Microsoft as "Evil Empire" has always seemed a little trite, especially when accompanied as it often is by Photoshopped pictures of Bill Gates as Borg Queen. But the company’s recent decision to shut down Chinese blogger Zhao Jing’s MSN Spaces page due to dissenting posts about the Chinese government took the cuteness out of the moniker.

And Microsoft is not alone. Google blocks sensitive results on its Chinese search engine. Yahoo exposed reporter Shi Tao, who’d been using a supposedly anonymous e-mail address,  to Chinese authorities last year, landing Tao in prison for ten years.

How’s an ethically-minded Internet user to search the web without the big threeGoogle, Microsoft (through MSN Search) and Yahoo?

It’s not easy. AltaVista offers news, image and video searchbut it’s owned by Overture Services, Inc., which is owned by Yahoo. A9, Amazon’s search engine, is powered by Google. WebCrawler and DogPile are meta-search engines that compile results from the big three. AOL lacks a news search, Technorati and Feedster search only blogs and Snap’s touted vertical search does not give comprehensive results.

That leaves only AskJeeves, a subsidiary of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which also owns RealEstate.com and dinosaur search engine Excite. Despite its childish-looking natural language site, AskJeeves provides strong image, news, and product searches. Occasional error messages are cleared on refresh, and results are comparable to Google’s.

But the implication is troubling. Those who want to use a non-China complicit search engine have only one viable option. All of a sudden, Reporters Without Borders’ call last week for the Internet search giants to establish a set of protocols for dealing with repressive governments is no abstract matter. 

There was a question going around Williamsburg a few years ago, about the h-words vs. the Hasidim: Who had more sex?

The h-words did it loudly, on mattresses on the floor, without condoms and with iPod speakers pumping Sade, played ironically. The Hasidim did it quietly but produced visible results, doubling their population over the last 20 years.

Now that growth is forcing one Brooklyn Hasidic community to look across the East River and down the Turnpike to secure its futurein Philadelphia.

Lubavitcher Rabbi Solomon Isaacson of Borough Park sees Philly, where a tax-abatement program is creating a real estate resurgence, as the new Brooklyn. The rabbi has spent the past year petitioning Mayor John Street and Governor Ed Rendell to have dozens of acres in northeastern Philly developed for 300 to 1000 of his constituent families, punctuating his pitches with gifted loaves of rye.

Solomon’s efforts underscore years of success for the Hasidim, who numbered only 40,000 in Williamsburg in the 1960s, and whose very survival was questioned at the time by the Hasidic sociologist George Kranzler. The Brooklyn fixtures have prospered due to a high birth rate (eight children is fairly common), dedicated internal efforts to address poverty and powerful deals with city governmentrabbis like Isaacson can deliver 5,000 ironclad votes to the Council member who comes to the table. There are now anywhere from 165,000 to 250,000 Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, with exact figures difficult to pin down as the group tends to ignore census forms. (Every time a census takes place in the Bible, a plague or disaster is sure to follow.)

But in neighborhoods where single-family homes cost $1.5 million, this breeding success brings genuine concern about space to raise the next generation. And while there isn’t any risk of Hasidic Jews abandoning Brooklyn entirelythere have already been decampments to Lakewood, NJ, and Monsey, NY, with no appreciable loss of the borough faithfulthere is a sense that Solomon’s proposed move is one of several recent growing pains. 

The last three years have seen a small-scale war between the Hasidim and the h-words, with Rabbi Zalman Leib Fulop of Williamsburg pointing out that h-words were sent from heaven to punish the Hasidic community. At the same time the Hasidic community has been torn from within by a borderline-civil war between Aron and Zalman Teitelbaum, sons of Grand Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum, whose struggle over the leadership of Williamsburg’s Yatel Lev synagogue has resulted in an embarrassing temple brawl and two civil suits.

The paradox is this: as Hasidic communities grow, they become less governable by singular figures like Rabbi Isaacson, whose push to Philadelphia is ordered and precise. Perhaps the Hasidim had too much sex; they’ve now got to head h-word style into undefended urban enclaves.

]]> http://nypress.com/brooklyns-sex-champs/feed/ 0 http://nypress.com/chop-shop-mentality/ http://nypress.com/chop-shop-mentality/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000 Ned Vizzini Everyone thinks I’m slumming, and I understand why. When you tell people you’re going to be a bike messenger, they look at you strangely. They won’t accept that you actually need the money, or that it’s going to be good for you. Certain other facets of your life distract them.

I’ve published two books. I got paid for the books. Thing is, I’ll never get paid that much for writing books again. They gave me money thinking I’d be the next something-or-other. I haven’t been. Next time, maybe, I’ll get a quarter as much.

In the meantime, I’ve hoarded my money and I haven’t developed many skills. I’m one of about two million New Yorkers who can write and do web production. Plus I can’t speak Mandarin. I can’t even speak Spanish. I’m not the most capable 21st century man.

So I went in on a Friday. Finished up with my shrink at 9:30 a.m. and got on my bike. I have an 18-speed Lemond with Kevlar tires. To conceal my bike’s pedigree I wrap it in old inner tubes. My friend Jordan showed me how to do that. He used to be a messenger. He laughed when I told him I was starting.

