Blogging on Meds

The Chicago Summer
Obama’s most fertile donor base: Chicago’s North Side. Pics by Hugh G.

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The Chicago Summer

As the rest of the nation nears recession, Chicago remains a literal beacon of hope. Largely untouched by the mortgage crisis affecting both coasts, Chi-town and the midwest never saw the full extent of the real estate bubble’s irrational exuberance. And people are happy. For the first time in recent memory, the city’s two baseball teams are in first place. A film shot in Chicago, The Dark Knight, is about to ecelispe Star Wars as the number two movie of all time. And of course, Chicago is home to Barack Obama, a black man who may be the next President.

All this positive energy had given Chicago’s largely-white North Side an odd arrogance. This is especially the case within the Obama campaign, which has been infected with cult-like secrecy and self-righteousness. Every other person I met on the North Side had a tie to Team Hope, yet even the lowliest one-day-a-week volunteer acted like they’d be divulging state secrets if they spoke (off-record!) about the Obama machine’s vibration.

Across the majority black South Side, Obamania is in effect too. Hustlers sell “Change the World” Barack 08 shirts on every corner; the entire South Side is a panorama of pride for the native son. But the area remains impoverished, with many residents lacking access to decent education and in some cases housing, and the big question is, Would an Obama presidency actually change anything?

These photos—taken in restaurants, homes, rap studios, and on the street—are of Obama’s core constituency.

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The Chicago Summer

Any questions of Michael Jordan’s lasting influence over Chicago were answered when I spotted four pairs of Air Jordans in one ten minute span. The last four pairs—all the same shoe—were in the same fast foodery at once.

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Last weekend the owners of the Beatrice Inn, a New York nightclub, hosted a private opening of their new Atlantic City venture, the Chelsea Hotel. Thanks to Paul Sevigny, Matt Abramcyk, and the whole Beatrice crew for busing in a score of the city’s hardest ragers for some penthouse action three nights straight. I was there on Friday, and a full report is forthcoming, but in honor of weekend good times, here’s some pics c/o Lindsay Boivert, who is pictured below at the hotel in a leopard print chair c/o me.

And despite the NY Observer’s insistence (in a piece written by John f–king Ford’s old roommate), AC is not the new Brooklyn—for there were only Manhattanites in attendance. So fear not: AC is irony proof at the moment. And I’m back from Chicago bitches.

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Stuey is the dude squatting…

Holy shit, Aaron Stuart, former Piebald guitarist and current diesel to vegetable oil converter, is on the cover the NYT...Stuey and I grew up together in the Andovers of Mass. He was the only guy in Andover Domino’s Pizza history to have anal sex (with a female) while delivering a two large ‘ronis and wings.

July 31, 2008
On the Bus, and Off It: The Initiation of a Young Rock Impresario

By MELENA RYZIK
“Where’s the bus, where’s the bus, where’s the bus?” Sean Carlson fretted last month as he paced around a block in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, his BlackBerry buzzing a message a minute. He peered anxiously down the street, waiting. An hour later, he spotted it: an old Blue Bird school bus, painted white and powered by vegetable oil. On its wheels rode one far-fetched idea, months of work and, perhaps, a blueprint for his future.

A nascent music promoter, with a wardrobe of cut-offs and three well-worn T-shirts, Mr. Carlson had turned 23 a few days before and barely had a moment to celebrate back home in Los Angeles. He was too busy planning the next step in his evolving career: taking the independent music festival that he founded five years ago in Los Angeles on the road.

(more…)

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The Chicago Summer

I’m in Chicago working on a top secret Med related project that has nothing to with Obama, the Dem Party’s moving here, or The Dark Knight being filmed here. Anyway, I grab the tabloid this morning a see this cover story about a Cub’s fan beating a Sox fan’s eye out during a 2-year old’s birthday party!

Sox fan Robert Steele’s eye was damaged beyond repair when an attacker wearing steel-toed boots kicked him in the face during the 2-year-old’s birthday party…

I’ve always thought that only Boston and New York had real baseball fans. But with both the Sox and Cubs in first place, it seems Chicago has gone baseball mad. Ah, summer, baseball, fan violence…what’s better than that?

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Former Yankees Suck-man and NYC-er Jamie Manza has relocated to the Hudson Valley where he lives on a former dairy farm. Manza is currently taking the 200-year-old Blough Farm off-the-grid, meaning it will soon be self-sufficient without reliance on public utilities. Medicine is planning on documenting Blough’s progress in words, pictures, and video, in a series called Mr Awesome’s Awesome Adventure.

