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Dunce Cap Quarterly
Sound AIDS prevention advice on all fronts, Indo-Tibetan Border Police…save one:
The man-boy who bragged last fall (while chewing on a gob of Twizzlers for dramatic effect, mind you) that one of the myriad entities suing him had “folded like Mitch Williams in the ninth” in settlement negotiations has pulled the ultimate fiscal implosion: Lenny Dykstra is bankrupt.
Dykstra’s well-documented rise from scumbag athlete to Wall Street darling for bored bankers in desperate need of cocktail party fodder begs a number of questions:
a.) Why does anyone listen to Jim Cramer anymore? Or, more accurately, why did anyone listen to Jim Cramer up until Jon Stewart reduced him to a blubbering, goateed effigy for financial media’s rather long shortcomings during the subprime buildup and collapse?
b.) Who brings Twizzlers to a closed-door meeting in a federal courthouse? During which hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake? “Ashtray money” aside, Lenny either planned out his Twizzler feast hours in advance and stashed the goods in his briefcase, pockets, underwear and/or socks, or employs an assistant whose sole duty as such is to keep Mr. Dykstra with Twizzler-in-hand at all times. “Where’s my fucking Twizzler brick, dude? I didn’t hire you and buy probably one of the top-five most badass Twizzler briefcases around for you to carry everywhere I go and not open and give me Twizzlers LIKE NOW!!!!”
More to come, without a doubt, sooner or later, but hopefully frequently for the rest of our natural lives.
Walking south from 86th on 5th Ave, something seemed odd: Bootyshaker Basin — appropriately located in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — was missing its bootyshakers. Cops blanketed the museum’s steps; no trademark freaking to be seen. Moving south, it became clear that the tenor of the day was, perhaps, a bit less flirtatious than that of years past:
Not a happy woman…
and then an innocent sociopolitical debate turned nasty; out of frame, some young guy cold-clocked another grrrl and everyone went “aaaaahhhhhh” and started pushing each other. It was great fun…
…until the cops came and ruined it for everyone…
A peaceful procession resumes:
DEES EES NO CAHNIVAL! HOO LET YA EEN??
Creeeeeepy:
All in all, the standard hot vibe, a disappointing freakage level, mediocre pics, and many men (and women) with whom you would not want to engage in argument. 51 weeks till next year…7.5 platanos out of 10.
Something led us to that old Dr. Dre/Tupac “California Love” video the other day — you know, the apocalyptic one where they’re running around in rags and ramshackle Hummers, all early Gibson-like? We couldn’t help but admire the stylistic shout-outs (ha! get it? hip-hop reference) they squeeze in there: Aside from the obvious overriding Mad Max trilogy theme, the video opens with vintage Chris Tucker doing his 5th Element thing (you know, the outerspace-crackhead schtick he used to land more lucrative gigs playing comic relief to Jackie Chan’s unintentional straight man) and is followed with a scene lifted from The Warriors before descending into full Road Warrior mode; this later tiptoes quietly into Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome territory when they move to sweeping aerial shots of the stars rapping inside a, yes, Thunderdome. The whole video’s simply fantastic, but why waste it on “California Love?” I know Australian apocalypse-themed jams don’t usually chart, but still: “California Love” is one of the few songs that actually warrants your classic mid-90s rap video — you know, 64s, Cristal, ladies in thongs, egregious materialism, guest spots by other definitively regional rappers.
What’s that you say? Oh.
One of the first warm weekends of this nascent summer in New York, and the streets on Saturday night were quiet where they should’ve been cracking and chaotic where they should’ve been silent. Los Trinitarios seemed to be staying in playing Mob Wars, leaving Los Sures to the older crowd: In the five minutes after I left my house, I exchanged pleasantries with a trio of homeless folks on the shelter steps, passed a heaving circle of Dominicanos going verse-for-verse in front of the mechanic’s garage, came upon an impromptu taco stand—complete with two-man mariachi band—in front of an apartment building, and ducked and weaved through fifteen twentysomething men streaming out of a row house to watch a brawl in the making.
Later, walking to the train through an eerily silent LES, a beater Camry packed with Latino teenagers screeched up alongside me, veering onto the sidewalk across the street and almost hitting a hydrant. On the phone, I glanced over long enough to gather that the driver was fighting with a girl in the passenger side, with another girl riding bitch most certainly not real thrilled about the whole scenario. Before I turned the corner, I looked back in time to see homegirl square up and punch the dude in the jaw, hard, before he drove away. An hour later, after an empty train ride back over the river, I stumbled down from the platform to see a white guy in a Warriors-inspired getup talking to three cops—one uniformed, two plainclothes—with blood caking the left half of his face and big welts rising on his forehead and right cheek. Jumped by kids on the train: “And the worst part was—listen to this—the worst part was, they were videotaping the whole thing! Check Youtube, I think they were doing it to put up there…” And so on.
So apparently, Nadja Benaissa, a 26-year-old singer in Germany’s famed girl group No Angels (equivalent to the US’s Danity Kane) has been arrested on suspicion of infecting one or more sexual partners with HIV. It is unclear whether or not she was in fact the transmitter, according to the source, so I don’t understand how this is even publishable news at this point. Many additional questions continue to float about in my head. I understand that it is incredibly immoral to have unprotected sex without disclosing the fact that you have HIV to your partner. But couldn’t she have been unaware that she was carrying the virus? In that case, is she still culpable? And how did she become infected? If from a previous partner, is he also being prosecuted? I gleaned the following info regarding US laws from a Yahoo answers result (cannot certify its accuracy):
“California has the “Willful Exposure Law” in which it’s considered a felony and you can get up to 8 years in prison. Qualifications for guilt are:
1. Having sex
2. Know that you are HIV positive
3. Not telling your partner you are HIV positive
4. Not using a condom
5. Having the specific intent to infect the other person
Usually they get off because how do you prove “specific intent”? However, The AIDS Policy Center in Washington, D.C., reports that 27 other states have established criminal penalties for knowingly transmitting or exposing another person to HIV. If you want to press charges you need to contact a lawyer and find out what the law specifies in your state.”
DCQ headquarters has come under siege. It started back in the fall, when the landlord responded to our complaint of “there’s mice” by giving us two 99-cent glue traps that never caught anything. At that point it seemed we were dealing with a lone invader, but then he multiplied into two, then four, then eight, maybe more? We bought snap-traps that didn’t work. They made off like bandits with pounds of cheese. Every night, these cretins run amok, gobbling crumbs and shitting on everything. Come in the kitchen after dark and you’re sure to see one of the little bastards bolt across the counter, plunge into the burner and escape through the stove. So we got a bunch of poison disguised as delicious mouse food. They ate two boxes of it and came back for thirds. Things looked dire.
Then we befriended Specklebutt.
He set up shop like Chris and Snoop:
Now nobody fucks with us.
