Before I Self Destruct

For a nerdy Jewish bookworm growing up in New York's Lower East Side, 50 Cent may seem like an odd role model. Yet, my eccentric artist father's decision to social work to support his family made me determined to be the famous artist he never was. I now am a preschool librarian, a strikingly similar day job. 50 Cent continues to inspire me. "Get Rich Or Die Trying" is a motivational message, an OG New York attitude that has gotten me through drug abuse, living in crack dens and rejection after rejection from every major NYC magazine and newspaper. 50's survival against all odds, his savvy business persona and the fact he is still wearing doo rags while Jay-Z indies it up behind Wayfarers makes me stick to my Gats. Now, I am published, clean and constantly trying to help others understand that in true passion there are no "ifs." We may not all run the risk of getting shot nine times, but if you're real, life without art is never an option.



-Royal

Pomp Goes Paris

Love it or hate it, Paris Hilton is a pioneer. As a nerdy Jewish bookworm growing up in the ghetto Lower East Side of the early '90s, Paris is my shiksa goddess wet dream and inspiration to succeed. Bowlmor Lanes, where I spent so many Sundays knocking down pins to de-stress after Hebrew School, had Paris host Carnival, full of sword swallowers, contortionists, stilt walkers and colorful booze. After our photographer snapped Paris, her bodyguards started beefing, so we snuck behind a one-way glass Funhouse partition right behind her head. The view of press, paparazzi and bodyguards was dazzling, if a little lonely looking. Fame is worse than Heroin, seductive and addictive. Still on our high, we hit up the open bar at Sin Sin's Picante Thursdays. LES keeps me grounded.


(Paris Hilton)


(Stiltwalker)


(Knots)


(Prize)


(Royal Young, Pomp & Circumstance Executive Editor, Lori Bizzoco, Pomp & Circumstance, Entertainment Editor)

-Royal
Photos: Amanda Segur

Picante

Pomp recently partied at Picante Thursdays, taking back the Lower East Side. For a native New Yorker growing up in the hood during the '90s before its multi million dollar facelift I rarely return to these congested streets. But now, Sin Sin hosts a night of Latin flavor that lures old school locals and gives new neighbors a taste of a forgotten Lower. With a 10pm-11pm open bar and five dollar plates of Pernil, Arroz con Habichuelas, Ensalada y mucho mas cooked up by creative caterer Will Pentecost, this is a perfect way to kick off your thirsty Thursdays.


(Alex M. Pomp Stylist and PR Professional)


(Patrons get down)


(Royal Young, Executive Editor and Amanda Segur, Pomp Photographer)


(Ippolita De Paola, Pomp Crew)


(Enjoying Dinner)


(Double Yum)

-Royal
Photos by Amanda Segur

Bring It Back!

I was surprised to read about Junkies and Prostitutes in my ten year-old journal. Granted, I grew up on the ghetto Lower East Side of the '90s, but still, seeing those words in my scratchy hand was haunting. I guess that should have prepared me for my preteen musings on Holden Caulfield, "He's angry and likes to drink a lot" and my high school stories of a girl getting raped and committing suicide on a beach in Aruba "she was never hungry, sometimes she drank sugar water, but that was all." I wondered what was wrong with me. My artist/social worker father had always encouraged my creativity and now I had pages of prose that stood witness to my weirdness. Yet, there were also notes in the sidelines that made me smile: First Kiss 12/09/98, "my sweat, my eyes, my teenage Authority." Journals housed all my forgotten phases, words waiting to awaken me.

Journals. Bring It Back?

-Royal

Viva Hate!

If you want to forward the white supremacist cause, do it intelligently. Bigoted entitlement is never smart, but you can at least package it as fighting for the disenfranchised white shitheads of America, rather than dementedly shooting a security guard and giving Jews from Crown Heights to Kibbutzim reason to rationalize their persecution fantasies with firearms. A shy Jewish boy brought up in the Black and Dominican dominated Lower East Side of the early '90s, I'm all about diversity, but can still play devil's advocate. After my Bar Mitzvah, my Rabbi's wife told me we should drop a nuclear bomb on Germany and I shouted "Heil Hitler" in her face. But these immature antics and button pushing are appropriate for a thirteen year-old hormone case, not a homicidal eighty eight year-old asshole. There are plenty of excuses for ignorance, but none for insistant, proud myopia. The ability to change our world and educate ourselves is color blind and revelling in one's own out-moded, racist ideas is being one's own taskmaster. White supremacists: You are only whipping your own backs.

