Nobody walks alone
Andrew Cutraro for ESPN The MagazineMike Williams (right) and Dan Ivankovich reunited at a Chicago rehab center.
This story appears in the Oct. 17 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
TWO HOURS BEFORE MIDNIGHT on Nov. 28, 2009, Michael Williams rises from his chair at Club 426, a Caribbean nightclub outside Atlanta. The bouncer wears a black shirt, black jeans, black shoes. A co-worker opens the door and lets in the first wave of people. The deejay steps into his booth. Williams crosses himself and prays, “The blood of Christ cover me. Dear Lord, don’t let me die by the hands of some punk with a gun.”
Williams is one of the lucky ones who made it out of Roseland, the violent, destitute neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Though he looks like a former football player — he stands 6’9″, 300 pounds — basketball had been his game. He dominated the post in college, played a little in the NBA, had a good career in Europe. Nickname: Massive Mike. Now 46, he’s spent the past decade working security, mostly as a bodyguard for stars such as Snoop Dogg and Beyonce.
Around 2 a.m., with an hour of work left, Williams rotates toward the speakers near the door. The club is packed with people singing, sweating, gyrating. Reggae music plays at full blast. Williams adjusts his earplugs. Then he notices two men shouting near the entrance. They start shoving each other. One throws his beer bottle, which shatters on the floor. Williams moves in. Stupid stuff like this is why he is tired of his job; this is why tonight will be his last shift ever as a bouncer. He steps between the men and places his right hand on the shoulder of the one nearest the exit.
The next thing he hears is a boom. He recognizes the sound immediately. Williams hits the floor and rolls, trying to get away from the two men. He reaches up and touches his left jaw. It has a hole in it. He shot me. He shot me in the face. He doesn’t realize he’s also been shot twice in the shoulder and once in the shoulder blade.
The shooter isn’t finished. Bullets five and six hit Williams’ ribs and hip. He doesn’t feel them. Number seven blasts into his back. He feels that one, and his legs go stiff. Oh, s–. Bullet eight follows in his spine. Then it’s over. The attack takes less than 10 seconds.
Lying on the ground in shock and disbelief, Williams touches the hole in his jaw again. He hears screams and the rush of footsteps around him. As the blood floods from his body, he asks God to forgive his sins. Thanks him for the chance to do so before he dies. He’s not afraid. He’s at peace.
Then he sees a broken bottle and feels the spilled beer on his face. Williams lifts his head and looks through the open door filled with fleeing people. I’ll die outside, but I’m not dying in here. He roars and shoves himself up on his elbows. He tries to crawl. He can’t move.
AS THE TV IN HIS MOTHER’S LIVING ROOM flickers before him, the big man in the wheelchair wonders whether there are fates worse than death.
It is June 2010. The shooting had placed Williams in a coma for two months. He lost a kidney, part of his liver, part of his jaw. He lost, worst of all, the use of his legs. Of the two bullets that lodged in his back, one sliced through his spine’s L2 vertebrae, just below his abdomen; the other, between the S1 and S2, near the pelvis. Williams is paralyzed from the waist down.
Shortly after his release from the hospital in February, he moved in with his mother; the 69-year-old Dorothy is the only person who can care for him. There is indignity in living here, his childhood home, a small pink house on the corner of 113th and Wallace in Roseland. But that’s not the greatest indignity. Williams wears diapers, and his mother has to change him. She must remove his feces from his rectum by gloved hand. Dorothy tells him it’s okay, she doesn’t mind. He doesn’t believe her. He often breaks down crying. He wishes God had just let him die.
That thought first crossed his mind soon after he woke from his coma. He had been dreaming about water, and he was so thirsty he tried to drink straight from his IV bag. A nurse gave him a cup of water instead, and it was the best he’d ever had. But then, looking at his lifeless legs, it all hit him: He’d awoken to his old world a new creature with problems that would get an animal euthanized. He was furious.
Now, seven months after his shooting, he can’t let go of his rage. He hates leaving his mom’s house, even just for dinner. It’s a job and a half, packing his wheelchair and his massive self into an SUV, and the stares that follow make him feel like a freak show. But there’s little comfort at home either. He’s consumed by the fact that the man who did this to him remains free. Williams has this fantasy about what he’d do if he were ever across a courtroom from him. His huge hands would clasp like iron around the shooter’s throat, and he’d watch as his breathing stopped.
Williams has no other fantasies. There is nothing he wants to do. There is nowhere he wants to go. So today, like every day, he plans to watch TV in his mother’s living room. ESPN. Soaps. ESPN. Back and forth. Killing time.
Amazing thing, though: Flipping on ABC, he happens to catch a teaser for the 6 p.m. local news. It promises the story of 28-year-old Haitian earthquake survivor Bazelais Suy, who spent months rehabbing his paralyzed body in Chicago. Williams doesn’t change the channel for the next two hours, waiting for the segment to come on. When it does, it shows Suy walking down a hallway using canes, wearing a red shirt and the biggest smile. Behind him is his doctor, who looks nothing like one. He’s seven feet tall. He wears motorcycle boots, jeans, a vest and a cowboy hat — all black. Then his name appears on the screen. Dan Ivankovich.
Williams shouts. That name. He knows that name. It has to be the same guy — his old teammate from high school, what, 30 years ago?
That night, Williams gets the doctor’s e-mail address from the TV station and sends him a message: “Saw your interview. Maybe you could help me. I was hoping you could help me. We’ve got something in common. We played together.”
The next morning, Williams’ phone rings. He picks up and hears, “Hey, this is Dan Ivankovich.”
“Big Dan. What’s up, brother? It’s Mike Williams.”
“Massive Mike?” Ivankovich says, chuckling. “What are you up to, you big, black son of a bitch?”
Williams laughs, and the doctor laughs with him, and just like that, the three decades between teammates is gone. But as much as he wants to play it cool, Williams fights tears to talk. “I gotta get up, man,” he says. “Something happened to me.” He tells Ivankovich what he can remember from the club. He tells him the pain is too much. He tells him, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to beg, I know you’re busy — but you gotta help me. If you can, you please gotta help me.”
“I’m sure I can,” Ivankovich says.
“You can get me walking again?”
“No guarantees. It’s going to be hard as hell. But dude, I’ll do all I can.”
THEY FIRST MET on the rooftop of the Chicago Sun-Times building, eye level with the city skyline, the world at their feet. It was the winter of 1980. Williams was a senior forward at De La Salle Institute.
Ivankovich, a 6’11″ center, was in his last year at Glenbrook South, the state-title favorite. They were two of the 10 players who had been selected to play on the Sun-Times’ all-area travel team, and they were there to get their pictures taken.
