Brooklyn resident Ben Sargent has attracted a rumbling of local press over the past week for running an underground (in both the “unlicensed” and “in his basement” sense) lobster roll joint in Greenpoint; the buzz seems to have emanated from Liza Mosquito de Guia’s fun video profile of The Underground Lobster Pound for food. curated.
Upon further investigation, it turns out Sargent hosts a weekly online radio show called “Catch It, Cook It, Eat It” for Heritage Radio. On said show, Sargent recently interviewed a memorable group dubbed the Night Crawlers: As the name suggests, the Night Crawlers are fishermen who prefer to spin their reels under cover of night. Armed with a simple motive — “to find the best fishing possible” — and a shared frustration over the dearth of public shore access, the Crawlers duck under barbed wire fences and pogo between rusty pier pilings to find and exploit underutilized fishing spots along the East River waterfront in Brooklyn and Queens.
There’s nothing especially remarkable here thus far — after all, Brooklyn seems to have become ground zero for urbanites who harvest their own food within murky legal parameters. What makes the interview indispensable Monday-morning jackoffery, rather, is the Crawlers’ approach to the taping: They arrived at the studio resembling a gaggle of Zapatistas, donning hoodies, ski masks, dark shades and bandanas while insisting on using voice distortion technology throughout the recording. The “Fish Slayer” and a couple of his sidekicks spend a half-hour schooling Sargent on the nuances of NYC trespassing law, the joys of falling into the soup (“I was lucky enough to fall in at high tide”), and the thrill of the potentially carcinogenic chase (“It’s sort of like a video game. There are, like, different stages, (and) the stakes are higher and it gets more and more difficult the deeper you get in…Yeah, it’s really fun because it’s a balancing act: You literally jump over stuff. I mean, it’s just like Donkey Kong sometimes”).
The highly-recommended full audio interview lives here. To put faces disguises to the voices, jump to the 4:25 mark in the video below:
We know, we know: The State of the Union played its typical role as an irrelevant exercise in smarminess and manufactured etiquette, and the iPad cooks blueberry pancakes while producing orgasms on command. We’re not going to talk about these things — we’ll leave that to everyone else in America.
We want to instead bring attention to a deserving topic the mainstream media has unconscionably abandoned in recent times: the plight of the Missing Young Reasonably-Attractive Blond White Woman (MYRABWW). The fact that most sane American media consumers suffered Natalee Holloway overload years ago hasn’t deterred Western Hemisphere evildoers from creating MYRABWWs (evildoers from other parts of the globe being more egalitarian in their kidnappings and slayings of Westerners). No, the epidemic has carried on with nary a stumble. After all, there are,like, other things going on. But while Anderson Cooper and his ilk have moved on to maintaining spectacular muscle tone (nohomo) in way-less-pretty Caribbean locales, one news outlet has steadfastly maintained its toehold on the stories that matter. It should come as no surprise that this outlet, as the only collection of newsgatherers brave enough to regurgitate the same below-the-fold story for three straight years, also happens to represent America’s last bastion of objective journalism; its last semblance of an independent media unshackled by governmental censorship; its last bearer of the torch of free speech; its last source…of hope. These descriptors can, of course, apply only to one Fox News.
This isn’t to say that others have failed for lack of effort: CNN, via a series of ever-dumber website redesigns and an increased focus on Anna Nicole Smith and her pitiful troupe of supporting characters/survivors, tried valiantly. I mean, they really tried. NBC fortified its all-news cable offerings with more talking heads, some of whom can scream almost as loud as Glenn Beck — the key word, however, being “almost.” No, the reasons for Fox News’ emergence as the paragon of free press become apparent as soon as one scoots over to their easy-on-the-eyes (read: a few giant words and a plethora of shiny photos) website: Awash in patriotic colors (signifying love of country manifested in intense scrutiny of a few America-hating politicians), the homepage alone betrays Fox News’ unmatched tenacity in thoroughly reporting stories (the ACORN Pimp, Sarah Palin) the whole lot of its capricious competitors have long since abandoned in pursuit of…whatever. So dominant, in fact, is the network in its coverage of breaking and long-since-broken news that it has seemingly set its sights on a burgeoning form of new media — fake news.
For the moment, however, Fox News’ looming standoff with The Onion is neither here nor there; this is about the MYRABWWs. And nowhere is the network’s MYRABWW prowess more evident than in its U.S. news section, a cornerstone of FOXNews.com that comprises unrivaled coverage of the Supreme Court, the H1N1 flu virus, and, in America’s Future, the four most important issues we’ll face going forward: Water, Security, Islam in America, and, of course, Textbooks. But the domestic news section’s ticket-puncher has long been and will, God-willing, continue to be, Crime. This is where you’ll find the news that shapes America. This is where you’ll find the MYRABWWs.
On that note, we’re pleased to report that, as observed in a random sampling taken earlier today, Fox News continues to hold itself to the same standards that brought us groundbreaking pieces on JWoww’s wardrobe transformation and the status of the eight-limbed Indian girl: Front and center on the domestic Crime page — nay, the entire U.S.homepage — is an update on the latest tragic twist in a case involving a Virginia MYRABWW. Kudos, Fox News. Keep us in the know (unless the victim’s black, brown, pudgy, big-nosed, brunette and not super-hot, over 30, freckly, foreign, or a man).
