Matchstick Men

Two kids playing with matches burned down their home and a go-go bar in Woodbridge yesterday. They lived over the bar, not in it.

And Woodbridge Dems pick their likely next mayor. Though he once worked for Jim McGreevey, by most accounts he is a heterosexual American.

Empty V.

Music Television (a wholly owned subsidiary of Viacom Inc.) turned 25 last week. But sadly, it had died a horrible death long ago.

Having grown up on MTV, I mostly had to cultivate my own taste in music. Looking back, it seems as though most artists and bands I listen to now began recording before 1983 or before MTV launched in 1981. Only a handful of those groups (R.E.M., U2) ever learned to treat video as an art form or anything more than an obligatory three-minute commercial to sell albums and concert tickets. Bruce Springsteen, whose popularity in 1984-85 could only be rivaled by Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson (between albums at the time) never produced anything more memorable than the horrendously faggy "Dancing in the Dark" video.

That sentence actually offends the term "faggy."

Moving from faggy to nerdy, I remember a friend of mine in college (though not sure who it was) who imagined what he might do with a holo-deck from Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the show, you could program a computer to create a completely convincing, fully immersive and interactive 3-D environment. Want to place yourself in pre-Katrina New Orleans? Or act a part in a Sherlock Holmes story?

My friend thought he'd use the computer to attend unrepeatable classic concerts throughout history. Mozart playing for French royalty. Or Hendrix at Woodstock (perhaps with a good umbrella).

Today, childhood dreams can become a reality with YouTube.

So in the spirit of Bill Simmons' YouTube Hall of Fame and his more recent list of the Best Performances of the Star Spangled Banner at a Sporting Event (need to scroll down toward the very end), here's my list of musical gems I've found.

Hard to believe that only a year ago you'd have to spend a lifetime surfing cable or PBS channels to see this stuff. Or spend a fortune on tape trades and official releases. Fuck MTV. I want my YouTube.

• Since I mentioned the almighty Bruce (and my musical taste basically starts and stops with him, all praise be to Bruce), here's a clip from him in his prime belting out "The Promised Land" during the legendary Darkness on the Edge of Town tour in 1978. And just to prove he hasn't lost a fucking thing in the almost 30 years since then, here he is with his Seeger Sessions Band kicking off this year's tour in New Orleans, and giving that city a massive dose of angry redemption. But if you're wondering if he knows how to take a backseat to another icon, here he is with the E. Street Band allowing Chuck Berry to take the reigns. Think Chuck is getting a charge out of a sold out stadium crowd in Cleveland?
• Is there anything more gripping than watching Otis Redding tear into "Satisfaction" during the Stax tour of Europe in 1967? That is, if you can keep your eyes of his huuuuge package.
• You gotta love Ray Charles chatting with Johnny Cash on Johnny's variety show from 1969-71. And he injects some serious soul into Cash's "Ring of Fire."
• The Johnny Cash Show also brings us this duet with Bob Dylan in his Nashville Skyline mode. Which almost beats Cash performing "Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog" with Ralph The Dog on The Muppet Show.
• But my favorite musical Muppet Show clip is this one, featuring Elton John singing "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and looking an awful lot like a muppet himself.
• YouTube can send you to see Neil Young play in London in 1976 or the Grateful Dead in Jersey the following year. Or even catch the latest video from internet darlings Arctic Monkeys.
• But gimme the past. Like Coltrane and Miles in 1958. Or Frank Zappa performing "Dinah Moe Hum" somewhere in the 80s.
• Zappa actually provides some of my favorite YouTube clips so far. There's this appearance on a Halloween Letterman show in 1983 or performing the always hysterical "Bobby Brown" in 1978.
• But don't miss Zappa vs. everyone on CNN's Crossfire in 1986, a time when Tipper Gore and her hectoring nannies were campaigning to censor rock music to protect the kiddies. It's a lesson in libertarianism. Twenty years later, we've just about achieved the theocracy Zappa was warning about then. And he gets to mock Bob Novack. Which is always fun.
• There's this tasty bit from a Steely Dan Classic Albums DVD in which you can see the recording of "Peg" and listen to Michael McDonald reminisce about the difficulties of harmonizing with himself.
• And finally, perhaps my favorite clip at the moment is this brief 1959 bit from Ronnie Hawkins, whose band The Hawks would eventually morph into Bob Dylan's first electric touring band, who got booed all over Europe in 1966 while making the most amazing noise ever heard up to that time. The Hawks eventually morphed into The Band, who played American music as authentic and soulful as anyone. Not bad for a group that was entirely Canadian except for Levon Helm (playing drums in this Hawks clip). But the most startling thing about this is the little dance Hawkins does at the end. Can't quite place it...naw...can't be...1959...but...could it be...?