Ivankovich immediately stood out to Williams because he was the only white player and the only one from the suburbs. Most of the city kids loathed his kind. When they first shook hands, Williams himself thought, This white boy’s crazy. Something about his eyes, wide and wild and blue. But Mike believed in judging nobody. And as they talked on the rooftop, they bonded over a respect for each other’s talent and their shared passion for pranking teammates. Itching powder. Water balloons. Icy Hot in jockstraps.
They were, to be sure, from different worlds. Ivankovich grew up the son of a military doctor. Williams grew up fatherless and the only man in a house with his mother, grandmother and five sisters. Despite the gulf between them, they became like brothers the next spring while playing together on the all-area team after their high school seasons. It went deeper than the jokes; it went beyond the game, scholarship offers and stories of Bobby Knight visiting their living rooms. Talking together after practices and during road trips to various tournaments, they’d agonize over life’s grand injustices, the violence and depravation that had taken hold of areas like Roseland. “Someone’s gotta do something about this, man,” Williams would tell his teammate.
Ivankovich would nod, as earnest teenagers do.
“
Ivankovich tells Williams that the only way to walk again — hell, to live again — is to let go of the body he once had. “The player is gone,” he says.
”
“I mean, really, why are these kids starving?” he’d ask. “Why are 3-year-olds dying by gunfire?” They each vowed to one day return to Chicago as bigger men who could make a difference.
Then Ivankovich blew out his knee at a tournament in Boston and was never the same player again. He and Williams drifted apart. Ivankovich dropped basketball as a freshman at Northwestern and went on to medical school. Williams played four seasons in Division I: two at Cincinnati, then two at Bradley. His senior season in 1986, he led the Braves to a top-20 finish and their first NCAA Tournament victory in 31 years. “He was a monster on the floor,” says Jim Les, Bradley’s point guard at the time and now the coach at Cal-Davis. “He played with this scowl on his face.”
The Warriors drafted Williams in the third round, but his game proved too unpolished beyond the post. He was cut in October of his rookie season and spent the next three years in the CBA, between brief stints for the Kings and Hawks. Beginning in 1990, he found better success abroad, starring for teams in Spain, Italy and Greece, among other places. He retired in 2000, feeling he’d done right by his talent.
Upon his return to the States, he worked random jobs, but his steadiest and most satisfying work came as a celebrity bodyguard. It surprised his friends, but Williams told them, “I gotta do something with this body I’ve been given.” He’d get calls from Diddy in LA at midnight on Thursday, and by Friday night he’d be leading
him through a club in Atlanta. He’d spend days on yachts with Jay-Z and Beyonce and work nights at award shows like the Oscars. To keep up with the fast-paced lifestyle, Williams did hundreds of push-ups a day, ran sprints and stairs and got his legs so flexible he could do the splits.
By 2009, however, Williams was ready to try a job with less travel. Working out of Atlanta, he dabbled in commercial real estate with a childhood friend, Reggie Chapman, and in November of that year, he brokered his first big deal. He just had to sign some papers in Chicago, and he’d bank $250K. With the money, he wanted to move back to Roseland, maybe start up some youth basketball camps or a community center. “You gotta get back here, Mike,” Chapman told him.
Williams booked a flight to Chicago. It was to take off at 8 in the morning on Nov. 29.
A FEW WEEKS after sending his e-mail to Ivankovich, Williams rolls into the doctor’s office at Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital and says, “So you’re gonna get me walkin’ again?”
Ivankovich is wearing all black, as always, and a necklace made from human bone, a gift given to him in appreciation of his work in Haiti. It’s been a busy 30 years since he last saw Williams. He lost himself to depression following his knee injury; he recovered by learning a mean blues guitar and by becoming one of the most prolific orthopedic surgeons in Illinois. In 2010, he started OnePatient Global Health Initiative, a nonprofit that provides health care to the underserved. When he wants something done, it gets done. To move Suy from Haiti to Chicago, he persuaded a U.S. Army major general to send an ICE team escort.
Now at Schwab, the doctor bends down and prods the legs of his newest patient. Williams says he can feel some of the pokes. Ivankovich asks him to try lifting his legs. There — just barely — they move. “Oh man,” Ivankovich says. “Dude, you really might walk again.” But again, he promises Williams nothing.
A week later, in July 2010, rehab begins. Williams is too weak to sit up on his own, so Ivankovich and his team work to rebuild his core: They twist him, turn him, prop him up, lay him down. They also start in on his legs, lifting, bending and stretching them. White heat sears through Williams. He screams so loudly he scares off some of the therapists.
“Do not loosen the reins on this guy,” Ivankovich tells them. “Beat on his ass. He’s a former pro athlete. He’ll respond.”
The doctor is callous, almost brutal, with his former teammate. When Williams tells him one day that he’s had enough, Ivankovich brings in pink panties and a megaphone.
“Put ‘em on or get your ass working,” he says.
“I always knew you were crazy,” Williams responds.
“Hey, I could always take your ass. Could take you right now.”
“Nah. You couldn’t jump over a piece of paper.”
“Yeah, well, you’re looking real hot yourself.”
Williams laughs, a deep, rolling laugh. Every little joyful moment helps. The twisted irony is that with a more serious injury, he would have suffered less. He’s an incomplete paraplegic. Though his legs can’t move, they retain limited nerve activity. This creates hope that he might walk again but also ensures that every therapy session is agony. Amplifying his pain, two bullets remain in his spine.
The mental battle is much worse. Williams still grieves over what he’s lost. He can’t urinate without a catheter. He can’t have sex. There is the awful business of relieving his bowels. He feels he’s a burden. His mother, who teaches Bible lessons and Sunday school, cuts her days short to visit and bring food. Ivankovich spends hours with him, time that Williams thinks would be better spent on other patients. His therapy is paid through Medicaid, and he hates that taxpayers now finance his life.
He wrestles with one question all the time: “Why?” Why would a just God leave Williams in endless pain while the shooter walks the streets free of consequence? Some friends tell him God must be trying to get his attention. “F– you,” Williams says. “If he wanted my attention, give me two in the shoulder. But why take my legs?”
One summer day, sitting in bed, his wheelchair beside him, he says, “There are times I really can’t say what I’d do if someone handed me a gun.”
