BY STEVE JANOSKI
I was not paying attention, I admit it. But then again, neither was the rest of the media.
It's not on the New York Times home page, it hasn't been plastered across television screens, and nobody seems to want to speak on it - but it's happening, whether we all want to report on it or not.
These protestors who have been “occupying” Wall Street for the past three weeks, I'm not even sure who they are. The lone common thread appears to be that they are all young, liberal, and… well, that's it.
The few news outlets paying the protest any serious attention have said that some are protesting corporate greed, while others are protesting the undue influence that Wall Street holds over our politicians; recent statements released by the group have added such concerns as police brutality, union busting, and the economy to the list.
Chants have risen up in the concrete valleys of New York, with the refrain of “We are the 99 percent” and “They got bailed out, we got sold out,” and it's clear that the protestors are drawing inspiration from the freedom protests born of the Arab Spring.
For a while, they were easy to dismiss as a few hundred radical hippies trying to make something out of nothing, but as liberal celebrities like Michael Moore and Cornel West joined the fight, it began to garner more attention through, of course, social media outlets.
One particularly inflammatory video on YouTube shows Wall Street's elite dressed in their Sunday finest, drinking champagne and laughing dismissively while watching the protestors; Hunter S. Thompson himself could not have written that script any better.
And so this week, that rag-tag bunch of kids will be joined by the real heavyweights as several prominent unions embrace their cause, and endorsements from the AFL-CIO, the Transport Workers Union Local 100 (representing 38,000 New York city transit workers), and the United Federation of Teachers (amongst others) have come rolling in.
It is a safe bet that other labor organizations will follow their lead. People in other cities certainly have - protests in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C. either have occurred or are being planned.
What this odd combination of old hippies, young hippies, union workers, and anyone else who is out of work and angry about it seems to be tapping into is the silent rage that those of us in the middle class hold because our prospects for the future were left for dead in the ashen wreckage of the “financial crisis.”
They're not socialists, but they don't want every government safety net torn from under them, and don't want corporations to be deregulated to the point of no return.
They're the ones who realize that while American manufacturing lies in hazy ruin, union membership - which helped create the vaunted middle class - has fallen to record lows, and the prodigious wealth disparity is growing every day.
They're the ones who are angry that, unless you're a CEO, there are no jobs, no money, and no raises - not now and, from news reports, it seems not ever.
This is not the first time this happened; a dozen years ago, there was a fight in the streets of Seattle that caught the world by surprise when the nascent anti-globalization movement announced its arrival by bringing tens of thousands into the streets to protest the World Trade Organization and the unbridled power that the massive, multi-national corporations were gathering.
The attacks of September 11 effectively undercut that movement, and the foreign wars of retribution that followed it made citizens focus more on the external threats than the internal.
But now, as those perils begin to fade and America stares down the barrel of yet another recession, it seems that Americans are finally beginning to cast their gaze inward and wonder what happened to the nation that they once knew.
It seems like it was a lifetime ago, but it's only been nine months ago since the now-legendary Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in the middle of the street in Sidi Bouzid.
His final words before committing that single act of defiance that ignited revolution across the Middle East?
“How do you expect me to make a living?”
Well, give Wall Streeters enough champagne, and I bet they'll come up with an answer for you.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
Showing posts with label YouTube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label YouTube. Show all posts
Friday, September 30, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Internet fame and falling in fountains
BY STEVE JANOSKI
One of the unintended consequences of the internet's rise is its power to turn regular, everyday citizens into super celebrities nearly overnight through the use of video hosting and social networking sites.
Do something stupid within range of an astute observer with a camera phone, and it could be your pleasant face plastered all over everyone's news feed on Facebook or the front page of YouTube.
It's kind of cool in a sick way, like you're constantly playing Russian roulette with your future- one wrong move could lead you to either internet fame or internet infamy.
I look at it the same way I look at the odds of a comet hitting the Earth- it's possible, I guess, but I'm not all that worried about it.
Of course, sometimes, we might deserve the infamy. Such is the case of Cathy Cruz Marrero.
Marrero, 49, is now nationally known as the “Fountain Lady” after being caught on a mall's security cameras doing a somersault into a decorative fountain after tripping over the ledge because she was texting while walking.
The clip features unseen people watching the video on a screen and laughing at the scene from two different angles. Marrero believes they are security guards.
An ABC News article said that Marrero's fall has attracted over a million and a half views on YouTube and has been shared frequently on both Facebook and Twitter as it skyrocketed to the top of the viral video rack, and of course, that's complicated things.
On a recent interview on “Good Morning America,” the troubled walker dropped hints that she may sue the mall, and the ABC article said that she's hired a lawyer to “explore whether someone should have come to her aid rather than posting her image on the Internet.”
That lawyer's name is James Polyak, and ABC quotes him as saying that they “intend to hold the responsible parties accountable; whether requesting or demanding an apology and requesting an explanation on why this happened and how it happened.”
I might be able to help him out with that because I'm pretty sure I know how this happened, but maybe I'll leave it to him. Maybe he'll get lucky and the answer will fall out of the back of an ambulance.