Cruise Missiles

Look. I realize I haven't posted in a long while. And this one won't be all that satisfying. But I want to know something.

How come, when Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran are about to start a steel-cage deathmatch...when we're sitting with targets on our heads in the middle of an Iraqi civil war...when North Korea is itching for a fight...when New Orleans and the entire Gulf Region remains in ruins...when these and a thousand other horrible things are happening in the world...

How come, when I sign on to yahoo.com for my email, I'm greeted with this breaking news headline.

Just wondering.

Mayors, Horses and Water

Woodbridge prepares to name a new temporary mayor.

Then the town frets over the establishment of an OTB. And frets some more.

And the Milltown pool is cool and wet. Fascinating.

Smith vs. Siegel

ABC reviewer Joel Siegel walked out of a press screening of Kevin Smith's "Clerks 2" after 40 minutes, loudly declaring "Time to go!'' and "This is the first movie I've walked out of in 30 fucking years!"

Check out Smith's rant and then listen to him shit all over Siegel on Opie and Anthony.

Somehow I imagine this will be far more entertaining than the movie.

Eich Bin Ein Neck-Rubber

Just a typical moment in the life of our frat-boy-in-chief who doesn't realize it's not exactly presidential to offer a surprise neck-rub to the German chancellor.

He's only been president of the United Fucking States for over five years. Hasn't learned not to diminish world leaders with overly familiar, unwanted and downright icky gestures? Good luck solving the world's problems, Georgie.

Career Planning For Dummies

I am not a lawyer. This is a good thing.

Save a SEAL

Thirteen hundred people showed up to a bone marrow drive in Spotswood yesterday to try and save a U.S. Navy SEAL with blood cancer.

To learn more about the Department of Defense's bone marrow program, click here.

Larry The Minstrel Guy

Here's a clip of Larry The Cable Guy before he put on the black face of a red neck. As usual, hicks are too dumb to be offended.

NRO Got Fooled Again

John J. Miller from National Review Online compiled a list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs. He did so with a contortionist's effort to twist words to his purposes, ignoring the avowed and blatant liberal ideologies of the songwriters while expressing a curious affinity for Rush and the Kinks. Mostly, though, he just picked a lot of mediocre and crappy songs. His second list is no better.

It takes a real genius to include songs by The Sex Pistol and The Clash on this list. Not to mention those conservative poster-boy bands like The Beatles. It's an exercise akin to walking in as an uninvited guest to dinner at someone's house and telling them their interior decoration is all wrong for their sense of style.

I'm particularly irked by Miller's insistence that any song expressing patriotism or "conservative values" belongs primarily to the Rush Limbaugh set and not to someone who both loves his country and has the balls to criticize it occasionally. Since when is unconditional love such a high value? Isn't this how women get abused by their husbands and fathers? Well, luckily we have Aerosmith's (apparently completely earnest) paean to a daughter's trigger-happy gun-lust revenge on her daddy in "Janie's Got a Gun." I'm sure that's something Richard Tyler is proud of.

Suggesting CCR's "Who'll Stop the Rain" is anything but a lefty anti-Vietnam anthem is just plain wishful thinking.

I'll let Pete Townshend defend his "Won't Get Fooled Again" as Miller's pick for the #1 conservative rock song.

I always find it funny to hear Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or Laura Ingraham play music by Don Henley or Bruce Springsteen or Neil Young as bumpers before and after commercials. It's fun to think you belong to a club that would shun you.

The bottom line is that rock music has always been made primarily to foment change and kick at the doors of the establishment. When so-called conservative notions leak into the mix, it's only because we are not a country (or world) of black and white, red and blue, bad and good automotons, but human beings with complicated opinions and feelings. Loving your country and wishing it were even better are not mutually exclusive stances.

To borrow from today's youth vernacular and the religious right's most recent bugaboo, let me say this about Miller's attempt to ingratiate his ideology on rock music: That's soooo gay.

A Grateful Anthem

Happy Independence Day, America.

Betting, Littering, and Burying

Off-track betting comes to Woodbridge, somewhat under the radar of residents.

Iselin's Little India just ain't the way it used to be, especially if you're not from South Asia.

And Woodbridge mourns the death of their mayor. Funeral service attendees included former Mayor and former Gov. Jim McGreevey, who is a lot shorter than I suspected.

