Maspeth Horror Story

Giggling couples picnicked in the graveyard last summer.  Now ominous winds snap dead leaves from the trees, as Halloween descends on Maspeth, Queens.

The lonely weekend streets of Maspeth are lined with sleeping semi trucks.  I've lived and worked near truck yards, so I'm comfortable around them; I just wish I hadn't remembered that article about serial killer truck drivers as I walked through [map].

Then there's the DSNY garbage garage (left, at 47th St. & 58th Rd.) with all those bags full of who-knows-what.

Sanitation man: It ain't the stink -- a couple-ten beers will take care of that.  What bothers me is when I wake up sweatin' like a pig and the bed is full of garbage bags with zombie arms stickin' out, tryin' to get me!

Then the hyper-bright plant where they make concrete boots (right, on 49th St.).

Made man: Now listen Jimmy, they been doin' things this way since Columbus was bangin' Cleopatra.  How we gonna make this statue if you won't stand still in the garbage can?


Then the creepy ad at the deserted bus stop across from the Duane Reade warehouse (left, at 50th St. & 55th Ave.).

"There's Something Wrong with Esther."  For one thing, she hasn't got bus fare, and you do!

Then the graveyard right behind it (top, New Calvary Cemetery).

Where they buried all the people who died waiting for the bus, or waiting for a friend who's waiting for them at 55th St. & 50th Ave., not 50th St. & 55th Ave!

Then (right, at 48th St. & 54th Ave.) the huge billboards that reach for  freeway commuter eyeballs like sunflowers reaching for the sun...

...to escape the scattered bones at their feet, remnants of failed salesmen who couldn't return home empty handed, to face the wife and poor baby Esther, wailing in her misery, knotted like a scared snake around the bars of her crib.

Then finally, the campground for crazy people (below, on 47th St.).

In better lit parts of the city, people stay up all night, abuse substances and play at Crazy.  But the crew here quit playing long ago.  They sit circled around the fire, strumming broken guitars, roasting odd bits of meat, licking Bowie knives, and necking like reptiles in heat.  Screams from the hills -- the weed covered trash mounds that shelter the camp -- make their dogs whimper and move closer to the fire.

The crew bides its time, waiting for something to happen.  They won't know what until some stranger -- maybe you, when your car breaks down and your cellphone goes dead -- wanders up to the fire and asks something silly like "Hey guys, do you know where we are?"

[ Map of Maspeth for Trick-or-Treaters ]
[ Middle of Nowhere, Queens ]

Maya Lin to Atlantic Yards

Seeing Maya Lin's work, left, reminded me of my simplest design for the proposed Atlantic Yards Nets Arena.

I don't care if the Nets new Russian owner is ready to spend like Bloomberg going after a fifth term, the Yards site is architecturally cursed.

This design is guaranteed to invalidate all complaints about crappy architecture and how the arena might fit into the surrounding environment -- by burying the whole thing beneath a gigantic mound covered in grass, in a style the ancients referred to as "green architecture," below right.

Fans won't care that they're buried alive.  They'll be too busy watching the massive plasma TV screen hung above the court, with closeups of LeBron James diving into the laps of Siberian supermodels in court-side seats, wrapped in wolf pelts, nibbling caviar bagels, and pouring Stoli down their gullets like gas into a Hummer.

To pay off the bonds needed to complete the project, the mound can be covered with billboards, like any other arena.  Then the BQE can be re-routed by the mound so there's an audience for the billboards.  That swell, sustainable future is rendered below.

Thank You MIKE Bloomberg

Mailed to my cats Snagglepuss Jr., Ms. Meow, and The RatMaster 5000
Thank you MIKE for all the big sturdy campaign ads I keep gettin' in the mail!

In between me, my 5 cats, 3 dogs, my surrogate taxpayer rabbit Mr. Chuckles, and the "Dirty Dozen" rats I been trainin' to pull the miniature Santa sled I found in a dumpster -- all of us registered to vote -- we been gettin' 20 mailers a day!

Soon I will have enough to paper the walls, ceilin' and floor of my tar paper shack down here by the crick, near where Kings County meets the Queens.  (I don't want to tell nobody which crick, 'cause then they'd all be movin' down here!)

Thank you, thank you, thank you!  Thank your ad people for usin' such good lookin' models, and thank your momma for bequeathin' you such a nice soft pleasin' face yourself -- since I'm gonna be lookin' at all y'all for the next 10 years at least!

In fact, since I hear there is no way you can lose, might I suggest you just get elected every 8 years?  'Cause these things is that sturdy -- sturdy as a country girl who can churn butter before breakfast, plow the field all day, and birth a baby in between supper and singin' the chickens to sleep!

Loquaciously Yours,
Festus T. Tennessee, Esq., PhP, DoD

Yup, the T. is for Tennessee too.  My friends call me Tennessee, MIKE, and you can too!  Done forgot what them letters after my name is for, so I can't rightly throw 'em away now, can I?

Fixing Karl Fischer 2

Here we cloak the slobbering big brother of Karl Fischer Row (20 Bayard) in a Frank Gehry outfit.

Note below that I've made sure the empty clock-face / eyeball -- the signature element of Karl's design -- still peeks out the hood.



[ Fixing Karl Fischer 1 ]

Fixing Karl Fischer 1

To fix this Karl Fischer monstrosity, lurking like a one eyed pervert at the edge of McCarren Park:

Find the oiliest strain of ivy you can find, plant it on top, and grow a massive, verdant Jheri curl (plus extensions on the side).

Sorry, I know it's not the greatest illustration.  But digital animators in Hollywood have spent billions trying to simulate realistic hair and it still looks phony, so I would be an idiot to waste any more time on this than I already have.

[ Fixing Karl Fischer 2 ]
[ Karl Fischer in The Showerhead ]

Critical Fountainhead

First The End of the Critic?, then the war over art criticism and journalistic ethics summarized by Ed Winkleman.  Cultural criticism is under siege.

So it was refreshing to watch The Fountainhead for the first time the other day and soak up its nostalgic warning: Beware the diabolical and powerful Architecture Critic, or you'll wind up pulling a plow on a collective farm.

O for the days when critics swayed The Masses!

My notes after viewing:

- Ayn Rand was 12 years old when she wrote this, right?

- The setup: A self hating, sexually repressed Gestapo worm is chopped up and comes back as 3 people: the cold and empty, riding-crop wielding heiress Dominique Francon; the heroic, iconoclastic architect Howard Roark (Frank Lloyd Wright meets Albert Speer meets The Unabomber); and tabloid tycoon Gail Wynand, a Rupert Murdoch clone.  Then the tabloid's architecture critic, Ellsworth Toohey, conspires to destroy Howard because he is too heroically individualistic.

Still, I was so moved I put together the storyboard below.

The movie starts with a bang: Howard is expelled from architecture school because he will not conform and submit to mediocrity.  Then the 3 worms proceed to spout each others' lines to each other, as captured in the subtitles and comments:




And now, 60 years after the triumph of Ayn's will, with our shared institutions crumbling, we can heroically and individually: vote for our favorite future casino lounge singer on American Idol (owned by Rupert); poison ourselves with the bitter, dead-end politics of The New York Post and Fox News (owned by Rupert); and express ourselves by throwing up gang signs on our MySpace page (owned by Rupert).

Soon we'll have American Idol-style government that changes daily by cell phone vote.  (Which might not be a bad idea, but would be... owned by Rupert.)

And soon the last newspaper critic will be sent packing, their wealth of knowledge useless to a world that doesn't really need help choosing between McDonald's and Burger King, or really enjoy the effort it takes to decipher all those words, when pictures will do.