“It might be good for you, I don’t know. Get a little bit of that chop-shop mentality.”

“The ‘chop-shop?’”

“Yeah, the hustle, the rip-off. These guys are going to rip you off left and right. It’s rough.”

I wanted rough. In the wake of my book, I started my own company and kept it running for two years. But I’ve never worked for anyone else. Not since I was a teenager. I’ve worked either for my mom or myself. Haven’t filled out a job application; haven’t sent my resume out on Monster; haven’t gotten up in the morning and drank coffee on my way to somewhere solid. Anywhere. Somewhere where I got paid just to be. It’s a horrific feeling and a serious need.

I sailed over the Manhattan Bridge. It was the second really cold day of the year. I knew I’d picked a good time to start. The people who couldn’t stand the cold were dropping off. They needed to be replaced. What kind of nut starts doing bike messenger work in winter?

My chest iced over and my phlegm took on a metallic taste. I thought about my body and how it could do better. I didn’t think about book sales or my Web site or my living situation (between my mom and my grandma—between my mom and my grandma) or how the mighty have fallen (Phi Beta Kappa, you know) or what I was going to do next. I thought about the metal bumps on the bridge, a pair of which cross your path at each tower, and accommodated them by pulling my handlebars up as I approached.

In my back pocket were my Google Maps. I’d gone on Google Maps the night before with the classifieds. There were seven listings for messengers. I was only interested in the ones with addresses and times to show up. I had four stops. First was West 17th St.

It was a sushi outlet on the ground floor, a tiny one. Maybe five people could stand in line to purchase sushi there. Maybe it was like the Soup Nazi; maybe they formed lines around the block. They were just putting the sushi out. I loped up to the third floor. On the way up the stairs were placards for a dance school, then a computer printout sign with early-90s clip art of a man with a big nose on a bicycle. You may have seen this clip art. “That’s me,” I thought.

Inside was a wide lobby area with a long table; then a glass partition; then, behind it, a half-dozen people on computers with blue screens and plain text readouts. In DOS. I approached.

“And who are you?” a flighty black guy asked.

“I’m here to apply for the messenger position.”

“Here, fill this out.” He handed me four stapled pages.

I came out to the lobby table. An older black guy—in his 40s, it looked like—was filling out his form. This was my competition. I sat down. I had no pen. See, I do have a lack of skills. I looked at the third person at the table—a stylish Hispanic kid with a clipboard in front of him, colored squares on it. He had a purple pen.

“Can I borrow that?”

He handed it to me without a word.

Address. Education. Three former employers.

Now, this was a bit difficult for me. Three former employers. Let’s see. There was my own company, which did web production and community development, but that didn’t have a phone number anymore, which meant I had to put the phone number of my ex-business partner, unless I wanted to put my phone number, which wouldn’t look too good. There was my parents’ business, the address of which I didn’t know for sure, besides which I already had my mom listed as “emergency contact.” If I listed her as the reference as well and she answered her phone by name, as she’s apt to do, they’d know she was my mom. And my third employer, the only third-party employer I’ve had since 2002, was Hyperion Books—was I going to put my editor’s number as the reference?

What’s important, I decided, is that I fill the thing up and not cross anything out. It should be a landscape of crisp text. That’s probably all they’re looking for—the gradient.

Page three and four were a test. The first question was “Where is the Empire State Building?” but from there it got difficult. Where is Pier 59? What building is at 89th St. and 6th Ave.? (Trick!) If you need to deliver a package and the customer isn’t there, what should you do?

I answered all the questions in the way that would least bother of my employers—that meant never selecting “call base.” Within ten minutes I was finished—the black guy had beat me—and I turned my app into a different man from the one who gave it to me, a fat white guy with whiskers.

“Boss’ll call you by next Friday,” he said. “We don’t pay by the hour. We pay by commission. Our bikers make way more than three hundred dollars per week.”

Jesus. I should hope so. I left. Next up was on Broadway; the whole building seemed to house messenger companies. As I walked in the office with my helmet on, the woman behind the desk said, “I don’t hire bikers.”

Champion Couriers was next. I was lithe with the traffic now. The one thing that I knew I had going for me with this job was the fact that I do not fear death. I nearly got hit with a flying garbage bag; I split the difference between two trucks with six inches to either side; I gave an NYU student stepping into a cab a true “Whoop!” moment, an unfeigned intake of breath and reflexive draw-back. I was good.

Champion had an even sparer “lobby,” with no table. A long-faced white guy gave me my application and then sat down and dictated a delivery from Versace to Star Magazine—“for Bonnie Fuller,” he said.

I always knew I’d be in with the power brokers.

I realized, again, that I didn’t have a pen—and there wasn’t anyone to ask here. I couldn’t ask the Bonnie Fuller handler who gave me the application—that was one of the few things you could do, I figured, to completely remove yourself from the hiring pool. So I caromed downstairs and out into midtown Manhattan looking for a single Bic pen—anyone, anywhere, please? There were no delis. There were no drugstores. I ended up buying one from a man in a newsstand—he was, in fact, in the smallest newsstand I had ever seen, with as much room to move as a veal calf. He charged me seventy-five cents.