Woodbridge Mayor Dies

Woodbridge Mayor Frank Pelzman died yesterday.

Here are my three stories.

How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?

The answer to that question, first asked by Depression-era songwriter Alfred Reed, is: Bruce Springsteen.

My passion for Bruce only seems to grow with time. As times get harder and darker, he lifts and shows the light. In this song, first performed with three new verses he wrote to perform in New Orleans, Bruce does that Bruce thing. From tragedy and anger and pain comes enlightenment and the sliver of hope. Even if that hope only lasts as long as it takes to finish a song.

As always, Bruce isn't for everyone (certainly not on a first-name basis like we are). But listen to this and try not to feel. It probably says more about you than him, I figure.

And you can always let him teach you to count.

By The Dawn's Early Blight

A Woodbridge woman flies the Puerto Rican flag on her lawn, mostly to spite her neighbors. What a country! (Spoken in Yakov Smirnoff accent.)

Tangled Up in the Big Red

"All the people we used to know/ they're an illusion to me now/ Some are mathematicians/ some are carpenters' wives/ Don't know how it all got started/ I don't know what they're doin' with their lives.'' … Bob Dylan

Living in New Jersey again has been disorienting to my sense of forward narrative thrust. I always thought my life's story should move me -- physically, at least -- to new and far-flung places. But little disorients more than confronting your past and present at the same time.

I should have expected the cold.

Ten years ago, I graduated from a school perched -- hunched, really -- on a hill in Ithaca, N.Y., the product of an ancient glacier that plopped down for some millennia on its way to the valley it was to form.

The school is a collection of ivy-and-rust-covered buildings in a most uncomfortably beautiful landscape. It was founded by a man named Ezra Cornell, and he thought: "Could there be a more strenuous location for my university?'' Likely, no. There it sits, and all others trudge.

I drove back there two weeks ago for the Class of '96 Reunion, and of course it rained.

I honestly can't remember a trip to school when it wasn't raining or snowing. Sunshine was out of the question. Other towns further north might get more snow, might get colder in negative degrees Fahrenheit or wind-chill index, but few towns can surpass the all-encompassing climatic misery that dominates Ithaca.

The seriousness with which most inhabitants/students take the university, is co-enabler in this particularly dysfunctional family. Solid months of head-down frozen slogging, wind-shielding, toe-numbing pain and despondency. And then there's the winter.

Perhaps because of the weather or just the prevailing attitude, the Cornell campus is one where eye contact is a precious commodity, hoarded away -- stockpiled for rare and disingenuous occasions.

So the reunion was an opportunity to exercise those old avoidance skills, while wearing a sweatshirt and holding an air-chilled beer on summer days.

I attended with a contingent of 10 close friends, whose weddings I've been and will go to, whose children I poke in the stomach, and whose money I borrow for the time in between winning it in poker and losing it at the next game.

I embraced and kissed other friends and acquaintances, happy to see them and learn the brief rundown of their lives. Some encounters jarred me a little. It turns out three guys from my high school class married three girls from college (I guess they're women now, even if that still doesn't sound right), and they live in and around my hometown.

I'm not sure how I feel about Ron and Beth living in Vicky's childhood home with their twin babies. Old, I suppose.

But also young. Having recently graduated journalism school with a younger crowd and setting out on a new career, I've learned you're only as old as you feel. And if I subtract the rapid aging that comes from pulling for the New (Jersey) Jets, then I'm feeling pretty young these days.

Mostly we drank and ate bad, wonderful things smothered with cheese. We stayed in the same dorms we lived in as freshmen and clogged the same toilets, smelled the same musty smells and mocked the monstrous construction transforming part of the campus into incongruous public housing projects. We stayed up late talking about nothing and tried not to feel tired.

Driving back to my current life, the roads stayed dry and I stopped off to watch a school buddy's baby crawl into walls with a smile wider than the Delaware Water Gap. I arrived home in Highland Park filled with curiosity about the future and warmed by memories.

Kids Play Lax, Adults Wear Funny Hats, and the Benefits of Fire Tax

Monroe lacrosse kids smack each other silly.

Adult graduates in New Brunswick get ready for all-new post-diploma disappointments of life.

And Carteret Fire Company #2 turns 100. Blow out the candles (but not with that can of hairspray).

Heil Heathcliff!

Here's a blog dedicated to cats that look like Hitler. And might I say, it's about time.

A Harvard Giggity Address

Family Guy guru Seth MacFarlane speaks to Harvard grads. So does Peter and Stewie Griffin. And, of course, Quagmire.