Archive for November, 2008

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Sunday’s Best

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

Argh, Sunday night. After four days off there is a feeling of dread in going back tomorrow. And there’s no need for it, since I enjoy this job. I’m sure it would be different if Bill was here, but he’s not on this cold rainy evening.
I wish he were here, but I must carry on. Didn’t do much today due to the weather. Yesterday would have been the day to do something but I stayed local. No trip to Manhattan, just a walk to the post office.

I did find the scarves I’ve been looking for, and of course I found them after buying a scarf on Thanksgiving morning in the city while waiting for Bill and his mother outside of Grand Central Station.

Last night I watched Tropic Thunder, which was very good, very witty. Turns out I didn’t have Hancock, the Will Smith movie. That’s next in the Netflix queue. Tropic Thunder was basically a movie about a making a movie, which I thought was along the lines of The Stunt Man, a movie from the early 1980’s starring Peter O’Toole, Barbara Hershey and Steve Railsback. Similar concept, different plots, or plotz.

I watched the director’s cut last night, the commentary with Ben Stiller, Jack Black and the great Robert Downey Jr., who is certainly one of the best actors around today, playing a blond haired blue eyed Australian who undergoes a darkening of his pigmentation so he can play a role written for a black man.

It did sag in bits, but then again it was the director’s cut, not the theatrical release which had most of the fat trimmed off. But as Downey’s character says in the movie that he doesn’t step out of character until the DVD commentary, he does his commentary in character, to the amusement of Stiller and Black.

After that I watched bit’s and pieces of Saturday Night Live as well as Escape from the Planet of the Apes which I used to love, now I was surprised that I was able to sit through it then because there was an awful lot of dialogue and really cheap sets.

Then again, I wasn’t able to see it in the theater since I was too young so I had to wait for it to be shown on broadcast TV. I think the only one I saw in a theater was the fourth Ape movie, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

They never showed the Apes movies nearby, it seemed they only showed them in Passaic, which was too far and too rowdy for me to go alone let alone ask someone else to go and get their parents to drive us. Paramus was closer and within walking distance and had a few theaters.

This afternoon I finally got around to watching Wall-E which was as charming and cute as I had been told. Harpy likened it to old school cartoons from the 1920’s, not much dialogue- you need to follow the plot by watching the action and figuring out various bleeps and whirrs.

But it’s not all bleeps and whirrs and watching it on DVD affords the luxury of reading subtitles. It’s funny, when I sat don a few minutes ago I was saying to myself I don’t want to write, but here I am twenty minutes later and basically finished with tonight’s entry.

And I just got a call from Rand who is going to be dropping off my computer in a few minutes. Oh how torn I am, using Bill’s Mac and finally getting the right commands down to going back to Ol’ Dusty.

Which is sort of like Bill’s Mac being EVE and Ol’ Dusty being Wall-E.

Yeah- that makes sense.

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Posted in So how's band camp? | 4 Comments »

Janie Jones

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

A lazy good for nothing Saturday and that’s how I wanted it to be. Didn’t do much of anything today. Just relaxed watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall and it was ok. It was hyped up to me quite a bit so maybe I was expecting too much. It was enjoyable but not gut splitting, which is good since who wants to clean up guts anyway.

Last night was pretty good though. Juan was a lot funnier than Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He stooped by on his way back to Trenton. We hung out and watched most of Zelig and The Times of Harvey Milk.

Of course while watching the documentary on Harvey Milk I got choked up which was a surprise to Juan. He was nice enough to ask if I was alright even though I think it made him a little uncomfortable.

I blubbered that even though I’ve watched the documentary a few times already it still gets me every time. I don’t think Juan had ever seen me like that before and I also don’t think Juan had seen the documentary before either.

He left around 10:00 and I watched the rest of the documentary. I wound up staying up until 12:30. I wanted to sleep late but I couldn’t sleep past 8:00.

