At first I wasn’t going to go to the Occupy Wall Street protests against the banks and greedy corporations that continue to bulldoze the middle class right off the face of the earth. I heard about cops pepper-spraying people, handcuffing them till their hands turned blue and abusing their power to silence people protesting peacefully. I’ve been beaten up by a cop twice in my life and I’m not anxious for the third beating. And I have to admit, the cynic in me said, “What’s it all worth? Can it make a difference?” Well, it’s been going on for two weeks now and I’m curious as to what the scene is like down at Liberty Park. “Boris” asked if we were going to go, and that’s where we’re off to right now. I really wish I had a gas mask though!
Shit, I just walked outside of work and it's pouring down rain. It'll be hard to take pictures down there tonight, so I've decided to go next week. Tonight, I'll improvise and take photos of walking home in the rain and pair them up with lyrics and links to songs about rain. Kind of an artsy-fartsy post tonight. Okay, here we go.
Tonight’s the wedding (congratulations to Michael and Abbey!) and I just wanted to relax and didn’t want to be running around bugging people taking photos. But I wanted something to blog about so I wandered around my folks house to find something to take pictures of and lo and behold, what do I find but the remnants of my once might record collection in the bottom of my parents closet. Check it out. My collection was about 5,000 albums and a couple thousand CD's before I moved to New York. Along with my pension plan, I got some money to move to New York by selling everything I owned. I sold my car, my furniture, my clothes, my stereo, my TV and most of my albums and all of my CD’s. Here’s what’s left of my albums, some of them I didn’t want to sell and some of them nobody else wanted so I stored them here at my parents house. Let’s just take a random look at some of them.
Here's the Beatles "White Album." But it's not exactly white. I used to smoke pot in my bedroom and then draw all over my records.
See? This is the back of the "White Album." I had a full canvas to work with here.
Here's the Beatles, "Yesterday and Today" album. This was the record that was originally the controversial, Beatles "Butcher Album." Since this is a Beatles record on the Capital label, it's probably worth something, except I drew all over it rendering it worthless to anyone but me.
The first Cheap Trick album! I remember being thrilled about this because they were from Rockford, Illinois and I had seen them in bars and clubs before they got signed. Hometown boys made good! This is a great album.
Legendary bluesman, Luthor Allison's live album. This album was recorded at a club in Peoria, in the '80's, I believe and produced by my friend, musician Craig Moore. Luthor's wife Fannie lived next door to me in an apartment complex and I went to a Christmas party with the entire Allson family and friends. I'll have to write about that sometime.
And finally, The Rutles. Do I have to spell it out? C-H-E-E-S-E-O-N-I-O-N-S-O-H-N-O. Goodnight everybody and see you tomorrow after dark.
This is the last night my folks are in town, so I’m going to go meet them and my sisiter and her family for dinner. I thought afterwards I’d just take some random shots while wandering around in midtown. We’ll see if we can find some interesting place in a part of town that’s not too interesting.
Okay, dinner's over so we begin the evening with an obligatory elevator mirror shot with Gumby at my side.
And now we begin our random night out in midtown, let's see what we can find out here.
Here's a Duane Reade with a "Doctor On Premises." What they don't tell you is, it's Dr. Pepper, so if you've got a brain aneurism, you should keep going straight to the hospital.
Turn me on dead men, The Beatles are back! But they must close by Sept. 4th to get John and George back into their coffins.
Wow, they fixed everything already. I guess when you're David Letterman your landlord moves quickly.
Colony Records! I forgot this place existed, and I'm amazed it's still here.
Look at all the different albums in the window.
Ha! Guitar air freshners. Okay, let's go inside and check this place out.
There's a whole case with Beatles stuff in it.
Here's Brian Epstein's book, "A Cellarful of Noise." I remember the National Lampoon satirizing The Beatles in one of their issues and they renamed the book, "A Cellarful of Boys."
Beatle hairdos!
I had this picture sleeve 45 as a kid. I think I traded it for a joint to someone when i was in high school. It now sells for three hundred bucks. Oops!
Here's a reprint of a vintage Beatles poster in the store.
And there's actual albums to flip through in here, what a treat! Let's take a look at some of them.
I always loved the Mothers of Invention album cover! RZZZZZ!
Pisces, Aquarius,Capricorn, & Jones, Ltd. My favorite Monkees album.