"I didn't get an apology, what I got was, 'At least nobody knows it was you,' " Marrero said. "But I knew it was me." Well, at least she's got one thing straight.
Unfortunately, she hasn't figured out that no security guard in any mall in any country has the responsibility to apologize to her for her own blatant stupidity.
If the case is ever brought in front of a judge, it would rival that of the lady that sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on herself in terms of someone being allowed to prosper due to their own unbridled idiocy.
Marrero should really just be happy the mall didn't completely put the screws to her and drain the fountain before she fell in it.
What makes this story even better is that the fall might have been some kind of karmatic retribution the universe is pushing on Marrero- as it turns out, she's got her own legal troubles.
ABC reported that she's been out on $7,500 bail for alleged theft stemming from some indiscretions with a former coworker's credit card. They also reported that court records show Marrero to have been convicted of retail theft four times, and had previously received 12 months of probation after being convicted of a hit-and-run charge in Berks County in 2009.
But at the end of Marrero's Good Morning America interview, she whines that no security guards came over to help her and that, “nobody took my feelings into consideration.”
As Don King might say, “Only in America.”
E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com
One of the unintended consequences of the internet's rise is its power to turn regular, everyday citizens into super celebrities nearly overnight through the use of video hosting and social networking sites.
Do something stupid within range of an astute observer with a camera phone, and it could be your pleasant face plastered all over everyone's news feed on Facebook or the front page of YouTube.
It's kind of cool in a sick way, like you're constantly playing Russian roulette with your future- one wrong move could lead you to either internet fame or internet infamy.
I look at it the same way I look at the odds of a comet hitting the Earth- it's possible, I guess, but I'm not all that worried about it.
Of course, sometimes, we might deserve the infamy. Such is the case of Cathy Cruz Marrero.
Marrero, 49, is now nationally known as the “Fountain Lady” after being caught on a mall's security cameras doing a somersault into a decorative fountain after tripping over the ledge because she was texting while walking.
The clip features unseen people watching the video on a screen and laughing at the scene from two different angles. Marrero believes they are security guards.
An ABC News article said that Marrero's fall has attracted over a million and a half views on YouTube and has been shared frequently on both Facebook and Twitter as it skyrocketed to the top of the viral video rack, and of course, that's complicated things.
On a recent interview on “Good Morning America,” the troubled walker dropped hints that she may sue the mall, and the ABC article said that she's hired a lawyer to “explore whether someone should have come to her aid rather than posting her image on the Internet.”
That lawyer's name is James Polyak, and ABC quotes him as saying that they “intend to hold the responsible parties accountable; whether requesting or demanding an apology and requesting an explanation on why this happened and how it happened.”
I might be able to help him out with that because I'm pretty sure I know how this happened, but maybe I'll leave it to him. Maybe he'll get lucky and the answer will fall out of the back of an ambulance.
"I didn't get an apology, what I got was, 'At least nobody knows it was you,' " Marrero said. "But I knew it was me." Well, at least she's got one thing straight.
Unfortunately, she hasn't figured out that no security guard in any mall in any country has the responsibility to apologize to her for her own blatant stupidity.
If the case is ever brought in front of a judge, it would rival that of the lady that sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on herself in terms of someone being allowed to prosper due to their own unbridled idiocy.
Marrero should really just be happy the mall didn't completely put the screws to her and drain the fountain before she fell in it.
What makes this story even better is that the fall might have been some kind of karmatic retribution the universe is pushing on Marrero- as it turns out, she's got her own legal troubles.
ABC reported that she's been out on $7,500 bail for alleged theft stemming from some indiscretions with a former coworker's credit card. They also reported that court records show Marrero to have been convicted of retail theft four times, and had previously received 12 months of probation after being convicted of a hit-and-run charge in Berks County in 2009.
But at the end of Marrero's Good Morning America interview, she whines that no security guards came over to help her and that, “nobody took my feelings into consideration.”
As Don King might say, “Only in America.”
E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com
Monday, October 25, 2010
Where have all the rockers gone?
Wednesday, April 7
By Steve Janoski
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, the Doors, Motley Crue, Buckcherry.
They didn’t begin modern rock n’ roll, but they’ve kept it going through its toddler years of the 1960s and have kept it rolling since, bringing this hard, swaggering style of music to the masses by playing show after show for year after year, paying their dues and rising to fame.
And that’s the one thing that they, along with most other rock bands that have “made it,” share: they all started somewhere.
It was in some guitarist’s parents’ basement in Los Angeles or Freehold or Jacksonville that they got together.
They progressed, as we’ve seen so many times in “Behind the Music” fashion. They played in smoke-choked, dimly-lit bars, sold their brand to swaying, drunken crowds who, at least at first, didn’t care that they were there.
They lived in roach-filled apartments, drove for miles to play gigs, and kept on playing until they got so damned tight that you knew they were in it for the long haul, live or die. And eventually, they got “noticed.”
At least, this was the formula back then. Now? I’m not so sure.
In my carousing across New Jersey’s nightlife, I’ve come to believe that there just isn’t anybody playing their own guitar-driven, gut-busting, fight-starting rock n’ roll anymore. It’s become a “scene” of lowly cover band after lowly cover band, playing the same Rolling Stones and Billy Idol cover songs before their huge finale of “Sweet Home Alabama” rolls out.
