Posts Tagged ‘Manhattan’

Don’t Tell Mama

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Oh it’s Wednesday and it’s been merely alright. Of course there was room for improvement but I wouldn’t know where to begin. Most likely I would begin on Thursday. Pet peeve time. I usually zoom around the city, I’m a fast walker.

In never ceases to fail that I can pick someone who maybe be 20 feet away from me that they will stop exactly where I need to walk. Every single time. It’s almost like they see me coming and think, “See that big guy, 6’2” coming in our direction? I’m going to stand right here and I don’t care if he’s bigger than me.”

I’m convinced that people are getting dumber. Even in the bus terminal. It’s so much easier to push the door rather than pull it, but 9 times out of 10 they pull. I wait until it’s clear then I push making it easier for all those behind me.

Last night was ok. Bill came home after my niece Corinne dropped me off. Gave her and her mother Elaine a nice big hug and kiss before I climbed the 4 flights of steps to my apartment. Bill came home a little after that and told me of his plans for me to write a play that they could work on for the workshop he attends.

Sounds like a good idea but I was trying to figure out what I should write. He mentioned 10 pages should be enough and that’s the rule of thumb, one minute for every page. It’s mainly an African American theater group but Bill says that doesn’t matter.

I’m sure I could write something color blind, but I think it might lean to existentialism and I don’t know how that would go over. I’m thinking like maybe a Beckett play. Write now I am writing about writing which could be a line of thought, a one person play.

Still looking for things to do. I did go out on a personal errand. I need hair gel. As usual the things I use seem to be on the way to being discontinued. I like hair gel and where I bought a few jars of it last year, now they’re unavailable online.

So I walked from 50th and Third Avenue to 36th Street. That’s where I almost ran into the various people in my way.

At one point as I was waiting for a light to change, some handsome young man in a truck says, ‘Hey hows it going?” I say, ‘It’s good. How about yourself?’ ‘Good good’ he says, adding ‘Are you still working over there?’ I say, ‘No man, I’m working over here now’

The light changed and he was on his way. Turns out he was a fling from many years ago, Jose. Still handsome and hot but he was the passenger in a delivery van so it obviously couldn’t get much further than a 30 second chat.

I didn’t figure out who he was until I was in the line to get my hair gel. And that was odd. The bill came to $6.13 and I had $6.12. I asked if they had a save a penny/leave a penny and she looked at me as if I was speaking Latin.

All I had was a $10.00 bill and wound up with a pocket full of change which seems to be heard by anyone standing on the street asking for change.

Another interesting thing happened to me while I was running around outside. I’m heading back to my office building when an attractive woman jumps in front of me.

She asks where I got the suit I was wearing and I tell her Syms, where an educated consumer is their best customer. She asks if I ever heard of Tom James. I did and ask if it was the maker of bespoke suits and it was. She tells me I look good and asks for my card which I gave her in exchange for hers.

I’d love a bespoke suit, which is basically a suit made from scratch. You pick out the fabric and they make it according to your size and tastes and will alter it if you gain or lose weight.

That was nice, telling me I looked nice, and it’s also a nice selling point, compliment the potential customer and maybe they’ll spend $1000.00 on a new suit, with 3 free shirts! That Amy Sacks knows her stuff, but I have about 12 suits now and I really don’t need anymore.

I am saddened by Natasha Richardson’s accident. Falling while on a beginner slope while skiing. Apparently something happened with her brain even though she was walking and talking afterwards.

I’ve hit my head many times, one particular incident was when I was working in a book warehouse. I was under the racks getting some books and I thought I had cleared the steel rack and stood up and smacked my head. I literally saw stars and had to sit down for a few minutes.

I guess having such fatty tissue for a skull had an advantage. Now apparently I would be taken to a hospital to be checked out. Not then. And now if you’re going skiing, helmets are almost mandatory.

