Dominance and Submission by Blue Öyster Cult; The Best New Year's Eve Song Ever

By baad lamb

There are literally thousands of Christmas songs, and many hundreds of them get played over and over again throughout this holiday season (which now conveniently starts in October). The repetition makes you so crazy you want to jump in a time machine and go back about 2010 years  to delay a certain family’s departure from Bethlehem on their way to Egypt.

But New Years Eve songs? There can really be only one. And for nearly three centuries it’s been Auld Lang Syne.

It’s really time for a new New Year’s Eve song, don't ya think, and I’ve got one everyone should agree on. It starts with one of the best screams in Rock n' Roll, has plenty of fun, Times Square-centric lyrics; a bouncy call and response chorus that practically forces you to sing along; and contains not one, but two ridiculously fast and furious finger-melting guitar solos.

And it’s from the 1970s, a decade that everyone loves, right?

It starts innocently enough, with an ascending minor key, choppy-chord introduction. But then an emphatic “OH YEAH!” aggressively grabs your earlobes, pushes you to your knees, and sets you up for the fun n’ fear that might happen next. Or not. 

A Very Queer Angle on a Hell’s Kitchen Tenement

Posted by baad lamb

The angular path Broadway creates as it cuts through the regular grid of the Commissioner’s Plan Manhattan is well known for producing interesting building shapes and challenging lots for developers.  The most famous is surely the Flat Iron Building, originally known as the Fuller Building for the developer who built it.

This was not the world’s first steel framed skyscraper construction, but its height and site combined to emphasize the unusual shape, and the prominent position at the southwest corner of Madison Square Park only drew additional attention to this new building method. At the start of construction in 1901, there were still plenty of skeptics predicting the building would fall.

Before steel frames, masonry buildings were essentially small rocks piled on top of the larger supporting rocks below them, but Fuller’s construction company had already built a number of buildings with this new steel frame technology. I saw an exhibit years ago that claimed architect Daniel H. Burnham was so tired of explaining and defending this method, already successfully done plenty of times, that he instructed the construction crews to put up rows of masonry wall in the middle of the building to demonstrate how they could hang alone, with no stones below for support.

But this is not a mystery about the Fuller Building.

Queer Rising in NYC

By Justin

New York City is one of those cities where people still get out to make a difference -- even when it is raining. In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the largest antiwar demonstration at that point in history, in New York City. More than 1,100 people marched with King (who advocated nonviolent, direct action) from Central Park to the United Nations' headquarters to protest the Vietnam War.

This Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, Queer Rising, a new civil disobedience group created in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made a difference. Queer Rising is a group that is part of the change that is happening to the LGBTQI community nationwide. They are taking the struggle for equality into their own hands and educating the public on our struggle.

On Saturday, members of Queer Rising stood in Times Square near the TKTS booth with a captive audience and chanted, handed out flyers and had conversations with onlookers about equality for Queer Americans.

They then moved underground to the subway and handed out many more flyers and then it was off to the Grand Central Station where many people took pictures and were handed flyers and were engaged. 750,000 people pass through Grand Central Station daily so it was a great venue.

This weekend I was reminded of the Dr. King quote when he said “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. What a great way to spend a weekend in NYC -- making a difference!

You can find out more about Queer Rising on Facebook.

Bomb Scare At Times Square - NYPD Drops Ball Big Time

Posted by Donnie

Recently, CBS reported that an abandoned van was noticed in the middle of Times Square shortly before New Year's Eve. Malfeasance in not inspecting the van in timely fashion which posed a clear security risk has been admitted by the NYPD. It's a serious matter given that the van was across the street from the NASDAQ ticker. To make matters worse, the van was parked very close to the exact location where an explosive device was detonated near the military recruitment station in March of 2008. ( That case is unsolved.) Reports are appearing that an authentic looking identification card issued by an organization called Detective Crime Clinic was displayed on the dash board. Many of these bogus placards which mimic legal parking permits are placed in cars with the intent of avoiding a summons or having one's car towed. A website called uncivil servant has long lobbied against bogus, legal or improper use of official parking permits. The organization photographs and publishes the offenders on their website. The owner of the van has been identified George Freyre, a street peddler from New Jersey. The van contained knockoff Burberry Scarves. It has long been known in law enforcement that the illegal counterfeit goods organizations have ties to terrorism and organized crime syndicates. This incident as well as the recent explosion onboard the Delta Northwest flight are strong evidence that our city and nation are still vulnerable to terrorism.

(AP photo)

Walking Backward through Times Square

Posted by Father Tony

Watch this amazing video by artist Hye Yeon Nam. It is the runner-up in Metropolis Art Prize 2009.

(via c-monster)