Bouquets and Brickbats
To US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for embarking on a “massive testing and research effort” to help understand the causes of the alarming rise in autism, a condition that was vanishingly rare fifty years ago but now affects about 3 percent of American children under the age of 8. “Everything is on the table,” Kennedy said, during a recent interview with Fox News, “our food system, our water, our air, different ways of parenting, all the kinds of changes that may have triggered this epidemic.”
While Kennedy critics were quick to denounce the Health Secretary for a multitude of sins, from being willing in the past to consider the possible role of some early childhood vaccines in triggering the illness to noting that some autistic …
Big Game
Only two distant stations are available through the rabbit-ear wire antenna, and your boss can only reach you through a pay phone. Welcome to the 1970s.
A doper lady who camps out under the stars hitches a ride from a millionaire with a hole in his heart.
When you pay, you can really move.
Back in the 1970s I had the perfect job. A motor club paid me to go to all the resorts and tourist attractions in Colorado. I crossed the continental divide 23 times that summer. I ran free as the snowy clouds that were scuttled over the peaks, close enough to touch.
The boss knew I camped out every night along the rushing rivers, but I was never sure he knew I took my big brown dog along. Perhaps he turned a blind eye because I sold more advertising than my predecessor. Still, the job paid relatively little. The cheap motels I could afford felt like prisons and staying in them would have put my boss in my ear each evening. There are advantages to a lack of connectivity that we fail to value now. To me, forty hours seemed sufficient labor for the little I earned, so I dreamed under the stars and called him each morning instead.
I didn’t have much of a car when I applied. The Rambler was okay …
Critics Corner
Dead Kennedys at Irving Plaza
Zine-making is a dying art. Recently I found an old zine in my room called Broken Nights Brooklyn. I remember picking it up at an old guitar shop a couple years ago and thinking that it was one of the best zines I had ever read. Which it probably still is, I’ll be honest. When I rediscovered it , I went on a long search to find a more recent issue, only to learn that the issue I had was the only one ever made.
Sadly, most zines nowadays are discarded like trash or used by aging Lower East Side hipsters to wipe their chins after eating a falafel sandwich. But looking back, Broken Nights Brooklyn contained a prophecy of my future taste in music. So many of the bands that I didn’t know existed when I first read it are now some of my local favorites. It even included a review of a show that featured T.S.O.L. and Black Flag. But, …
