Monthly Archives: November 2012

Number One Instrumental

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One of the all-time great instrumentals, a B-side by Jerry-O — I’ve pumped this at every party I ever DJ-ed since I “acquired it” from a DJ buddy/enemy. I like to think this instrumental says a lot about Frankie’s Apartment, my collaborators, and the entire 6th Borough.

Over simple soul, pre-funk, slambo. You can dance to it. B-Side, cause we’re never A-Side. Hot snare, bass-heavy, you can hear people in background on the break. Only for the heads. Technically, there’s a lot of stuff that’s way better, but not really.

Stick The Horn On The Unicorn

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99¢ Stores came through a few years ago with a new version of Pin The Tail On The Donkey, appropriately named: Stick the Horn On the Unicorn.  What a nice and welcome change.  Everyone in Frankie’s Apartment has been playing a solid 10-rounds of Donkey every evening after 2nd Dessert for the last 7 years. Sometimes we play 80-rounds. It’s an invigoratingly depressing way to get ready for our nightly Seinfeld block where we turn down the sound and do all the voices.  Unicorn is so much better than Donkey because Sudsy hates it and the kit comes with the awesome BLINDFOLD you see below.
We ran out of Twizzlers once while we were playing so I had to run out to Fazmer’s Bodega on Sorgum Ave.
to pick up some more.  I still had on the blindfold – and guess what?  It started a chain reaction in
the Sixth Borough.  A chain reaction of FASHION and an official LEAGUE for serious players of
Stick the Horn on the Unicorn.  
So not only are the local ESP-kids showing off by wearing the blindfolds around town without bumping into
everything (like I do), but all the graf-heads use the Unicorn Horn Stickers to sticker-bomb.

It’s a nice sticker.

MORE SIXTH BOROUGH STYLE
Rubbish hates the poster because he hates unicorns and all the talk about unicorns that comedy
people have been doing over the last decade or so.  I ain’t letting them spoil all my unicorn fun,
but he’s sort of right.  It’s so weird when a little piece of comedy catches on and it gets kicked down
the trough far enough that cornballs start spitting it like they got chops to rock jokes.
Sarcasm used to be something that a person generated naturally.  Now they teach it in
kindergarten.

1/2 Price Sale at Brothers Deli on 13th St. & 4th Ave.

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The super-wack Brothers Deli on 13th Street and 4th Avenue in Manhattan is having a Going Out of Business Sale.  Everything is half price.  Salami, tuna salad, Windex, Snapple, Beer. That means that everything is finally the price it always should have been cause this substandard monstrosity always charged way too much for 7-year old product.  It was always a terrible store and jail-filthy and the guys who worked it had such horrible attitudes that I can only guess they were hired out of some clinic where they’d been told they were gonna die pretty soon.  I’m glad it’s closing.  I wish it had never been open.  All their candy is mad dusty.  I once bought a piece of Bazooka here that tasted like sardines.  The bagels here convinced me that maybe the Thing is actually made out of bagels, not rocks.  They should donate whatever Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups they have left to the Board of Ed so they can use them to write on the blackboard, you feel me?  On a scale of rat to cockroach, I give this place a big fat tarantula.

I am trying to negotiate buying this sad piece of neon.
Hey — while I was there, I took advantage of the sale.  I might have hated them, but cheap fluff is cheap fluff.
1. Strawberry Fluff.
2. Regular Marshmallow Fluff in the QUART TUB.
3. Food coloring set from 1984
4. Garlic Spread (IDK what it is!)
5. Canister of Charms Sour Balls
Google Maps

1964 Map of Queens and Some 6th Borough Info

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Peoples always think that Frankie’s Apartment is in Queens. Some guess Manhattan. No, man.  As I told you before — we’re Sixth Borough — and proud.

What are the Sixth Borough though, Frankie? — say them.

I’ll tell you (them) now.

Dedicated to Louis and Louis, Mr. P, and Luca Guidolini

Sixth Borough = Zaghaven.  Z-Town.  Home of Zaggers, Zeds, and the Zephyr Candy Factory.

