hear him breathe. Can I talk to a doctor?
me: (seeing office social worker walking by and flagging her down) No I can’t put on a doctor. But could you hold on for a minute.
(hand phone to social worker…)
Actually that title is a little dramatic. I still have a drunken, 2:30AM place in my heart for Lorenzos, and (upstairs!) at Tattooed Moms is still alright every now and then, but the strips draw – the 4th and South Toynbee Tile – is now history. For those that don’t know (which is pretty much everyone on earth) the 4th and South tile was the last confirmed original Toynbee tile in Philadelphia. It was glued at least 15-20 years ago and in that time, withstood everything the intersection threw at it.
I’ll let tile fan, Colin Smith’s eulogy speak for the loss:
It’s okay folks. I’ll miss the tile very much, but the fact of the matter is death is necessarily connected to life. No matter what sorts of issues of relativity we may squabble over in regards to the space between conception and destruction, there is little room for disagreement in regards to the hefty, unwavering inevitability of death. This tile’s demise is as inevitable as its birth, which we can potentially date around late ’80s/early ’90s.
Rather than trying to beat death, I think we should use it as event to mark and celebrate the end of a narrative. Think of how many molecules came and went from this tile over the years! The tile itself was gone before it was ever even visible! In actuality, there is no ’tile’ at all, just a procession of molecules engaged in a finite process of “tile-ing.”
And what a process it was! I can remember the tile as a shining, colorful beacon of weirdness aglow in the eye of a younger me trolling along South Street in the early ’90s. And here we are in 2008, celebrating the times of these molecules in their participation in the oldest Philadelphia Toynbee Tile. These molecules performed quite a function for quite some time, but they will soon disperse and begin new lives in the corporeal bodies of our realm of operation – the physical world. We needn’t fight this process! Some would argue that we can’t. Our options are to make peace with it or be overtaken by it while kicking and screaming.
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