EUGENE McCARTHY IS A PEACEMONGER: I didn't always have Barry Goldwater on my left breast, as witnessed by this amazing discovery from David Chelsea's files: the mock-up I gave David for the invitation he would draw for my 25th birthday party, back in 1993. As you can see, all my childhood doodles of Betty and Veronica stood me in good stead.
The idea of having a party set in the year I was born was my mother's idea. She not only provided the super-authentic Knox Blox, but also showed up dressed as she was on September 2, 1968, the day before my birth. That's right, she showed up looking nine-months pregnant! Mom, if you're reading this, I love you.
The entertainment included an extremely rare solo appearance by Jim McCarthy of the Godz, who led the crowd in a rousing version of their classic "White Cat Heat". It did not, however, include the advertised Laughing Bob Doombus, better known as Rolling Stone writer Rob O'Connor, whose friend's car broke down on the New Jersey Turnpike, if I recall. Also performing was my singer/guitarist friend (and chronicler of the Godz) Tom Miller. Many thanks to David Chelsea for unearthing this artifact!
4:08 PM
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What Do Time Out Writers Do During Their Time Out? Well, if you're Marisa Cohen, who wrote that magazine's wonderful article about Tuesday Night Trivia, you spend some time with your family at ... Tuesday Night Trivia?!
As Todd observed, the petite, raven-haired scribe didn't have to be there, but there she was at a Baggot Inn table last night, with her brother Mike (an ace trivia hound who tipped her off to the event). Caren and I thanked her for her article, which really captured the feel of the event. (If you'd like to read the piece, which includes the time-and-place details for Tuesday Night Trivia, it's in The Dawn Patrol archives.)
Others who turned up to play included TV ad buyer Roy Currlin (whose Website, uncleroy.com, has a recent photo of him with Joe Franklin) with his statuesque Stefanie Powers-like girlfriend Patti (a Dawn Patrol fan who congratulated Todd on getting his trademark back), and Jamie Foehl, an effervescent pal of Todd's who is a card-carrying libertarian [literally—I've seen the card] and has a contagious smile. Appropriately, she's in advertising, and recently managed to slip her Objectivist sympathies into the high-profile New York-centric "It's Where John Lennon Imagined" campaign for The New School. (She contributed the line, "Where Ayn Rand built her Fountainhead.")
Another highlight of the evening was when a player I didn't even know called me over as I was picking up answer sheets. He gave me a Trivial Pursuit key chain for me and Caren to use as one of our "tchotchke prizes." (First through third-place winners get bar tabs, while last-place and funniest-team-name winners get candy or tchotchkes.) That's actually the second time that's happened during the four months Caren and I have been doing Tuesday Night Trivia, where a player has given me something to use as a prize. It makes me so happy, to think that people so enjoy and appreciate what we do that, when they receive a fun little toy, they want to offer it for use in the game.
12:18 PM
Tuesday, September 24, 2002
Janet Gets Left at the Southpaw: Last Saturday night, following a delightful evening of karaoke, Janet Rosen attempted to enter the WFMU benefit at Southpaw, which featured the band ESG. Here is the account that she e-mailed to me on Sunday morning. I think she is a poet. (If you'd like to get on the mailing list for the comedy show that Janet puts on with other funny femmes, "If We Were Men, We'd Be Famous," e-mail me at the address at left and I'll pass your address on to her.):
After I skipped out of karaoke, I taxied to Brooklyn across one of those bridges that's not the Brooklyn. Even though I'm a native new Yorker I can't keep them straight. And the river and the lights and the skyline were so glamorous it was like being in my own black and white movie.
When I got to Southpaw, the show was sold out. There's a kick in the gut. I left my friends and a night of singing in a fake Cyndi Lauper voice for an expensive cab ride to nothing.[With all due respect to Janet, it was our karaoke partner, my Tuesday Night Trivia cohost Caren Lissner, who really had the Cyndi voice dead-on.—Ed.] So I went down the street and had a nice slice of Sicilian and a Coke. Talked on the phone to Debbie, Elyse, and Jon, and killed some time. I went back to Southpaw and sat outside on a fire plug. I could kind of hear the music from out there. I called up a few more friends. ESG wasn't scheduled to play for a while. I figured I could hear from outside and dance around on the sidewalk with the other Brooklyn hipoisie and salvage my night. Then I wouldn't feel so stoopit.
I went to chat with the doorman again. He suggested I try to talk to the ticket guy again, maybe there was room. There was room! I'm goin' in! I guess not everyone showed up. so I bought a ticket. Don't mind paying full price to see ESG and help WFMU.