I rallied and was out the door, paying 25 cents more for the funny papers. Saw the family unit on the 3rd floor only briefly since Superboy needed a super change and I certainly didn’t need to see that.

After the morning shows I watched the extra disc of the documentary before I had to turn it off. You see since I’m using Bill’s Mac these days, the TV is in the next room and I don’t get any chance to watch it, only hear it, which of course isn’t the same thing.

Right now, The Stand is on. I’ve seen that before a few times. Pretty good adaptation of a Stephen King novel. I can hear what’s going on and I can picture it in my mind.

I still have Wall-E to watch as well as Hancock on DVD. Hancock got so so reviews but I am a sucker for a super hero gone wrong story, so that should appease the 12 year old boy in me.

Also deleting non-existent racks from my iPod. The gray exclamation points show which tracks are no longer there. Rand is fixing my computer and updating my iTunes so perhaps if I take everything off the iPod and reload it, it might work better.

Then again it might not.

In any event I missed the Apple sale where the iPod classic was on sale 20.00 less that the list price. No matter where you shop, the iPod is 249.00 so I guess 229.00 is a big deal. It was a one day sale.

Perhaps as we get closer to December 25 there might be another sale. But even then it’s a bit of an extravagance.

One other thing Juan got a super duper new phone, which he was so happy to have. It does everything, even contains a defiblerator.

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Posted in Cool Cold Reality | 3 Comments »

You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)

Friday, November 28th, 2008

Friday night, yet feels like a Saturday night. Looks like a pump, feels like a sneaker. Bill and I went to see Milk this afternoon in Chelsea. Sold out show at 2:30. An excellent movie, well done.

I can’t really say that I’m a big Sean Penn fan but I have utmost respect for him since playing Harvey Milk. James Franco, also someone I was ambivalent towards was quite good as well as hot. Emile Hersh played Cleve Jones and I had forgotten his role in the Harvey Milk story.

Cleve Jones is the creator of the Aids Memorial Quilt, aka the Names Project. The other day I posted in my Facebook page a statement from Harvey Milk, You Cannot Live on Hope Alone, which still brings a tear to my eye.

There were a few moments in the film that tears were rolling down my face. I knew where it was going to end and I was dreading it, but it was remarkably handled. Just so well made, Gus Van Sant did a commendable job.

Harvey Milk was a hero of mine. I feel one of his main points from his life was to get gay people out of the closet and destroy those myths. There is no shame, we are not monsters or child molesters. WE are your brothers and sisters, your children, your friends and co-workers.

For years, maybe centuries we have been told we were inferior, perverted, just because of whom we love. To find out that I was gay at the onset of puberty was an earth shattering moment for me.

I remember it perfectly. One night I was letting the dog out in our backyard and while I waited for him to do his business I looked at a newspaper waiting to be tied up and given to our neighbor for recycling.

There was an article that caught my eye, an article in the sports section about a footballer, Dave Kopay who had just come out of the closet and giving the NFL a big scare, if not society as a whole.

He cracked the myth of the limp wrested florist or hairdresser. Here was a football player who could probably beat up anyone in the room who called him a fag, coming out of the closet. I remember getting aroused reading it.

That is when I knew, when I had my ‘uh-oh’ moment that October night in 1976. As confusing as it felt for me, my life plans whatever they were at 14 years old, getting married and having kids was what was drilled into me, as confusing as that was, it also felt true.

I knew then, that this was the way I was, no choice involved. And really if you think there is a choice, at what moment do straight people make their decision to be straight?

It was painful and lonely for me. I did look it up in a dictionary and that was basically telling me I was abnormal, a deviant. I knew I wasn’t those things.

In 1976 there were no Gay/Straight Alliances in high schools and if there was, I was going to a catholic high school and there certainly wouldn’t be one on that campus. I eventually found my footing and was forced to live a double life, or a lie from the age of 14.

Not very easy and the terror of being found out always loomed in my mind. I was found out once by someone in my immediate family who said I was disgusting and perverted and would tell mom and dad. I hyperventilated as the room spun and saw that my world could be destroyed that very moment.