Ivankovich, uncertain of what else to do, shares with Williams his own darkness. He confesses that when his knee blew out, he lost more than his athleticism. “I’ve always felt like that left a part of me dead,” he says. His injury, of course, didn’t compare to paralysis, but, he tells Williams, the body is an athlete’s most precious instrument, his means to lasting significance. If it deserts him, for whatever reason, the anguish is real and deep. Ivankovich would never know his physical potential. He had to accept that reality, just as Williams must now. “The basketball player, the athlete, the person who was indestructible, is gone,” Ivankovich says to him. “That person can’t come back. It’s not possible.” He tells Williams that the only way to walk again — hell, to live again — is to let go of the body he once had.
Something changes in Williams after that conversation. He progresses from an hour of rehab a day to four. He goes six days a week instead of five. Therapists order five sets of stretches; Williams demands two more. In August, he rolls over and sits up. It makes him feel, for the first time since he hit the Club 426 floor, as if he has some semblance of control.
About a week later, Ivankovich tells Williams he’d like to see whether he can stand. They wheel him to the facility‘s gym. Nurses strap custom-fit braces around his lower legs. Williams is put before a platform walker, about chest-high from his seated position. He puts his thick arms on it and pushes up. His legs wobble and feel like rubber. He closes his eyes and lifts his head as high as it will go. His back straightens. He puts his weight on his legs. He feels his size again.
Now is the time to try for more. Ivankovich orders Williams back to the gym the next day. The big man wheels in, grabs the railing and rises, huge and wobbly and free. He rolls his lips shut and strains. He haltingly lifts his left foot, drags it across the linoleum floor and plants it again, a few inches ahead. He lifts his right foot, higher this time, moves it four or five inches ahead and plants it. His left foot again: forward, plant.
His legs tremble. Sweat pours. Ivankovich wheels Williams’ chair beneath him, and he sits down. Everyone in the room is bawling.
A DAY OR TWO after Williams walks again, his 17-year-old daughter, Amarah, stops by Schwab to see him for the first time since the shooting. She was born of an old relationship and lives in St. Louis. Before his injury, they spoke maybe twice a month. Now it’s at least twice a week, and they text almost daily. She’s a terrific high school basketball player, a monster inside, just like Dad. Williams tells her he wants to wear her jersey.
They take the elevator up to the serenity garden on Schwab’s rooftop. The weather is clear and breezy. They talk about his rehab, about her college options. He tells her to go somewhere she feels comfortable; she’s good enough that the pros will find her anywhere.
Mike rolls his chair beside a table and locks the wheels. He has this impulsive, foolish idea, one conceivable only by a father trying to make his daughter proud.
He shifts his weight, places his hands on the table and shoves himself upward. He isn’t wearing his braces; there is nothing to support him, save the table and his atrophied legs. His ankles could crack under his weight. Still, he lifts his left foot and places it a few inches ahead. Shuffles his right foot behind. Starts to sweat. Takes another step, leans over on the table.
“I’m going to do this,” he tells Amarah.
A few weeks later, as summer gives way to fall, Williams will move into GlenCrest Rehabilitation Centre, the same place Bazelais Suy got his legs back, and train with Mike Mitarotondo, an ex-football player, and Arnel Cordero, an MMA fighter. Every day he will be pulled, pushed, twisted; he will sweat, roar, cry. By the holidays, he will take several steps at a time on his walker.
By the summer of 2011, a few months after one of the bullets is finally removed from his spine, greatly reducing his pain, he will take 50 steps at once. Every week they will be stronger and more fluid than the last. Ivankovich will be astounded. “You know I still can’t promise you anything,” the doctor will tell Williams, “but you’ve got a shot.”
All that progress will be in the months ahead. But right now, on this rooftop, Williams just wants to take a few small steps and show Amarah something. The Chicago skyline rises to the east. Straining on his feet, he points his finger to the south, in the shadows of the skyscrapers.
There, he tells his daughter, lies Roseland.
Brandon Sneed is a contributing writer for ESPN The Magazine.
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2011 Las Vegas BikeFest Review
The Fremont Street Experience offered bikers music, dining, shopping, gambling and official BikeFest merchandise.
Blocks from downtown Las Vegas sits the Cashman Convention Center, the current home base for the Las Vegas BikeFest motorcycle rally. The large facility offers plenty of room and parking for the 30,000-plus motorcyclists who venture to the city that never sleeps looking to enjoy a weekend of biker fare.
Aside from the well-planned rally itself, Las Vegas offers shows, shopping, music, clubs, dining, bars, casinos, warm weather and all the high-energy action expected of the self-proclaimed, “Entertainment Capital of the World”. One popular destination is the Freemont Experience located in the heart of downtown Las Vegas, centrally located among the hotels and casinos, including the host hotel for BikeFest, The Golden Nugget. In conjunction with BikeFest, Freemont Street offered official BikeFest merchandise, popular tribute bands, celebrity appearances, bikini contests and motorcycle raffles as part of the BikeFest experience. It was a place where bikers and tourists intermingled but you could feel the biker vibe as motorcycles roared up and down the city streets and customs sat parked all around for people to feast their eyes on. Bikes and Vegas seem to go hand-in-hand when it comes to being flashy and sporting some bling.
Ten bikini babes battled on stage for the Las Vegas BikeFest bikini model title and a $500 first place prize.
Some 200 vendors ventured to BikeFest, offering the usual broad array of motorcycle everything, from leathers to T-shirts, jewelry, sunglasses, parts and accessories, insurance and legal services. There was Affliction offering lifestyle clothing, the Law Tigers offering legal help and companies offering new innovative products such as Lockstrap with its great locking tie-down system or Convict Cycles which offers Lockdown Stor-Bordz, a product that allows riders to store a variety of valuable assets safely and securely in a custom motorcycle foot board.
There was a menu of competitions, including Bikini, Wet T-shirt, Miss and Mr. Las Vegas BikeFest, Hog Out competition offsite at the Harley-Davidson Café, custom bike shows, the World’s Strongest Biker, as well as two poker runs. A Ride for Kids charity run was held, and on the other end of the spectrum were the slot and poker tournaments. Of course, live music is a must and BikeFest featured the likes of rock bands Nurse Ratchet, the Crashers, Voodoo Cowboys and others to round out the event. Other headliners played at various venues around town but were still linked to BikeFest including Bush, Duran Duran and ZZ Top.
Artistry in Iron presented 20 of the hottest custom builders with their latest bikes in an “invitation-only” custom builder’s bike show. Chris Richardson of LA Speed Shop was selected by his fellow builders as the 2011 Artistry in Iron Master Builders Champion. All these bikes were works of art but one specifically caught my eye. A bike named “Steam Punk” built by Copper Mike Cole with Gravesend Cycles featured many antique copper parts such as old fire extinguishers, industrial gauges and a really neat old maritime compass inset into the copper gas tank. Sponsored by American Cycle Magazine the show was held at the Cashman Center Friday and Saturday only but included autograph sessions along with a meet and greet to learn more about the builders behind the masterpieces they created. You can see all the Artistry in Iron bikes in our Las Vegas BikeFest Artistry in Iron 2011 photo report.