Now I'm in another post-concert happy mood. ESG was outstanding! The audience went wild. stomping on the floor and chanting "ESG, ESG," so they came back out for a couple of encores. I danced, or what passes for dancing in one square foot of floor space; I didn't even mind that the guy in the geeky striped shirt next to me was dancing in a way that could have poked out my eye with his elbow. I'm happy! I'm dancing to ESG! I understand nostalgia now. there are still lots of bookstores on 8th Street, I wear little-girl plastic earrings from the 88-cent store and have a lot of cool records and tapes, CDs haven't been invented yet, and no one I know has died of AIDS. When I'm dancing to "moody," that's what it feels like.
4:31 PM
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Monday, September 23, 2002
Dawn's Surly Plight: I just took a while going through my CD collection in search of a song that would best express my current state of mind to Dawn Patrol readers. The first thing that came to mind was "Brief Candles," by the Zombies, but I nixed that for fear it would sound too self-righteous (though, truth be told, it's an accurate depiction of how I feel). Then I thought about any number of Emitt Rhodes tunes—"Live Till You Die," "Better Side of Life," "You Must Have," etc.—but, while they were beautiful, their lyrics were too vague and hippieish for my purposes.
Finally, I settled on "Everybody Tries," a demo by John Carter and Ken Lewis of one of my all-time favorite groups, the Ivy League (pictured; Carter at top, Lewis at left, and Perry Ford at right). I also pulled the CD containing that song, the John Carter demo collection As You Like It, out of the spot it's occupied for the past three years in my five-disc CD changer (yes, it's that amazing) so I could upload the song to this site [just click on its title]. [2/19/03: I took away that link to cut down on Dawn Patrol expenses (I pay for data transfers), but it's still stored on my Web site. If you want to hear the mp3, e-mail me and I'll send you the URL.]
After all that introduction, the song itself will probably seem anticlimactic—it's just a pretty anthem detailing universal truths about life and love—but it means something to me. Certainly, during this time, it hits home.
1:23 AM
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Friday, September 20, 2002
Encouraging Thoughts From Mom (#3 in a Series): On Persistence—
"Even if something is for the birds, we must leave no tern unstoned."
(Yeah, I know Ogden Nash made the latter pun, but he lacked the presence of wit to combine it with the former. For more Encouraging Thoughts From Mom, see entries #1 and #2 in the series.)
11:54 AM
Saturday, September 14, 2002
Manic Panic Janet: My beloved longtime pal Janet Rosen, literary agent and comedienne extraordinaire (known to fans of the downtown revue "If We Were Men, We'd Be Famous") sent me a thoughtful e-mail on Saturday, in response to the mention I made of my publicizing last summer's World Trade Center concerts:
I still have happy memories of dancing around backstage with you [in the wings, actually-Ed.] at the amazing Box Tops show, and on 9/11 I felt melancholy about how many of those audience members we were looking at might have perished. Last night, rock'n' roll and 9/11 humanitarianism met at CBGB. Actually, in the basement of CB's 313. It was a combination Manic Panic 25th anniversary celebration concert and benefit for the WTC search and rescue dogs (Suffolk County SPCA). Five solid hours of total ear-splitting amazingness. Lauren [Agnelli] did a great rendition of "What Do I Get, that started out slow and plaintive and then turned slamming, Richard Barone did a bunch of Ramones songs, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Lenny Kaye, Annie Golden, the Sic F*cks (just as awful as when I saw them 25 years ago), and Robert Gordon were some of the other outstanding performers. And Blue Oyster Cult. I'm serious. Well, the two Bouchard bros, but yeah, it was Blue Oyster Cult three feet away from me. Did I even care about them at all in the last 25 years, no, but what a thrill to have them throbbing away within spitting distance and with all of the other aging ex-hipsters bouncing around there with me. My hearing is still shot, but I don't care.
11:26 PM
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Friday, September 13, 2002
The Geeks Shall Inherit the Mirth: Tuesday Night Trivia, the weekly event I cohost with Caren Lissner at the Baggot Inn, is featured in the lead article in the "Around Town" section of this week's Time Out (week of Sept.12-19). I've typed out the relevant portion below, but I highly recommend picking up the issue, as the writeup is part of an excellent article by Marisa Cohen on trivia nights called "The Geeks Shall Inherit the Mirth".
On a personal note, this kind of recognition is very meaningful for me, particularly coming at this time. During the summer of 2001, I had the most wonderful job of my life, directing the publicity for the Tuesday-afternoon oldies concert series at the World Trade Center, "Summer Hits at the Twin Towers." (You can read my recollections of that series, whose performers included Dave Davies, the Box Tops, and Mark Lindsay, in an article I wrote for Fufkin.com.) Were it not for the events of September 11, the job would have resumed this summer.