It used to be a part of Queens. Then the Bronx stole it.  Queens smuggled it back over in the middle of the night. Then the Bronx started in with the sewer bombing; Queens retaliated with hand-glider attacks. That’s how Zag lost it’s toe.

Rumbles went hard. Bitch-slaps, tripwires, kids were digging holes in the concrete and covering them with leaves so they could trap their enemies. Games of ASS and Suicide went to the death on the h-ball courts. Name calling got so good that front-liners took it on as a job. Denim jackets were getting so ripped up that they came to life and started fighting for their own rights. Graffiti didn’t just get crossed out, it got captured. Kids were only safe at their great-grandma’s house. You can still find teeth if you dig into the dirt of the trees that line Sorgum Avenue. At the height of the legend — the last brawl (aka the Stickball Bat Stand-Off) Zaghaven residents put their foot down and went rogue. Boroughless. They broke off the mainland and said — Yo, Zaghaven, us, is separate.

The neighborhood moved – miles out into the East River. We declare ourselves an independent borough, it said. The mayor of NY (at the time of the beef) just shrugged. Ok with me, he goes.

Queens and Bronx were both mad — they wouldn’t play with Zaghaven in the schoolyard no more.  Threw garbage at us. Called us NOWHERE. Then they started in with the Silent Treatment. Ignored Zaghaven, like it had mono. Pretended they couldn’t hear Zaghaven when it talked. Zag said, fine, we don’t want to talk to you either.  Did somebody say something, said Queens.  It was just the wind, said the Bronx.

For awhile, the Sixth did OK on its own. Manufactured hand-balls, banana-seats, and television antennas. They had the Candy Factory on the southern rim. Big spot, Zephyrs.  If you lived in Z you worked at Zephyrs at some point.

Once the high of the break wore off, a greyness hit Z-Town. Zaggers who had jobs in Manhattan, got tired of swimming to work and bringing home wet sandwiches for dinner. Manhattan was friendly, but it was busy doing its own thing. Brooklyn had never been friendly, so. Z-Town got depressed.  The Factory started laying people off. Time marched on. Nobody wanted banana seats anymore. The TV antenna business went to hell. The Handball molders still did OK, but the Sixth kinda got stuck in a different time. Like literally. Take your watch into the latitude. It’s usually yesterday in Zaghaven.  Technically, it’s 19.4 hours back in time. We catch up because we totally skip Columbus Day, but then we lose the time again because Halloween is always twice as long in Zaghaven. Sometimes it goes for a week and we have take a chunk out of August.

In an effort to zap up the kids, Zag boated back to its original position in the NY map, but instead of being ignored, they literally could not be heard. They cried and yelled. That’s why there’s such a strong music scene in Zaghaven — we’re always trying to make noise so the rest of the city can hear us.

The time thing makes it difficult to show you where we are. Yes, Borough Six is between Queens and the Bronx, sort of on top Queens, but underneath the Southern Bronx landmass. It’s hard to describe with words. It’s much (more fun) to describe with colors (felt tip markers) and cut out pictures from magazines and by folding up origami models. Sound Effects and Music, especially old hiphop instrumentals, help to establish a feel. It’s important to remember that it doesn’t make sense. Nothing really good ever makes perfect sense. If something’s not left out, then there’s no treasure to find.

Yes, there is a bypass tunnel from Manhattan that runs straight into the old Sixth Borough trolley station. But you have to leave a day ahead of time to make it to your appointments. It’s nice though, because when you go home, it’s yesterday again. We’re not really supposed to use the Tunnel, but everyone does. Then there’s the rush hour raft that you can catch from Astoria, but you need to buy raffle tickets to ride that thing. The helicopters are a sure way in, but it’s tricky for them to fly through the forcefield windows when it’s cloudy.

I’ve said too much.

Thanksgiving Songs!

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Juve Turkey Time by The Clickettes:

Cool Turkey by James Booker:

The Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Theme by Vince Guaraldi:

Thanksgiving Day Parade by Spencer Ross:

Thanksgiving Day by Ken Jones and his Orchestra:

Turkey Dinner, off one of those Funny Bones records: