Post-Partum New York Stories> Act One: Sid Yiddish Visits Mykel Board

Every once in a while you take a vacation that is so fun, so exciting and so memorable that it stays with you long after the reality of the world kicks in. I had one of those a few weeks ago, in New York City. What I hope to present to you from now until the end of the photos I will share with you, 441 in all, some of the more outstanding highlights and lowlights.

I'd been planning this trip for over a year. I was originally scheduled to go last fall. I had been previously scouted by poet & venue host Roxanne Hoffman at a previous poetry event at The Bowery Poetry Club in New York City April, 2005, but the surgery and extraction of three wisdom teeth drained me of my trip funds so I had to postpone it until the following year when I knew I would be on solid financial ground.

This trip was a two-fold purpose; to perform at a few nightclubs and to have fun, the latter of which I did everyday. New York City despite all its criticism by those who either used to live there or those who disdain it otherwise, is a very vibrant, beautiful city. Sure it's had its share of misfortunes like 911 and losing baseball teams, but there is no place on earth like it. Other cities pale in comparison to it and that's no lie.

I left the morning of Saturday, October 7, just excited to be going there once more. For a long time I hated New York City and for the life of me, I cannot remember why now. Well, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I love it now.

I stayed with my good friend Mykel Board. Like me, there are many sides to him, most notably author and columnist for Maximum Rocknroll. He's a good guy, no-nonsense and everytime I see him, he teaches me a new trick or two.

But I had two requirements; get him a bottle of Everclear and don't be a pest. Being a pest I did my best not to be. The Everclear was another story, as my friend Pierre who owns a liquor store in the town I live in, didn't want to sell me a bottle as I told him I was transporting it in my checked luggage.

"I don't want you to be arrested, man! That stuff is 120 percent proof," he exclaimed. Mykel suggested that I put it beneath my clothes which I did. I also snuck my screwdriver set and my Furbies inside. Just imagine all the possibilities you can have with a bottle of Everclear, a six-piece screwdriver set and two Furbies all stowed away beneath a jetliner carrying tons of fuel! Think of all the terroist possibilities! Well, I solved the problem. I bought a couple of ice-like holders for the Everclear, kept them inside my freezer, while I kept the Everclear in the fridge until the morning I left town.

But where to put the car? Seems the city I live in has a some sort of obscure law, that says you cannot leave your car on the street for more than seven days undriven! Stupid law, considering the last few places I've lived I never had a problem leaving it on the street when I went on vacation. So, only having lived here for less than a month, I found a friend who knew someone who let me put my car in her garage during the week I was gone. I hate stupid laws, not laws in general, but stupid ones!

Mykel Board's apartment is like a living inside a museum or a thrift store! Every possible little trinket or book you might imagine is there, plus a lot of Yankees memorabilia. Naturally, he's a Yankees fan, but I still don't know why.

He also collects Negroes. Yes, you heard me right, Mykel Board collects Negroes. Not the human kind, but the trinket kind as you see by some of the photos here. In this first act, besides photos of yours truly, you get a mini-photo tour of the inside of Mykel Board's apartment& his trinkets.
Enjoy!

The Obscure Derelict Diversion: An Occupational Hazard>Act 31

Disclaimer: Obscurity brings safety. The street to obscurity is paved with athletes who can perform great feats before friendly crowds. The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance, that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph. What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care. Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity. Fiction can be that way sometimes. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental & should not be taken or misconstrued as such. Anyone who thinks otherwise probably believes that obscurantism is the academic theorist's revenge on society for having consigned him or her to relative obscurity a way of proclaiming one's superiority in the face of one's diminished influence, more so that darkness is to space what silence is to sound and obscurity is the realm of error.

Well, it is said that lately in and around the great prison walls of Devil’s Island, prison guards have been harassing prisoners at breakneck speed. Often the harassment stems from personal vendettas, jealousies and Acts of God. Some of these actions are leading prisoners to commit great acts of obscurity, including their own untimely deaths, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

It is a common practice for prison guards here on Devil’s Island to let certain prisoners slip by with violations a-plenty and a smile, while other prisoners are ordered to follow obscure rules simply because they were not smiled upon.

It’s called the obscure derelict diversion and it separates the men from the boys; the women from the girls; the phonies from the honest, the good from the evil and the saps from the lackeys. The prison guards have been doing strange things to amuse themselves lately and that includes accidental and untimely prisoner deaths, but after all, what’s another prisoner death on Devil’s Island anyway?

It apparently stems from a trickle-down document that surfaced recently during a locked-door meeting held by prisoner guards, which of course Broadcast Betty had privy to be invited to. After all, good misinformation scares Devil’s Island prisoners. The meeting primarily focused on old and often overlooked obscure prison procedures to more speedily execute longtime prisoners taking up good cell-space on Devil’s Island.

Take Trixie Pixie for example; always attentive to every prisoner’s needs; always the one to go above and beyond the call of what skill required within the Devil’s Island prisoner labor camp; always a shining asset to Upper Prison Brass, yet some unknown obscure law caught her full of too much juice one day and due to an extremely obscure prison procedure, she was executed.

Then there was The Anglican Choir Boy, who was recaptured after many months of being on the lam. Once he was placed back into the system, they brainwashed him into thinking everything was okay, but of course it wasn’t, as one day a trigger-happy prison guard “accidentally” shot The Anglican Choir Boy in the back, similar in style to the coward who shot famous outlaw Jesse James in the late 1800s. No one ever made mention of the “accidental” incident ever again and the trigger-happy guard was rewarded with his own watch office.

And then of course there was the unfortunate death of Mother Hen Martha that broke up the infamous choking-smoking, wheezing-sneezing OCTOBER Sisters, based on a pressurized psychological noose that prison guards kept tightening around her neck. It went on for weeks, until one day without warning, Mother Hen Martha swung herself hard off a chair and the rest as they say, is history.

Often times I find myself in their rifle scope between their well-placed obscure procedures and boundaries of falsehoods. But where is truth on Devil’s Island? Is there such a movement as truth? Be it so done my friends, that there’s enough obscurity to be placed upon the entire prison population here on Devil’s Island, including the self-appointed and anointed prison guards.

Be it so said that some might try to decipher or decode what is written here. Let them. Beware however, of the felled obscurity that will boomerang back into their spineless bodies, thereby giving birth to the affliction commonly known as the great obscurity dereliction fruition that infects only those who set foot onto Devil’s Island!