Tonight at 8pm I
moderate the no doubt spectacular debate on immigration at Muchmore’s, near
the first subway stop into Williamsburg
on the L subway line.
To some shiftless Manhattanites, just making the brief
subway hop to Williamsburg is apparently as traumatic as emigrating to a new
country, which is sad. On the other
hand, much as they will be missed at this (and possibly other) events there,
there are things about Williamsburg that can be culturally jarring:
•Manhattanites often comment on how old and unhip they feel
as soon as they glimpse the Williamsburgers, but there are times when it can
make the visiting Gen Xer feel a reassuring sense of superiority, as when I
recently overheard confused young hipster males in a bar there having a
conversation about whether (formerly
NYC-dwelling) singer Joe Jackson is the father of Michael Jackson.
•Nearby you see the wall-sized outdoor painted mural
advertising the David Lynch-esque, late-night, surrealist comedy/horror series The Heart, She Hollers that I saw in
Williamsburg, which gives you some idea how different the (apparently crucial) young-hipster demo is there from the
average billboard-gawker out in the suburbs.
(I include a photo of a flyer for a lost French bulldog named Oliver, taken by burglars in Williamsburg, as a humanitarian bonus.)
•I have found some Manhattanites paranoid that they will be
trapped on the other side of the river if they dare trek to Williamsburg (this
has happened about twice in the past 7,000 years), but I will admit I ran into
one very unexpected transportation problem the last time I was there: For the
first time, a Metro Card machine just
plain ate my $20 and gave me no card.
The subway station agent, a Bernhard Goetz-looking guy
probably very familiar to people using the Bedford Ave. stop, gave me forms to
fill out and mail into the MTA to get my money back -- and then, when I asked
to buy another Metro Card (in no way asking for freebies from him in the
process, mind you), he proceeded to do the most protracted examination of my
$20 bill for signs of counterfeiting I have ever witnessed, almost as if I were
it were not the MTA that had just been revealed as a money-snatcher. (Why would a counterfeiter draw attention to
his travails with the card machine?)
•On a brighter note, that same trip to Williamsburg (to
print out flyers advertising tonight’s debate) gave me a chance to further
distance myself from the old
comics-collecting habit a bit by giving three comics away to young folk
hanging out at Muchmore’s (admittedly, I had already read them). I hope their relative inexperience doesn’t
mean that the special 3D cover on the issue about Darkseid will cause nausea.
(I think many of us are more sickened these days by DC
Comics driving away many of its star writers through editorial micromanagement
and by last-minute shifts in editorial direction that cause even the noble
workhorse writers who can roll with the punches to end up doing jarringly
disjointed stories. Take Geoff Johns
transitioning from a two-year build-up about pagan-god/wizard warfare in the
“Trinity War” story arc into just having some familiar supervillains from Earth
3 teleport into town to take over the Earth in “Forever Evil.” Two
years of occult in-fighting and mystical remaking of time and space over
the mythical Pandora’s Box, and it turns out it was just a teleportation
device, no biggie. On to the next mess.)
Even for those wearied by or long wary of DC and Marvel
superhero stuff, with whom I fully sympathize, there is the amazing comic book
miniseries The Star Wars from Dark
Horse (who so richly deserve to keep the Star Wars comics franchise after all
these years despite synergistic Disney now owning both LucasFilm and
Marvel). The Star Wars is a trippy comic book adaptation of George Lucas’s
original 1974 draft of the Star Wars screenplay, with all sorts of familiar
elements (including some that he wouldn’t get around to using on-screen until
the prequels) but all scrambled around and put in different places.
There’s an aged Gen. Skywalker, and Anakin is a separate
character from Vader, and Alderaan is the capital of the Empire, and all sorts
of other surprises that make it a weird but essential mirror-mirror experience
for completist Star Wars fans. That one
I kept even after dispensing the other comics to the hip young masses at
Muchmore’s.
I admit I will delve back into DC Comics again when they
publish either of the two projects Grant Morrison is now working on for them:
the graphic novel Wonder Woman: The Trial
of Diana Prince (which promises a return to the character’s
bondage-influenced roots, for good or ill) and the ultimate
metafictional/multiversal miniseries, Multiversity. But oddly enough, despite those big projects,
Morrison told the UK’s Guardian the
following recently about the next miniseries in his occasional surreal/comedic
side project, Seaguy, about a
scuba-suit-wearing man living in a future world devoid of crime but menaced by
Satan, a gondola-piloting Grim Reaper, and sentient fast-food paste: “It’s
honestly the best I’ve ever written...It never sold well, but it’s my thing. I want Seaguy to remain as my statement about
life and death and the universe.”
As the Guardian
puts it, “Given that, until recently, Seaguy had a cigar-smoking tuna fish
as a sidekick, this is no ordinary wish.”
•And speaking of the UK, Williamsburg, and immigrants, here, courtesy of the great Bananarama, is what NYC culture looked
like to British eyes back in 1982, what with Boss Hogg chasing people all over
Brooklyn. Our rock videos about them
were, of course, all full of bobbies drinking tea back then, I admit.
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