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Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Actually had to spend time in a mall today... always odious. Kid's toys. Ate this Arthur Treacher fish that was both artless and treacherous; it turned immediately into bowel-churning greased feces and if that description sounds disgusting, try visiting a Long Island mall on Xmas week.
The large pop-art cock was one of numerous artworks lending rare grace to the concern. Now the place is bereft of these li'l islands of greenery and sculpture; the promenades are instead dotted with krap kiosks and snack counters. Soft pretzels covered with brown sugar and toffee goop to eat while purchasing battery-operated trick dog toys that disintegrate on the way home.
When I worked in Sam Goody records, the disco era was in full flower. I was forever trying to play Tom Waits in-store before the boss took it off and put something awful on the stereo. During the holiday shopping season, one of the albums in heavy rotation was the unimaginably rotten, utterly unendurable Salsoul Orchestra "Christmas Jollies." The cover is shown below, along with the original, peek-a-boo ass pic of the Salsoul girl, which the crack design team at Salsoul records bowdlerized for the Christmas album. That same craft and taste informs the music as well, an incessant boomboom disco beat throbbing without variation under the comfort-and-joyless mynah bird chorus disemboweling seasonal favorites sacred and secular.
Years ago I worked in a mall. There's a view of its interior way back in those days:
The large pop-art cock was one of numerous artworks lending rare grace to the concern. Now the place is bereft of these li'l islands of greenery and sculpture; the promenades are instead dotted with krap kiosks and snack counters. Soft pretzels covered with brown sugar and toffee goop to eat while purchasing battery-operated trick dog toys that disintegrate on the way home.
When I worked in Sam Goody records, the disco era was in full flower. I was forever trying to play Tom Waits in-store before the boss took it off and put something awful on the stereo. During the holiday shopping season, one of the albums in heavy rotation was the unimaginably rotten, utterly unendurable Salsoul Orchestra "Christmas Jollies." The cover is shown below, along with the original, peek-a-boo ass pic of the Salsoul girl, which the crack design team at Salsoul records bowdlerized for the Christmas album. That same craft and taste informs the music as well, an incessant boomboom disco beat throbbing without variation under the comfort-and-joyless mynah bird chorus disemboweling seasonal favorites sacred and secular.
"Fuck me Elvis" (as we said in those days), it sucked. And it made those already wretched hours eeeeendless.
At every available opportunity I'd slip away to Beefsteak Charlie's to drink away the agony. As did most of the store's management on Christmas Eve itself, which presented a grand opportunity to purloin stacks of records, tapes, styluses, cartridges, microphones, tape decks, headphones, cables, instruments, songbooks, office supplies, et al, right under their inebriated noses. I wonder if the great R. Stevie Moore, then working at one of Sam Goody's New Jersey stores, did the same. I got fired three times from that place. Sometimes I still dream that I'm showing up for work there, looking for my time card. Then I wake up, drunk.
Ah, holiday memories!
Ah, holiday memories!
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