-Royal

Bring It Back!

My mom bribed me into getting Bar Mitzvahed by buying me traif (non-Kosher) Burritos after Hebrew School. I loved The Big Enchilada, but I was into fame, sex and drama not davening. Growing up in the ghetto Lower East Side of the '90s, I thought Torah was trife. Urban Dictionary defines trife as

adjective - 1. something that is gross,cheap, or in anyway unbecoming of you or beneath you. 2. Anything you deem to be stupid.

i.e. I can't believe we're staying in a Motel 8, this is so trife.

Bring It Back?

-Royal

Bring It Back!

Sex saturated, but naive twelve year-olds, my friends and I cybered. Not with each other. Seventh grade the next year ushered in wet dreams, phone sex, my shrink mom's birthday present to me What's Happening To My Body? Book for Boys. But before I gawked at female flesh, I giggled over HotGirl69 from a Christian Sex chatroom (half the hidden turn on: I was Jewish). My sixth grade Lower East Side crew would munch Two Boots pizza as we typed depravity. Our cybering was always funny first, I never let on I was secretly aroused. We cybered with women and men, at the end of steamy sex sessions always spilling secrets instead of semen. "i am actually old enuff 2 b ur lil bro lol" or "dude i don't hav pamela andersson size tits, u just fucked a 45 yrs old man" then signing off. We laughed off our cyber sessions as funny, harmless jokes, not exploring an adult world of intimacy we barely understood. At twenty three, part of me still prefers the anonymity of internet climaxes, if not the cheesy come ons.

Cyber Sex. Bring it back?

-Royal

Pomp Goes Global: Mom Writes from Chile, Valparaiso

Querido Mijito,

Greetings from Chile's charmingly seedy second largest city! No Big Macs, I order "guaton" a triple decker 5 inch round sandwich layered with meat, melted cheese, lettuce, tomato, and guacamole. Taking a launch boat in the harbor I motor past ocean liners, tankers, the Chilean armada, and sea lions basking on buoys.





My calf muscles aching climbing the city's 45 hills, I turn a corner and there's a street art version of your psychedelic dream girl. My favorite, winding through a maze of streets with only my camera. Do the colors of the houses match the cars or is it the other way around? The streets play tricks on me. Last week I passed the statue of the national poet and a local look-a-like was posing with him. This week, on the poet's birthday, they painted him silver, turning him into Elvis!







The hundred year-old indoor markets remind me of the Lower East Side's Essex Street Market when you were a toddler in the ‘90s, except for marisquerias on second floors, where proprietors beseech me to try caldos de mariscos while stray cats scrounge for scraps.





Street marionettes performing tango music lured me to Teatromuseo - a puppet and clown museum. I can take a funicular for around 20 cents, I hop one of these vintage cable cars to ascend the hills and then take the stair path down checking out graffiti.





About a half hour from the city, I visit Laguna Verde - a green lagoon surrounded by mountains where awkward and mysterious, masked birds congregate. A two hour bus ride takes me to Horcon, a seaside town, where men on horseback pull a fishing boat to shore.





I visit the home of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize winning poet and national hero, at Isla Negra, with Neruda's many collections; old glass bottles, masks, wooden ships' figureheads, butterflies, naughty postcards. A sailboat in his side yard never entered the water. He traveled farther in his imagination.

Abrazos y besos,
Mom

Bring It Back!

In seventh grade at my Chelsea middle school across from a gay bar called Rawhide, my Puerto Rican friend with a mushroom cut proclaimed his lunch time pizza was "Butta."

Urban Dictionaryhas a few definitions. In the Lower East Side of the mid '90s, it mostly meant:

"having a particularly illmatic quality; sweet; nice
'If lookin' good is like being on time, man, THAT girl is fifteen minutes early.'
'Yeah, she's butter.'"

This is also butter.



If brought back I propose we pronounce it "Butta" with a slight 'D' sound on the T's.

Should we bring it back?

-Royal

It's all in the timing

I suck. A couple of weeks ago, Royal forwarded me an invite from L Magazine to go to some bar in the LES to cover the launch party for NYC comedian Demetri Martin's new Comedy Central show, Important Things with Demetri Martin. I thought it was a week later than it was, so I missed the damn thing.