(L) The Strongest Biker Competition involved motorcycle tires and beer kegs. (M) Custom buider Chris Richardson with LA Speed Shop won the 2011 Artistry in Iron Master Builders Championship. (R) Hatred Customs entered a slammed custom in the bike show
The Cashman Center was also the scene of BikeFest’s Custom Bike Show. The event had a good turnout, with the majority of bikes entered in the Radical Class vying for the $2000 top prize and an invite to be one of the featured builders in the 2012 Artistry in Iron competition. AFT Customs with operator and builder Jim Giuffra took home several trophies for two different bikes entered in the show, one a metric custom named “Asumati.” Built from a Honda VT750 this bike combined custom paint, leather, detailed engraving and hidden radiators along with many other customized parts to form an award-winning package.
Tribute bands such as Ultimate Van Halen rocked the Jagermeister stage at the BikeFest Vendor Village.
Admission to the Vendor Village cost $15 per person for the weekend, which mostly gave you access to shop, view many of the contests and listen to local bands under the large party tent hosted by Jagermeister. Registration packages were also available, ranging from $25 to $55 per person and offered some extras like a t-shirt and special access to some hosted parties both on- and off-site.
Some of the better parties were out of the confines of the Cashman campus. Establishments such as the nearby Hogs and Heifers and Double Down Saloon are true biker bars. For more local flavor, try Fremont Street where the night never seems to end and anything you could want is available foot steps away. Las Vegas has much to offer and for 2011 BikeFest lived up to the reputation of the “Entertainment Capital of the World.”
How will we speak The Simpsons when there’s no more The Simpsons?
In the introduction to his hefty (if not necessarily authoritative) oral history of the show, Toronto author John Ortved notes that, “We, as a culture, speak The Simpsons.” Of course this means more than saying “Woohoo!” when you win $2 on a scratch ticket. It means that, for one-and-a-half, maybe two, generations of folks who came of age as The Simpsons blossomed and then withered into mediocrity, the show shaped mindsets and attitudes more than parents, school, and government public service announcements combined.
And even though the show’s decline in quality over the post, oh, 12 or 15 seasons seems now more like a statement of fact than an opinion, the recent dust-up that The Simpsons may-or-may-not be canceled forces to consider not just how we’ll speak The Simpsons when it’s gone, but also how we’ve continued to speak The Simpsons as The Simpsons itself has slipped into irrelevancy over the past decade. Because there’s a warmth to dropping a good Simpsons quote now that The Simpsons is bad: It has an “Oh man, remember when…?” quality that’s galvanizing in a way.
But what will happen when The Simpsons is extinct? Will a well-placed “I, for one, welcome our insect overlords” or “Oh my God! The PTA has disbanded!” thud like an out-of-touch “Yabba-dabba-doo”? And what of the bigger things, like the attitudes? Will The Simpsons’ subversiveness go the way of the beat poets or punk rock, to become just another deviant blip in the grander history of conformity? To answer this—and to offer an addendum to Ortved’s “we speak The Simpsons” truism—it may useful to understand exactly what’s made the program so durable for more than two decades, and how contemporary fans are responding to that very hardiness: to understand how contemporary fans speak The Simpsons.
Pop culture-wise, it’s hard to conceive a phenomenon quite like The Simpsons. And I don’t even mean this in the way where it’s astonishing to think of something as funny and subversive that’s always been broadly marketed with images of bald dad strangling his spiky-haired son or of that same son voicing his distaste for homework. Heck, The Simpsons mocked its own relentless marketing apparatus constantly—with “I didn’t do it,” the cardboard boxes of Be Sharps merch, etc.—but even thinking about this, let alone admiring it, breeds a kind of rosy and unproductive nostalgia. What I mean is that it’s hard to think of anything in the history of popular culture that has so defended itself against the processes that should have brought it to its knees a long time ago.
As an animated program, The Simpsons is fundamentally resilient to change. Excepting the flash-forward episodes that seem to upturn the show’s crawling sense of time, Bart will be 10 years old forever. The world swirls around The Simpsons, and it attempts (more desperately than ever) to comment on it using its now ancient dynamics: Bart as big-hearted mischief-maker, Homer as well-meaning dope, Lisa as misunderstood wunderkind, Marge as fretting mother, Maggie as Maggie, and so on. The Simpsons is the contemporary screw-in-a-lightbulb joke, adaptable to nearly any context. This is good, in a way. The classic, mid-’90s Simpsons episodes (apart from scattered Clinton jokes) do not show their age. Much of this is by design.
Unlike other seminal sitcoms of the era, like Seinfeld or The Larry Sanders Show, the fashions on The Simpsons never come off as tacky. Looking back on it, Jerry Seinfeld’s early season uniforms of paisley shirts, high-waisted jeans, and oppressively clean white sneakers seems like period costuming. Kramer, however, in his tastefully vintage “hipster doofus” garb, realizes a timelessness that escapes the other characters. Marge’s green dress and Bart’s red T-shirt are similarly eternal, not only because they are now exist for the ages, but also because they are abiding. They never change and will never seem dated or out-of-fashion, precisely because they are little more than an approximate contour of what clothing is.
As the longevity of The Simpsons has been extended and extended towards infinity, there have been reactions to this. Take, for example, the upswing in what I’ll call “Gross Simpsons” fetishism. Across Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, etc., there’s been a swell in drawings and video of characters from The Simpsons that destabilize their design and basic traits, usually in a manner that renders them ludicrous, if not out-and-out disgusting.
Chief amongst these is “Bart The General,” a YouTube video series that casts Springfield’s favourite family in a nightmarish, incomprehensible crime melodrama. Another fine example is the @BARTSIMSON_REAL [sic] Twitter account (which may have been recently hacked). Run by a (probably fake) Yugoslav Bart Simpson, the account sends out hilarious, half-coherent tweets like, “FATHER;; MINE FATHER../// ¿HOMTRE RETUORNE? PLEASZE DO STRANGEL ME. . . HOMETR ”’STRANGEL”" ME PLEASZE{{{ I ENJOY IT ^^^^^ SPIYKEHAIRE.” Then there’s “Simpsons pictures that I gone and done,” a Facebook page in which someone named “Chris (Simpsons artist)” collects MS Paint drawings of Simpsons characters, all intentionally bad, with the idea being that The Simpsons has been around for so long that not being able to draw one of the characters or recall one of their catchphrases is plain absurd. The Gross Simpsons trend seems like a way of aging The Simpsons via purification: It’s a way of making the show and its characters susceptible to the same weathering patterns of time and irony that have chipped away at everything else.
