Avery Fisher? Who remembers him? FUCK AVERY FISHER!

Oh well. Not everyone can be Ozymandias. (Who?)

When it comes to corporate greed, posterity be damned!

Lincoln Center's famous "Avery Fisher Hall" is going to be re-named to the highest bidder. Purina Cat Food Hall? Charmin Toilet Paper Hall? Wal-Mart Hall?

Nothing lasts forever. Nothing even lasts a lifetime. The relatives of the late Mr. Fisher are going to walk by this building and NOT see Avery's name. People who recorded albums there, or played there, will have no prestige. What? You played someplace we never heard of!

This shit happens all too frequently. Broadway theaters have been routinely re-named because a person famous in the 30's or 40's is unknown now. So let's switch it. The Alvin Theater. The Virginia Theater. Nope...they are now the August Wilson Theater and the Neil Simon Theater. Ever hear of Martin Beck? It's now the "Al Hirschfeld Theater."

Sure, it's nice that Neil Simon was honored in his lifetime, and Hirschfeld. It does mean there's even less reason for anyone to look up "Martin Beck." And wasn't that the point? That his name would live on? That decades later, people would at least be saying, "Who's this Martin Beck guy they named the theater after?"

NO. August Wilson, by the way, is a BLACK, and Broadway didn't have a theater named after a BLACK so now there's a theater named after a BLACK.

It's only a matter of time before the Helen Hayes Theater will become the KIM KARDASHIAN THEATER. Why not? Kanye might want to give it to her as a little birthday gift.

Phil Ochs once sang about the "Flood of Florence," and how the holy works of God and reverence fell before the floods. That was a natural disaster. Renaming Avery Fisher Hall just so a fresh egomaniac rich prick can get his name associated with art and culture, that's more like backed-up sewage.

I'm already well aware of how temporary things are. My high school and my college no longer exist. People ask me where I graduated from? The answer is, in essence, NOWHERE. I will never be able to go back to the "old school" and look around wistfully. Time marches on.

Then there's the insanity of places that claim to exist, but don't. Tourists love to go to Yankee Stadium. Guess what. It is NOT Yankee Stadium. It is NOT the house that Ruth built. It is NOT where Lou Gherig stood and told the world that despite a fatal disease he was "the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."

They knocked Yankee Stadium into dust and built a facsimile a thousand yards away. So it's close, but NOT the truth. Which makes it a lie. When I stood on the field at Yankee Stadium (thanks to a lucky photo assignment) I was able to say, "I'm standing on history." The stadium seats were renovated (no pillars blocking the view) but basically, I could say "I'm looking toward home plate from center field, same as Mickey Mantle did. Same as Joe DiMaggio."

There's no loyalty in sports, that's for sure. A player's contract runs out, and he'll change his uniform and go to a different city because he'll sell himself to the highest bidder. There's no loyalty in naming a city street or a building. Times change. I say this from a country that may one day be re-named "Los Estados Unidos." At least nobody's talking about tearing down Avery Fisher Hall entirely and replacing it with a mosque. Yet.