I considered saying I went, and that the free beer flowed freely for a few hours, that OMG Demetri was totally there and gaw he's so frickin' cute couldn't you just die. And how I mustered up the courage to talk to him and I was terribly witty and charming and he laughed at all my jokes.

"Do you wanna get outta here? Somewhere more quiet where we can talk?" he asks, and I say sure. We go to the backroom at 'Inoteca and share a bottle of Pinot and then we fumble all over each other up against a dumpster somewhere on Ludlow and part ways, promising to find one another on Facebook or something equally tragic. Yeah. None of that happened.


But I did watch the premiere of his show Wednesday, and aptly enough, the theme of the show was "timing." Like Martin's live comedy show, the New Yorker incorporates his simple drawings, songs, and dry jokes in between sketches.

Many many Mondays ago, Martin ran a sort-of focus group at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. He spent a good four hours testing jokes and airing sketches from his upcoming show. Martin was looking for feedback, but most of us were too polite, or sincerely enjoyed what we saw. The only person who looked like he wasn't having a good time was the guy who played Stanford on Sex and the City. He sat up front, all arms folded and sour-pussed. What the fuck was his deal? Am I right, ladies? A few eager geeks did opine some of the sketches dragged on a bit, but for the most part they worked. Perhaps I'm biased 'cause I totally wanna bone him. What can I say; I'm a sucker for a big nose.


Anyway, Martin definitely took the criticism to heart, and tightened up his little sketches. One of my favorites of last night's premiere was the "guy too early for a rave." Martin's in bike shorts, and his long hair that usually hangs in his eyes in just the most darling way was up in pigtails. He was dancing around in broad daylight among people going to work and doing day time stuff. It was a simple idea, as most of Martin's premises are, but the visual was hilarious.

At that UCB show, Martin was asked who influenced him. Not surprisingly, he counted Steven Wright as one of his top inspirations. Like Wright, Martin deadpans intelligent commentary on life observations as humor without copping to raunch. And like Wright, I would totally do him, in case I haven't made that crystal clear.

Make a friend with cable and check out Important Things with Demetri Martin, Wednesdays at 10:30 on Comedy Central.

-Megan Metzger

What's your Obama-won-face?

Due to technical difficulties of feeling cut off from the world because of no election news coverage, the Pomp election watch was shortly canceled and we made our way down to another LES hang out, preferably one with drink specials and television screens; all the while staying close to the Williamsburg bridge so that the trip to BK would be quick and painless no matter who the victor. Our group consisted of Pomp editors, photographers, writers and illustrators, armed with red and blue glowsticks and huge Obama pins, we made our way through the strangely quiet streets. In bars, people were glued to television screens in a rapt alcoholic daze.



Inside Iggy's (great jukebox, $2 pbr and $3 red white and blue shots) with it's multitude of news channels and it's guardedly optimistic patrons we were able to rejoin the rest of the world in waiting with baited breath. Yes Obama's lead was pretty extensive but the talk of the town was "dirty tricks". The general murmur was of great enthusiasm - and as the night wore on and the red white and blue shots were imbibed aplenty - growing wariness.



In the middle of talking to a friend, a cheer went up. We turned towards the TV to see CNN declaring Obama president-elect. Everyone started screaming until someone shouted "Wait! Isn't it too soon to tell?" People immediately stopped cheering and started drinking like mad. Like I said already, guarded optimism.



Finally the news reached our paranoid minds! Whoops and shouts, people laughing hysterically, me and my roommate jump up and down and hold on to each other. Everyone else hugging, talking rapidly and smiling hugely. We find noisemakers and start blowing like Lewinsky. Strangers hugging, kissing and high-fiving as if there is absolutely nothing separating them (because at that moment nothing is). Like New Years but better, all that hope and expectation distilled into a balmy November night.





The rest of the evening was an ecstatic haze of taking pictures of Obama-won-faces, celebrating loudly and reveling in the noise. The LES was a parade of insane elation. The city felt like a community again.

- Kastoory










PostScript: Obama's speech was also a high point of the night as all the noisemakers and revelers silenced to hear him speak. It just further cemented his place in history. How many presidential acceptance speeches are that humble? And give we-the-people so much credit? I don't know, but seeing Oprah as just one of millions in a crowd thawed my cold dead heart even further, it might even start beating again.