By Jamie “Mr Awesome” Manza
Blough Farm is a 76-acre property located in central Orange County, New York. The old dairy and hay farm stopped producing as an active farm decades ago, as old Orville Blough’s physical abilities deteriorated. Now, as the current owner and resident, I strive to make the once postcard-like setting vibrant again by raising pastured animals and organic produce.

Today, production of wholesome food only scratches the surface of my ambitions; self-sustenance is the goal. But I know that self-sustenance is more comprehensive than feeding oneself. To be truly independent of industrial capitalism’s reach, I’m striving to free the farm from the needs of “The Grid”. To do so, independence from municipal services is critical: no water, sewer service, OR ENERGY from outside the lines of the tax map.

As a developer (or antideveloper), I am R & D ing zero-emission homes and buildings that use only renewable energy captured on site.  I have the education and most of the resources necessary to accomplish this task of independent living.

The lacking resource en route to my goal is (wo)man power. If one asks why I do not hire some bulldozers, loaders and excavators, I answer, “They use too much f*#kin’ petro”. I’m also disillusioned by the impact (noise, collateral destruction and disturbance) these machines wreak on the sensitive microclimates. Basically I don’t want to scare away the herons, swans, hawks, and eagles that reside on and around my lake and stream.

My principles create an opportunity for like-minded individuals who share this passion for protecting ecosystems; I need people with whom I can collaborate. I am looking for people to share a solution-searching dialogue and who have an affinity for certain aesthetics: architects, artists, chefs, gardeners/farmers, to name some probable candidates. All should have a viable work ethic in order to be considered.

Integral philosophies of the process are community service andfree, public education. I want everyone to “steal” these methods and the finished product so the proliferation of ideas is a result. The sooner “everyone” achieves these goals, the sooner my work is done.

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Sectarian violence strikes Baghdad (Shiite pilgrims) and Kirkuk (Kurdish protesters). Kirkuk is fast becoming a city on the brink. Maybe Manny will bring peace?

All told, at least 61 people were killed and 238 wounded throughout the country on Monday, nearly all of them Kurdish political protesters in Kirkuk and Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad, making for one of the bloodiest days of the year. But the numbers understated how much the violence in Kirkuk unnerved government and security officials, and even caused Turkmen leaders to call for protection from United Nations security forces.

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Really, Boston Dirt Dogs? You’re still going after “Yankees Suck” chants and tees?

Here’s some backstory. I started making the above shirts in 99. Around 02 or 03 a bunch of middle age weird semi-jocks wearing Oakley Blades and headphones started lurking around Fenway with Boston Dirt Dogs signs and t-shirts. They were trying to “Bring positivity to Boston’s fans,” one of the Dirt Dogs told me. Normally, someone treading on YS shirt turf would get handed a beatdown, but no one—and I mean no one—bought their shirts. (We had someone tail them and count shirts sold; tally: 0.) So they started a website, The Boston Globe bought in, and now they make $$$ on advertising. 

Today they post “Tis is the Season to Remind You That You’ll Look Like a Tool If You Wear Those Shirts and Chant That Low Rent Chant.” Actually, every Boston fan thinks the Yankees suck. And those 50,000-plus shirts sold were to fans of all ages, from all walks of life. Dirt Dogs, you’re just haters. Get over the fact that you never sold any shirts. You wanted to channel “positive” fan energy in a cynical city that takes baseball more seriously than life itself. If you think Derek Jeter doesn’t suck, you’re not a Red Sox fan. And your eight examples of the Yankees not sucking suck too. Curt Shilling? Bill Burt? Kevin Cullen? Where’s Sully McMurphy’s or Joey from West Roxbury’s opinion? 

Beckett vs Joba tonight at Fenway, 7pm. And Joba sucks.

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Every year Adidas sponsors this crazy all day soccer tourney with free beer and burgers. Check it out. 

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Pool AFP

People sometimes ask why I use (or steal—I’d pay the $500 use fee if we made any money here, I swear) so many Getty Images pics. Simple: They’re the best photo agency. Yesterday, some black guy from Hawaii with a middle name of Hussein attracted 200,000 people in Berlin. Comprehension of this is feat is still beyond me, but the pic below definately shows a bunch of Germans waving American flags. Huh, what? You gotta love it.

Photo by MICHAEL GOTTSCHALK 

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Dickheads

Jeremy Scahill, The Nation writer turned Blackwater book writer/expert, linked to a post of mine the other day. My post recapped an NYT blog write-up that said Blackwater, a North Carolina-based “security contractor,” was moving out of the mercenary biz, according to a spokesman. Blackwater’s comments came a day after Sec Def Gates wondered, “Why have we come to rely on private contractors to provide combat or combat-related security training for our forces?”