Back to the office! Pull out a chair! Back to the application! The same set of questions, but this app looked older, more government-sanctioned, and there was no test.

The guy looked through my app. He looked at my paltry accomplishments and hard-thought-up friends. He looked at where I’ve gotten to in life and where I used to be, where I had the potential to be. He stood up.

“Come in on Monday at eight-o-clock. Speak to Elliot or me. I’m Mike.”

“Okay, sir.”

I’m not one to make big statements. I’m not interested in trying to answer huge questions about myself. But in all my life, why the hell hadn’t I just gone in somewhere and gotten a job? Why had I lived with the anxiety and frustration and bullshit of not knowing if I could do it? Was it just because I didn’t have to?

Well now I had to. And now I’d done it. And after that acceptance, I went to another service, for backup, and got hired there too, told to come in at nine-o-clock on Monday, so that if the eight-o-clock place didn’t work out I had somewhere to go.

I ate lunch. I felt more accomplished than I have for a long time.

“T-bones! Filet Mignon! Excuse me, sir, would you like to buy some steak?”

A much larger man, black, with an apron wrapped around itself and hanging off him like a skinny tie, strides onto the scene and grabs one end of the box.

“C’mon, let’s move this inside,” he says; he and the Hispanic man migrate to McKenna’s Pub, 245 W. 14th. A small group of patrons at the window are waiting for them.

“So I got filets, thirty-five dollars for twelve,” the black guy says, putting the box on the counter by the window. He’s got a patchy beard and a wide smile. “And you can see it’s cold, real cold, fresh.”

The men who circle the box, all Caribbean, reach out their hands to touch the meat, which is in plastic wrap on top of sytrofoam, just like it would be in D’Agostino’s, except in vastly larger quantities. It is, indeed, frosty.

“You don’t have rib-eye?” one customer asks.

“Man, you know the Meatman don’t fuck with no rib-eye.”

The Meatman works at the newly fishified Hunt’s Point Markets in the Bronx. On Wednesday nights, he brings down certain choice cuts for Manhattan customers in his refrigerated van.

“How many filets is that?” a guy in cornrows inquires.

“I told you twelve.”

“For forty?”

“Man, you know the best I could do for you is thrity-five.”

“Thirty-five? I got rent due, you know? So it’s like that.”

“It’s like that. Where you paying rent that five dollars is gonna matter?”

“How about you give me a deal on those T-bones?”

“T-bones,” the Meatman’s assistant says.

“This is some serious hustling right here,” another meat patron says. “Get out the camera.”

The Meatman ends up parting with the filets for thirty-five and the T-bones for twenty (“C’mon, man, just make it twenty-two, a’ight?”) before taking his box back outside, assuring those gathered that he’ll be back next Wednesday.

“And I’m gonna have oxtails, too, for the holidays,” he says, giving out his cell phone number. “Y’all know who to call when you need some meat.”

The Meatman can be reached at 646-309-1710.

Now the
singing has started: "There’s a man who lives a life of danger…"
Interspersed with the music, in a voice pitched right between Howard Stern and
Rush Limbaugh, with better timing than either, the opening barbs are thrown.
"How come Wall Streeters aren’t running for their lives?…
Why is no one talking about the eight trillion dollars they wiped out?"

"Secret
Agent Man…"

This is
Nicholas A. Guarino Jr., better know to his audience as "maverick international
financial analyst Nick Guarino," publisher of the Wall Street Underground
newsletter, former foil of Bill Clinton, convicted federal criminal, and
recent defendant in a civil action brought forth by the U.S. Commodity Futures
Trading Commission.

Guarino
has been portending the collapse of Wall Street for more than a decade, most
recently calling this summer’s rally "stok[ing] the coals" and
"a mighty bull that’s now a steer [that] kind of lost his manhood."
He is a perma-bear, down on the market through the late 90s and I-told-you-so
gleeful since 2000, when major losses let him forgo the word "crash"
and use his preferred term: "wipeout." Mr. Guarino has a fondness
for the sweeping doomsday statement.

"The
stock market’s been wiping people out for centuries, okay," he said
on his May 26, 2003 "Radio Free Wall Street" broadcast, archived with
all the rest at wallstreetunderground.org. "Every single one of the great
bull markets that they’ve had in stock market wonderland has always ended
up in a bear-market bust, and get this: a Great Depression… [T]he ‘deflation’
word [is] the buzzword for depression. The U.S. economy is going into a 1930s-style
depression. We’re talking bread lines, soup kitchens, selling apples on
street corners and a wipeout of untold proportions."

According
to Guarino, his speculation will become truth by autumn–"by the time
the leaves start turning in Central Park"–at which point a final,
critical piece of the U.S. economy will go bust: real estate (more on that later).
He also says that simply by revealing this information, he is putting himself
in mortal danger, which is why he must continue to broadcast from his Cheneyan
"location" and communicate with his underlings via scrambled satellite
phone.

Citing these
concerns, his "staff"–an outsource located in England–repeatedly
dodged interview requests.

