Tag Archives: Luba

Black Wa-Da-Da

Well today is Saturday, a nice day to sleep in on so that’s how I started my day. Last night was spent with Bill in front of the TV. Actually he had choir practice and didn’t come home until 10:00. I watched the usual. When the elections are done will I go back to watching shows I used to watch, like Ugly Betty, or My Name is Earl?

I’ve been watching the Daily Show and The Colbert Report as well as Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. Not exactly escapist fare. Haven’t been to the movies in quite a while either. Totally missed the Dark Knight. It’s still playing out there so maybe I could get it together, but then again I don’t like going to the movies by myself.

Bill Maher was pretty good last night with Alec Baldwin, Christiane Amanpour and Gary Shandling. According to the reports, McCain is slipping in the polls which is good and that people are pretty much over Palin which is a good thing. I do look forward to how the debate is parodied by Saturday Night Live tonight.

This afternoon i watched a documentary on the club Wetlands. It used to be in Tribeca and closed in 2001. 9/11 closed it. They were going out of business anyway after being open for 13 years. The last gig was supposed to be Bob Weir and Ratdog, on 9/14, but everything in the city was canceled at that time. I was supposed to see Cachito from the Buena Vista Social Club that week at BB King’s Nightclub.

I had gone to Wetlands, mainly to see various reggae and ska bands. They mentioned in the documentary that the club had terrible sight lines which was true. One time I remember going with my friend Miriam and her friend Andre to see Burning Spear. We got there at just the right time and were 3 feet away from the stage right in front of where the legendary Winston Rodney would be singing.

Miriam and I were definitely smoking up a storm and even though she said Andre could hang, homeboy couldn’t hang. Apparently we smoked him out and we wound up walking him out of the club into some fresh air outside, giving up our prime spot and missing the show totally. Andre felt bad about this but all Miriam and myself could do was laugh at him. That was probably the last time I had gone to Wetlands.

Andre did help me get a job as a doorman at a building on the Upper East Side. That lasted for a few weeks. My friends had warned me that it wasn’t the job for me, I’m not the subservient type and they were right. My co-workers thought I was a spy for management since there were talks going on with their union, and management seemed to be grooming me to be a scab in case the doormen went on strike.

One night I had to work a double shift and that’s when I realized that I wasn’t cut out for the job. Andre did have it right though, they only wanted me because I was white. After the Wetlands documentary I watched Perseopolis. That was very good. It’s about a girl growing up in Iran and the Vienna during the revolution and the war with Iraq.

Very good animation, so good that I wished they could do the same with Love and Rockets which like Perseopolis started out as a comic book/graphic novel. I could easily see Maggie and Hopey or a story about Luba in Palomar done in the same manner.

Perseopolis was in French with subtitles and they could do the Palomar story in Spanish. I think it’s a good idea. I wonder if Los Bros Hernandez thought of it. I don’t think it’s too late.

Today my mother would have been 80 years old. Hope she’s having a good time out there in the universe.

late night addition: 11:21PM I guess my brother Brian reads this blog from time to time as he just informed me via email that my mother would have been 82 since she was born in 1926 and Brian also guessed that I got my info from wikipedia.