I had a really great day today. There was some rap shit involved at a book release party. Then there was some crate digging at a Williamsburg record shop to find some great album art to hang on my bare apartment walls. Oh and a great dinner, and a quick trip to the city to the Times Square Sephora.
After Sephora, I did what I usually do when I’m in the Times Square area – I sit my ass down, put on the Beats by Dre, and work on writing on my phone. It’s my special place. I’ll explain that in the future sometime. I literally left Times Square around 10:15 or 10:20…I had been texting my homegirl and had sent her a text right when I turned on my car to leave, and 10:15 was the timestamp on it. What I’m saying is that I pretty much missed a riot by mere minutes.
When I got home and was hanging vinyl on my wall my mom calls me and tells me Bin Laden is dead. “Meh” I say, and then start rambling about this art project I’ve taken upon myself.
Did you hear me? I acknowledged the information and then kept it pushing. Meanwhile I’m eating dinner, washing my hair, staring at my beautiful new wall ornaments, thinking the world is moving along as usual. Open the Macbook, log into Twitter, and “OMG I’m going to Ground Zero right now!”, “Times Square – everyone celebrating! FDNY standing on top of trucks!” talk is flying around.
What?
So I look at all the twitpics. The mob around the White House. The crowds in Times Square. Those smiling souls down near the WTC site. And all I can think is “you dumbdumbs.”
You know why my mom called me in the first place? Not just to tell me Bin Laden was dead, but to ask if I was still in Times Square. My mom is a smart one. Bin Laden dead = heightened security and a bunch of salty terrorists. She had noticed on my Twitter that I mentioned being there, and she was calling to see if my life was still intact and to tell me to get the fuck out. So why is it a good idea to congregate around all of these iconic and very politically charged places in America when we just deaded the Godfather of modern terrorism?
Once upon a time last year I caught myself in a bomb scare in Times Square. I was in Forever 21, as usual not finding much interesting, and I was about to give up and walk out the door when the security guy blocked me and said I couldn’t leave. I looked out onto the street and it was like a scene out of some disaster movie – not a living soul in sight. I was waiting for a tumbleweed to blow down the road. Naturally patrons started panicking, and after quite some time some officers came to the door, quickly opened it, and instructed us all to run as quickly as possible a couple blocks away where it was supposedly “safe.” Very, very creepy. It ended up being a suspicious package outside of McDonalds, which also wasn’t a bomb. But naturally everyone who was in Times Square at the time mobbed up as close as they could to where the police had it blocked off because New Yorkers and tourists have at least one thing in common – we are nosy as fuck.
Imagine if the box was really a bomb? all the shards of glass we nosy fucks would have caught? What if the bomb was more explosive than the 5-0 had anticipated? What if it caused some structural damage and some skyscraper was in danger of falling? Let’s just say the scenario wasn’t handled too well, but there really is no way to handle a crowd that big in a place so hard to secure.
So now we just gave terrorists a reason to be mad, we all form big mobs around places they’ve been eyeing to attack or already have anyway, thus creating a scene very hard to secure and control, and all to do what? To party. Over a man’s death.
Man, if I want to party I go to Soiree. Or Greenhouse. Somewhere where bouncers will be quick to strong arm the drunk idiot who starts a fight, thus causing tables to be overturned and glasses to be thrown. Maybe some weave will get pulled. Someone might get their ribs kicked in. But fact of the matter is I’ma be aight because those bouncer guys keep their game thoro.
Ain’t nobody shutting down the crazy muhfucka in Times Square who is about to “push the goddamn button!” (c) the little Chinese girl in Rush Hour, because you can’t even walk over there right now. You can barely walk there on a regular day. And even when a faux-box-of-impending-doom that harmed nobody is sitting in front of McD’s, you have Forever 21 employees fainting out of fright. I kid you not. Homegirl hit the ground and was out cold. Everyone thought she was dead. You know how long it took for help to get to her in the middle of that crowd? And what about the person who’s meat packing district apartment catches fire? Wonder how long it will take those firefighters to get down from the top of their trucks and make their way through the crowd to go help them?
I say all this to say that not only are you party mob muhfucks out of your cot’damn senses, but celebrating death is just ass backward on so many levels.
On September 11th, which Bin Laden has been accused of masterminding, you weren’t celebrating the deaths of the men who basically kamikaze’d themselves on the planes that hit the towers and the Pentagon, and the grass in Pennsylvania. You were crying over the people you lost, or the concept of just knowing that many innocent people died since you may not have lost someone close to you. Surely partying at that moment seemed inappropriate. So now that the guy is accused of being behind the event, but you know, didn’t actually execute it dies…and we party? I’m sorry but last I checked there is still a war happening. A war that has killed a ton of Americans, and innocent people on the opposition’s side as well. So how is it any more appropriate to celebrate now than it was the day of 9/11? Really? I’m not happy about this, if anything it’s stressful. The thought of retaliation from Osama’s goon squad doesn’t make me happy, and it surely doesn’t wanna make me scurry my ass out to Times Square with a bunch of strange people I don’t know. Or even go underground into a subway tunnel at all, really.
So “yay,” “woohoo,” “ahhh,” and all of those celebratory exclamations my coaches taught me to never say while cheerleading. We killed one guy. Whoopdeedoo. We’re still trillions of dollars in debt, I saw $4.59 premium gasoline in Manhattan today, we’re still at war, Japan is a radiated disaster zone, Haiti is still fucked the fuck up, and the heat still ain’t on in my apartment even though it’s freezing in here. This solves absolutely no problems. There is some guy Osama taught all his ideology to, in fact I’m sure there are scores of men following in his footsteps, who can still impose a proverbial Hominick head lump on the world.
I’ll celebrate when I can actually comfortably afford rent, gasoline, and fuel off the type of money people think they can get away with paying writers these days. Until then, I’m happy I made it back to Bushwick before the craziness erupted in Times Square, because ain’t shit out here notable enough to attack. What, a bitter Al Qaeda associate is gonna go after Kellogg’s diner during the post-club rush tonight? Yeah right.
Dumbdumbs.