Americans
are in a record amount of debt, as is the U.S. government–an all-time world
record, in fact. The predicted recovery in corporate earnings has yet to materialize,
and unemployment is at a 9-year high. Home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies
are reaching record highs, while interest rates are at their lowest in a generation.
Every large state is broke–California is double-broke–while cuts in
federal taxes are being offset by hikes in state and local taxes.

These are
the signs of fiscal apocalypse regularly given airtime by Guarino, and they’re
largely true–no matter how extreme they may sound in his delivery. Also
accompanying Guarino’s analysis and advice is a criminal past and a long
history of fleecing customers in the under regulated world of small-scale Wall
Street newsletters.

The number
of independently published stock- and futures-picking financial rags skyrocketed
in the 90s, alongside broker-free online investing, according to the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission, the government agency currently attempting to bring
Guarino to task. Publications such as Louis Rukeyser’s tony Wall Street
(est. 1992) and Wall Street City Pro’s Wall Street Digest (est.
1996) spent the last decade charging high subscription rates–in some cases,
thousands of dollars–to those interested in alleged insider information
on the markets.

"These
sorts of things [newsletters] come up on a daily basis," says Rocell Cyrus
in the Chicago regional office of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
"I couldn’t give you a figure of how many people are making recommendations."

No single
organization regulates these newsletters, so charges of fraud can be filed by
different agencies. In Guarino’s case, since his Wall Street Underground
came with a trading system that recommended futures, the CFTC filed charges
last April. For the most part, the newsletters are watched over by a confusing
juncture of the Better Business Bureau, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service ("[T]hat
would fall under the mail fraud statutes," says David Ng, New York Postal
Inspector), the aforementioned CFTC, and the SEC, through its self-regulatory
arm. No one is directly responsible for overseeing claims made in newsletters–let
alone websites, chat rooms, and message boards–except for the customers
themselves, once they get screwed.

Guarino
came under investigation because he was selling information on exactly when
to buy specific futures and accompanying it with outrageous claims: He once
guaranteed $1 million returns with false money-back promises. With more than
$5 million from his 1000-plus Wall Street Underground subscribers, he
started filling up the banks of the Cayman Islands.

In what
seems to be questionable judgment, Guarino wears his criminality on his sleeve:
"Will the nutcase, the criminal rogue of Wall Street–that’s me–be
allowed to continue to air his prophecies of doom and gloom and poison the Wall
Street investors’ minds against the greatest hustle in history?" During
one broadcast, he claims to have "been fighting the Wall Street establishment
for 20 years," who "hate [his] guts." The establishment has "tried
to run [him] out of business." He’s been "criminalized."

Guarino’s
"criminalization" has a long history. According to the charges filed
against him in April, he was registered with the National Futures Association,
the CFTC’s self-regulatory agency, in 1984. He had his own company at that
time, H.G.S.E Commodities, Inc., and was a certified commodity trading advisor
until 1986. He operated out of Arkansas (and still uses the Midwest as a home
base).

At some
point, Guarino began to commit mail and wire fraud, using a scheme to sell investors
on gold and silver. On March 24, 1992, he was convicted by the U.S. District
Court for the Western District of Arkansas and sent to federal prison. According
to an April 22, 2003 filing by the CFTC, he also was ordered to pay the government
$1,250,678–a fine that remains uncollected.

In the early
90s, the machinations of then-governor Bill Clinton captured Guarino’s
fancy, leading to eight-page, single-spaced public letters in which the recent
ex-con called Whitewater a "pure hustle" and asked like-minded citizens
to send him money–"no credit cards"–to fight Clinton. His
book, The Impeached President (a prescient title if ever there was one),
accused Clinton of drug running, beatings, arson, airliner sabotage,
rape, and 56 or so murders.

Then, in
the mid- to late 90s, Guarino entered a new line of business, once again operating
out of the middle of the country. He began Carnival Brands Seafood Company,
intending to sell microwaveable seafood meals. At the International Boston Seafood
Show in March 1997, the new fishmonger presented a product to a reporter from
Quick Frozen Foods International with that catchy 100 percent money-back
guarantee. He later sued another Carnival foods company, Carnival Brands, Inc.
of Louisiana, for trademark infringement, although the defendant was incorporated
in 1990–six years before Guarino’s company. The Eleventh Circuit U.S.
Court of Appeals found for the other Carnival seafood company on September 3,
1999.

These days,
Guarino has a $100 million federal agency and its own enforcement officers taking
him and his associates to court. The CFTC has revealed his "undisclosed
location" to be Merriam, KS, and has painted Guarino’s offenses in
the sort of black-and-white paints he proudly employs on his radio show. According
to the CFTC, Guarino and his associates have "fraudulently overstated the
profit potential of the trading systems…omitted material facts about Guarino’s
criminal background and history of fraudulent conduct, and made false money-back
guarantees."

But Nick
Guarino has one ace up his sleeve: His operation is in Merriam, KS but
his own whereabouts are unknown.

"We
are still in the process of seeking to serve Mr. Guarino," says Rocell
Cyrus of the CFTC. "I did get the order from the judge regarding the preliminary
injunction hearing and the judge did find in favor of us, the plaintiff… The
judge enjoined the defendants from further practices and actions of distributing
or advertising or marketing the Wall Street Underground products to the public,
so there is a preliminary injunction in place." However, wallstreetunderground.org
remains in operation, offering its archive of Nick Guarino’s financial
radio broadcasts and his calls to "join the underground."

