video killed the radio star

Not really...corporate mediocrity and convergence killed the radio star. Also, television killed the radio star. Video is awesome. I love love love watching movies and also certain tv shows on dvd. for real.

The following is a representation of what went down yesterday after I received an irate phone call from a local video store at approximately 9:30am. The excerpts taken are from a Yelp review (or open letter) that I wrote to comment on what had happened and from the owner's response to my comment, and finally my comment back on his comment.

Last year in January I moved away from Bernal Heights and away from the proximity of Four Star Video. So, I haven't been there for almost a year. In June of this year, I received an angry, almost threatening call from an employee at Four Star urging me to pay the $15 in fines that I still owe them. I don't have a movie checked out from them. It's just the late fines he's trying to collect from me. Well, I was recovering from surgery at the time and my mind was on other things. This morning I got another threatening phone call from a Four Star Video employee which detailed the fact that I have not rented from them in a year but that if I do not pay them the $15 that I owe them, they will report me to a credit bureau. Please guys, who do you think you are? The video store mafia?? I understand the importance of supporting small businesses, but you are ridiculous to call me and speak on my voicemail in this fashion!! Save your threats and bullying for someone who gives a damn. Oh, and by the way, the video store is great - criterion collection, films organized by director, all the perks. I just object to this collection tactic.

[not an hour later, I received this response from "Ken Shelf"]

Hi Lauren,

I see you were very angry about our voice mails. Sorry about that. Our only hope by calling you is that you would pay your bill.

I also see that you signed up for Yelp specifically to give us a negative review. Why didn't you just call us and talk to us about your bill? That probably would have saved you time and saved us from wondering if you were planning on paying.

I am truly sorry that you had a surgery. I hope you are better now. And I see that you think we should just forget about the money you owe us. However, please understand that if we have 1000 customers who all think that we should forget about our fees, then our business suffers.

We are a small business, in a challenging industry. To that end, we have some of the lowest prices in town. In order to stay afloat, we need to be paid for the service we provide.

I really wish you would remove the negative post and call me to discuss your account. I am sure you would find me easy to talk to.

Regards,

Ken Shelf
Owner, Four Star Video

[to this bit, I responded...]

Ken,

I might have considered paying the fees if your employee had not used such a threatening tone on his voice mails to me.

The one he left this morning threatened me with a report to a credit bureau. I'm sorry but I really do think that's a little high and mighty and overblown for a small neighborhood video store. I, as well as I'm sure all of your customers, do not respond well to threats.

I chose to write an open letter on Yelp rather than contact you directly because I feel that this is the best way of exposing your employee's ridiculous behavior. Obviously, I was correct or you would not be requesting that I remove the post.

How should I respond to such negative voice mails? With a positive review? You'll notice that at the end of what I wrote, I had to admit that your store itself is great.

Actually, it's your job to monitor the behavior of your employees, not mine.

I support local businesses and appreciate the necessity of people paying fees to keep you afloat, but this is too ridiculous. You want my $15? Ask me in a civil manner next time,

thanks,

LS

time balm

Today at the store I got into a situation with the guy at the register that I don't even really understand. It was at a health food grocery store on Divisadero St. I'd taken my time and selected some shampoo and stuff and then I noticed the larger selection of lip balms placed, for some strange reason, behind the counter. I wasn't wearing my glasses, and even if I had been wearing them I doubt whether I would've been able to read the labels. So while I was trying to select a balm, the register guy told the guy behind me to come on ahead. He got that impatient with me. I guess the guy waiting was one of the register guy's regulars. But it pissed me off. When I was finally paying for my goods, I told the guy how I felt. And then I just calmly continued the process of paying. And I was so silent while doing this that about a minute later the guy apologized to me and then asked me if I lived around there. He assumed that since I actually said something about all of this, that I must be an out-of-towner. Then I left and continued my walk to the pain management center to get a trigger point injection. happy channukah!

junkyard, dog

Today, while sitting in her wheelchair, my grandma Rose told me once again a story about her mother, whom she admires more than anyone in life even after the woman, my great grandmother Annie, has been dead for around thirty years. The story goes like this:

My grandmother's family were unaffected by the Great Depression because my great grandfather, Carl Davis, and his brothers, Joe and Phil, were in the scrap metal business, basically they operated a junkyard. And junk is always a hot commodity. Apparently. Or at least in Duluth, Minnesota in the 1930s it was. There is another story about how Carl Davis somehow distilled his own bootleg whiskey and made money off that and that's the real true reason why his four children - Rose, Ben, Florence and Shirley - never wanted for anything while growing up. But grandma didn't mention that today. Today she said that Joe Davis, the boss, wasn't paying his brother Carl enough to support the four children, so Annie took the four of them down to Joe's office dressed in their best. She collected his pay for him, so she could get the things they needed before Carl could spend any of it. At one point she told Joe that Carl wasn't receiving enough to care for the four children she'd paraded in front of his desk and so the next week Carl received a raise. Then she went on to say that her mother marched the children to a local department store and charged new shoes for all of them to Joe's account. By her account, Joe paid the bill no questions asked.