Chris (Simpsons artist)
I’m guessing a bit here, but these kinds of Gross Simpsons jokes seem to play especially well here in Canada. The only real empirical evidence I have is that my friends and I all seem to find them really funny. But there’s a weird fascination with the show up here. And it’s not only because of the three “The Simpsons are going to Canada!” episodes. The show is littered with references to what Homer has called, “America Junior.” (The website Simpsons, Eh? indexes all of these, while also offering fringe opinions, like Springfield actually being a guised Elora, Ontario.) Maybe it just feels good, to be acknowledged by one of the biggest American pop-culture entities, when anyone else could just easily miss us, all tucked away down here.
It’s telling, though, that not just Ortved but Chris Turner (author of the much more seminal Planet Simpson), both high-profile Simpsons chroniclers, are Canadian. Like the Republican primaries, we can watch The Simpsons at an ironic remove that it demands, appreciating its snide commentary on American culture while taking for granted that its depictions of the culture were at all honest or on-point. After all, Canada has always viewed the States as the grand metatext, understanding it through newscasts, films, and animated sitcoms rather than through lived experience. Highly referential, and self-referential, The Simpsons is, or was, the ultimate American metatext, and it makes sense that it would appeal to a nation of (barely) outsider viewers who were accustomed to understanding American experience as just that. And Gross Simpsons is to The Simpsons what The Simpsons was to America: a caustic caricature that seems productively mean-spirited.
Seeing Gross Simpsons makes The Simpsons surreal and repellent, but it brings to the surface the inside-out decay that has been afflicting the show since about season eight. For fans of The Simpsons who are fans of The Simpsons for its satire and self-awareness, and not because they think its funny to see Homer take a claw hammer to the eyeball or sing a song about a “Spider-Pig” (Why is that even supposed to be funny?), the Gross Simpsons output seems like the only honest Simpsons, with sarcastic rot topping the actual show’s present sterility.
The Simpsons blog Dead Homer Society has coined the term “Zombie Simpsons” to describe the general tenor of post-season 12 episodes. It’s a nice catchall, which reflects the show’s protracted decomposition. As the blog’s manifesto defines Zombie Simpsons, “It has no pulse and no intelligence but it just won’t fucking die.” Well, now it seems of The Simpsons is poised to “fucking die” (though I’ll take these reports with a shaker of salt). Having any stake in the program at this point just seems deluded, like that Seinfeld bit about how rooting for any one sports team is basically just cheering for the clothes. The Simpsons is now so hollow that even the good, classic episodes seem like a fluke—the perfect alchemy of talent, freshness, and zeitgeist-y prodding that can never be repeated. That’s fine.
We can still speak The Simpsons, and we’ll probably always be able to. It just might be in the grosser, more intentionally crude and off-base dialect. Instead of a spot-on, “That’s it, back to Winnipeg!” we’ll have soon-to-be-classic “Bart the General” lines like “What da heck?” and “who is wants a duff, baby” courtesy of Chris (Simpsons artist). It’s stupid and dumb and knowingly debased. But it least it makes The Simpsons feel like ours again.
Radio show to focus on filming high school football and firefighters in pink T-shirts – Merced Sun
Merced City firefighters wearing pink T-shirts, all the art in the month of October and high school football are among the topics this week on Community Conversations, a public service program on KYOS.
The hour-long show focuses on community, education and government news affecting residents throughout Merced County. It airs on KYOS, 1480 AM, at 7 p.m. Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday.
This weekends lineup: Mary Bigelow talks about United Way’s Lunch in the Park in Atwater; Staci Santa talks about the October activities of the Merced County Arts Council; Jim Kocher talks about Playhouse Merced’s production of Sweeney Todd; David Givens of Hammer Stryke Self-Reliance Training talks about fundraising events for the American Cancer Society; Sean Tierney, a Merced City firefighter, talks about the departments pink T-shirts and raising money to fight breast cancer; Vicki Strickland talks about the effects of the high-speed rail project on dairies and farms; and Shawn Bockoven and Tim Ryan of Merced Educational Television (METV) talk about the upcoming sports season, the work METV does to film high school football games and how the community can help.
Riot Fest 2011: Danzig Legacy | Concert preview
Danzig
Putting aside debates about Weezer’s punkness, the most buzzed-about show at the 2011 Riot Fest is “Danzig Legacy.” Glenn Danzig rarely performs the music he wrote and sang in his legendary horror-hardcore band the Misfits, or its more metallic successor Samhain. After Misfits bassist Jerry Only legally wrangled the band name from Danzig in the mid-’90s, a full-blown reunion has a snowball’s chance in hell. Thus, punk fans were jazzed when Danzig announced he would croon and scream beloved Misfits material with the group’s erstwhile guitarist, Paul “Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein” Caiafa.
We asked folks who have some investment in Mr. Danzig if this concert will be a glorious event, a sacrilegious violation or a half-assed cash-in.
Eerie Von, bass player in Samhain and Danzig 1983–95 “Glenn’s been doing this for years. He’s done sets with Doyle and Samhain ‘reunions.’ He’s just calling it ‘Danzig Legacy’ now. It’s a marketing thing. It makes no difference to me what he does.”
Wes Texas, guitarist for Misfits cover band Children in Heat “I think it’s great that he’s doing it. These are his songs, after all.”
Joe Losurdo, documentary director of You Weren’t There: A History of Chicago Punk 1977–1984 “I saw an earlier tour where Danzig had Doyle come out and play some Misfits songs. It was fine. But it doesn’t sound like the Misfits without Jerry Only.”
Dennis Dread, heavy-metal album-cover artist, Destroying Angels zine editor “I saw Danzig for the first time in December 1988. Through a string of incredible coincidences and good fortune, I was escorted backstage. I was a 16-year-old dork in a Tales from the Crypt T-shirt. Glenn could’ve crushed my soul in his black leather grip. Instead he told me my shirt was cool and invited me to have a seat. He tried talking horror movies and comics, but I was mostly speechless and dumb. Ever since that evening I’ve fiercely defended Glenn from the nonbelievers and shit talkers, even though he started wearing rubber shirts and praising Korn.”
Losurdo “Jerry Only’s background vocals were really important for the band’s sound. His bass playing was distinct—overdriven, straightforward, reminiscent of Gene Simmons.”