Somehow I got through that and as I far as I know, they didn’t say anything. Eventually I was outed. My father found magazines under my bed, but unlike my brothers with Playboy and Penthouse, I had Blueboy and Mandate.

My father told my mother who told my brother then to my sister and then to my brother and when I was confronted I admitted it. I knew I couldn’t live there anymore.

I wasn’t kicked out and they didn’t want me to leave, but I knew I couldn’t live my life the way I wanted to in Lodi. I was in Hoboken more and more, hanging out with an intelligent group of college graduates and was more comfortable there.

That was about 8 years after I found out about myself in 1976. Almost 2 years later Harvey Milk was reported on initially as being the first Gay person elected to public office and it was national news in January 1978.

On November 27 1978 he was assassinated in City Hall, as was Mayor George Moscone by former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White.

As terrible and horrible as Harvey Milk’s murder was, I felt equally bad for the Moscone family. George Moscone was a progressive Mayor and who knows how far both he and Harvey would have gone if only they had lived.

I highly recommend this movie. It was so good I would probably see it again in a theater if the opportunity presented itself once more.

After Harvey Milk’s assassination 30 years and one day later Harvey Milk lives on.

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Posted in Wonderful World Beautiful People | 1 Comment »

Young Gifted and Black

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

No, the title isn’t about me just a song that has been playing in my head for the past few hours. The Bob and Marcia reggae version, not the Nina Simone version which is still good but heavy enough to make Nina cry when she sang it. Bob and Marcia’s version is very much a fun song, upbeat and optimistic.

It’s a late posting tonight since I just got back from Thanksgiving dinner with Bill and his mother and various cousins and friends. A lovely time indeed.

Last night was mellow yet again. Bill was here in the apartment for about thirty minutes, mainly to pick up some fresh clothes and for an extended bear hug, which I was glad to both give and receive.

Can’t really hug that long on the street when I see Bill after work since you never know who will bash your head in with a brick if you’re seen showing affection to the one you love and the one you love happens to be of the same sex. So we have to hug indoors in the safety of our apartment.

It was all too fleeting, Bill’s visit. We did finalize the itinerary for this morning though. Bill handed me a round trip Metro North ticket and we made plans to meet at Grand Central Station.

I woke up this morning and went out for the papers and some bagels. Had to go to Dunkin Donuts since the Hoboken Bagel store was closed on one of the few days they actually close. I think Christmas is the other day. I’ll find out on December 25 in any event.

Saw Julio and Stine and Kal-El this morning. They were going to Julio’s sister who just gave birth to twins last month. One came home a few weeks ago, the other last weekend. They were premature you see.

I came upstairs, made some breakfast and soon I was suited and out the door headed to Manhattan. Not many people on the bus, which was nice.

I expected some problems crossing Broadway due to the parade and my expectations were on the money. I couldn’t even cross Seventh Avenue. Just people milling about looking at floats and balloons from a distance.

No cops to ask where to cross so I try walking down to the subway hoping I can cross underground. Nope, the gates were closed for entry. I found another subway entrance and was able to get through but the exit I had hoped for on the other side of Broadway was inaccessible.

Luckily there was a cross town shuttle about to leave the station and I squeezed in. Five minutes later I was at Grand Central. I had some time to kill before Bill and his mother arrived so I bought a dozen roses for Bill’s cousin Hiram’s wife, Chris.

Met up with Bill and his mother and soon we were on the railway to Beacon NY, about two hours away.

Hiram picked us up at the station and soon we were mingling with cousins and friends. Chris made a lot of food and we all ate like gavones, at least Bill and I did. Pictures were taken but I can’t figure out how to post them on a Mac so later on down the line you can see them.

You can see Bill’s pictures taken on his Facebook page.
Cut n’ paste time http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?cropsuccess&id=1037999596#/profile.php?id=1062659430

I’m wearing Bill’s hat, which since it fits me better than him, is mine now. He said so.