These are some sketchy details of the powerful nature of a woman who I was too young to ever really know before she died of a gall bladder attack after eating some lox jarred in oil (instead of fresh lox which is always preferable) and about whose death my grandma today lamented, "how could such a smart woman be so dumb?"

I'm not sure what a scrap metal or junkyard business was all about in Duluth in the 1930s, but I'm tempted to do some research and find out. The fragmented story is so dramatic and colorful and filled with saddle shoes and gusto that I'm bound to be curious.

brrr

Ok, I know why I moved away from Chicago in 1997. It's because it was fucking cold. And guess what? Ten years of global warming have not changed the fact that it is still cold as a motherfucker up in this piece.

Today I went to visit my grandparents in their suburb, Morton Grove. I really find the name unappealing and random. It's basically a little burg sandwiched between Skokie and Niles. But if you're unfamiliar with Chicagoland then this fact makes little difference to you. Anyways, I thought I had the route down when I left the house, but I was so so very wrong. And the cold cold fact of that became apparent to me while I was waiting in twenty-something degree weather for buses that just never came.

The worst was when I confused the end of the line for a bus route and ended up in the middle of nowhere on the other side of Skokie Sculpture Park. Ordinarily, and in much warmer weather, I would've been pleased to discover a random sculpture park in the middle of suburban wasteland, but today it was creepy to see a gigantic head rising from a landscape that resembled a golf course. The beacon of light in this cold darkness actually turned out to be a mall. I remembered from my journeys to Morton Grove from the far northside of Chicago ten years ago that the right bus stops at that mall and so hiked past the Olive Garden and through the parking lot into it to wait for the bus.

While I was in the mall, still all bundled up, some G'd-out suburban teenagers who were obviously cutting school to "chill" in the food court laughed at me. And I thought, "wow, I really am in the suburbs and I really did just get laughed at." The last time I was laughed at by teenagers in a mall I was a teenager and it pissed me off. This time I took sort of a bit of pride in it. Aah, how times change.

the sound of fucking

I cannot believe that I just heard my old friend D. fucking his girlfriend in the next room. I mean, I believe that everyone should fuck who they want and when they want and particularly especially in their own homes. So, his bed is right next door to his office and I'm staying on the couch in said office and he's doing me a favor by letting me stay here tonight - my last night of this, ahem, vacation in NYC that I've been on for two weeks now. But dude, that was awful. (ok maybe not so awful as staying out in the cold or being forced to wander the streets all night but...) Yeeereesh...

Tonight, he brought his girlfriend over here to hang out and she was nice. I even maybe liked her. But that doesn't mean I was prepared to hear her get fucked - and, yes, she was really fucking noisy - by my old college buddy. I feel like that's just rude in a way, not to mention weird. I mean it's weird to be this old and still be in the situation where, against my own choice, I am forced to listen to some couple coupling.

Maybe this, um, position I've been put in should make me think about my life in a profound way. Like, say, if I was more on top of shit somehow I would've had the money enough to just stay in a hotel for my last night or two in NYC. or something.

Anyways, I just had to type this out so that I can read a book and go to sleep now without being all weirded out and also so that the couple next door can hear the sounds of my fingers on the computer keyboard typing this so that they will know that I am still awake and that I totally just heard them fuck. Maybe that will weird them out - or at least maybe her because she was so fucking loud - a little bit. or not. As for me, I am not even givin' a fuck.

movies

I was at a loss for what to do with this rainy day, so I decided I would go to the Angelika Film Center and see the new Noah Baumbach picture, Margot at the Wedding. I set out from Fort Greene and made it halfway to the subway when I realized I had forgotten to take a crucial pill and so was forced to turn back. This interfered with my movie timing, but not severely since the film in question is playing every hour - in two different theaters. I filled the gap with shoe browsing, as I once filled much of my time I now remember/realize, on Broadway.

I decided a slice was in order, again, of course. So, I went to Pomodoro's on Spring St. There's a place called Pasta Pomodoro in SF, but it's totally different and only for yuppies or wanna-be yuppies. On the way back up to the Angelika, I walked on Crosby St. past the old freight entrance to Talas and that amazing taxi driver Pakistani restaurant and the Housing Works Used Book Store . There are a few more shops and maybe another gallery or so lining Crosby but it was so much the same that I got emotional - again.

Even going to the Angelika Film Center to see a movie made me a little emotional since I used to go there alot to see the arty (if not art) films to which I was (am) so partial. So, Margot at the Wedding: it's more subtle I think than The Squid and the Whale. Maybe that's a way of saying not as strong and it's true...I remember being moved to tears by that one and this one...well, a few chuckles, and some brow furrowing were it. I really love Jennifer Jason Leigh (the director's wife), so I enjoyed it just for her. Nicole Kidman does a great acting job, as per usual, but doesn't entirely escape being annoying, being Nicole Kidman, being such a big movie star for this smaller film. And Jack Black is actually not annoying in this movie. Go figure. He's actually good. I winced and cringed all through The School of Rock, which most people I know seemed to at least think was an ok movie.


After the movie, I walked over the Cafe Rakka on 1st Ave. and St. Marks and had a falafel and hummus sandwich. it was very savory and tasty, but, alas, the balls were smaller than I remember and the portion of hummus managed to stay within the confines of the pita - also less than I remember. Maybe I got a skimper for a sandwich preparer.

After that I started walking uptown. up and up and up I went until I reached Times Square. following a brief interlude in Bryant Park where they've set up a little skating rink surrounded by little shop kiosks like how they do in Union Sq. So, what does a girl like me do in Times Square? Go to see a movie of course! So, for the second time today I seated myself in darkness and did what amounts to meditation for me - I watched a movie. I saw the Coen brothers new one called No Country for Old Men. It was good. I didn't realize it was based on something written by Cormac McCarthy until the end, but it definitely smacks of his style. which I like. And Javier Bardem, who I usually think is totally sexy, is actually really creepy and scary in it while Josh Brolin, who never seems to be in many movies that I watch, is totally sexy in it.


Now, I'm back in Fort Greene. It's late. I'm tired. I think there might be a big party across the way, right beside the Talmudic academy, because I can hear all this bass just pounding - boom boom boom boom boom - very rapidly. Tomorrow night I'll move to Williamsburg and spend another whole week in nyc. oy vey.

a day in new york

Today I woke up on an L-shaped couch sometime in the early afternoon and was presented with a nice glass of strong tea with a bit of milk and maybe some sugar. I went and brushed my teeth and rushed back to enjoy the tea.

I bundled up, borrowed an umbrella, and set out with my compadres in search of brunch. The place we wanted to go, called Maggie Brown's, was delightful-looking and smelling but had a forty-five minute wait. So, we decided to search on for brunch. (This is all taking place in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the way.) Since I remembered, from back in tha day when I used to live in new york, that there are places to eat brunch on Lafayette street, that's where we headed until we happened upon a place called Olea. very pleasant inside. I enjoyed my basic breakfast and good, strong black coffee as well as the light coming in from the gray-lit foliage fringed outside. my fellow diners said that they too enjoyed their dishes.

After this and a false start, I made it to Union Square in Manhattan and began walking down University Place until I reached Washington Square park. I noticed every bit so keenly on a street I used to count as workaday. strolling by Washington Mews. and then at dusk standing in the center of washington square and looking upward at the towers, the spires, I was astounded by how much it seemed to move me.

I breezed down Thompson street until I hit Houston and then cut up it because I wanted to have a look at the marquee of the Angelika Film Center. Margot at the Wedding is playing. maybe I'll go and see it.

I walked down Broadway, braved the crowds, past Prince, Spring, Broome, Grand and then I cut east past Lafayette and to Mulberry then further east still to the L.ower E.ast S.ide (this manner of showing off abbreviations has suddenly become very attractive to me tho I have no idea quite why)

I wanted to see where Cake Shop the newish music venue, record shop, bar was because Michael Hurley was playing there tonight and I needed to know where to go. I succeeded in scoping out the place but I had time to kill so walked up Avenue A and got a slice at Two Boots. Then my friend Sarah called right at the same time as my old college friend David called. When it rains it pours, right?

So, after a brief detour while Sarah picked something up that she needed for school, I met David at the subway entrance. David and I said good-bye to Sarah and went for tapas. I dragged him down to the L.E.S. tho he did not want to go. We drank several drinks and reminisced, caught up, shot the shit. Then he said good-bye and I went in to watch the show. It was wonderful.

Now I am back in Fort Greene and very tired. typing all of this out seemed like a more exciting idea when I began. Goodnight.