Texas “It’s not about putting dollars in his pocket, that’s for sure. If that were the case, he would have reformed the Misfits years back, toured the world 20 times over and made millions. He’s never been one to go back and rehash what once was. He doesn’t talk about the Misfits in interviews nor relive the past.”
Dread “The last time I saw Danzig perform was Halloween 1990, when he stubbornly refused to pull out the vintage treats that would’ve perfectly suited the occasion. So this Legacy tour is awesome! The Internet has proven that truly nothing is sacred, certainly not the brilliant Misfits and Samhain songs of my youth. I would be delighted to see these songs performed in a live setting no matter how questionable the motivations.”
Losurdo “I know they can’t get along, but [the Misfits] should just do a real reunion. Cash the checks and get separate buses.”
Von “I’m as sentimental as the next guy, but I prefer to move forward, not back.”
Danzig Legacy haunts Congress Theater Friday 7. Riot Fest runs Thursday 6 through Sunday 9.
Waltham High class sells pink T-shirts in breast cancer fundraiser
Getting a male high school student to wear a pink T-shirt would normally be a difficult task, but a group of students at Waltham High School are finding it to be quite easy this week.
On Friday, Oct. 7, students who purchased the shirts, each at $10, will be encouraged to wear them to school to promote breast cancer awareness. All of the proceeds will go to breast cancer research.
One hundred pink shirts were sold to students in the high school on Monday, selling out in about two hours. Another 200 were in stock on Wednesday morning, but weren’t expected to last long.
The effort is part of a campaign by Waltham High School housemaster Chris Gelinas and business teacher John Maguire, the latter of whom teaches the sports and entertainment marketing class in charge of promoting and selling the shirts.
Gelinas had the original idea to promote breast cancer awareness month by making and selling pink shirts with a red “W,” designed by former student Sam Richman, in the middle.
Gelinas had the idea because he wanted the students to rally around a cause and also to have them be involved in the school’s “Denim Day,” an annual event where faculty make a donation to be able to wear jeans to school.
“Kids wear jeans everyday so it’s not a big deal to them,” said Gelinas. “I thought of it as a way for teachers and students to rally together.”
Gelinas was able to strike a deal with Atlantic Sportswear, where one of his former lacrosse players, Mike Stone, works. He was able to purchase the shirts at cost and Atlantic shipped the first order of 100 in only two days.
So far, the shirts haven’t stayed in boxes for long, snatched up by eager students during lunch or in the hallways.
Dana Parello, a sophomore in the marketing class, said the shirts were an instant hit. He and the other students in the class wore them in the hallways on Monday.
“When people saw us wearing them, they all wanted it and we had no shirts left,” he said.
Anthony Battista, the biggest seller so far in the class having sold six of the shirts, had an aunt who passed away from breast cancer when she was in her 30s.
He said she has been in his thoughts during the entire T-shirt campaign.
“Nobody thinks (breast cancer) is that big of deal but it really is,” said the sophomore. “A lot of people are affected by it.”
He said students and faculty have been very supportive of the cause so far. Even the male population at the school has embraced the pink shirts.
“A lot of guys bought the shirts,” he said.
Parello, only a few feet away, chimed in.
“Real men wear pink,” he said.
Maguire, who is also a hockey coach at the high school, said the T-shirt campaign was partly inspired by the National Football League’s breast cancer awareness campaign, in which players from every team wear pink apparel during football games. Some wear pink gloves or bandanas, while others sport bright pink shoes throughout the entire month.
“The NFL is a big stage,” said Battista. “Everyone watches football so I think they’re aware of the cause by watching the football games.”
Steve Apanian, a senior, said the appeal of the shirts is that they serve the purpose of supporting a cause, while also showing school pride.
“It’s a great idea,” he said. “I know everyone is buying them up.”
Derrick Bonnah, a senior, had a few words of warning for students who don’t show up to school on Friday clad in pink.
“When everyone is wearing pink on Friday, and you’re wearing green, how are you going to feel?” he said. “Don’t be that guy.”
Gelinas, whose aunt is a breast cancer survivor, said many students and faculty in the school have friends and family who have battled against the disease.
“My initial idea was a school community rally together to support a cause but it’s not just a community thing, it’s a worldwide thing,” said Gelinas. “The importance of it struck me. It made me more aware of the need for awareness.”
He said the students have all bought into the campaign.
“The class right away latched onto it and just ran with it,” he said. “It will be a great atmosphere on Friday.”
Ignacio Laguarda can be reached at 781-398-8004 or ilaguarda@wickedlocal.com.
Your Daily Dose of Awesome: New Trailer for Bas Rutten’s "Punk Payback"
(Props to IronForgesIron.)
For those of you who heard about Bas Rutten’s new series launching on FUELTV and thought it was some sort of Bully Beatdown rip off, then this new teaser trailer should ease you worries. Described as a “comedic, street fight survival series,” Punk Payback premiers Nov 2nd and from what I gathered is entirely devoted to continuing the awesomeness that we have been devoid of since “El Guapo” released his series of self defense videos. It’s safe to say that nothing has made me want a 3D television more than the possibility of seeing Mr. Rutten kick some 17 year old kid in the balls.
Below, we have a little more in depth look at the show, and by “in depth” I mean clips of Bas headbutting and kneeing groins on a loop.
If you can correctly guess how many spleens and/or kidneys Bas breaks over the course of the first season, we will give the names of the poor men’s families so you can offer your condolences. And maybe a shirt.
-Danga
T-shirts celebrate inside jokes and ironic civic pride
Doxanas’ business used to be based in Dundalk and “you could see it from the bay doors,” he said.
Since 2004, he must have sold 15,000 of the shirts, which come in yellow and brown, Doxanas estimated. He said he has received orders from California and even overseas.
Some agree that the domes are worth celebrating.
“It’s really something to be proud of,” said Kurt Kocher, spokesman for Baltimore’s Department of Public Works.
“Without this facility you’d have a pretty messy Chesapeake Bay,” he said.
In Hampden, people have been chuckling over the “Real Housewives of Hampden” shirts sold at Kiss n’ Make-up, a shop on The Avenue. Debbie Stoll, the owner, said the concept, depicting women pole dancing, shooting a gun, pushing a stroller and smoking while pregnant, was her husband Malcolm’s idea.
“We were wondering if it would offend anybody in Hampden,” Stoll said. But Hampdenites, she said, “seem to be the ones who find them the most amusing.”
She agreed that the humor was self-deprecating. “I tend to say to people, ‘it’s funny because it’s true,’” Stoll said. “As Baltimoreans, we’re very good at laughing at ourselves.”