Ms. Nina Nilssen, rest in peace. Middle America never knew ya.
Bay Area hip-hopper The Clap may or may not have perished in one of the myriad natural disasters that have struck Southeast Asia and Oceania in the past three weeks. Composing one-third of seminal San Fran provocateurs Dead Horses, The Clap and his misogynistic, drug-riddled hedonism will be missed by many dozens of people should he fail to return of good health and spirit. He also owes DCQ $31.50, so there’s that, too. Clap, please come back and kill ‘em all, preferably before rent’s due on the 1st.
(Warning: Video and lyrical content therein completely devoid of moral fiber).
Telefon Tel Aviv is half the band it used to be: Charles Cooper died in January in Chicago at age 31, with media reports suggesting he may have committed suicide. TTA’s surviving member, Joshua Eustis, has remained mum on the circumstances surrounding his bandmate’s death. In any event, Eustis recently tapped a longtime friend and collaborator to join him on tour this summer.
Telefon’s playing a number of September shows in DCQ territory — find a way to get there (dates below). And if you still don’t have Immolate Yourself, cop it stat or follow the album’s instructions.
Hint: It may be one of the locations in the opening montage of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, which we’re not saying we’ve seen, but we might have talked to someone who’s seen it, so don’t even go thinking what you’re thinking of thinking. Because really. Have some faith.
…desde Grecia. That’s a semi-sorry attempt to merge a language I haven’t yet learned with one I’ve already forgotten. A couple quick observations from my brief stay in the country:
- America doesn’t have a copyright on public parks littered with used condoms and needles.
- Spain doesn’t have a copyright on placing copious amounts of crane next to heavily-touristed national treasures.
- The exterior of the National Archaeological Museum is very similar to that of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum.
- The interior of the National Archaeological Museum is much more impressive than that of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum.
A portion of the DCQ team is currently en route to Greece for a month long sabbatical. You may ask, how can he vacation for a whole month, and not lose his esteemed position as a DCQ contributor? Well, he’s just that smooth. And also, he’s promised to provide some Greek-related posts during his travels. Enjoy some ouzo for us, buddy.
We were robbed. That we knew immediately. Musty clothes covered every inch of linoleum floor, from the cinderblock walls to the kicked-in back door. Two worn, ransacked backpacks lay somewhere underneath. The passports! Still in their place, alongside the credit cards and insurance cash under the plastic-sheathed mattress. Amid the tumult of the floor, an iPod stood out in its fluorescence, headphones disconnected earlier and stashed separately. They’d left this behind. They didn’t know what it was.
The cameras! The cameras. Gone. They got the motherfucking cameras. The ones with the photos of the beaches and the waterfalls and the jungles and the strutting street kids and the islands and the funeral pyre and the dirty fish markets and Waterloo and Maracas Bay and San Juan de las Galdonas. The cameras packed in our bags an hour before as we’d left our rented, windowless apartment to drink one last Carib with friends and close the book on Port-of-Spain and Carnival Tuesday. To bring closure to three days of round-the-clock costumed, painted, sweaty revelry and three weeks of haggling and tromping our way through Trinidad and northeastern Venezuela. Upon reaching Tragarete Road, we dove into a pulsing current of celebration, each participant a member of a “band” clothed in the stereotypical vision of cultures real and imagined — ”Egyptians” in full King Tut headgear, “jungle warriors” with leaves covering only the most forbidden of body parts, “Americans” channeling John Wayne.
The coordinated costumed pranced alongside flatbed semis alternately carrying full bars and stacks of speakers blasting the designated soca songs of the year (and there were about eight of those, played with according frequency). But this was day three — and we were out of Puncheon spitfire rum, with a plane to Tobago leaving in three hours. Our gang was easy to find — they were usually hanging in the steel-pan yard on the corner, shirtless and stinking from too many consecutive days of music and beer and just trying to “maintain” through the weeks of nonstop practice leading up to the festival proper. We said goodbye to Nigel and Kurt and Tommy and the kind dreadlocked guy Lennox whose canines were chiseled down to vampire fangs and walked back to the unkempt, ground-level unit to collect our packed bags en route to the airport. Only they were no longer packed.
Suspects abounded: Bryan, our drug-dealing landlord with stitches sealing a two-inch mystery gash above his Adam’s apple. Anthony, the skinny dark-skinned man who charmed us weeks earlier with his sordid story of growing up in The States for 35 years before being deported in the ‘80s for smoking a joint in San Fran’s Washington Square Park, who had led us to Bryan when we were in desperate need of shelter? The group of standoffish teenage boys loitering outside Bryan’s apartment when we left for the parade earlier? Nigel, the band leader and our entree to true Trini culture, our unofficial Tragarete Road tour guide? Could he have!? Someone who knew we wouldn’t have time to call the cops over for a report. Someone poor; that eliminated nobody. Someone who knew our schedule — someone who knew us. Someone we’d never find.
