Well I broke down and bought the remastered White Album, Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper. When at Target the other day I saw they had the best price and after obsessing about it, I decided to bite the bullet and get some.
The White Album was listed at $18.99 which is cheaper than what I paid for it 10 years ago, close to $30.00. If you’re a cashier at Target, if there is no one on your line you have to stand in front of the registers and tell people that you’re open.
At the register (#9) it was marked down to $16.99 and then the cashier applied a $5.00 gift card, knocking the price down to $12.58. At that price I also picked up Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper. And those were $13.99, at the register- $11.98 and the $5.00 gift card was applied to that as well so it was too good a deal to resist.
I was so excited about it that I told Rand and Chaz about it. And they do sound better. The CD’s. Rand and Chaz sounded the same. The records have more of a warm feeling, full sound- not flat like before. And I’m no audiophile.
That was basically the highpoint of the day. It’s been a better day than yesterday.
Online I sent the fat geezer from England who was giving me a hard time yesterday to the Spam folder never to be heard from again. I stopped by Tunes to check out their price and everything was a few dollars more for the remastered Beatles CD’s.
I called up my brother Frank, just to check in, to let him know about the Target prices. I was feeling pretty good, walked along the new walkway between Hoboken and Jersey City. They were setting up for the official opening with Governor Jon Corzine making a speech.
On the way home I had to get some juice and butter substitute and I got a call from Frank. I told him how the Target deal went down. He had mentioned earlier about how he would like a mono copy and I told him then that it wasn’t for individual sale, only as part of the $300.00 boxed set.
He said his friend Alex got it for $100.00 and I sort of disputed that. Outside the supermarket, in a good mood, last day of summer he mentions again how he’d like a mono copy. I said his friend Alex could burn a copy for him I’m sure, but I myself wouldn’t expect one from Alex since I’m not Alex’s friend.
Once again I get accused of being antagonistic. I tell him that I’m not antagonistic, I don’t appreciate being called antagonistic like he did on September 9 when the Beatles stuff came out again.
I was quite happy and thrilled and trying to share that happiness with him but he’s not having any of it either then or now. I told him it would probably be best to end this conversation right then and there since it’s going to a bad place and I didn’t want to go there.
I do my shopping and come home excited to hear the Beatles stuff. I feel a little bad, especially when I open my emails and there are 2 links that Frank sent. One was an R. Stevie Moore thing covering Elton John’s Think I’m Gonna Kill Myself and the other was this fabled rapid share list of the Beatles remastered from WFMU.
I decided to call him back and thank him for the links. I try to explain how I am feeling and during that he tries to interrupt me but I don’t let him. ‘Oh it’s all about you,’ he says. I tell him I am trying to tell him what is going on. He’s a bit put off that I didn’t enjoy a link he sent regarding an off shoot of Arcade Fire. I tell him I haven’t listened to Arcade Fire since May 2007 when I had my meltdown at their Radio City show.
I respect him, even admire him but what’s the point when there doesn’t seem to be any respect coming my way? He had another call and I told him to call me back if he wanted to. He hasn’t.
Now that’s the Junior side of the day.
The Senior side is about my father who died 10 years ago today. It’s hard to write positive things about my father. He did put a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs and food on the table but he also ran a tight ship, kept us in line by browbeating us or actually beating us.
He was 40 years older than me and I don’t think we ever really got along. There was never any moments of a hug and saying I love you.
Growing up I disliked him so much that I indented an X on his face in a picture of him and his siblings. He did try to make a connection I guess, but talking to a 15 year old boy like he was 5 years old wasn’t the way to do it.
I didn’t like the way he treated everyone in my family and wanted him out of my life, the sooner the better.
But that would never happen, even after abandoning my mother in Cape May and driving back to Lodi after my mother jokingly said when having after dinner cocktails at some restaurant ‘that she was fine and didn’t need his money’.
He decided to teach her a lesson by deserting her, my mother. He felt totally justified in this.
After my mother passed away in 1991, I was living in a bad situation and he was as well after losing his wife that I thought we could both help each other out. Everyone warned me about moving back to Lodi but I saw a side of him I had never seen before.
Loss and grief.
I was working in Hoboken and taking a bus to Manhattan and then a bus to Hoboken. It was a job and I had no other options.
One morning as I was getting ready to go to work, I used his deodorant. He must have seen me doing it and he says, ‘I don’t know what diseases you have, but don’t use my things!’ I could not wait to get away from him, I would be happy if I had never saw him again.
I lived with him for 3 months in Lodi and didn’t speak to him from 1991 to 1998. Before that I didn’t speak to him after kicking his pregnant daughter out of the house for a couple of years, until my mother passed away.
But of course he was around. At Xmas eve dinners at Brian & Karen’s my brothers would try to get me to wish him a Merry Christmas. I had done it before and each time I would be rebuffed. And once again I went up to him hand out for a hand shake and he would look the other way. I told my brothers that I am tired of being the ‘better man’.
To others he could be quite the charmer, but to me he was a mean, petty and vindictive man and I do not miss him at all. I didn’t like him and thought he was an idiot. I’m sure he felt the same way about me.
In fact, I don’t think I really became an adult (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) until he died. Bill notices my lack of self confidence and my zero self esteem, and has figured out where that came from.
It was oddly reassuring to hear from my cousin Jackie that he didn’t realize how bad things were under his Uncle Francis’ roof until after he died. It was good to get some sort of recognition of neglect.
So here I am 10 years later, butting heads with his son with the same name.
I simply cannot win with anyone named Francis Xavier.
But I will always give Junior another chance.
An hour or so later.
Just got back from a walk around Hoboken after dinner. Enjoyed a cigar, listening to the iPod. Thinking about my father and that classic line from Paul Westerberg from the Replacements, ‘He might be a father but he sure ain’t a dad’. That sums up a lot.
I recalled when I was living with my father and during a lull in our stormy relationship we went out to dinner. He was going on about how his mother, my grandmother, treated him like a prince and my mother treated him like a prince. What a princely life he had.
The thing is, around that time Jim Mastro and Meghan Taylor had thier first daughter Lily. Now Jim and Meghan weren’t selfish at all and when Lily came into their lives Lily became the center of all tings Jim and Meghan, as it should be.
I couldn’t (or can’t) help but compare my father to Frank & Elaine and their daughters, Anne & Rex with Earl and Brian and Karen with their 3 kids and how their lives revolved around their children, like Jim and Meghan. But no one would be most the important in my father’s life, except my father. It struck me as odd and made me realize that we were in competition with my father for my mother’s affection.
We lost of course since we weren’t the breadwinners.
He said and did some truly rotten things. But he was my father and he put food on the table, clothes on our backs and put a roof over our heads.
So for that I will say ‘Thank you’.