Tomorrow afternoon Bill and I are going to see Milk and we’re both pretty psyched about it.

We hope you had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.

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Posted in Wonderful World Beautiful People | 1 Comment »

I See Red

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

Jesus Christ what a crazy day this has been. First off, since May 2007 I have been receiving harassing calls from an Asian woman who claims I have lied to her and betrayed her.

She usually fills my voice mailbox with messages preventing any legitimate messages from being recording. All the messages are in another language and they starting out in broken English- whispering weeping and usually increase in volume winding up with her screaming and sobbing.

Usually I’ve just erased them. The phone service we use claim they couldn’t help me unless I changed my number (which can’t be done since my number is the main number) or go to the police.

I figured the NYPD has better things to do, but I found out later this afternoon that if I get a police report from the NYPD I can submit that to the phone service who will send it to Verizon (who control most of the land lines in Manhattan) and they could block these calls. No one told me that earlier.

In the meantime, I asked that my phone be forwarded to the fax machine until Monday. I tried it myself but couldn’t so I schedule it to be done at 2PM this afternoon after I had left for the holiday weekend.

At 3PM I checked and expected to hear a fax machine, instead I heard my own voicemail. The psycho didn’t call. Other methods I have used in the past to discourage this woman calling was to digitally record her messages, load them into my iTunes and then play them back as an outgoing messages.

Some Asian woman screaming and crying about how she’s not a celebrity and everyone stares at her when she goes shopping. I can honestly say I don’t know anything about what the hell she is ranting about.

I should also add that I did meet her last year. She showed up in my office, asking to see John Ozed. The receptionist tells me and I go out and introduce myself and she says I am not John Ozed, that someone as put me up to being John Ozed.

Apparently somehow she got my name and work address and has called me almost every day since then. I know it’s odd but that is how it happened.

I live such an interesting life.

Then Bill asks me to pick up some shoes from the shoemaker and some dry cleaning. I go to the shoemaker and hand in the ticket to some Hoboken born and raised inbred. Old geezer paisan. He can’t find it.

Younger Latino worker asks when the shoes were dropped off, I tell him I’m doing someone a favor, and to look at the ticket. Turns out Bill dropped off the shoes October 30. Today is November 26.

They look and look. They ask me what size shoe, what type of shoe and the shoe’s color. I call Bill, he says size 12, penny loafer and they’re black. They can’t read the ticket. I suggest sending it to a pharmacist so they could read it. They didn’t get the joke.

Geezer paisan says some remark about me going to a pharmacist. I ignore him. 20 minutes they find the shoes and start putting on the toe and heel savers. Almost a month to do the job and here they are putting the savers on.

The kid behind the counter takes some money off the bill and wishes me a Happy Thanksgiving but I just take the shoes and I leave.

I call Bill, telling him that I couldn’t believe it took them almost a month to do the job. The Geezer is outside and hears me and says, ‘Yeah so what? It took a month.’ I tell him to mind his own business. He doesn’t like the sound of that, and warns me to watch it.

I tell him to shut the fuck up. He again warns me and I tell him to drop dead.

I get the dry cleaning and come home and feel bad about the kid who wished me a Happy Thanksgiving. I call the store and ask for the Latino kid behind the counter. It turns out he answered the phone.

He asks who’s calling and I tell him I was in the store and they couldn’t find the shoes at first, and anyway ‘you wished me a Happy Thanksgiving and I ignored you and that was wrong’.

I wish him a Happy Thanksgiving and tell him that I like the work that they do there, but if the geezer is there next time I won’t be coming in. He says he understands and says, Happy Thanksgiving my friend.

I just saw Rand and Lisa outside and then Julio and Stine with Alexander. Rand and Lisa headed home and I went upstairs with the family unit. Had a few glasses of wine, told them the story I just wrote and watched Alexander teethe.

Alexander restored my faith in humanity so all is well. A few glasses of wine helped also.

