It’s Tuesday and it’s hummus out. At around 8:00 this morning it was 73 and climbing. It’s been hot hot hot. Uncomfortable for many. I played it cool as best as I could but sometimes it wasn’t enough. Not that anything happened, I rose above it all. Not much happened at all really. I took a long lunch, combined with an errand and caught a subway to Farfetched where I bought birthday cards for everyone born in July. I hung out for a little while and talked with Susan. We chatted, I told her about the play that I’m taking Bill to see on Sunday at 7:00. Susan saw it and thought it was very good, hence her recommendation. The show my brother Frank and I wanted to see, Company is closing on Sunday so we missed the boat on that. Stupid stroke.

I also ran into Virgin and picked up New Boots and Panties by Ian Dury and the Blockheads. I’ve been looking for it for a while now and finally found it at a reasonable price. Got a salad and made it back to the office. It’s fairly quiet lately. The managing director’s plan to have two interns come in has been squashed. Greg Stevens expects a brouhaha when she returns from her conference in Santa Monica on Thursday. I only have three more days of work then I am off for 9 days in a row. My mind is almost on vacation already anyway. What else is new?

Last night while riding with Julio up Route 17 to Paramus, we drove past an empty space where the Century movie theater used to be. It used to be one big theater, where I saw one of my first movies, Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. Then in the 1970’s turned it into two. I saw Jesus Christ Superstar in my religious fervor back then, when it was playing next to Last Tango in Paris, a racy X rated film starring Marlon Brando. My brother Brian and I were kicked out with our money refunded when we attempted to see The Poseidon Adventure at an evening show. My father took Brian and I to see the Cowboys in the seventies on weeknight.

That was odd. Our father taking us away from our two hours of homework enforced discipline to go to the movies. Even if we had homework that could be finished in 10 minutes, we had to sit at the dining room table twenty feet from a television loudly playing Johnny Mann’s Stand Up and Cheer! Didn’t help our grades really. I took to writing out random pages in the encyclopedia. Brian stretched his neck trying to see what was on TV, at one point stretching it 5 inches. That’s when he threatened to kick my ass if I tried to get help. It eventually shrunk back, like a turtle’s.

I saw Boyz in The Hood when I was living with my father in 1991 against everyone’s, and I do mean everyone’s advice. I don’t know if I could say I loved the movie, but I was moved by it. The Century theater was by that point a four plex I think. I remember leaving the theater in the bright summer sun walking out into the hard mean streets of the Garden State Plaza. I have to say I was sad to see the Century torn down. It is totally flat, nothing there to say what it used to be.
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