C’mon. Really?
I’m not sure why this has all gone down the way it has. There are less venues to play than there used to be, but that’s not a reason that long-haired 17-year-olds should lay down their guitars, take their torn Maiden t-shirts off, and start going to school.
There are definitely enough places for these cover bands to play — they seem to find where I’m at every Friday night, so I don’t know why it couldn’t be an original band instead, or even a band that plays original songs at least half of the time.
I’ve never been in a band myself, but I’d imagine that there’s a kind of special feeling that happens when four or five guys get together and create a new song that they play for the first time and say to themselves, “Damn…that was good.”
It’s probably a way better feeling when they play that song out in public the first few times, and get a reception from the crowd that shakes the rafters and knocks beers off the table — I suspect that’s why musicians get into the whole thing in the first place.
There’s a clip on YouTube that I found recently of AC/DC performing their song “Whole Lotta’ Rosie” live in 1978 at what looks to be a small club in England.
The people are packed tightly together like toothbrush bristles, while onstage a shirtless, tattooed Bon Scott howls on the microphone while Angus Young races around headbanging and kicking and tearing through solo after solo, captivating his rollicking audience of reckless youths and the thing is just the embodiment of wild energy and passion, of fire!
Somewhere, sometime, that band played to an empty bar when they began; maybe they thought about just playing covers on the weekends when someone told them that they weren’t any good.
But they forged ahead… and look where it got them.
I hope the kids today are doing the same, because without them, rock n’ roll will soon die off, and the only things playing at bars will be the same half-hearted Skynyrd covers or the whiny songs from the bartender’s iPod.
Until then, though, I keep hoping that every bar I walk into, the next Bon Scott is nervously getting ready to walk onstage for the first time, tapping his fingers and shaking his leg, waiting to hear what the crowd will say about his band’s set.
To those about to rock: we’re all waiting for you.
By Steve Janoski
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, the Doors, Motley Crue, Buckcherry.
They didn’t begin modern rock n’ roll, but they’ve kept it going through its toddler years of the 1960s and have kept it rolling since, bringing this hard, swaggering style of music to the masses by playing show after show for year after year, paying their dues and rising to fame.
And that’s the one thing that they, along with most other rock bands that have “made it,” share: they all started somewhere.
It was in some guitarist’s parents’ basement in Los Angeles or Freehold or Jacksonville that they got together.
They progressed, as we’ve seen so many times in “Behind the Music” fashion. They played in smoke-choked, dimly-lit bars, sold their brand to swaying, drunken crowds who, at least at first, didn’t care that they were there.
They lived in roach-filled apartments, drove for miles to play gigs, and kept on playing until they got so damned tight that you knew they were in it for the long haul, live or die. And eventually, they got “noticed.”
At least, this was the formula back then. Now? I’m not so sure.
In my carousing across New Jersey’s nightlife, I’ve come to believe that there just isn’t anybody playing their own guitar-driven, gut-busting, fight-starting rock n’ roll anymore. It’s become a “scene” of lowly cover band after lowly cover band, playing the same Rolling Stones and Billy Idol cover songs before their huge finale of “Sweet Home Alabama” rolls out.
C’mon. Really?
I’m not sure why this has all gone down the way it has. There are less venues to play than there used to be, but that’s not a reason that long-haired 17-year-olds should lay down their guitars, take their torn Maiden t-shirts off, and start going to school.
There are definitely enough places for these cover bands to play — they seem to find where I’m at every Friday night, so I don’t know why it couldn’t be an original band instead, or even a band that plays original songs at least half of the time.
I’ve never been in a band myself, but I’d imagine that there’s a kind of special feeling that happens when four or five guys get together and create a new song that they play for the first time and say to themselves, “Damn…that was good.”
It’s probably a way better feeling when they play that song out in public the first few times, and get a reception from the crowd that shakes the rafters and knocks beers off the table — I suspect that’s why musicians get into the whole thing in the first place.
There’s a clip on YouTube that I found recently of AC/DC performing their song “Whole Lotta’ Rosie” live in 1978 at what looks to be a small club in England.
The people are packed tightly together like toothbrush bristles, while onstage a shirtless, tattooed Bon Scott howls on the microphone while Angus Young races around headbanging and kicking and tearing through solo after solo, captivating his rollicking audience of reckless youths and the thing is just the embodiment of wild energy and passion, of fire!
Somewhere, sometime, that band played to an empty bar when they began; maybe they thought about just playing covers on the weekends when someone told them that they weren’t any good.
But they forged ahead… and look where it got them.
I hope the kids today are doing the same, because without them, rock n’ roll will soon die off, and the only things playing at bars will be the same half-hearted Skynyrd covers or the whiny songs from the bartender’s iPod.
Until then, though, I keep hoping that every bar I walk into, the next Bon Scott is nervously getting ready to walk onstage for the first time, tapping his fingers and shaking his leg, waiting to hear what the crowd will say about his band’s set.
To those about to rock: we’re all waiting for you.
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