Here' a copy of the original 3-D cover of "Their Satanic Majesties Request" by the Rolling Stones.
And the album that three out of four proctologists preferred back in 1967, "Bugaloo '67" by Johnny Colon and His Orchestra.
All in the family, Michael and Janet Jackson, together again!
And of course we all know that Abba spelled backwards is Abba.
One last in-store photo of James Dean and Lucy. I knew that this store has been on this block for over 60 years, but I didn't realize the history of this place till I got back home. I have to go back and document it further and talk to some employees, so stay tuned for that.
And this gentleman in the newsstand outside was nice enough to wave goodnight to everyone. See you tomorrow after dark.
After yesterday’s Beatle post, I realized I haven’t seen the movie, “A Hard Day’s Night” in quite a while. I went to Netflix and it’s one of their movies that you can stream instantly. I’m pretty sure everybody’s seen the movie, so I’m just going to post the trailer and then pick ten iconic shots from the movie for tonight’s midnight movie. Okay, lights...camera...Ringo!
Gene and Smoopy are back in town and so far since last night they've hit 2745 bars and have had a combined total of 978 drinks between the two of them. They'll be joining me for Cheeseburger Saturday Night tonight, but in the meantime, here's a photo Gene took of a scary encounter the two of them had last night. Aaaaahhhh!
I thought I’d just walk home and write a short story tonight. I’ll take a few photos on the way home and then write a story about a favorite memory of mine.
And it's off we go towards the McDonalized light on 6th Avenue.
I'm just going to ignore that gum stain and walk by it quickly.
I hate it when people congregate like this in front of a restaurant hogging half of the sidewalk chattering away. You want to hang out and talk? Then go back into the fucking Olive Garden where you came from and talk while eating your stupid fucking endless salads and then choke on the endless breadsticks and die a slow agonizing death, please and thank you.
Shit!
Oh fuck, check out this mutant strain of the Cardboard Box Man. It just has a mouth and no eyes...yikes!
Okay, home sweet home and safe at last! Time to go to my writing area and get this story down.
Aaaaahhhh!
A Beatles Memory I feel kind of lucky to have grown up when I did. I was a child in the ‘60’s, a teenager in the ‘70’s and a young adult in the ‘80’s. I witnessed a lot of things in those three decades. I can remember the day when President Kennedy was shot, because I was pissed off the next day that there weren’t any Saturday morning cartoons on, just news reports. Five years later I remember watching the reports on TV when his brother Robert was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan (a man so nice they named him twice!) and being shocked and saddened. He was the first politician I was ever passionate about. And I have to confess, it wasn’t really so much his politics as the fact that he had long hair for a politician at the time and I thought he was really funny and cool. I was ten-years-old when he was gunned down and I remember asking my mom why people were shooting at the Kennedy’s. She just shook her head sadly and said, “I don’t know.” I remember the first moon landing and then seeing the same images being used twelve years later when MTV launched. I stayed up all night long with my brother watching the videos on the pioneer TV station. We couldn’t believe it, music videos all night long! Such a concept!
Random memories off the top of my head include: Richard Speck murdering those nurses in Chicago, Easy Rider, Martin Luther King getting assassinated, the Manson family scaring the shit out of the Hollywood community in 1969, Woodstock, Altamont, hippies, Watergate, Nixon quitting, disco, punk rock and kids dying in a stampede at a Who concert in Cincinnati. Lots of memories and I’m always playing them back like films in my mind. One of my favorite memories is the Monday after the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan.
On February 9th, 1964 The Beatles appeared and sang five songs on the Ed Sullivan show. I was five-years-old and our family was living in Louisville, Kentucky at the time. I remember the week before hearing ads on the radio saying, “The Beatles are coming!” I was riding shotgun to the Winn Dixie grocery store with my mom and I asked her if they were talking about bugs. She laughed and explained to me that The Beatles were an English singing group and they were going to be on Ed Sullivan that week. I didn’t think much about it and was more interested in getting a candy bar when we got to the checkout line.
That Sunday was pretty much like every other Sunday of my youth. We went to church in the morning, came home and had breakfast then whiled the day away playing and engaging in things that pass the time when you’re five-years-old. My mom always cooked a big Sunday dinner and we probably had something like pot roast and mashed potatoes and gravy. Then after dinner the whole family gathered in the front family room and did what most families did in the ‘60’s. We turned on the TV and watched the Ed Sullivan Show. And here’s what we saw that night:
I watched in amazement at all the screaming girls and wondered aloud why they were screaming and carrying on in the theater.
“Because they like them, stupid,” my brother Jim said and then smacked me on the head.
We watched the whole show and although a couple of years later I would become a full-fledged Beatles freak, they didn’t have much impact on me that evening, but I did like the music. The next day my dad dropped my brothers Tom and Jim and my sister Terry at their grade school, Holy Trinity. He then drove me to my kindergarten, Sacred Heart on the other side of town. Almost every day he’d let me steer the car for a little while if there wasn’t much traffic and I always loved doing that. We arrived at Sacred Heart and he watched me climb the cement stairs leading up to the school’s entrance. As I opened the front door, I waved goodbye as I always did, he drove off to work and I walked into the classroom.
Some kids were already there and others were showing up. I hung up my coat in the hallway wooden coat rack and went inside the room. We didn’t have separate desks, there were tables where you sat at an assigned seat with other kids. I sat at a table with two kids named Matt and Mark. I liked Matt, but I remember disliking Mark because he was kind of mean and didn’t share anything. He had a habit of drooling too and that was gross. Our teacher was a nun whose name was Sister Gabriela. I can’t really remember what she looked like, I only remember her full-blown penguin nun outfit. She was nice though and opposed to other nuns I experienced in my years of Catholic education was an nice and gentle woman.
We started the day out like every other day, we said a prayer and then Sister asked a question of the class.
“How many of you children watched the Ed Sullivan show last night?” She asked with a smile. Every hand went up in the air and then came down.
“And how many of you saw the English group, The Beatles on the show last night?” She asked as the smile disappeared.
A couple kids giggled and once again every hand was thrust upwards towards the gray corrugated ceiling.
“I want all you children to know one thing,” she said in serious tones as the hands went down, “it’s a sin for a boy to wear his hair that way.”
Mark immediately shot his arm up the air and Sister called on him.
“I’ll never wear my hair like that Sister!” He barked out in a sickening, ass-kissing moment.
Sister smiled and said that was good.
God how I hated that drooling, selfish, ass-kissing little prick! As a little kid, I was pretty good and didn’t often question things my parents, teachers or authority figures told me. I wasn’t going to say anything in class that morning, but I wondered why wearing your hair a certain way was a sin. I didn’t get it and it bugged me all day long and into the evening. This incident may have triggered a life-long habit of obsessing over weird little things and not being able to let them go. (See: Box Man, Cardboard and Dog, Papaya.)
That night after dinner I was reading a Dr. Seuss book in the room I shared with my brother Jim. He came in and I put the book down and sat up on my bed.
“Sister Gabriela said it’s a sin for a boy to comb his hair like the Beatles do,” I told him.
He just looked at me and thought about that for a minute. Then he walked over to me, grabbed my arm and said, “Come on.”
I got up and followed him into the bathroom. He locked the door behind us, opened a drawer and took out a comb and ran it under water. He then proceeded to comb his hair down into Beatle bangs. Both of us laughed and then he handed me the comb and I did the same thing. We continued to laugh at the way we looked and then my brother defiantly said, “Nuns don’t know everything.” I looked at him and nodded in agreement.
Ten years later we were teenagers in the wild ‘70’s doing drugs, breaking rules, laws and questioning authority every fucking minute of every fucking day. And it all started with one downward swoop of a comb way back on a winter’s night in 1964.
Okay, time for round 7 of the Papaya Wars! A couple of weeks ago I went to the Papaya King on the Upper East Side. They’re the original Papaya King and have been on the block for close to 80 years. If you’ve been following the Papaya Wars, you’ll remember I came here a couple weeks ago. I thought it was open 24 hours like the rest of the Papayas, but was saddened to find it closed. It turns out they close at midnight during the week and are open till two in the morning Friday and Saturday. The next day I put up a tweet on Twitter saying I was sad that this place was closed when I got there. A little later on in the day, this tweet hit the Twitterverse:
It was the King himself, apologizing! I thought that was nice, so I agreed to give the Papaya King a second chance. I’m getting out of work earlier tonight, so I should be able to make the 12:00 pm deadline. Onwards to the King!
Let's hail a cab and head up to the Upper East Side.
Taxi!
And here we are. Deja vu, let's see if they're open and maybe have a deja chew.
The door's are open, time for tonight's Papaya Wars to begin. Banzai!
"A Tropical Oasis in the Concrete Jungle." Sounds good to me, it's still freezing cold out here.
Okay, tonight we find out if this is just a boast or fact from The King.
The counter here is long and sparkling clean. Let's check out the dogs.
They look good here and the aroma is doggidly delightful in here.
And here Amzad serves up a Papaya drink and a dog. Amzad's the manager here and has worked for the King since 1996. He says it's a great place to work. I have to admit, this is the friendliest Papaya I've been in yet. let's try the dog and the drink. If you recall the last Papaya drink I tried didn't go down too smoothly.
We'll camp out over here, this place really is the cleanest Papaya I've ever seen.
Here's my dog and I ordered the orange drink from advice from my friend and co-worker, Joey D. They don't have beer here, but this time I came prepared...
Say hello to my little friend! I poured this into the Orange Papaya drink and a new drink was given birth to: "The Screwdrapaya." Both the dog and drink were delicious, good call, Joey D! Sorry there's not an ATM shot in here, I'll try tomorrow.
They have some great vintage photos of the place. Here's one from 1955, hot dog history!
Here's a shot of the counter back in 1950.
The King has been in this same spot since 1932. I found out from Twittering with the King that the Beatles ate here on their first trip to New York.
And if you're a Seinfeld fan you'll remember the King was a guest star on one of the episodes.
Here's the script on the counter.
Here's a shot of the Papaya King from the '70's. I wonder if Travis Bickle ever ate here?
My patented Ebony and Ivory Papaya shot, this time with brand names. No generic condiments at the Papaya King!
One last glance out the window and time to end this week's battle of the Papaya Wars.
And I'm happy to testify that yes, they are tastier than filet mignon! Goodnight everybody and see you tomorrow after dark.
This Week's Papaya Wars Standings. As always the rankings go from worst to the best. 6. Hell’s Kitchen Papaya: Because it’s not there anymore. 5. Chelsea Papaya: It’s clean, people were nice in there, but there’s no beer. 4. Gray’s Papaya on the Upper West Side: It brings back good memories and the signage is nice, but there’s no beer here and I don’t know if I’ll ever get that horrible taste of the papaya drink out of my mouth or mind. 3. Papaya Dog at 14th and 1st: The staff is super-friendly, it’s clean and the hot dogs are great there. However, they robbed me of my patented Ebony and Ivory ketchup and mustard shot! War is hell. 2. Penn Station Papaya: They’ve got beer! 1. Papaya King on the Upper East Side: They’ve got vodka...okay, you’ve got to bring it yourself and sneak it in, but still, this is the original Papaya King in New York City. They've been in the same spot on this block since 1932. The Beatles ate here on their first trip to New York when they appeared on the The Ed Sullivan Show. So does this put the King in first place for now? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There’s still a few more Papayas in town to check out in this hot dog battle, so stay tuned to the Papaya Wars here every Monday, exclusively at MAD and see if the King can hold on to his crown! Papaya King 179 E. 86th St. (Near Third Ave.) 212-369-0648
At first I wasn’t going to go to the Occupy Wall Street protests against the banks and greedy corporations that continue to bulldoze the middle class right off the face of the earth. I heard about cops pepper-spraying people, handcuffing them till their hands turned blue and abusing their power to silence people protesting peacefully. I’ve been beaten up by a cop twice in my life and I’m not anxious for the third beating. And I have to admit, the cynic in me said, “What’s it all worth? Can it make a difference?” Well, it’s been going on for two weeks now and I’m curious as to what the scene is like down at Liberty Park. “Boris” asked if we were going to go, and that’s where we’re off to right now. I really wish I had a gas mask though!
Shit, I just walked outside of work and it's pouring down rain. It'll be hard to take pictures down there tonight, so I've decided to go next week. Tonight, I'll improvise and take photos of walking home in the rain and pair them up with lyrics and links to songs about rain. Kind of an artsy-fartsy post tonight. Okay, here we go.
Feels like colored rain, tastes like colored rain, bring on colored rain...yeah.
I loved her, but now I've lost her, love's in vain. I watch a funeral in the rain.
17 Comments | 
