Category Archives: What’s for Dinner?

Standing Still

I am starting to be convinced that people in Hoboken say at least once a week, ‘I’d know them if I saw them’. It happened at the bibliothèque this afternoon and I know I say it often. It’s a small town, Hoboken and you see the same people over and over again and usually by the time you might be introduced to someone after a few years it gets awkward. And if you’re talking to someone about someone else, that is when the line ‘I’d know them if I see them’ comes into play.

It is a bright and sunny and warm day finally. Been out and about. No sign of Juan but Bill has been around. Didn’t do much except some grocery shopping and a stop at the bibliothèque. Tonight it’s work at Maxwell’s. My old pal, Rand is holding a lecture at the bibliothèque but since I have to work, I can’t go. I think it was scheduled for last year, a lecture about the famed comic book artist Jack Kirby, but was postponed because of the storm. Or maybe it was scheduled for earlier this year and postponed because of a snowstorm. I posted a flyer at Maxwell’s, hoping to get more people to attend.

I am still sending out resumes but not at the frequency that I used to send them out. It’s coming up on a year since I was let go from the cigar shack and being told constantly by employers and agencies that you’re not good enough can wear one’s spirit down. I’m still doing it though, a steadier job would be ideal. Until then I keep puttering along doing what I can.

Now it’s the anxiety of going back to work tonight. I really haven’t had much with regards to working at Maxwell’s but it’s been a few days since I last worked there so here it comes again. I’ve eaten and now I am killing time, enjoying a cigar before heading out. I just checked the website, no bands are playing so that means it will probably be a slow night and instead of working until midnight I will likely be out of there by 11:00.

Rand and Lisa stopped by with a friend and I sat them at a good table. Didn’t get much of a chance to talk to them but Rand’s lecture at the bibliothèque went well with about 40 people attending. I worked with Chloe and Jess and Rob was behind the bar. There were one or two schmucks (being kind here) and I was their first point of contact. One was a young man who was in a hurry and hurriedly said that he was in a hurry. I mentioned that it was obvious he was in a hurry and somehow he took some offense to that. Then he stood next to a speaker playing loud music and talked on his phone.

Towards the end, a squeaky wheel came in with three younger wheels. The squeaky wheel asked if they could sit at a table and drink and I said that they couldn’t. Then the squeaky wheel said they were going to eat and who was I to deny them a seat when the restaurant was nearly empty. Why the squeaky wheel said she had been coming to Maxwell’s for 30 years and never was denied a table. I mentioned that I worked there 30 years ago to which she stated her doubts since she had never seen me before.

She had been coming in with her kids for so long and doubted that I had worked there then. I know I had never seen her before, all nouveau riche with a voice that was the equivalent of nails on chalk board. That voice would have been remembered what with dogs cowering due to the shrillness. The timing couldn’t have been better since the squeaky wheel party came in just minutes before I left for the night.
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Happy Go Lucky Me

I Start to Run

Document 35. That was the number assigned to this file in Microsoft Word. Document 35. The point of it being document 35 doesn’t seem random, not at all. It is just the 35th document, perhaps for the year 2013. That is the explanation that makes sense the most. According to Word Press, I have posted 2,476 entries and this will make it the 2,477th. I lost count after the first month, but it was easy back then. It was before I decided taking Sundays off from writing. That was when I was becoming a servant to this blog. Now I am merely a savant.

I came across a cache of some papers, papers that weren’t swept away by Sandy last year. I guess I rescued them, along with the 45’s I had a few months before. I found a couple of versions of a film script I was supposedly writing with Julio in the 1990’s, when Julio was a production assistant on a film that a mutual friend was making. There was creativity in the air and once again my up to then unseen writing skills were brought up and it seemed like a good idea to collaborate with Julio.

It was probably the last time I collaborated with anyone which sucks since I am a very good collaborator. I helped write a script in the early 1990’s with John Bruce, an amazingly creative guy from the Maxwell’s era. He liked what I wrote, so much so that he made it a point to tell me that it made him cry. If he Google’s his name and this comes up, well I am 100% sure that is what he said. No embellishment on my part. It’s one of the things in the 1990’s that is not fuzzy at all. I think the script was called ‘This is My Plus One’

I find it good to have someone to bounce ideas off of, it works for me. And in the 1990’s with Julio I went into it wholeheartedly. Perhaps too much as I took it seriously, feeling that it was my last chance at doing anything. The script is untitled and there are a few drafts of it. I remember writing it on an electric typewriter using the equation of one page being one minute of film. I think the longest draft has about 25 pages and we were aiming for a 10 minute short film.

I think it could be saved somehow. The dialogue is quick and conversational, not quite His Girl Friday or Gilmore Girls. It is snappy though. I’m no Ben Hecht & Charles McArthur nor am I Amy Sherman Palladino and I certainly don’t claim to be. Julio proved to be uninterested in writing the script and I probably came on too strong. He had more important things going on in his life and I had this script. And soon it was put in a drawer, or what is more likely, underneath the dresser.

It’s about 2 characters named Alan and Vincent and their escapades in the 1990’s. I based Alan on myself and Vincent on Julio. The dialogue is almost verbatim, at least snatches of it. Written while living in Weehawken it is based on the time when I was living in a basement apartment in Hoboken. It was right around the time when Julio and I became friends via Maxwell’s. Nowadays Julio has his hands full with his wife Stine and their son Alexander and work as a stage manager as well as being a landlord in Hudson County. And I am going to do is look into seeing what I can do with the script.
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Downtown