I started Tuesday Night Trivia with Caren Lissner at the end of May 2002, not out of a desire to make money, but out of a desire to use my time—of which I then had far too much (see The Dawn Patrol's archives for details)—and the experience I'd gained at the World Trade Center and elsewhere to create an event from the ground up. It has been, and continues to be, a great joy for me to see how scores of New Yorkers, coming from as far away as New Rochelle and Long Island, come together to enjoy the game—and each other's company—each week. It makes me feel that, regardless of whether I will have a job as exciting—and as regular—as my World Trade Center one anytime soon, I can still work with kindred spirits (Caren is the best cohost and business partner one could ask for) to build something positive that makes the greatest city in the world take notice.
From Marisa Cohen's article in Time Out, Sept. 12-19 issue, p. 42:
At this four-month-old quiz night, you'll find seriously competitive trivia geeks, who huddle over their answer sheets like Stuyvesant students taking the SATs. They think hard and laugh hard—in fact, coming up with the funniest team name is a major preoccupation in this subculture. "One of my favorite names was Axis of Evel Knievel," says Dawn Eden, who cohosts with Caren Lissner. The game is split into five rounds, including general knowledge, current events, top-ten lists, and segments with audio and visual clues. The questions range from kinda hard (What year did Ferdinand Magellan die?*) to insanely difficult (Which is the only neighborhood in Manhattan that is not located on an island?*). The top three finishers get bar-tab prizes ($25, $15, and $10), and there are tchotcke prizes like Smarties candies—get it—for last place and funniest team name. Tuesdays, 7:30-9:30 p.m., The Baggot Inn, 82 W. 3rd St. between Sullivan and Thompson Sts. (212-477-0622).
*1521
*Marble Hill
1:05 PM
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Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Caen? I'm Able: Got my first smile of the day from Jay Bennett, who sent me the following one-line e-mail:I've noticed a very Herb Caen quality to your work as of late ...
Actually, I've been going for a Harry Golden vibe.
11:05 AM
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Spotted near Union Square ... an unshaven, very scruffy man in black with an oversized scarf tied around his head, Little Steven-style, carrying a guitar and?this is what caught my eye?a copy of Javascript for Dummies.
12:36 AM
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Saturday, September 7, 2002
Time Out for Tuesday Night Trivia? Watch this space next week for details!
6:41 AM
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Friday, September 6, 2002
The Gospel According to St. Mark's Place: On my way to meet Todd and others at Yaffa last night for the annual Offoffoff writers' dinner, I saw a youngish man cross Second Avenue wearing a black T-shirt bearing the legend, in white lettering, "These ARE my church clothes".
12:20 AM
Wednesday, September 4, 2002
Tails of the Unexpected: It turns out I was wrong in thinking that Offoffoff editor Joshua Tanzer was the mind behind the Post headline "Rats may help men get tail". While Joshua calls the headline "a thing of beauty," it was written by another copy editor, William. (I'd publish his last name, only I don't yet know whether he wishes to take public credit for his achievements.)
2:20 AM
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Tuesday, September 3, 2002
She's a Real Screen: If you're looking for the video clip of my Maxwell's performance, it's now in The Dawn Patrol archives and may be directly accessed here. Or here. Or even here. But not here.
2:26 PM
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Ratted Out By a Forgotten New Yorker: Kevin Walsh of the must-see Web site forgotten-ny.com dropped a line yesterday giving me undue credit for a Post headline:
Scientists studying the way rats have sex....could have major implications for the treatment of men's sexual problems
"Rats may help men get tail"
That one HAD to be yours ...
Thanks, Kevin, but I'm afraid I can't claim that one, as I played hooky from my usual Sunday Post shift so that I wouldn't miss Dave Rave's "only NYC show of 2002" at the Bowery Poetry Club. I'll e-mail a fellow Postie to find out who did the rodent headline, and, assuming the person doesn't wish to remain anonymous, post the answer on The Dawn Patrol. My guess would be Offoffoff Webzine editor Joshua Tanzer.
2:16 PM
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On this day in 1968,
the #6 song on the WABC Musicradio Survey was Mason Williams's "Classical Gas;
the patent for the first fully integrated Cystic Fibrosis sweat testing system was issued;
Brendan Fraser was born;
and I was, too, at 1:40 a.m. at Caledonian Hospital in Brooklyn.
12:04 PM
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