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Scanner Colleen's Encounters of the Presidential Kind

Colleen Kane — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

My fellow Americans, I have only had one Presidential-themed encounter personally, but I'm going to share my mom's anecdote and my dad's half-one as well. It's a Kanes' Brushes With Presidential Fame Extravaganza.

Picture it: Central Jersey, nineteen eighty something. My moms was driving along route 287 when a high-end foreign car (she forgets the make now, but guesses BMW) took a swerve towards my mom's mustard-colored Volvo station wagon. Mom looked over at the driver, who was rummaging for something on the dashboard, and was startled to recognize one of the most iconic faces of her lifetime looking back.

It was Jackie O! She lived in some ritzy part of the Jerse at the time, possibly Pluckemin, although that factoid is now hazy in my parents' memories as well. They met eyes, and Jackie did a little "oops, sorry" wave. Then my mom and John John's mom happened to get off at the same exit, and happened to end up at the same strip mall. (Nobody was stalking anybody, so lay off.) Jackie was heading to the dry cleaners, noticed my mom's car as the one she'd swerved at earlier, and waved over to her. She was maybe not the greatest driver, but no one could deny the lady's grace.

It must have been the early 80s, because I was young enough that I didn't know who Jackie O was, but I remember how thrilled my mom was telling the story to everyone. Another time, my dad stood behind Jackie on line when she was buying cigarettes, but he didn't get any Presidential waves. I did though, years later. Here's my encounter, as told when I was interviewed on Gothamist.

A few days after September 11th, a few friends and I made it into the sealed-off downtown area to try to volunteer at one of the hospitals. We ended up sitting in a waiting room for hours, not being of any help to anyone. The whole front glass wall of the waiting room was covered with missing-person fliers. While waiting there I saw, on the fuzzy local TV news (all the TV towers had been knocked out, remember) President Bush boarding a small plane to come to New York. That’s right, that goon is President, I was reminded again. Finally we gave up waiting around to help and headed out. I peeled a scrap of paper from a car that was covered in that damp, gray-white dust that was made up of the collapsed buildings and humanity and planes. It said “Appendix,” and I kept it in my pocket. As we walked uptown we were stopped by a cop, on a corner across the street from City Hall. All pedestrian traffic was stopped on all corners at that intersection, though we weren’t told why. Finally a succession of black SUVs and other Secret Service vehicles with tinted glass came around the corner heading down to Ground Zero…it was the Presidential motorcade. New Yorkers on each corner of the intersection stood silent as the motorcade slowly proceeded by, then we saw President Bush’s grinning monkey face at one window, and he waved and gave us the thumbs up. The fucking thumbs up?! Was he joking? Nobody waved back, cheered, booed, or said much of anything, really. It was just like, Holy shit; that was the President. It was just another odd sight to an already stunned populace at one of the most unreal times ever.

Kind of a bum note to end on...but then just remember OBAMA!

USA!

Happy Presidents' Day, everyone.

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Smiths Speed Dating Really Happened

Colleen Kane — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:25:00 GMT

Perhaps you read on Gothamist.com or elsewhere about the existence of Smiths Speed Dating, hosted by comedian Dave Hill. It happened on Friday (with another one planned for February 12), and it was so packed they were turning away folks at the door.

Someone who attended blogged about the event, and here are some highlights.

When a cameraman from Time Out New York criticized everyone playing around on their iPhones: "What should we have been talking about, oh wise dating sages? The 21-year-old with the goatee and the size negative 4 jeans standing in the corner? Congratulations, cameraman. You’re at a Smiths speed date. In a sea of Greenpoint hipsters you’ve managed to ascend to the apex of hipsterdom and earn the prize for biggest douche of them all."

About an anarchist he met during the speed dating: "If I ever met her in a dark alley, one of us would be getting their face bashed in, and you can probably guess who that would be. That’s right…her. There’s no way I’d let a girl kick my ass. Still, she’d probably put up a good fight."

"The crown jewel of the night, though, was a girl that had a role in a movie I saw recently. I distinctly remember thinking to myself during the movie that the girl was beautiful. I also distinctly remember thinking to myself during our brief encounter that the girl was beautiful. Lest you think my attraction to women is purely physical [you mean there's more to women than looks?—Ed.], she also had a great personality! Or so I think, since I only had William It Was Really Nothing to get to know her."

Read the post here.

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Today in WTF: The Hipster Streetfighting Revolution

Brian Fairbanks — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:43:00 GMT

We saw this on Gothamist and can't figure out what the hell it means. Are the Fight Club fanatics and wannabes taking it to the streets now, bored of duking it out with their multiple personalities in bar basements across the nation? Are hipsters finally getting into thuggery, as the Old Guard in the Fifties feared they would?

New York City, which has police everywhere, including dozens of plainclothes in Union Square at any given moment, seems an unlikely place for people to get away with this sort of thing. (For those who don't know the Square, think of someone getting away with an illegal boxing match in a smaller version of Times Square and you'll get the idea.)