I didn’t see Natasha Richardson on Broadway in Cabaret but I know the soundtrack inside out and she’s on it. She certainly was a beautiful actress and a pleasure to watch and to listen to. It doesn’t look good for her, reports are that she’s brain dead.

It’s been said that she was scheduled to be on Broadway again with her mother the great Vanessa Redgrave in A Little Night Music, but now that isn’t going to happen. I would have loved to have seen it.

8:08 PM- New York Times
Natasha Richardson, Actress, Dies at 45, Family Says

Natasha Richardson, a Tony Award-winning actress whose career
melded glamorous celebrity with the bloodline of theater
royalty, has died following a skiing accident on Monday north
of Montreal, her family said.

Shakin’ All Over

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

Oh that Kenny G. He’s on TV right now playing his horn on some ice skating program. He’s the butt of a lot of jokes but I talked with him a while ago on the phone while working for Arista Records and found him to be quite a nice guy.

So I have no beef with him. I won’t run out and buy his records or anything like that but I really have nothing bad to say about him. I wish I knew him better so I could recommend Harpy working for him.

I just got home from Manhattan. Nice day to walk around the city. I headed into the office and cleaned some vases with bamboo shoots in them and roots and rocks covered in algae. I try to clean them once a month but I’ve been lax in that department.

I was also able to take care of a few things that occurred during my absence yesterday. It’s true, these people I work with and support can’t do anything for themselves. They are spoiled. I’m not complaining since I’m the one who’s spoiled them and it keeps me busy. The smallest thing I do makes me look good I think and I intend to keep this up until the lease runs out in March 2010.

Last night I watched a little bit of Factory Girl (The Edie Sedgwick story) which had a bit of the song, Shakin’ All Over. I loved the version and went to iTunes to find out who had done it. Of course it’s a classic and covered by dozens of artists. I found a version I really liked by Iggy Pop and downloaded it. But still- who did the classic 1960′s version?

I enjoyed a Padron as I walked back to the Path train. I wasn’t going to take the bus home since it took forever to get into the city on the bus. One lane going in through the Lincoln Tunnel, plus the bus had a slight collision with a truck. Nothing bad happened and we only stopped for a few minutes.

I was reading about Caroline Kennedy in the New Yorker and a woman next to me asked what I thought about the article I had just finished. We would up having a nice chat about the Kennedy’s and politics. I mentioned that it’s sometimes confusing and infuriating that being so close to New York, we get all the information about New York politics, like Caroline Kennedy thinking about becoming a Senator for the Empire State.

Ultimately it wouldn’t concern me one way or another, but I was drawn into it due to the Kennedy myths. My seat mate felt the same way. She’s an Irish Catholic and I’m a Irish Atheist, formerly catholic. It was a nice chat. She was chubby cheeked enough that she could have passed for one of my cousins. And we both still feel bad about John F. Kennedy Jr and his untimely demise.

I talked with my sister on the phone as I puffed on my Padron and walked down Fifth Avenue towards the Path train. She and her husband, Rex are enjoying the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss CD I got Rex for his birthday this past week, Raising Sand.

Annemarie is going to burn it for me since I was pretty much intrigued by the song that I had heard. I, in turn promised to burn a copy of Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It. I posted the 100 Yard Dash on my Facebook page page and Annemarie liked it.

It promises to be another quiet night tonight. No plans really. Got the new Mojo and Uncut magazines which I will likely peruse while perhaps watching Renee Fleming on the Elvis Costello show, Spectacle. That’s it on this end. Hope all is well with you and yours, as it is with me and mine.

There Is No End

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

I love New York but I also love being able to get out of New York and back to the relative safety of Hoboken. It always amazes me the difference one river makes. Things in Hoboken are somewhat normal and quiet, whereas across the river it’s go go go all the time, no chance to rest.

There was a time where I would go out after work, drink, see a concert, do whatever and it didn’t matter what time I was finished with whatever it was that I was doing, the Path train runs all night and I didn’t mind waiting for the train at whatever time I happened to be in.

