Burger Joint makes you feel in the know for knowing about it. In a city (New York) known for its money, in an area known for being expensive (Manhattan in General), and in a hotel known for its opulence (Le Parker Meridien), Burger Joint is the sort of place you might only hear about if someone told you. Though it seems to have gotten a fair amount of press, and the business is brisk by any measure, it is still a place that makes someone feel cool by proxy.
Important factors:
- The only sign to mark the place is a neon burger.
- This neon burger is on a wall at the back of a dark little alley hidden behind a curtain all the way in the corner of an atrium whose footprint is the better part of a city block.
- The place has no windows and a pretty baffling melange of posters. Up in Smoke? Sex in the City? The Sopranos I can understand, but why Wild Hogs?
- Entering and exiting the Burger Joint requires entering and exiting the Parker Meridien, which means that a paid hand outside will call you a gentleman (gender permitting) and ask you if you would like a cab. In those situations I tend to start feeling a little like R. Kelly.
- Now that you are in the know, you can get your friends in on it too.
Beyond all this, the burgers are great. I am always impressed when a place will sell me a bloody hamburger, though this is by no means mandatory. The shakes were perfect, and they certainly didn’t skimp on the fries. All said and done, it should cost you about $15 to get a full meal, though the cost of feeling cool and sharing awesome little secrets with your friends is just short of priceless.
The bus station, much like (but to a lesser degree than) the airport, is a non-place. To see the bus station of a place is hardly to see the place at all. Perhaps while you are waiting for your next bus, you can sample the way that this particular McDonald’s makes their fries or purchase a hat with the logo of the local sports team. You are not in that place, though, you are in the entrance/exit of that place. A bus station is the outer skin of the place, just close enough to see if the people are more physically attractive or ideal than the place you just came from. You are almost there, just on the outside borders, but not quite there yet. (more…)
Filed under: book, postmodernism | Tags: ellroy, gravity's rainbow, paranoia, postmodernism, pynchon, rockets
Today while reading a collection of James Ellroy short pieces (a bunch of crime articles for GQ and a few novellas) entitled Destination: Morgue!, I started to think about how obsessive great artists tend to be. Ellroy, for example, is obsessed with boxing and the murder of his mother, echoing certain obsessions that Raymond Chandler had. Essentially, the reason that they write about obsession so well is that the act of writing is the channeling of that obsession, not the release from it, but the distillation of it. Simply put, they obsess through their writing, and the obsessions of the characters become that much more real for it.
Now, Thomas Pynchon is an altogether different beast. I have been attempting to read Gravity’s Rainbow, but I am finding it so dense and evocative that I can only manage to bust my way through ten pages at a time. When describing a desk, he describes each thing on that desk with the precision and thought generally reserved for a short story writer charged with writing a story-long description of the desk. (more…)
So, it turns out that I have been neglecting this blog. I will start writing more again. First off, I vow to stop waiting until I have what I consider to be a “great” idea for a post, as this means that I usually end up having an idea about once a week and posting even less. I believe that this will better reflect what is going on with me and the ideas that I am interested in.
Second, I will be attempting to start an online magazine with a friend of mine, and thus I will have a forum for my long, rambling, detailed ideas that is not this blog. The ideas in this blog will be smaller, the posts will be more streamlined, and with any luck, you won’t have to put up with so much just because you kind of like me.
Recently I have been listening to more and more older music. These things include: Stax Records Singles (1959-1968) and the like. It got me to thinking that the context in which we listen to our music has a great effect on how we hear it. Our grandparents listened to music differently than we do, our parents listened to it differently than they do now, and we listen to it in a way that no one would have dreamed of. I never truly appreciated a lot of this music until I started to listen to it on my own terms. In the context of an oldies radio station, motown songs always sounded so dated to me. Especially when they were accompanied by an intro discussing in which year they were released. 1960, for example, was 25 years before I was born. I am not even 25 years past my birth year, so thinking of 25 before it is just incomprehensible.
Listening to these things on my ipod certainly changes things. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to use a walkman for the first time, listening to music as you wander around a city, for the first time being able to take personal music listening out of the context of the home and bring it with you wherever you want to go. Now, I can fit probably every motown release onto a player about the size of a deck of cards. My parents used to have to buy 45’s.
Infinite availability has inured us to the genius of past generations of musicians, I think, but it doesn’t have to keep inuring us. We can use this to our advantage. I think many people would find that Roy Orbison can seem as brilliant to us as he did to our parents, that Otis Redding can still sing a song that breaks your heart, that Coltrane still cooks, and that the king still rocks. Basically, we should use what we have to our advantage. Try listening to something old, you might be surprised that it doesnt sound so dated when you take it in on your own terms. As a matter of fact, it may sound newer for its unfamiliarity.
