For a brief time I wrote band previews for the NY Press. Some of the articles appeared largely unretouched, but as time went on, I noticed they were really going through the wringer. Somebody was hacking my tiny blurbs, not to shorten so much as add nonsensical stuff to somehow jazz up my writing. I talked to the shmoe who was doing this and he blamed me for not writing "tight enough." Somehow, adding "Spraying the audience with vomit and cheese" to my write-up of the Ex-Models didn't seem to be tightening anything up, yet he had the final cut. Anyway we were both unceremoniously let go a couple months later.
I was reminded of this heady time in my life today as I read JoshB's latest article in the Press, concerning the reticence of his livery cab driver to take him to my adopted neighborhood of Bushwick Brooklyn. It's a pretty funny read, which I read previously on his own blog. Now, I don't know if his writing is subject to the same dubious knife of editorial re-education, but there are some amusing discrepancies. In describing our house and its occupants' desires, the Press article states
My friends wanted to buy an apartment in Park Slope, sure. Who wouldn’t? Historic brownstones, lush trees, schools without metal detectors. Yet their bank accounts would only let them buy in Bushwick, two minutes from the jackhammer-loud overhead train.
Oh, the indignity of it all! Like I would ever want, of all things, an apartment in Park Slope. I know, none of it matters, it's just filler for the real meat of the story. I just hope it was the work of some anonymous editor and not Mr B Himself. He knows better anyway; we lived for years on the same longitudinal path in Clinton Hill and Crown Heights, respectively (he's still there). Truth be known, I had wanted to buy in Clinton Hill, but even that neighborhood had priced us out long ago, not to mention it is getting progressively full of the kind of reprehensible people I used to think would never cross Flatbush Ave (let alone come into Brooklyn).
But I suppose in terms of dramatic illustration, establishing the dichotomy of The Slope and The 'Shwick makes for a palpably wide spectrum of experience. Still, none of you Slopers better come out here or, you know, we'll beat you with a bat. For an hour!
