Managing partner Patrick Oxford, who joined Giuliani at the
announcement, said the firm was seeking a New York office when it approached
Giuliani about seven months ago.

“The name Rudolph Giuliani,” Oxford said, “is
synonymous with strong and effective leadership.” Plans for the Bracewell &
Giuliani venture were revealed a few days before Thursday’s formal announcement
at The Waldorf-Astoria hotel, in midtown Manhattan.(NYDN)

That's funny. I associate the name "Rudolph Giuliani" with the murder of Amadou Diallo. i associate that name with the murder of Patrick Dorismond and the illegal leak of his police record to the media in a disgusting attempt to excuse the crime and depict his life as worthless. i associate Rudolph Giuliani with all those pictures of Abner Louima's brutalized face - his teeth broken from having the Plunger with which he was raped shoved down his throat - on that hospital bed.

I also associate Rudy Giuliani with involvement in city workers' union election fraud aimed at keeping leadership amenable to the Giuliani vision of the theme park, safe for suburbanite city in power. I associate Giuliani with police tanks in tompkins square, LES community gardens destroyed to sate the greed of wealthy developers, the neoliberal city ruled at gunpoint, racial formations policed with repeating pistols. I associate Giuliani with political corruption, technocratic, arrogant, power, questionable use of public resources for private enjoyment, armed police officers patrolling the halls of public high schools, massive payoffs.

The first political demonstration i ever went to was the October 22, 1998 march against police brutality, down Broadway from Union Square to City Hall. Because of the experience of growing up in Giuliani's New York, i started organizing. I wrote stuff in my school paper. I went to protests and marches. i wanted to get arrested and participate in civil disobedience. I tried to take over my student government. (Electorally, believe it or not.) I started an "anarchist collective." And then i wound up in New Haven, and saw a related but subtly different form of urban imperialism at work.

The post-9/11 hagiographic rewriting of Rudolph Giuliani does a great deal of violence, and this is a violence directed precisely against those who suffered so much from Giuliani's policies the first time around.

"but my dreams, they aren't as empty as my pocket seems to be."

Well, it makes a lot more sense than the original...

jl's account of the lohan incident makes it onto gawker Right between Nicky Hilton and Winona Ryder, who starred in mean girls back when it was called Heathers and was a much better movie.

last thursday night was walking with a friend down essex b/t
Stanton and rivington when we noticed a bunch of movie trailers lined up along
the street. out of nowhere, lindsay lohan storms past us on the sidewalk with
four curlers in her hair and a really distressed look on her face. she was
wearing a white sweater, which contrasted with the sickly burnt-orange shade of
her skin. if mary-kate resembles a homeless munchkin, then (as my friend noted),
lindsay’s more like an oompa loompa.

Frank Black and Steve Cropper. Interesting.

Honeycomb features work from eminent studio musicians such as
keyboardist Spooner Oldham, guitarist Steve Cropper, and drummer Billy Block.
The album features 11 original songs from Black, including "Atom in My Heart",
"Another Velvet Nightmare" (co-written with Reid Paley), "Go Find Your Saint",
"Violet", "I Burn Today", and "My Life Is in Storage". The three covers that
round out the record are Doug Sahm's "Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day", Roy
Bennett and Sid Tepper's "Song of the Shrimp"-- which was made popular by Elvis
Presley in the film Girls, Girls, Girls-- and Dan Penn and Chips Moman's "Dark
End of the Street".

Happy birthday to Lev, who can now drink legally in this country and therefore should stop all the bourgie globe-hopping now. Also happy birthday to Amelia, who is not bourgie.

If they make a movie of Chloe Does Yale (which i actually read, as good a measure as any of how dismal my life is at the moment,) does Lindsay Lohan play Natalie Krinsky -- err, "Chloe Carrington?" I think she totally does.

I really should be writing more on topic, but i've really been on a sort of hiatus of all things topical recently as i deal with the fallout of things i do not wish to advertise about myself on "the blogosphere." At some point i'll feel stable enough about my life and shit to be able to blog the way i want to, but right now i'm keeping things sporadic and light while i (yet again) attempt to pull myself together.

New York's alright if you like bizarre interractions with former child stars in curlers

Earlier this evening, i was walking down Essex street with JL. Between Stanton and Rivington there were a series of very large trailers, the kind movie stars stay in when filming. I've seen enough NYC movie sets to know one. We were about to muse over the possible occupants of said trailers when a very perturbed Lindsay Lohan rushed down the street with an entourage of white guys dressed in black turtleneck sweaters. LL was all disheveled, with four curlers in her hair. She looked kind of like an anorexic pumpkin. Or maybe an oompa-loompa. Later, we stumbled onto the set of the movie - two big cranes suspended over a lower east side street.

Minnie Driver was much cooler.