Stoll said she’s never seen any of the “Real Housewives” TV shows, but “I can only imagine, based on what I see on a daily basis, this would make a much better show,” she said.
A similar “Real Housewives of Baltimore” shirt is available online with other tongue-in-cheek designs, said Rob Goldberg of Hampden. The out-of-work graphic designer, 46, said he started selling the shirts at festivals and online about three years ago “kind of out of boredom.”
While some of the T-shirt designers say they’re making profits, Goldberg said he’s barely breaking even. “It’s almost like a labor of love,” he said.
York picked up his black BMORE shirt Sunday at More Collective’s stand at the Fells Point Fun Festival. He was showing two friends from Seattle — one a visitor, the other a recent transplant — around the city. The 24-year-old pharmacy and law student said he had been describing the city’s different neighborhoods.
“It’s neat that a small town has so much pride,” he said.
liz.kay@baltsun.com
An Odd Future, With Limitations
Among the items tossed on and off stage during Friday’s Odd Future show at The Warfield: water bottles; sneakers; CDs; paper; weed resin; two bras; a bottle of lotion; a square, bookish thing that may or may not have borne the title Black Dahlia; a gift box wrapped in shiny pink paper; T-shirts (one of which bore the group’s famous “Free Earl!” slogan); and people, two of whom were manhandled by security and swiftly escorted away. Odd Future frontman Tyler, the Creator picked up one of the bras, sniffed it, and hung it around his neck. He sniffed the next one and grimaced. A girl in the mosh pit used her wrist to swab a gash on her forehead. Members of the group’s entourage smoked flamboyantly while they followed the emcees around with cameras.
It was a riveting show, even when you accounted for mosh pit injuries, screechy microphones, and an overall flimsy sound system. Los Angeles-based rappers Tyler, Hodgy Beats, Domo Genesis, Mike G, and Left Brain (who doubles as a producer) tore through as much material as they could fit into two hours, while their DJ, Syd Tha Kyd, cued tracks on a laptop and danced ecstatically in the background. Odd Future’s performance, like its albums, was a work of controlled chaos: Violence was permissible, but only within a tightly restricted area. The group’s mostly teenage fans got an illusion of total freedom, even though they were monitored by watchful adults the whole time.
In many ways, Odd Future (its full name is actually Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, or OFWGKTA) is a lot closer to punk than hip-hop, even if the group doesn’t use a single live instrument. The group’s lyrics sound like pure, unchecked id, divorced from any set of morals or principles. These guys rap freely about rape, mutilation, drugs, murder, and gay-bashing, using their dicks as a kind of all-purpose synecdoche. They’ve garnered a lot of comparisons to the hick duo Insane Clown Posse.
On another level, though, they’re rigorously creative, with a kind of winking self-irony that belies the crudeness of their material. Music critics have come up with all kinds of theories as to the emcees’ raison d’être: that they’re paradigm-shifters or artists with a capital “A”; that, as Sean Fennessey suggested in Pitchfork, they’re the vanguard of a new, Internet-friendly, “micro-rap” movement (oft called “swag”); that, as Cord Jefferson wrote in The Root, they’re merely “fetish[izing] black male rage” for a white audience.
All of which is true, albeit in a fairly reductive way. When you see Odd Future live, you realize that the behavior it promotes is different from the shallow iniquity of other rappers — that, moreover, they’re pastiche artists who thrive by cannibalizing other forms of pop culture. And as such, they appeal to a large swath of the youth population: skaters; flannel-shirted hipsters; girls in short shorts; backpackers; Trenchcoat Mafia types; white kids who treated The Warfield show as their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use the “n”-word without inhibition (while singing along to Odd Future’s lyrics, of course); and guys just old enough to have potbellies and porn star mustaches. When Syd emerged to spin her opening set — a mix of hard-core tracks by Waka Flocka, Mike Jones, and Rick Ross — the crowd erupted in fervent applause, which only increased when Hodgy Beats came onstage to perform “64,” an unconventional boast track in which he compares himself to Judah, Rasputin, and various kinds of Transformers. (Best line: Your system is my fucking dick-dom.)
From afar, the group is visually arresting. Its members are all around twenty years old and they look tiny and skeletal onstage. Hodgy removed his shirt to reveal a nice set of chest tattoos, and a stomach just flat enough to rival Tyler’s eight-pack. Mike G wore sunglasses and a hideous tie-dyed T-shirt. Domo and Left Brain slung towels over their heads. Syd looked captivatingly androgynous, perched in front of the group’s “shark cat” tour logo (a big snarling cartoon cat with sharp claws). Already top-heavy with personnel, Odd Future arrived with a huge retinue in tow. The only notable absence was famed crooner Frank Ocean, who apparently couldn’t make it that night.
Twenty-year old Tyler, who spent most of the night rapping in a low, primordial growl, complained in the middle of the set that he had a severe headache. But then he bounced back, rapping exultantly on “Orange Juice” and his solo track “Yonkers.” At one point he paused to shout-out the group’s female fans because they tolerate so many rude, pushy, lecherous dudes.
What made the show so successful wasn’t the musical presentation (actually a little shoddy), or the emcees’ stage presence (fantastic, since they bounce around and pantomime their lyrics, whereas most rappers just stand still and preach). Really, the main selling point was a false sense of liberation that the group generated. Tyler, in particular, encouraged bad behavior wherever possible — at one point, he threw a water bottle into the pit and told people to fight for it; toward the end, he led the crowd in a rousing chant of “Fuck the police!,” actually the refrain of Odd Future’s second to last song.
The show ended with a track called “Radicals,” just as the clock struck 11. “Uh, we’re done,” Tyler said, unceremoniously. The lights went up. The crowd booed. Ushers shooed people out of the building, encouraging single-file lines, and deterring loiterers. The fun was over.
Blondie — A Day in the Life
Elizabeth Bruneau, AOL
It’s a gorgeous Tuesday afternoon in New York City’s West Village, and even if Fashion Week weren’t in full swing, there’d be no shortage of pretty people browsing the Bleecker St. boutiques. At around 4:45 PM, after an hour of strolling around, we figure we’re numb to the beauty of our surroundings — the luxurious townhouses, the leggy model-types — but then a black SUV pulls up in front of the Marc Jacobs store, and out step the members of Blondie.
Well, we assume all six are there. Our eyes shoot straight to frontwoman Deborah Harry, whose platinum locks are so bright they make us squint. She’s rocking gray slacks, a matching tank top, a pink over-shirt and enormous black sunglasses, and even at 66 years old, she looks like a character out of an old movie, or maybe Andy Warhol’s Factory. Blondie have agreed to let Spinner tag along for the afternoon and evening, and we’re trying to keep cool. This is Fashion Week — can’t let ‘em see you sweat.