I didn’t like waiting in the bowels of the Port Authority though, after 1:00AM all buses leave through the basement and it’s horrible down there. Time crawls, and there’s no real escape, plus I was usually in an altered state which didn’t help the waiting at all. The scenes I used to frequent are over or changed, clubs have closed and things cost a lot more money now than they did then.

Funny thing is I make more money now, but then again my expenses have grown. No more cheap rent in Weehawken, lower rent than most in Hoboken and I have a job that’s not in the music business and they frown on coming into work hung over or still drunk from the night before. And everything is more expensive now that it was then. Even more expensive than it was last year.

I’m not complaining, that is just the way things are lately. Somethings I’ve noticed lately that I hadn’t noticed before, like the fact that so many young men are going bald and have taken that preemptive strike and shave their heads. Really, a lot of guys in their twenties are going bald. Was it like that in my twenties?

I wasn’t in danger of losing my hair at that age. Bill’s in his forties and that seems to be the ripe age to start to lose one’s hair. Just something I’ve noticed. No longer a stigma, the male pattern baldness, and they mostly shave it all off rather than assuming the role of Lord Comb Over.

One thing that has been driving me crazy is the Blackberry. A lot of people have them, I don’t and I don’t want one. What I do want to do is smack them out of people’s hands as they walk down the street not paying any attention to anything going on around them. They walk and stare at that two inch screen as if their lives depended on it.

Maybe their jobs depend on it, but to ignore everything that is going on around you is just insane in this day and age. Oh if I only had the cojones, which by the way is not a song cut out of the Wizard of Oz.

I have a feeling that another blackout will occur in New York City this summer. Just a feeling. I hope I’m wrong. And if I’m not wrong in the off chance, I hope it’s only a blackout, nothing worse though that is still pretty bad. That was a thought I had in my head last night as I lay in bed listening to Bill saw concrete as he slept.

I voted today, partly for the democratic machine, partly for an independent. We shall see how that turns out. I met the independent when she was handing out fliers at the Mother’s Day 5k run that Meghan and Rob participated in. So my fingers are crossed which makes typing difficult.

The haters have got the anti-same sex measure on the ballot in November in California. And a christian legal firm has sued to bar New York State from recognizing same sex marriages that were performed elsewhere.

Ages of You

Monday, April 7th, 2008

It’s Monday again. How that happened I’ll never know. Woke up to the sounds of the Rascals singing ‘It’s a beautiful morning…♫ and I searched for the snooze button while the Arif Mardin production went on. No fault of the Rascals and definitely not Arif’s fault. It was battleship gray outside once again and I just wanted to sleep. But no, work was waiting and I had to get out of bed. Made coffee, had cereal, showered and then I was out after getting dressed. I no longer hustle to get the 7:10 bus, instead I take my time and catch the 7:20 bus. Not as nice a bus, but usually less crowded.

Got to the city and for some reason I decided to play REM’s first album, Murmur on my iPod. I remember when I first got the record around the same time I got my first Walkman. It was the beginning of the cassette age for me. I wanted a Walkman for Christmas a few months before, but my father, figuring that I was mentally retarded said no. I would more than likely be crossing train tracks and playing music so loudly that I wouldn’t hear the oncoming train taking me to my death.

Instead of a Walkman I got a Sears cassette deck with an AM/FM radio. I was crestfallen that Christmas upon opening the box and instead of seeing Sony, I saw Sears. Still I had to show some gratitude and thanked both my parents for the tape deck before going up to my room and beating up my bed in frustration. I didn’t have a car at that time and still trucked around wherever it was I had to go with the tape deck cradled in my arm. It was 1983 so I was probably jazzy all the time. I walked to the 7 Eleven in the snow, just to get out of the house, just to get high.

