It's expected I'm gone

Ah, this is awkward. I don't know how to put it exactly. It's been four years and, well, it's been great. But now, like a two-minute brother, I'm through.

But listen: It's not you, it's me.

Helen

Yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the Black Tom explosion, which was a German-led act of sabotage on a New Jersey munitions plant. Anyhow, you can read a few summations of what happened here and here. (It is, however, one of those classic shrouded-in-mystery events, so there isn't a lot out there. A book about the saboteurs was recently released, though I haven't read it.) I'm the last person who should be giving any history lessons. No matter--I am not here to talk about the exacts. In fact, one of the most nebulous aspects of the Black Tom explosion is that there seems to be no agreed-upon casualty count. Various sources put it at anywhere from seven to 12, though at the time it happened, this paper claimed 200 people had died. (Why I'm mentioning this will all be clear in a bit.)

So, this is my great-grandmother Helen. By the time I was born, she was a stooped, wizened little thing who relished insulting everyone in my family and insisted on eating only ham and Pepsi at every meal. I suppose you don't outlive three husbands by being easygoing.

Helen grew up in Red Hook, Brooklyn. As teenagers, she and her sister passed their summers by swimming in the Erie Basin every day. They were both known as such expert swimmers that a movie director paid Helen's sister (whose name I can't remember) five dollars to do a swan dive off of the bow of a very tall ship--I think it was like a 30-foot jump--for a scene in a movie. (Her mother beat the hell out of her when she got home that night--I guess word spread quickly in Red Hook.)

The Black Tom explosion happened in the early morning of July 30. If my great-grandmother is to be believed (and that's debatable: you don't outlive three husbands by telling the truth, either), later that morning, she and her sister went down to Erie Basin, which was close enough to Black Tom that debris from the explosion was floating everywhere.

The story goes that she and her sister helped the police by swimming out into the water and bringing in the bodies. I'm not even sure if they were entire bodies or just pieces. Then again, I'm not even sure there were any.

I'm not old enough to have heard it firsthand, and so I've been told multifarious versions by my father and my aunt, both of whom are either too senile or too drunk to remember what really happened. The tale of my grandmother the body recovery scout has taken on the patina of myth. When I finally got around to actually researching the Black Tom Explosion for this post, I was terribly disappointed.* Seven freakin' people? All those years, she must've been lying.

Still, I like the story.
*I like my death tolls horrific.

Which one of them is Jeremy?

Is it just me, or does this photo remind you of this?

(Bonus question: Is it just me or is Xeni more blog-hot than real-hot?)(And am I a year-and-a-half behind the curve on that observation? What is this Boing Boing you speak of, sir?)

[this is good]

Summer is halfway over, sorta, and this being the busiest time of the year for me work-wise, I have neither the time nor the werewithal to come up with anything snappy to say. I have the following items that I've collected on cocktail napkins, wadded up in my pocket, and saved for a time such as this.

First of all, I'd like to thank not one, but TWO friends, for sending this article* to me, with the subject line "Thought you'd find this interesting." It speaks volumes that when a goth stripper in Philly gets arrested for having body parts in her house, you all think of me.
My favorite line is the following:

"And Hott 22 does not knowingly hire mass murderers."

Titty-squeezin' time

From what I have gleaned, apparently there comes a point in time at which all female journalists of a particular mien must write about visiting the Town Shop on the Upper West Side. Although I am no journo, I am no longer content to let Alex Kuczynzki have all that fun writing about shaking her cans. And also I'm short on material, so here goes.