Tomorrow, the trip to Beacon NY with Bill and his mother via MetroNorth to have Thanksgiving dinner with Bill’s cousin and his family.

This was written once again on Bill’s Mac since my computer is at Rand’s with a new hard drive I bought this afternoon being repaired and installed.

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Posted in WTF | 4 Comments »

It’s Alright With Me

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

Well it’s Tuesday and it’s been a rainy Tuesday. The iPod keeps shedding tracks, it seems like the end is near. My computer was off all day and I made arrangements to drop it off at Rand’s tonight, but now it’s working.

As slow as ever but still it’s working somewhat. I’m not taking any chances though and I am writing this on Bill’s Mac once again. More dependable plus he’s not here. He doesn’t mind that I’m using it either.

There’s just a slight adjustment in using the Mac. Certain commands are different and instead of using the control button you need to use the ‘cloverleaf’ button to do the things you want to do.

I neglected to mention yesterday that I gave someone the wrong directions on the street yesterday. I was on 52nd street walking east and a woman asked me while she was walking west if she was walking in the right direction to get to 53rd street.

I didn’t hear her correctly and asked her to repeat herself and she did. Still I didn’t understand exactly and just agreed with her, telling her she was indeed going in the right direction. A few feet later I felt bad about not putting her on the right path, but not bad enough to set her straight.

Work was busy today and I was able to get a few things done and also find out what Vivek and his partner had in mind. 10 hours a week, paid to do administrative things like expense reports, travel arrangements and other things like that.

Extra money is extra money and I showed interest and enthusiasm. Don’t know when it’s going to start though.

Bill and I talked today, a few times actually. The call that stands out is the call I got on the bus ride home. I don’t like talking on the bus, since I don’t want to be one of those people who while chatting the people sitting around them can hear every word of the conversation. I had 2 seats to myself, probably because of the Padron I smoked on the way over to the bus terminal.

Bill was excited though, ‘fishing’ to see what I was doing on Friday afternoon. I told him I had no plans, and he wanted to meet up around 2:30 for something to do at 3:30. I told him sure, just to remind me on Friday morning.

I was a bit short though since I wanted to get off the phone as soon as I could, telling Bill that I would call him when I got home. That was the first thing I did when I got home, even before changing clothes.

He was still excited, he’s a rambunctious character. He asked if I was home and I said, yes I told him I would call when I got home and I am calling him now that I’m home.

He was going on and on about his bus driver friend and how her sister wrote a script and should the driver invest in the play.

Actually it all started when I mentioned Casey. Bill mentioned meeting Casey on the bus while his was talking to the bus driver which turned into the driver’s sister’s script. Then he said he had to get off the phone. I asked, ‘what about me?’

He asked what did I have to say and I said I didn’t have a chance to say anything since he completely dominated the conversation and how he loves the sound of his own voice. It’s true, homeboy can talk and talk without letting anyone get a word in edgewise.

Unfortunately I didn’t have anything to say except that I need to carry my computer over to Rand’s apartment and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Then he asked if I was just going to chill out in the apartment tonight and I said, No I was going to bring my computer over to Rand’s apartment. Which went in one ear and out the other.

Bill is unapologetic for the fact that he loves the sound of his own voice. But it’s alright, since I love him so. Drives me crazy like no other and that’s fine by me. After 8 years it had better be.

I think Bill and I are going to see Milk on Friday. That may be what he was fishing about. I really want to see it since Harvey Milk was a personal hero of mine. I own the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk which always leaves me sobbing at the end.

In 2004 Bill and I visited the Castro in San Francisco. Harvey Milk’s photo shop was a card store, but embedded in the sidewalk out front was a plaque in Harvey’s honor. Got choked up there too. I’ve seen the trailer and I have to say Sean Penn looks incredible. Not so much looking like Harvey, but having the mannerisms and speeech patterns down pat.

If you have a chance, rent the Academy Award winning documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk. You won’t regret it.

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Posted in Yesterday's News Tomorrow | 6 Comments »

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