Author: Josh Philip Ross

The strike has struck. The TWU and the MTA couldn’t come to an agreement last night, so all city subways and buses are stopped, paralyzing New York City.

I’m trapped in Brooklyn. I could theoretically have walked the Brooklyn Bridge, but by HopStop.com’s estimate, that would have taken two hours and 37 minutes to travel the 5.41 miles, in 24-degree weather with a wind chill of around 12 degrees. And then I’d have to do it again to get home. Instead, I’ve notified people at my office that I’m available to work from home via telephone and email.

That’s me, and I can get away with it, but I worry about all those folks who get paid hourly or by piece or sale and will not be able to reach their jobs. Not to mention the transit workers themselves, who will suffer this holiday season.

I’m disappointed in the TWU for calling the strike now. I agree that the MTA has been shady with its finances, to say the least, and that the TWU should be given a deal equivalent to those that other municipal unions have received. On the other hand, transit workers make an average of $50,000 a year — more than I make — don’t pay anything for their healthcare and receive generous pensions at age 55.

Considering these less-than-Dickensian current conditions, the TWU could have stayed on the job without a contract for some period of time, as the less-well-paid United Federation of Teachers (UFT) did for two years, ending in November of this year. At the very least, the TWU should have waited to strike until after the holidays so that the economic impact on the communities they serve would be less devastating, and so that its own union members could get to Christmas without facing lost pay and possible fines.

Yes, the MTA should have been more flexible, but it is Roger Toussaint who decided on the timing of this strike, and I am unimpressed with his arguments that this had to happen now.

In case you didn’t catch this week’s Saturday Night Live, Gothamist has the hookup for where you can see the funniest skit they’ve done in ages: Lazy Sunday.

And while you’re at it, you’ll want to watch as a jelly donut wins mad rap battles.

While we’re on the subject, David Byrne’s Sound page has some fascinating material, including Quicktime videos of America is Waiting and a live performance of Help Me Somebody, both from his groundbreaking collaboration with Brian Eno, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Also, Byrne’s Journal — that’s like a blog, but without links — is sort of shockingly readable and interesting. For example, I greatly enjoyed Byrne’s musings on architecture and the riots in France, made all the more fascinating for being an insight into the mind that gave us More Songs About Buildings and Food and, of course, “Don’t Worry About the Government”:

My building has every convenience
It’s gonna make life easy for me
It’s gonna be easy to get things done
I will relax alone with my loved ones

Shameful. Just shameful.

Radio DavidByrne.com
Nonesuch Records

Ah, the joys if streaming audio!

I just dicovered, via BoingBoing, that David Byrne has on his website an audio stream of music he’s been listening to, updated monthly. The current playlist, called “Rednecks, Racists and Reactionaries: Country Classics,” is four hours and 33 minutes of “pre-hippie-country, pre-alt-country, pre-outlaw-country — [from] before Graham Parsons, Bob Dylan, Emmylou, Willie, the Flatlanders and scores of others made the genre accessible to folks who usually associated country music solely with rednecks, racists and reactionaries.” Past playlists included old-school club music, a month of Missy Elliot (whom Byrne calls “one of my role models”), a month of Dylan, psychedelic classics and music from Italy.

Another nice audio stream comes from Nonesuch Records (click the Radio link on the homepage), which includes tracks from Nonesuch’s illustrious stable of artists.

Luaka Bop, the label Byrne founded, also has a radio station, but it’s disappointingly lo-fi.

This sounds like an amazing event: Gothamist reports that Cobble Hiller Jonathan Rosen is planning the biggest snowball fight ever, to be held here in Brooklyn. Email him at brooklynsnowballfight@gmail.com to get on his list to be notified when the Battle of Brooklyn has been scheduled.

I just discovered BoCoCa.org, a nice blog about our little neighborhood(s).

And while we’re at it, check out this map of Christmas lights in Brooklyn, via 423 Smith, which has pictures of the over-the-top displays in Dyker Heights. Serious Santafication.