That preliminary
injunction, when decided upon, could stop wallstreetunderground.org from posting
Guarino’s radio rants. In the meantime, the "criminal rogue of Wall
Street" is still out there broadcasting.

"That’s
right, do you realize you’re listening to a criminal broadcast?" Guarino
asked on May 19.

"This
is the forbidden broadcast. You might want to ask why. Well, I’m a criminal,
and Wall Street will be sure to tell you about that. But what they’ll forget
to mention to you is that criminals have made a lot of people very wealthy.
And I’ve helped millions of people just like you get out of the Wall Street
clutches… Now you better believe that really chaps Wall Street’s butt."

Guarino
predicts a bear market the likes of which we have never seen–Dow 1000,
NASDAQ 100–and a depression that’s been setting in for years. His
proclamations are so repetitive and so harsh that, coming at such a period of
economic uncertainty, it’s not hard to imagine frightened investors sending
him money. Looking beyond the issue of fiscal responsibility, however, his comments
can also be appreciated as enormously entertaining, thought-provoking contrarian
rants–available 24/7 on the Web:

"The
U.S. consumer, which is 70 percent of the U.S. economy, has run out of money
to beg, borrow or steal.

"You’ve
been screwed, blued and tattooed, rode hard, put away wet…

"Oh,
by the way, refinance your house, take out the equity, and go buy some plastic
junk from Taiwan… See, you’re being set up for the kill."

Guarino’s
current argument, repeated for the last three months, is that after toppling
the stock market, the caretakers of "the Wall Street poop chute" will
go after your home. Market rallies are just temporary flourishes designed to
get you to throw more money at stocks, which will lead to the looming real estate
crash.

"The
only thing that has saved the U.S. economy over the last two years from a full-blown,
in-your-face depression…is the fact that trillions of dollars have been
put into the U.S. economy by mortgage refinancing," he says.

The International
Monetary Fund predicted a 40 percent chance for a real estate bubble, with the
current run-up in the market the largest since 1970. Ronald E. Roel of Newsday
acknowledges that low interest rates and a torrent of mortgage money are
keeping the market going.

Guarino
predicts a real estate fire sale that will feature mansions selling for pennies
on the dollar. To prepare, everyone should get out of debt and start renting.
Keep your money in cold, hard cash and take charge when everything goes wrong:

"Buckle
your seatbelt, prepare for airbag deployment, wait two years and this wipeout
will be as obvious as the stock market wipeout and you will be rewarded for
the cash you save."

Guarino’s
appeal lies in the fact that no one wants to know what’s happening on Wall
Street these days. Another accounting scandal or another earnings disappointment.
The man who seems like a safe bet, the one who made $5 million off his readership–and
that’s only what the government knows about–is a self-described "old
man" who doesn’t seem to shave or shower, and who dispenses advice
from a hole in the ground.

But what
is he really looking for? His track record does suggest money to be his primary
goal, but his advocacy and near-religious fervor against Wall Street seem to
hint at other intentions:

"I
hate Wall Street. I got it in for them…I’ve seen many people close
to me wiped out in these Wall Street little scandals, okay. I’ve seen many
people’s lives destroyed by Wall Street and I don’t like it. I have
got a bone to pick."

Clearly,
he relishes his role as a perma-bear, an underdog, a creature apart from the
Wall Street insiders. He’s the self-proclaimed recession messiah. And like
Gray’s Papaya’s "Recession Special," if you advocate something
for long enough, it will eventually become true.

In many
ways, Guarino is an exemplary stock-market figure for our times, much like James
J. Cramer in the late 90s. But Cramer was and remains a disgusting individual:
all arrogance, obviously out to make as much for himself as possible, but willing
to bring you along for the right price. From his sharp suits to his goatee to
the fact that he pushed Internet stocks while starting his own Internet
stock to push Internet stocks, he was an insider, a guy who knew what was going
on.

The thing
is, both Cramer and Guarino seem to have some truth in them. Their rhetoric
is clearly inflated, but by putting scruples aside, perhaps one could make some
money. That’s why it’s hard to listen to that "Secret Agent Man"
music and not get caught up in a Wall Street Underground of your own.
Nick Guarino is a criminal, but really, in finance these days, who isn’t?

"‘Mindflank’ is a word that was invented by my friend Smiley when he was really drunk one time," Te’DeVan explains, just returned from a self-promotion/healing jaunt to Park City, UT. "A mindflank is when you confuse the mind so it can expand afterwards. Like usually people say ‘Hi’ to each other, but instead of saying ‘Hi’ to people you start saying, ‘Sometimes it rains, sometimes it pours.’ Or you can go even more extreme, saying things like, ‘I’d like to have sex with my second cousin.’

"These are the types of things that people aren’t prepared to handle; they freeze up, and then that’s when you can take over. You mindflank them."

Te’DeVan’s mindflanking manifests in many ways. The one that has kept him housed and fed recently is faith healing, a talent he discovered in 2001.