Amazon
Listen to Blondie’s Full ‘Panic of Girls’ Album Free
The pioneering New Wave group is back home in New York, where it formed in 1974, to play two sold-out shows at the Highline Ballroom and mark the release of ‘Panic of Girls,’ its ninth studio album and first since 2003. To celebrate the occasion, as well as to raise a few bucks for the environmental charity Riverkeeper, the Marc Jacobs store on the corner of Bleecker and Perry has been transformed into a Blondie pop-up shop. The racks are filled with colorful T-shirts emblazoned with Harry’s face, and the walls are covered with photos of the group in its late-’70s heyday. When Harry and the gang roll up, poised to sign some autographs, diehard fans have already been staking out the shop for hours, jockeying for position.
Obviously used to such attention, Harry poses for a few photos and heads inside, where she joins guitarist Chris Stein and drummer Clem Burke — Blondie’s other two original members — on a couch visible through the shop’s front window. Behind them sit newcomers Leigh Foxx (bass), Matt Katz-Bohen (keyboard) and Tommy Kessler (guitar). The atmosphere quickly becomes hot and noisy, as ‘Panic of Girls’ blasts on the sound system and fans queue up for signatures.
Watch A Day in the Life With Blondie
Videography by Elizabeth Bruneau and Reid Rolls / Production by Elizabeth Bruneau
As befits Blondie — a band that started out playing punk at CBGBs but has since dabbled in everything from hip-hop and disco to reggae and French cabaret — the line holds a motley assortment of individuals. There are gushing 20-something girls, punk dudes in CBGBs T-shirts and one guy with blue eyeliner, red Chuck Taylors and a pitchfork tattooed on his neck. When two women — seemingly friends of Katz-Bohen — show up with a Chihuahua, Harry doesn’t miss a beat.
“Am I going to sign your dog?” she asks.
Why not? Some other guy brought a red stiletto shoe, and plenty of folks come clutching old LPs and other Blondie memorabilia. A 30-year-old fan from Australia has brought along one of Harry’s post-Blondie solo singles, and when his turn comes, he chats up Burke, who he’s met before. It turns out the Aussie doesn’t have a ticket for tonight’s show — the second of the Highline gigs — and Burke tells him to come by the club around showtime. He’ll take care of it. Later, when a French friend of Harry’s comes through the line, the singer listens to make sure ‘Le Blue,’ from the new album, isn’t playing.
“I’m so glad you weren’t here for the French song,” Harry says, dissing her own French pronunciation.
Fortunately, Harry is pleased with the album on the whole, and later on, during a quiet 10-minute chat in the back of the shop, she dishes about keeps her legendary band going.
“We love our fans, and we want to respect them,” she says. “We want to have a continuity with our past albums and our past identity. But mostly, when we start out, I think the germ of inspiration has to really be that: You have to be satisfied with what you’re doing. We’re really fortunate. We’ve created a sound that’s identifiable. We’ve kind of stuck to our guns. We haven’t had a complete meltdown. Only partial meltdowns.”
Reid Rolls for AOL
Some of the meltdowns she alludes to presumably contributed to Blondie’s breakup in 1982. They reformed in 1997 and have since released three albums. ‘Panic’ is the first in the band’s history not to feature founding keyboardist Jimmy Destri, and despite the presence of new members, some of whom contributed songs for the latest collection, Harry says today’s group functions like the old one did.
“Blondie has always been sort of an ensemble situation, and that’s how we consider it,” she says. “If something good comes along, something we like, that seems appropriate, it feels like a lucky break.”
Other interesting tidbits that come out of our conversation: Harry has been “hopping around” to LMFAO‘s ‘Party Rockers Anthem,’ one of her favorite songs of the year, and she thinks the only hope for humanity might be a kind of forced unity brought about by the total depletion of Earth’s natural resources.
The conversation is less heady 20 minutes later, as we ride with Burke and Stein back to their hotel, the Millennium Broadway Hotel. The drive takes us uptown, through once-seedy, now-Disney Times Square — a prime example of how New York City has changed since the mid-’70s, when Blondie were making their name on the Bowery.
“The energy is still here,” Stein assures us. “Even the darkness is still here, a little bit — a lot of the stuff I loved about it.”
As talk turns to Blondie’s eclectic sound — their greatest hits include the disco tune ‘Heart of Glass,’ early hip-hop crossover ‘Rapture’ and bouncy reggae cut ‘The Tide Is High’ — Burke says the band is a product of its surroundings.
“As so-called artists, we’re really lucky to be placed in this city,” he says. “The genesis of this band was in this city, and we emerged from this city, and all the stimulus this city allows really makes us sound the way we sound.”
In recent years, Blondie have covered songs by former CBGBs pals the Ramones, and on this latest tour, they’ve been doing ‘You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory,’ by the late New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders. They’re also blending ‘Rapture’ with the Beastie Boys‘ ‘(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (to Party!).’
“We’re able to do a disco song; we’re able to do a hip-hop song,” Burke says. “It’s all in this big stew — that’s really what we are.”
Reid Rolls for AOL
Other interesting tidbits that come out of our car ride: Blondie already have much of its 10th album recorded, and Stein thinks Katy Perry‘s ‘Teenage Dream’ is an “awesome piece of work.” He doesn’t care that people know all about Blondie’s personal travails or his previous love affair with Harry (they broke up in the ’90s), since everyone’s information is out in the open these days, and in the future, they’ll be no more politicians, “because everyone is going to have a picture [online] of them with their c—s hanging out or something.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Burke asks.
A little more than two hours later, Burke and Stein pull up in front of the Highline. Harry is either already inside or en route, and the band is due on stage in just over an hour. Burke looks around, spies the Australian fellow he spoke to earlier, and pulls him into the group of people that shuffles past the bouncer guarding the club’s side entrance. That’s one way to save money on concert tickets.
When Blondie hit the stage at 10 PM, Harry is wearing different clothes than she was in the West Village. Gone are the pants and loose shirt, replaced with a tight black Oriental-style dress. The group opens with a trio of old favorites — ‘Union City Blues, ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Atomic’ — and as Harry readies for a new one, ‘D-Day,’ a bright, buzzy synth-pop they could have recorded in 1981, she looks out at a crowd that comprises young and old, gay and straight, chic and schlubby, punk and square. Maybe there’s even a Chihuahua running around somewhere.
“It’s good to be home,” she says.
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