Monthly Archives: April 2006

Being for the Benefit of Mister Kite

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A wonderful Sunday much better than yesterday. Floated about Hoboken. Beautiful day, blue sky. Got bagels this morning for Julio and myself. Bill was off driving a bus again. Yes me, Alice Kramden it seems. Ralph doing his routes. Today was an old friend of mine, Charlie’s birthday party in Jersey City.

I’ve known Charlie almost twenty years. He used to dj at McSwells along with me back in the eighties. A genuinely nice guy. Even geekier than me when it comes to music. He saw the New York Dolls at the Mercer Art Center, he saw T. Rex, and he saw Bowie at the first shows in the US. He was there. Now he’s fifty.

Charlie is married to Kathe and they lived next to me when I lived with Charlie’s brother William in Weehawken. Charlie was offered the apartment originally in 1991, but it was too much of a fixer upper for him and Kathe. They knew I was in a tight spot so they told me about it. William was also looking or in need of a space so Charlie suggested going in on it with his brother. Fine. We saw, we liked, we took.

During the eleven years, we fought and made peace and fought again, while Charlie and Kathe moved in after the landlady died. It was a cool situation despite her death. They were in on again off again relations with William as well. That made it easy to find someone to bellyache about the situation.

William had also done the same about me. They managed to work around it and there were peaceful times. I was friends with Charlie initially and my relations with William never seemed to affect our friendship. Kathe was also a good ear, while giving me hope, telling me that William was planning on moving out. It never happened.

Both Charlie and William were brought up under a lie. They were told that their mother didn’t want them anymore. Their birth mother was married to their father, a Greek immigrant. The father got tired of living with a non Greek woman and took the boys and moved to NJ divorcing the mother in the process of lying to the boys about how she didn’t want them anymore.

Their father found a nice Greek woman and married her and having another son. Charlie and William had no choice but to accept it. For forty years they basically believed it until the Internet where their birth mother tracked them down.

William took it upon himself to invite his birth mother to the party to surprise her son on the eve of his fiftieth birthday. She was a nice woman, very happy to be there. She had her husband with her. Kathe was at loose ends because of Williams surprise but in the end it all worked out.

There were some faces I hadn’t seen in a while, and faces I hadn’t seen since January when Charlie and Kathe had their holiday party. All in all a splendid time was had by all.

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A wet and cold day. Not much to do. Tried to sleep late but couldn’t due to a crew jack hammering in the storm. Did get out and get bagels and the papers. Bill was off driving. Julio off to West New York so I didn’t get anyone else anything. Sat around, read the papers, ate breakfast. Very lazy. Which was more than fine.

Ipod is functioning beautifully thanks to Brandy. She’s so good. I think the Ipod might have a serious jones for her which causes it to flip out and require a trip to Tek Serve. Yeah that must be it. My Ipod is developing emotions. That’s all I need.

I did make it to the Library and picked up Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. I’ve read Angela’s Ashes and T’is. Both very good books but I would favor T’is as my favorite. My sister read all three books and said Teacher Man was really good. So it’s on her recommendation that I got it

I did have a plan to go into the city to see how long it would take for me to get to McMann and Tate but it was so cold and rainy that I got as far as Washington Street where I decided to forget about it. Instead, I got a haircut at Mr. L’s on the corner by my apartment. Tony hooked it up.

The usual cut. The same cut that I had at eighteen. I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens. So I had to get over that real fast. Surprisingly enough, I did. I had some interesting haircuts over the years. Specifically when I decided to cut my own hair and wound up cutting it over a period of two weeks before I was able to put the electric razor down.

Then there was the time I tried to dread my hair. It didn’t take. The only white guy I ever saw with sharp dreads was the singer from the Wolfgang Press. Who knows what he looks like now? Is there a home somewhere in England for former 4AD bands? I can see the pseudo Goth types sitting on rocking chairs in Brighton or Blackpool, blankets covering torn fish netted legs. I’ve melted with you they sing.

Now we are watching Saving Private Ryan, Bill, Julio and I. Each of us seems to have the same attitude towards war, how it’s fucked up. This was a ‘just’ war if there is such a thing. The first part of the movie is harrowing as all hell. Total brutality. Mankind fighting fighting fighting. Not much proof of evolution.

Not much has changed, except for the fact we’re also sending young women off to battle to fight alongside young men. So far Vin Diesel and Giovanni Ribisi have been killed off in Private Ryan so far. We’ve all seen it before and know how it ends. Yet we remain glued to the TV. It’s easy to forget this is a Steven Spielberg film. I guess this was the start of his unease phase rather than the feel good phase the preceded.