"It happened three or four days after the World Trade Center, and basically I was sitting in the car and my friend was crying from an angina attack of the heart and I just didn’t like listening to her cry and I just instinctively reached out my hands—I didn’t touch her, but I just felt something and I kind of pulled it out. And she looks at me like ‘What the heck did you just do?’"

Te’DeVan now heals regularly.

"I heal people in Washington Square Park. I’m just carrying around a giant sign that says ‘I Can Heal. Will Heal Pain for Free. No Touching. I’m Serious. Real Deal.’ I don’t want money, but people end up paying me."

Mindflanking’s other main aspect is "naked comedy," which Te’DeVan started two years ago at Surf Reality on the Lower East Side. The oldsters told him he was like a nude Lenny Bruce, and the youngsters were fond of his showstopper: lighting a match in the head of his penis.

"I’m not really that into that now," he admits. "But I still do naked comedy and naked comedy is a mindflank. Actually I would always describe it as ‘a mindflank performed by Te’DeVan Rocketman Kurzweil.’"

Naked comedy got Te’DeVan on the Ricki Lake show; footage from that episode features heavily in Mindflank. "Nobody in the audience got naked, but they were loving it," he says. "I declared ‘Naked Time.’" (An appearance on Shipmates, which Te’DeVan secured after healing the neck of one of the show’s producers, should air soon.)

His appearance outside Sundance was highlighted by the guerilla Mindflank screening, and by his proximity to famous people.

"You literally couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a celebrity. It was like the most pretentious scene I had ever seen. I actually healed the Mom from Boy Meets World. Her neck was bothering her. And I ended up with thirteen hundred dollars in free stuff from parties."

Mindflank shows on Thurs., March 6,
at Void. 16 Mercer St. (Howard St.),
212-941-6492, 8 p.m., free.

It is tough to get by in
America as a man with a large penis. From the get-go, one is branded a brute,
a tool, a member of the lower classes. If a woman has taken a large-penised
man for a lover and she is praising him to her friends, she does not say, "He
has a big dick," she says, "He has a big dick and he’s
an excellent…" stockbroker, dog-walker, chef, corrections officer,
etc. She declines to mention the penis alone because it is embarrassing to have
a large one, or to cope with a large one.

Plympton
is at the forefront of this new wave, or the back, depending on whether you
like his childishly simple line drawings, bizarre sex scenes and characters
that morph from one disgusting thing into another. His new opus is about a group
of animals, spawned under frightening circumstances in outer space, that returns
to Earth to kill the nasty government figure who got them created in the first
place.

"The
original concept for this film occurred to me when I was looking at a magazine
and I saw a picture of Laika, the Russian cosmonaut dog," Plympton explains.
"I wondered, ‘Is that dog still up in space circling around the Earth
in some tin can? There must be a lot of other monkeys and mice and rabbits that
are circling the Earth and they’re probably pretty pissed off.’"

Mutant
Aliens runs a bit long for my taste, but Plympton fans will be happy to
know that Bill’s archetypes are all accounted for: the Reagan-esque villain,
the horny and visually imaginative young man and the babe-with-oversexed-voice
(as cute child and slammin’ adult). There’s also some man-on-alien
action that’s not for the squeamish.

"I
started out doing sex cartoons for Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler
and Screw, so I still like to, y’know, put sex stuff in my films,"
Plympton says. "I think that’s kind of a unique quality to my animation,
going up against DreamWorks and Disney and Fox."

Mutant
Aliens has its American premiere ("as soon as my films are finished,
they go immediately to [France and Korea] and I make money on ’em")
this Friday at Cinema Village (22 E. 12th St., betw. University Pl. &
5th Ave., 924-3363). The show runs at 2:20, 6:20 and 10:10 and anybody who sees
the movie that night will be allowed to attend an after-party for Plympton fans.
(The location is secret; you’ll learn it when you get out of the theater.)

Oh, and
keep in mind as you’re watching Mutant Aliens–Bill Plympton
wrote, produced, animated and directed it. It took two and a half years and
ate up $300,000 of his own cash.

…Speaking
of lost wages, talented instrumental band the Cancer Conspiracy went
through some serious crap last month when their van, full of equipment, was
stolen in Queens. "We lost a total of over $21,000 in gear and merch,"
writes bassist Brent Frattini on the band’s website, "as well
as a porno mag and a jar of peanuts." It’s never a good time to have
your shit jacked, but it was particularly bad for the Cancer Conspiracy–they
had just released one of the most ambitious, interesting albums of the young
year and they were slated to play Mercury Lounge. They did what any band would
do; they sent out an e-mail about the theft, got stupid drunk at a bar in Queens
called Gussy’s (20-14 29th St., betw. 20th & 21st Aves., Astoria,
718-728-9418)–Gussy himself took a liking to them and added their debut
The Audio Medium to the jukebox–and flew home to Burlington,
VT.

This week,
Cancer Conspiracy returns for a show at Knitting Factory, where their uncompromising
post-prog chops will be respected. Basically, The Audio Medium (January
2002) plays like an even denser Don Caballero with saxophone and keyboards.
Along with bassist Frattini, guitarist Daryl Rabidoux and drummer/multi-instrumentalist
Greg Beadle have no respect for any of the norms of rock music, going
from Floyd-inspired horn parts to riffs cribbed from Rush to piano interludes
like they’ve been smoking dust with RZA. It’s amazing that
something like The Audio Medium ever even got made, let alone released
by Big Wheel Recreation.