Eventually I got a car and wound up driving the company van for the book company I worked for. On one lunch hour I decided to take my cash and go to one of the rip off shops by Grand Central where I bought a Walkman II for about $80.00. Soon enough I was putting everything on cassette and playing it wherever I would go. I wasn’t stupid enough to wear it while driving, I did have the Sears cassette deck for that.

One occasion, one of the last reunions of a sort while my mother was alive, had my parents and me with brother Brian and his then fiancée Karen driving down to Bordentown NJ. I was playing Murmur over and over, and loudly too. Loud enough for my mother to complain that I was going to go deaf playing it that loud. I grumbled and lowered the volume, staring out the window at whatever it was that we were driving past.

We made it to my cousin Eileen’s house, where we sat in her backyard and smoked cigarettes (everyone was doing it) and drank Budweiser (everyone was doing that too). Don’t remember much about going home but we made it all in one piece and didn’t get pulled over. All these memories came flooding forth while playing Murmur, which still stands up on it’s own, a near perfect record. Finally got to see REM at McSwells touring for Murmur.

It was one of the first shows that they sold tickets to, and I swear there were only about 30 people in the back room watching a shaggy Michael Stipe hang on the the microphone for dear life while tossing his curly locks to and fro. Won’t be seeing that again anytime soon. Michael Stipe with hair that is.

Here are some pics from an errand this afternoon in midtown.

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Neighborhood with Slow Children
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Gray Manhattan
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Silver Cup Studios where Julio was working today
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Artists Only

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

Today being Saturday means I get to sleep in. I slept until about 9:00 which wasn’t too much of a stretch considering I went to bed at 1:00AM. I watched Bill Maher last night, he was ok, definitely needed his writers, and he even said so towards the end of the show. After that I watched Ringo Starr on VH1 Classic, Ringo being the subject of the Storytellers show. He was ok, an enjoyable hour spent. Of course the Beatles songs had stories I had heard before.

Mainly Ringo saying that the White Album is his favorite album but it’s also the one during which he left the band for two weeks. Perhaps it was a pretty good fortnight for Ringo. He wrote Octopus’ Garden while out of the group. Obviously he came back, then George quit for a couple of days, followed by John nine months later. Paul was the only who actually left, telling the press he quit to the dismay of the other three. Ringo didn’t get into that mess though.

Last night’s blog was a way for me to let off steam. I’m back to what passes for normal when I’m concerned. Today was a nice day. Went out, got the usual, did some shopping, dropped off dry cleaning. Came back, had breakfast, read the papers and started on some laundry. I had a sketch of a plan to head into the city and see the last day of a Warhol exhibition. Time Out NY had the gallery on 57th Street so I hopped on the bus and walked up to 57th street. At 20 west 57th, I walked in and asked the guard for the Susan Sheehan Gallery. He tells me it moved. I call up the gallery and they tell me they’re on west 22nd street now, and she told Time Out that fact, but they haven’t changed it.

I was annoyed but thanks to some transcontinental prodding from Annemarie, I hopped on a train to 23rd Street. Made it to the gallery, saw some very old Warhol drawings from the 1950′s and two early 60′s silkscreens. It was good to see Andy’s stuff and it made me glad that I went out and did something. I wandered around 22nd street and looked at some other artists in different galleries. Good stuff, a good day to look at some art. It was getting dark out and I was getting hungry so I walked over to 33rd street and caught the Path train back to Hoboken.

Made a burger and it was good. I may watch Inland Empire tonight. I don’t know what to expect but I’m sure to get something out of it. David Lynch can do that to you. I heard from Juan yesterday, he’s having a gay old time in Costa Rica. All the young men have faux hawks in Costa Rica, so he’s probably standing out with his New York City style by way of Seoul. He was planning on heading tot he beach, the Pacific Ocean, and surprisingly enough, I’m not jealous.

I took some pics but having difficulty with my editing program so I’ll post them tomorrow hopefully. That is if you want to see them.