Samorost
Samorost 2

I’m not much of a gamer, but I was fascinated and delighted to discover Samorost and Samorost 2, two Flash-based adventures by the Czech designer and animator Jakub Dvorsky. While falling into the category of point-and-click games such as Hapland and The Museum, in which you solve the puzzle by working out a sequence of clicks, the Samorost games are both easier to solve and much more beautiful to look at than what you usually find. Drawing on the rich Czech animation tradition exemplified by Jan Švankmajer, Dvorsky creates strange, organic worlds that you want to explore, as you lead your little nightcapped hero on his way to prevent a disastrous collision (Samorost) or rescue his abducted dog (Samorost 2). They’re so interesting that you might want to play them more than once just to enjoy the the scenes (and the stylish soundtrack).

Dvorsky has also created Quest for the Rest, an elegant promotional game for The Polyphonic Spree, and a somewhat ham-fisted game called Rocketman VC, which awkwardly combines Samorost-like graphics with a clichéd slam-dunk-in-space promotion for Nike.

You can find more of Dvorsky’s work at his website, Amanita Design. For fans of Bjork and Sigur Ros, I highly recommend the video for Plantage, by the Danish group Under Byen.

Beck

Visit Beck.com to listen to a whole bunch of new material. When you load the page, there’s a boombox in the upper right corner where you can skip from song to song and listen to a couple of unreleased tracks plus three songs from Guerolito, an album of Guero remixes, which includes tracks by Adrock, Mario C, el-P and Diplo. You can also click on Discobox, then Unreleased Tracks to hear one additional song.

Meanwhile, Jesse Jarnow at PopMatters has an interesting take on Beck’s Scientology. Jarrow claims that Beck’s affiliation with the much-maligned religion is nothing new, and he even goes so far as to argue that Beck’s unusual beliefs have probably contributed to his unique musical approaches.

Certainly Scientology has nothing in it that’s more absurd than Christianity’s supernatural family psychodrama, Mormonism’s missing tablets, Hinduism’s elaborate pantheon or Judaism’s fantastical war god who rains plagues from the sky, to name a few belief systems that stretch credulity. And whatever else religion does, it certainly seems to inspire artists. So I suppose one could go looking for traces of Scientology in Beck’s music, though there doesn’t seem to be anything overt.

In any case, for those of us who have loved his music for many years, it’s reassuring that Scientology is not something brand new that’s likely to reshape Beck’s art, but is rather a longstanding influence. What is new in Beck’s life, as Jarrow points out, is that he’s now a father and husband. Whether that contributed to what many have described as a certain inconsequentiality to Guero, his latest record, is an open question.

Daniel alerts me to this strange bit of news about why Hong Kong police see the 1,500 South Koreans in town as the major threat to the WTO negotiations there. Most of the piece is about South Korea’s rice subsidies, but it begins with a recap of Korean WTO protests past:

At the 2003 WTO summit in Cancun, Mexico, activist Lee Kyung-hae stabbed himself to death after unfurling a banner that declared “WTO kills farmers.” Early this year, in November, two more farmers committed suicide by drinking insecticide.

What the hell? I mean, this is not India, where farmers have committed suicide rather than face impossible debts. They may have seen suicide as the only way to get the moneylenders to back off, thus saving their families from starvation. Nor are Korean farmers facing anything like the destruction that confronted Quang Duc, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who immolated himself in 1963 to protest the repression of his religion and his country. It’s true that Korean farmers are clinging to a declining way of life, but this has largely to do with South Korea’s shift from agrarian poverty to industrialized wealth. I was startled, too, that South Korean protesters would cut off their fingers to protest Japanese claims to Dokto/Takeshima, a tiny hunk of rock in the East Sea/Sea of Japan.

So what motivates Koreans to mutilate or kill themselves for what seem like mid-level political scuffles? I honestly don’t know.