As for the
name Cancer Conspiracy, it might refer to an alleged plot by members of the
medical community to suppress oncological research or it might refer to the
way pop music spreads through American minds, depending on how you interpret
the cryptic writings that come with the CD. "[I] tried to understand why
a culture which supposedly values individuality and variety is content to tune
in to what is essentially a static and repetitive signal," writes "Dr.
Travis John, Ph.D." in a "letter" that fits in the album sleeve.
Rock on.

Cancer Conspiracy
plays Saturday at Knitting Factory (75 Leonard St., betw. B’way
& Church St., 219-3055). They open for Lake Trout; Kill Me Tomorrow
is also on the bill; doors are at 8:30 p.m. so Kill Me Tomorrow should be
on at 10 with the Cancer Conspiracy following at 11. Tickets are $12.

…If, instead
of $12, you feel like spending a couple hundred this week, you’re in luck:
the swank spring events are in full swing. Something about daffodils and cherry
trees just makes people want to spend cash in New York, and our auction houses/theaters/community
organizations know it.

First, on
Thursday, the Friends of Grand Street Settlement present their second-annual
Taste of the Lower East Side. I always thought the L.E.S. tasted like
beer, but when you reflect on it, there’s one single block that has Katz’s
Deli, Bereket Turkish Kabob House and Famous Original Ray’s
Pizza (Houston St., south side, betw. Orchard & Ludlow Sts.), so that’s
not too shabby. The Taste of the Lower East Side is bringing in yummy samples
from 25 restaurants and refreshments from 12 beverage distributors, including
Korand/Alize Cognac, for a night of ingestion. Proceeds benefit youth programs
at the Grand Street Settlement.

The best
thing about this event is that it’s taking place at the Orensanz Center
for the Arts (172 Norfolk St., betw. Houston & Stanton Sts., 529-7194),
a synagogue-turned-party-space that is gorgeous front-to-back. If you’ve
never been there, you owe it to yourself to drop by; it’s like the downtown
Cloisters. Tickets can be obtained through www.grandstreet.org/taste or by calling
674-1740 x211 for $75-$300.

Next on
the list, White Columns is a nonprofit exhibition space in the West Village
that’s been hosting a Benefit Silent Auction for the past two weeks.
(Whom does the auction benefit? White Columns, of course! They’re nonprofit.)
If you want to bid on any of their art, get on www.whitecolums.org now. If you
just want to party, shell out $150 for their gala this Saturday.

The hoo-hah
takes place at White Columns (320 W. 13th St., betw. 8th Ave. & Hudson
St., 924-4212) starting at 7 p.m. Be aware that despite what you might think
from the address, the entrance to the gallery is on Horatio St., one block south
of 13th St.

Finally,
it is Shakespeare’s birthday this Monday and Theater for a New Audience
is celebrating with its 23rd Anniversary Gala. Shakespeare is famous
for writing some plays in England. The Theater for a New Audience is famous
for putting these plays on. And John Turturro, celebrity MC, is famous
nowadays for this weird cultural blip O Brother, Where Are Thou? that
has gripped us since 2000. Cocktails start at 6:30 p.m.; dinner and entertainment
(including auctions for Broadway evenings) start at 7:30; it all takes place
in the Puck Bldg. (295 Lafayette St., betw. Houston & Prince Sts.,
398-1133 x11 or x12), New York Press’ old home, where I spent many
a rockin’ evening. Tickets are $450 and up and are available through the
number above.

"I
teach, among other things, how to access your instinct, your intuition and your
deeper wisdom so that you can assess a new prospect," Wininger says. Excuse
me? I thought dating was about humiliation and (maybe) theft.

"Wisdom
is crucial, because let’s face it–most dates lead nowhere," Wininger
reasons. This week he is going to go over the best places to meet somebody new
("I’ve met women on the subway, I’ve met women at the bus stop,
I’ve met women on the movie line") and how you can start a conversation
anywhere.

"Especially
now, post-9/11, people want to be bonding and connecting more than ever,"
he says. "This is the first post-11 spring and it’s going to be a
very happy hunting season."

Heck, you
might not even have to hunt outside of the workshop. Charlie Wininger’s
get-together will likely attract 60 people, 50 percent male and 50 percent female.
"One thing I’m doing on April 12 is some theater improv with everyone
to loosen everyone up and get them into a more spontaneous place," he explains.

Charlie
Wininger’s RelationShop course is $325, but this Friday’s hoo-hah
is totally free, so step up. Proceedings begin 7 p.m. at the SLC Conference
Center (22 W. 34th St., betw. 5th & 6th Aves., 244-8888).

…Now,
when I get guitarist Dave Rick on the phone, formerly of King Missile,
I ask him the dumb question that anybody would ask. I ask him if he still gets
money from his old band’s hit, "Detachable Penis." (Remember
that song? No? Well, it goes "De-tachable peee-nis" and it’s
about a detachable penis.)