Sachill, in a piece headlined “Media Goofs Again,” says the story is a bunch of hype:

It seems that executives from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration’s favorite hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS gas and Little Bird helicopters and go back to the great dismal swamp of North Carolina whence they came. Or at least that’s how it is being portrayed in the media.

Among the headlines of the past 24 hours: “Blackwater plans exit from guard work”, “Blackwater getting out of security business”, “Blackwater sounds retreat from private security business”, and “Blackwater to leave security business”. One blogger slapped this headline on his post: “Blackwater, worst organization since SS, to end mercenary work.” [The last one was my headline.]

Frankly, this is a whole lot of hype.

But I don’t think the Blackwater spokesman saying of security work, “If I could get it down to 2% or 1% [of total business], I would go there,” is a non-story. In fact, combined with Gates’ statement, this is great news.

I hate Blackwater and the entire concept of combat outsourcing almost as much as I hate Nazism. The fact is, US tax money is spent on Dogs of War who are not operating under rule of law—aka we support state sanctioned murder. We’ll be regretting allowing this to happen as long as we’re a nation.

Now, even the head of the Pentagon is angry about it. That’s damn good news to me. 

Of course, Blackwater has over the years become a multi-billion dollar defense contracting beast. Their CEO is from an old guard Michigan GOP familia. They’ve made enough cash and high-level State and Pentagon contacts to keep their business going.

Sachill writes, “Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong.” I didn’t see anyone writing that. Unfortunately, as best outlined by PW Singer in Corporate Warriors (Cornell 2003), the privatization of war is here to stay.

But the fewer assholes with guns running around the better. And both Gates and Blackwater seem to be moving towards a mercenary downsizing. Sachill says this is in response to Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan being celebrated by the world this week:

The company may be bracing for a possible shift in policy should Obama win in November. Blackwater could be contemplating resignation before termination. On the other hand, Obama has sent mixed messages on the future of war contractors under his Iraq policy. While he has been very critical of the war industry in general — and Blackwater specifically — he has also indicated he will not rule out using private armed contractors at least for a time in Iraq.

In a perfect world, US troops may be able to disengage from Iraq on large scale in the near future. I still don’t believe that’s possible. Iraq’s security gains over the past year are tenuous. If elected, Obama will likely have to keep a force of 80,000 or so in Iraq through his first term. How would he deal with providing diplomatic security for Green Zoners is unknown—will he keep the mercenaries or take MPs off the battlefield? Still, if Gates is trying to move away from privatized force protection now, the better the chances for a policy shift. And that’s not hype. It’s good news.

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In one of the best magazine stories of the year, David Samuels embeds with a Cali pot dealer and his different “scenes” for the New Yorker. I love that this was cool with the editors:

Water pipes were passed around, and everyone got high. After four hits on Nick’s bong, the slogans on the refrigerator started to vibrate with uncommon significance.

The whole story is worth reading. And Samuels deserves a National Mag Award nomination. Guy spent six months reporting this one…

The New Yorker is taking an increasingly liberal approach to covering pot and potheads. Remember the blunt-in-hand Weezy pic (see below) that ran as a full page last year? It was the first time the magazine had ever run a picture of someone smoking weed. Now Samuels writes 8000-plus words and is admittedly stoned during much of the second half of the story.

First time New Yorker ever ran a pot smoking pic, Lil Wayne from last year…

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Everyone knows about Southie, the Boston white ghetto made famous by Good Will Hunting and The Departed. But did you there was a place called East Boston, another white ghetto, that’s filled with Italians not Irish? Pretty neat huh? And Eastie rules. They had an Italian Fest this weekend and these two women, Gabby Rizzuto and Christin Skane, were captured by the Boston Globe.

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Best news of the day! NYT says Blackwater to end “security contracting” “business.” Steroid sales in Iraq and North Carolina to plummet 40%…

Blackwater is giving up on the business that put them in the crosshairs of an astonishing array of parties, from the insurgents it expected to face in Iraq to the Iraqi government itself, along with the American public, Democratic members of Congress and investigators from several agencies in Washington.

Gary Jackson, Blackwater’s president, described plans for a withdrawal from security contracting in an interview published last night by The Associated Press:

In 2005 and 2006, security jobs represented more than 50 percent of the company’s business. The security business is down to about 30 percent of Blackwater revenue now and Jackson said it will go much lower.

“If I could get it down to 2 percent or 1 percent, I would go there,” he said, adding that the media have falsely portrayed much about that aspect of the company. “If you could get it right, we might stay in the business.”

This comes a day after SecDef Gates wondered, “Why have we come to rely on private contractors to provide combat or combat-related security training for our forces? Further, are we comfortable with this practice, and do we fully understand the implications in terms of quality, responsiveness and sustainability?”

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Batman Goes Bateman 2
LAT.com does not have anything up top about Batman’s arrest. In a town where the movie business is the only show in town, when the star of the biggest movie ever gets arrested two days after its record opening, which was propelled by the death of another of the film’s stars, wouldn’t this be a lead story? Still, despite not getting top of site billing, Bale’s arrest is the third most emailed story on LAT.com.

A lot of turmoil has stricken the LAT of late, but they’re entertainment coverage is second to none. Here’s a great story on Da Dark Knight’s gross potential:

“I think that’s not going to be a difficult task,” Warner Bros. domestic distribution chief Dan Fellman said of “The Dark Knight’s” prospects to eclipse both “Iron Man” ($314.4 million to date) and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” ($312.6 million to date). “I think we’re going to be way up there.”

But how high? Some rival studios said Monday that they are confident “The Dark Knight” could gross more than $400 million by the time all tickets are counted. The highest-grossing film of all time is 1997’s “Titanic,” with ticket sales of $600.8 million. But only six other films ever have grossed more than $400 million in domestically, a list that includes the original “Spider-Man” and “E.T.”

“The Dark Knight’s” Sunday sales — a record of $43.6 million for the day — suggests that family, adult and ethnic interest in the film is unusually high, as the end of the weekend tends to be an especially good moviegoing day for those demographics.

I wonder if the Bale arrest is going to help or hurt ticket sales? I say help…You know he’s gonna release the best statement ever, like, “The immense pressure of making this film and Heath’s death has contributed to my mental instability at this time.”

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Batman Goes Bateman: Real Life Insanity Clouds the Dark Knight

I hate you mom!!!

I was trying with all my energy not to write about the new Batman move, The Dark Knight, which just had the biggest opening weekend in history ($158 million). Last spring, one its stars, Heath Ledger, who plays the Joker, overdosed on a pill combo that included OxyContin. Now Batman himself, Christian Bale, gets arrested in London for beating up his mother and sister. In effect, a movie that cost $180 million plus another $100 million for marketing, and then grossed more than any film ever, has been hijacked by its stars’ insanity. That’s a lot of precedents.

British police sources tell TMZ Christian Bale has been arrested and is still being grilled on allegations of assaulting his mom and sister Sunday, the night before the London premiere of “The Dark Knight.” 

Bale went to a London police station this morning by appointment and was arrested there.

A recent stat showed the number of drug deaths in the US jumping from 800 to 2500 between 1999 and 2005. This jump is largely due to a legal painkiller, OxyContin. Ledger’s death, for all its media coverage, hasn’t spurred any talk about the fact that one opiate, which was falsely marketed by Purdue Pharma as non-addictive, is killing so many people. (Last year Purdue lost a $2 billion lawsuit for false advertising.) So many people my age know of folks who have had their lives ruined or ended by OCs. If Hollywood had any balls, they’d use Ledger’s death not just as a vehicle for Dark Knight dollars but also as a way to confront the FDA for tighter regulations on opiates.

Bale, well, he’s played a lot of “dark” dudes, most notably Patrick Bateman, maybe the best psycho in American literature. Anyone else beats his ma and sis, I’d say it would hurt him, but the Batman numbers and Bale’s “Psycho”-background make him an unprecedented franchise. Even this shouldn’t hurt him.

Now if they’d only turn Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns into a film and let Bale kill that poon Superman.

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I can read your vibes…

I somehow missed my friend and Guru, Paul Manza, brother of Jamie (aka Senor Awesome, Mons Ziti, Big Queso etc), in New York Magazine a few weeks ago. But Paul showed me this feature at his 31st b-day on Saturday (where Skye Manza cooked the best wood pizza ever!!!). Sarah Bernard writes:

Picking a yoga practice in New York, where the options are limitless, is not such an easy task. You can crisscross the boroughs, bankrupting yourself while figuring out whether you like Vinyasa or Ashtanga or Hatha or some hybrid form. Pure Yoga, a massive studio opening June 25 on the Upper East Side (203 E. 86th St., nr. Third Ave.; 212-360-1888), offers a logistical solution: nineteen different types of yoga under one very spalike roof and a flat $140-a-month fee that allows unlimited classes. There are straight-from-the-ashram practices for purists (Iyengar fans: There’s a rope wall!) as well as options like Bollywood Fusion (the title speaks for itself) or Acroyoga, a partner yoga, and something they’re calling Zenyasa, which mixes yoga, push-ups, strength training with Thera-Bands, and guided meditation. Master teachers like Yogi Vishvketu and Twee Merrigan will be flying in to teach alongside well-known locals from studios like Jivamukti and Om Yoga. Below, a few instructors assume their positions.

While reporting the story, Bernard spoke to Paul for about 30 minutes. NY Mag wound up placing him dead center on the page, looking Zen as a motherf*cker, in pink shortz, while all the other featured Yogies are pretzel-bent and way less Guru-y. Paul’s quote:

“Half-lotus lets you sit completely straight without any effort. The hard work is doing all the other poses so that can happen.”

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The Barry Files

Pic by US Army

Anyone else wake up most mornings, look at the news, then think with a smile: Is this guy really going to our next President?

Senator Obama is in Iraq right now. Here he is cruising in a Blackhawk with General Pertaeus. Last week, Iraqi PM Maliki endorsed Obama’s Iraq plan. After Obama hits Israel later this week, we can start to review his Mid East-Afghanistan trip in full, but so far he’s gotten a great response and head of state treatment.

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Shawn Young in Port au Prince. 

Going to Haiti doesn’t cost much—just airfare to the DR or Part au Prince, which runs about $500 with taxes—but the experience of visiting the Americas’ poorest nation and most failed state is akin to setting foot on another planet. You have the oldest (and maybe the best) culture of the Americas stuffed onto a resource starved half-island with no functioning government; a population of 8 million-plus, with 80% living on less than $2 a day. Tropical heat. Voodoo. UN blue helmets. Shawn Young was just there, and here’s what he saw:

The total journey to Port-au-Prince took about 2.5 hours. But along the way I had to get off and find new rides in Croix de Bouquets and at another point just outside of central Port-au-Prince. I walked most of the distance through Croix de Bouquets—about two miles—to get to the next stop where I could catch a ride further along.

As I reached the other side of town, it was a very strange feeling to be standing on a street in shorts and a t-shirt and see a convoy of armed UN troops in flak jackets roll by in white trucks. The deeper in I went, the scarier it felt, and the more removed from help I imagined myself being if anything went down. I just wanted to keep moving. I jumped on the next “tap-tap” (the characteristic multicolored buses and converted mini pick-up trucks in Haiti) and got going.

Thirty minutes later I was in Port-au-Prince. I caught another ride further in to the center, about a mile along. And the further along I went, the more shocking the scene became. Burned out buildings, unfinished construction never to be finished, people everywhere selling junk and nobody buying, piles of garbage and filth…squalor, ruin, desperation—my uneasiness from fear started to shift into something new: an increasing sobriety about the world and human reality, informed by what was starting to become (and would soon be) an absolutely unbelievable environment of social ruin. The truck stopped. I hopped out and gave the guy 50 gourdes. I walked further down the street, towards where it got more crowded.

It was incredibly crowded. There was a large truck trying to push its way up an extremely crowded street. People were selling anything they had to sell: used clothing from the United States, brightly-colored plastic household items, soap, rice, fish, crabs, meat…everything was motion, congestion, noise, heat, humidity, stench. Chaos. It was like a Hieronymous Bosch painting…things happening everywhere in every small and large place, with no overall theme or idea but that of a thousand horrible individual stories being played out simultaneously. At the macro level, it was all just static on the TV screen. I saw an old woman selling underwear out of a large basket and sitting quietly on the ground in the middle of all the turmoil; I saw another person selling rotting food; I saw people unfolding huge bundles of clothes to lay out on the ground and sell; I saw piles of rice, polluted water, flies, and garbage everywhere. A man was struggling to pull an old engine on a wagon that looked older and heavier than the engine itself did. Nothing made sense. The buildings seemed disproportionate and empty, yet filled with people. Everything was in disrepair. I noticed paint peeling off of balustrades maybe 20 or 30 feet above. I thought that I should be taking photographs of all these things—but then taking pictures just seemed intensely trivial and irrelevant in the middle of such an incredible, horrible, and very immediate situation of other people’s lives. And I didn’t want to actively draw attention to myself. I was the only light-skinned person that I had seen in hours in an unfamiliar and dangerous place, and had moved like a specter thus far on my journey. I had to get out of there.

I walked up a hill and glanced behind me. With some distance between me and the place, I saw it there, in the pit of it all, at the center in all of its decaying glory: the old slave market. It looked like something out of a nightmare. A hot, crowded, smelly, midday-sunlit nightmare. God damn…this place truly was a disaster…a giant social disaster extended out of a disastrous history. It was like I had descended into hell, and it was very much like Sartre said: Hell is other people…

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