I got another cryptic text from a friend last Friday afternoon: “Fight Club in Union Square. GET HERE.”

For those who don’t live in New York, Union Square has historically been a giant meeting place for political protesters, social activists, and merchants of all sizes. In the days following September 11th, it was a meeting place for rescuers and mourners alike. Now it’s home to a multiplex, Ann Taylor Loft, a Whole Foods, and a Diesel store.

We know this isn't permitted because of this choice line, and the original post's final one:

Street fighting is a million times cooler than anything on TV has ever been, and New York’s the only city in America where a bunch of guys fight in public all weekend long while the cops watch and approve.

Read more at Gothamist or the original blog.

Sloppy Spitzer Seconds, Part Two: Where We Are Pleasantly Surprised

Bryan Christian — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:00:00 GMT

We're back, and since we got all the sleazy stuff out of the way earlier this morning, we're looking at whether the media's doing any better treating the Spitzer Scandal like we're all adults. And we gotta say: if this were the SAT's, we'd say they scored in, like, the 85th percentile. Let's have a look.

-- On New York's Daily Intelligencer, it is noted that prostitution, like real estate, is an industry that has seen a fair amount of inflation in the last few years -- and everyone knowing what Eliot Spitzer was paying might make it worse. Here also find the Wall Street Journal article which inspired the DI post, albeit longer-ly and with less wacky Photoshopping.

-- By the way, in case you weren't aware, the New York Post says over a ten-year period, it was somewhere around $80 GRAND the guy spent on hookers. Remember: Eliot Spitzer actually comes from money, so that $80 Grand probably seems like even less money to him than it might to you or us, assuming you are as broke as us.

-- Slate Magazine totally surprises us by dropping a couple of short missives on whether Spitzer might shoulda paid more for his lady company, and how he could have arranged his payments, to avoid being caught. Slate, who knew you were so naughty!

-- And Slate's XX Factor blog also goes into overdrive on the topic, asking whether cheating is better or worse with a prostitute (for the spouse, of course), what a prostitute might consider "not safe," how hard it would have been for him to have just gotten a little on the side, and whether Spitzer got into politics for the chicks in the first place. (Again, we remind you: dude was born rich, so it ain't out of left field to wonder.)

-- Finally, over on Salon, Glenn Greenwald bums us out as he generally does, this time with all the contradictions brought up by l'affaire Spitzer.

* People who work at an unpleasant job in order to support themselves, rather than because they enjoy it, are the functional equivalent of brutalized, exploited slaves and therefore should be barred by others from choosing that job -- when the job in question is prostitution, but not when it's factory work or fast food cashier or large corporate law firm associate or massage therapist or porn actor.

Ah dude, don't ruin porn for us too!

Sloppy Spitzer Seconds, Part One: Where We Are Titillated and Amused

Bryan Christian — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:05:00 GMT

What a difference a day makes. Here we were yesterday, bemoaning the lack of serious discussion of prostitution in the media following the Spitzer Shocker™, and what do we find today but a few really interesting and thoughtful attempts to explore the state of prostitution in this country! Not that we're gonna cover those just yet. We gotta get all the goofy and sleazy stuff out of the way first. Like for example, the quest to uncover "Kristen" -- who it turns out is actually named Ashley and is kind of cute (see above) -- and her madam. Shall we begin?

-- Let's cut right to cherchez-ing la femme. The prostitute named in all those indictments as "Kristen" is really named Ashley Dupré and she's apparently having a really hard time with this so please no one bug her. The first definitive picture that we saw of her was the above screengrab on PageSix.com, and within a few hours the New York Times had an interview and pics from her MySpace page. She's a 22-year-old who, according to the Times, just want through a breakup, spent time in an abusive home, looks up to her brother, and is trying to get a music career going and hooking on the side. Oh, and sometimes she gets sleepy.

Ah look at her. Seriously, guys, if even part of her story is true, we are totally crushing on her, so if we hear of you being even the slightest bit mean to her, we will personally jump out of your computer screen and strangle you with your mouse cord.

-- Meanwhile, New York's Daily Intelligencer tips us off to the fact that Kristen/Ashley's madam, Tameka Lewis, a.k.a. "Rachelle," lives just a few blocks from us in Clinton Hill but has yet to turn up -- despite being staked out by the MSM. Rachelle, if you're reading this: we've got a Wii and Tofutti Cuties if you need a place to crash.

-- The New York Post totally ripped off NYC blog Gothamist by publishing -- without credit -- a Photoshopped gag image submitted to the site's "We Can Haz Spitzer Photoshop?" contest. Our favorite was the other Spitzerpimp, actually, which was a little less cut-and-pasty.

-- Oh, and best headline we've seen thus far on the story comes from Fark, posted some time yesterday morning: Spitzer will pull out within the hour, or around $4900 from now.

See ya in a bit with a more grown-up exploration, promise!