Back to work today. Tuesday for everyone, a Monday for myself. Bill had left before I did, and I left around 7:15. I really didn’t feel like going to work, not dreading it, just feeling rather lackadaisical. I walked to the Path train, Plantain Man not sporting any morning wood, he was more covered up than usual. It was a bit nippy out this morning and he coming from below the border felt the chill before I did. The train was as crowded as usual and I’m starting to recognize some faces from riding with these people Monday through Friday.

The office, it was shambles. Most everything Ariane said was true, the coffee machine was broken and the email system was not working at all. Nothing to do with the New York office, the blame falls on London for this. Also the system of reserving and booking conference rooms was a mess. Not at all like the set up at Wanker Banker, and they use the same program as McMann and Tate. It’s really ridiculous, since the system is set up that you can’t see what room is available until you open each window individually, you can look at them at the same time, like at Wanker Banker. It doesn’t make sense to me, and I spent most of the day carrying a clipboard making sure rooms were occupied, and I felt like a schoolmarm.

It was a long, busy day. I decided to walk over to Broadway, smoking my after work cigar, my reward and walked down to J&R Music to pick up the new Scissor Sisters CD and also Elton John, ‘The Captain and the Kid’. Despite the so so reviews I was excited when I heard about the sequel to ‘Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy’. That album was the shit back then for me and my classmates. I loved that album so. I remember being in the bathtub on a Saturday night, listening to 99X and hearing an early playing of ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’. I didn’t know what to think. I must have been just about 13 years old.

My brother Frank was working for a record distributor and I got the record before it hit the stores. I included two booklets and a poster. They really skimp these days on packaging. I loved it from start to finish. I played it nonstop and brought it to school for art class and me and some friends would hush whenever the song ‘Better Off Dead’ came on. It mentioned the word ‘whore’ and we didn’t want the teacher to hear. I wound up getting a new copy because my brother Brian and I were fighting about something stupid no doubt and he shoved the dining room table that I had a portable record player playing the records on and he totally trashed it. Oh that Brian.

Listening to the sequel, I’m not the same, Elton John and Bernie Taupin aren’t the same. Dee Murray and Gus Dudgeon are dead, Nigel Olsson and Davey Johnstone still play with Elton, and I’m sure they’re not the same. It’s a good record, we’ve all moved on and gotten older. It’s Elton, and it sounds like Elton. Good Elton. He did put out some stinkers in the eighties and nineties. There’s always a soft spot in my heart for Elton. I loved him so much in the seventies. I first got into him through my sister Annemarie who liked him a lot. But I had the fever. She took me to see him in August 1976. It was my first concert. In a way he’s responsible for me getting into punk and new wave. Elton’s a big music fan and to this day is known for spending thousands of dollars a week in records stores. Elton had sort of retired from music in 1977, and at the end of the year was given an award for entertainer of the year or something, and he reportedly turned down the award saying that he hadn’t done anything at all that year and the award should go to someone like Elvis Costello, who I was soon to be quite rabid about. Elton has recently championed both Scissor Sisters and Rufus Wainwright. So he still has a golden ear, knowing what is good and classic.

Cheers, Elton and Bernie and company, both here and there.