"Hello?
Hello, is this working? Hello?" Dave responds. "I thought the
press would know more about this than lay people would know. No! I don’t
make any money off that song."

Dave’s
been through the rock ’n’ roll wringer more than once with King Missile
and the avant-garde group Bongwater; he’s taken plenty of "Detachable
Penis" questions.

"I’m
curious myself in my office when it’s like, ‘Dave, you’re on
the radio again.’ And I figure we get played on K-Rock and KROQ in L.A.
every day, but no, no one buys our records so we don’t make money… We
sold 80,000 records, and that’s shit."

Dave is
currently testing the waters with a new band, Dr. Mom. In some ways it’s
a supergroup of the art rock that flourished on New York’s Shimmy-Disc
label in the late 80s; the other members are Roger Murdock (ex-King Missile),
Stuart Popejoy and Ann Magnuson (ex-Bongwater). These nutcases
brought us tracks like "Dazed and Chinese" (Zeppelin’s "Dazed
and Confused" sung in Mandarin, from Bongwater’s first album) and
they’re coming to Galapagos this Wednesday to spread that new sound.

"Last
year, we put a song on a compilation disc called Colonel Jeffrey Pumpernickel,"
Dave explains. "That song was called ‘Dr. Mom’ so we said fuck
it, let’s call the band Dr. Mom. Let’s just keep it up… Ann had
to be in town this week because she’s required to go to jury duty and we
were like, ‘Hey, let’s do some songs.’"

Expect reworked
Bongwater tunes, humorous covers and developing material at the show. Also check
out openers the Martinets, another band that Dave Rick plays in.
They do true-grit revivalist punk.

"We’re
all those kind of people who, no matter what day job we have, we need to go
out at the end of the day and do this thing," Dave says of his musical
aspirations. Dr. Mom and the Martinets perform this Wednesday at Galapagos
(70 N. 6th St., betw. Wythe & Kent Aves., Williamsburg, 718-782-5188). The
show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $10. Expect old scenesters.

…Also
in the world of veteran NY rock, Arlene Grocery hosts Tiger Mountain on
Thursday. This is another band whose members are cluster-fucked back to the
early 90s. I got to speak with bass player Dean Rispler, who also plays
in the Brought Low and who produced last year’s terrific Bad
Wizard record. It doesn’t end there.

"I
played in Murphy’s Law and I also played in Voluptuous Horror
of Karen Black… I’ve been playing bass professionally in New York
since 1992," says Dean. "It’s been kinda terrible. I think Manhattan
has gotten really bad, in terms of the clubs. The thing that’s cool about
it is that there’s been a shift of focus over to Brooklyn–Northsix
is the best club in New York right now."

Tiger Mountain
does sparse, harmony-rich 70s rock a la Steve Miller. The songs are there
and so is the buzz–what’s interesting is that guys from Murphy’s
Law and Nada Surf are getting lumped with the Strokes and written
up in Rolling Stone. Dean doesn’t mind.

"I
really didn’t want to like the Strokes, but you know what, their record’s
not bad," he muses. "At least younger kids are like, ‘Oh, I like
this stuff,’ instead of listening to some sort of bizarre version of this
new techno that comes out every two weeks."

Tiger Mountain
is currently working on a debut album. They play Arlene Grocery (95 Stanton
St., betw. Ludlow & Orchard Sts., 358-1633) Thursday at 9 p.m. The monster
bill includes five other bands, but I haven’t heard of any of them so they’re
probably bad.

…If you’re
looking for a different kind of proven act, go down to B.B. King’s and
check out the X-ecutioners on Tuesday. This NYC supergroup of DJs comes
into town as part of the Adrenaline Tour sponsored by SoBe Adrenaline
Rush soda, the "MAXIMUM ENERGY SUPPLEMENT" that contains Siberian
ginseng and taurine. ("Get it up, keep it up, any questions?" is the,
uh, motto.)

The X-ecutioners
were formed in 1989, a quartet (now a trio)of legendary DJs pursuing that
rarest of birds–longevity in hiphop. They worked throughout the 90s toward
a 1997 record contract (rare for a bunch of turntablists) and recently released
their second album, Built from Scratch, on Sony. Built from Scratch
hit MTV and landed the X-ecutioners on the Billboard 200.

The Adrenaline
Rush tour doesn’t stop there (get it up, keep it up, remember?). It also
features a slew of extreme-sports videos to be played before the X-ecutioners,
from Crusty Demons (The 7th Mission) to Logic 10.
Many of these videos are still in production, so if you’re an extreme-sports
"enthusiast," you owe it to yourself to check them out. Also, as is
to be expected, the B.B. King screens will be graced by Jackass’
Steve-O and Bam Margera, who appear in the skate/hijinks/I-can’t-believe-they’re-not-dead
videos CKY2K and CKY3.

Opening
the Adrenaline Tour are politically minded rappers the Coup, but it’s
hard to waste ink on a group that stepped into mainstream legitimacy by abandoning
an album cover that showed the Twin Towers blowing up. It all goes down this
Tuesday at B.B. King Blues Bar & Grill (237 W. 42nd St., betw. 7th
& 8th Aves., 997-4144). Doors open at 8 p.m. and tickets are $15.