Alexander Tuller

I haven’t listened to this one in years and it all came flooding back. It’s written as a dialogue with alternating verses talking to each between the guy and gal.

Even if you don’t like this kind of sound, give the story a chance.

NY Cares Day, prepare to meet team Robert “Huge Biceps of Help” Moses. Registration is closed, but send me a note if you’d like to help out as we can probably work you onto our site. We’ll be cleaning a park in Staten Island on Saturday.

I few people have asked me why I choose the name Robert “Huge Biceps of Help” Moses. The answer is clear: this guy had a huge impact on the development of today’s park system in NYC, and I’m pretty sure he had huge biceps (this is what I’ve gleaned from the 30-something pages I’ve read from the mammoth book The Power Broker).

A fictitious account of the life and times of Robert Moses:

Robert Moses was a polarizing, controversial, sometimes drunk leader of New York because of his manic drive for urban development (brooklyn battery tunnel, tavern on the green, triborough bridge, jones beach, every park in long island, central park zoo, tennis houses, golf courses, bridle paths, baseball diamonds, beaches, lincoln center, the united nations headquarters, shea stadium, parkways, expressways, housing developments, bridges, roads– the list is longer than my span of attenti-…).

He was often criticized, unfairly, for playing too much Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Seen as a savior of a people who grew tired of pooping on Tammany Hall’s gold-plated toilets in the late 1800s, Robert Moses was also famous for his huge biceps. Power eventually corrupted him and he forced countless citizens out of their homes to make room his housing and highway projects, but that evil only spawned because he never had the opportunity to watch Obama’s 2004 DNC convention speech. Embezzlement issues aside, this guy was more powerful than Superman, and had he had another few decades to modernize he would have turned the Upper East Side into a similarly ballin’ Fortress of Solitude.

As park commissioner and later Mayor of NYC, he tussled with FDR, bullied with party greats and always won his way. He will be remembered for a lot of things, most of which I’ve forgotten already, but the main point is he built a lot of parks. Thus, under his flag of influence, team Robert “Huge Biceps of Help” Moses will inseminate NY Cares Day by spreading his metropolitan-park hybrid dreams and insistence on small miracles.

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

We all know things are bad — worse than bad – they’re crazy.

It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”

Well, I’m not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.

You’ve gotta say, “I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!”

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

“I’m as mad as hell,

and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”

NY Cares Day is coming up on Saturday, April 24. I created a team this morning, Robert “Huge Biceps of Help” Moses. Feel free to join and invite people–it’s open to anyone/everyone.

There is a $20 registration fee, but I hope this doesn’t keep you from rolling up  your sleeves and using your cubicle jockey keyboard baby hands for one day of manual labor. It’s for the kids.

The whole buildup of events will go something like this:
1) One month of fundraising, or, more likely, 1 month of forgetting you had signed up
2) One Friday night where you curse to yourself and kick a rock and pout w/  your hands in your pockets b/c you realized you can’t go out until 3am b/c you have to be in attendance at this stupid civic event by 9am on a Sat morning. What gives!
3) One Saturday morning where you wake up early and actually venture outside before noon. You’re tired, but you realize this is what normal people do on Saturday mornings. You start to feel kind of good about yourself. After all, it’s for the kids. ~pat on back~
4) A hard days work. Last year we weeded and helped fix up a playground. I will order some ‘za. It will be delicious. You work hard and feel content, after all, it’s for the kids.
5) You join team “Robert Huge Biceps of Help Moses” as we partake in some happy hour glory. Many, many pitchers will be ordered. You’ll forget how sore you are.
6) The whole experience will have been fun!

Hope to see you out there!
Alex

HOW TO SIGN UP
*Go to www.handsonnyday.org
*Click ‘Join a Team’ along the right side of the page
*Agree to the waiver
*Click ‘Join a Team’
*Select Robert “Huge Biceps of Help” Moses
*Enter all of your information
*Start fundraising

BACKGROUND READING

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses

http://icanhascheezburger.com/