Year: 2008

Standing Up, Sitting Down

It figures that it would take the United Electrical Workers union to try to rally the fighting spirit in America’s battered working class with a sit-down strike at a shuttered factory in Illinois. The UE have a proud history of daring and desperate fighting stands that culminated in their expulsion from the Congress of Industrial Organizations early in the Cold War for refusing to purge their ranks of Communists. That fight resulted in the loss of over a hundred thousand members and the union’s relegation to the sidelines of the labor movement. The UE that survived those terrible fights of the 40’s and 50’s remained a leaner, meaner fighting machine; a union that prized democratic rank-and-file control, labor education, the long haul struggle and the value of a symbolic fight. The tactic of the sit-down strike was expelled from the labor movement long before the Communists who perfected it. The […]

Belle and the Beeb

With the departure of Isobel Campbell and a turn towards straight-forward power pop, Belle and Sebstian morphed into a new band earlier in the decade. This was not a totally unwelcome development, as the genre is desperately in need of a savior and the band’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” and “The Life Pursuit” were two of the best releases in recent years. And, yet, we lost a delightfully idiosyncratic voice in the old B&S. Matador Records reminds of of what was lost in their recent releases of Belle’s sloppy seconds (to paint a vulgar picture). 2006’s sprawling collection of odds and sods, “Push Barman To Open Old Wounds,” consisted of more highlights than some of the band’s official LPs and paved the way for their new collection of BBC sessions. Most bands take advantage of the Beeb’s generous compensation package to pad their numbers and add back-up session players. Belle and […]

Musings From the Campaign Trail

I first noticed Barack Obama on the campaign trail for the New Hampshire primary. He annoyed the shit out of me. Granted, I was dispatched there by my union to campaign for Hillary Clinton. Neither of them would ever get my vote, but at least Hillary had a track record. You knew what you were getting with her. With Obama, a very eloquent and inspiring (to everyone but me) speaker, he was so vague that it seemed supporters projected onto him what they wanted to hear. After all, what does “Change” mean? Reagan was a change from Carter. Lenin was a change from the czar. The Good and Fruities with the jelly bean center were a change from the Good and Fruities with the licorice center. Obama’s zombie teenage hordes of supporters really annoyed me. Were they excited about politics that looked like a Hollywood movie? It’s one thing to […]

Spoiled Ballots

I cast my absentee ballot today, and, yes, I voted for Nader just to be contradictory. I had the odd timing of being at the Board of Elections at the exact time they were running a public demonstration of new voting machines. In New York, we’ve been voting on the same machines that sent Kennedy to the White House. New machines have been long promised (or threatened, depending on your perspective). Apparently fearing voter backlash, the New York City Board of Elections shied away from a full-on computerized ballot. Instead, the Ballot Marking Device is a clunky touch screen and computer ballot that looks like a 1970’s version of the “future.” The paper ballot never entirely leaves your hand. You feed it in to the machine, like a Scantron test sheet from when you were in school. A nigh-on unresponsive touch screen runs you through the various contests and prompts […]

A Real Hat

After a morning that saw me put a bid in on a spacious two bedroom apartment with a formal dining room in Bay Ridge – $10,000 down with 75% financing and a very adult activity, if ever I engaged in one – I decided to go shopping for a new hat. I’ve been wearing hats for a little over a year now: a straw hat followed by a light felt black fedora. Fashionable as it might otherwise be, a black hat clashes with the navy blazer I’ve taken to wearing lately. This is another dubious sign of maturity. As the Clash song goes, “You grow up and you calm down / You start wearing blue and brown.” A grey hat seemed in order, so I made my way to Bencraft Hatters. Bencraft has two locations in Brooklyn. The original is located in Williamsburg, not far from where my paternal grandfather […]

Woody Allen’s Later, Darker Ones

“Vicky Christina Barcelona” is the most thoroughly enjoyable hour and a half you could spend at the movies this season. At what point does Woody Allen’s “comeback” (as each of his last few movies have been hailed by critics) get to stick? Liberated from the upscale Manhattan locations that his characters could no longer afford, as well as from the crutch of casting himself or a famous impersonator as the romantic lead, Allen’s films have been consistently thoughtful, sober and darker than his proverbial “early, funny ones.” Bankrolled by the Spanish tourism industry, the film is set in a clearly booming Barcelona (note the construction cranes that dot the skyline), which gets top billing along with the two American tourists (played by Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) whose summer in the city fuels the plot-line. Vicky and Christina are propositioned by painter Juan Antonio for a weekend of art, wine […]

Hopelessness We Can Believe In

In a coffee shop in western Pennsylvania the morning after Barack Obama’s muted acceptance speech in the arena, I overheard a conversation that made me wonder ‘why bother.’ “Forget about it. It’s all over,” said one excited man, the ringleader of five donut-dunking middle aged white men. He went on to advise his compatriots, “Anything you own in your own name, get it out of your name before they take it away.” The others mumbled agreement, and added their own advice about changing obscuring Social Security numbers and hiding guns. You’d think the Bolsheviks were amassing outside of Pittsburgh from the way they talked. The conversation grew more bizarro as the topic turned to military adventurism and terrorism. “Well, we won’t see any more terror attacks, because the terrorists love him,” said a man, who presumably will look back nostalgically on the days of airplanes-as-missiles after Obama makes peace with […]

Goodbye, Queens. Hello, Brooklyn

I’m not a well-traveled person. I secured a reputation of sorts in grad school, on the first day of Elaine Bernard’s global labor movements class. As we went around the room for introductions, and everyone explained who they were and where they came from (yes, yes, they were the union, the mighty, might union) and discussed their various international contacts and trips abroad, I introduced myself with a flip “Shaun Richman, AFT, Queens, NY. Frankly, I’m uncomfortable leaving Queens.” I’ve spent my entire life – nearly 30 years of it – in this fine borough, but all things have an end. I finally received an acceptable offer on my apartment. I signed the contract of sale on Friday and will be gone by November. I’m looking to move to Brooklyn, someplace close to the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano Bridge, and within an hour of midtown by subway. Someplace quiet, […]

Another Day Older and Deeper In Debt

We socialists, I hope, are not the types to revel in I-told-you-so’s, but for years we’ve been sounding the alarm that the consumer purchasing power of our fellow patriotic Americans could not be counted on to fuel the global economy. Wages for working Americans have been essentially stagnant since the 1970’s, leaving a huge amount of consumer debt to preserve the American Way of Life. But, we warned, one day we will all have to pay the piper. That day seems to be at hand, with a mortgage crisis and bank failures making headlines. Gee whiz, the New York Times is finally giving this story the attention that it deserves in an otherwise-excellent series of articles “about the surge in consumer debt and the lenders who made it possible.” One article, which readers will likely use as a yardstick for their own financial worries, profiles a Ms. Diane McLeod who […]

Keep Your Riches, Give Me a Bonus Track!

Finally getting their due after a generation and a half of younger bands cashed in on their legacy, the Replacements are in the midst of the rock-n-roll equivalent of a Presidential exploratory committee for a reunion tour. First came Jim Walsh’s adoring biography, and now the Mats’ early funny records get the deluxe treatment from Rhino records, re-mastered and fleshed out with bonus tracks. The Replacements’ later years on a major label were marked by disappointment, as each effort to turn their next record into a “Great Rock Statement” missed the mark, making the out-takes and B-sides an essential part of the band’s narrative. Their indie years, on the other hand, were marked by a constant maturation and growth that culminated in as perfect a record as any band has ever committed to modified petroleum product, 1984’s “Let It Be.” Consequently, the bonus tracks are the usual mix of covers […]

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