Wednesday night, later than usual. It’s been a somewhat busy day. Bill was the one slamming his snooze button an hour before I usually do. I went back to sleep as he rousted himself from bed realizing that if he hit the snooze one more time then he was going to be late. I woke up eventually, about an hour later, realizing that I had to go to work, after all I made plans to go to the movies with Bill and Billie, who is back up from DC for more training at the Chop Shop salad joint around the corner from where I work.

We hardly ever go to the movies anymore. We have cable TV and I subscribe to Netflix, so basically there are tons of other movies out there, besides the ones in the cinemas right now. And if you need to see something current, if you wait a week you can get a bootlegged video for about $5.00. That’s what I did a few months ago when I bought a very good clean copy of 300 on the street for half a sawbuck. I don’t have it anymore since I gave it to Earl when he was here a few weeks ago.

Work was slow again, but I kept busy. I fixed a door which was a major accomplishment, and I saved the company some money from repairing it myself. I can be handy after all. Carla the receptionist mentioned that I never seem to go out and take lunch. It’s true. I run out and get some food and just go back to my desk and eat. I should go out and enjoy some of the afternoon at a leisurely pace. That’s something I have to look into somewhere down the line. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow.

Tonight Bill and Billie and I went to see Hairspray. I met up with Billie after work, meeting Bill at the theater. Billie and I had some time to kill so we wandered up to Central Park for a spell and sat and talked and looked at the ducks and a crane and got a little jazzy. It was perfect. Billie mentioned that he loves coming up here and doing nothing. That’s basically what we did when Bill and I visited Billie in DC. We didn’t do much of anything. Saw some monuments and went to a leather bar and went bowling, eating at different restaurants each night. It’s great. Billie is entertained just walking around Manhattan and talking. Jazziness helps.

The movie was good and a lot of fun. I recommend it. It’s humor is even broader than it was in the original. And yes, John Travolta is good as Edna Turnblad, but the movie belongs to Nikki Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad, the hair hopper herself. John Waters, Ricki Lake and Jerry Stiller all have cameos. I liked it, but my heart belongs to the original. The songs, the acting, the whole feel of the movie are better than the latest. But it’s a different time, different actors, totally new songs. It’s worth seeing it though. Michelle Pfieffer is really good in it, as is Queen Latifah. Go see it. If only to see John Travolta dance off Michelle Pfieffer. Have fun and enjoy it. We did.

I just got off the phone with Jane. She’s an old friend, one of the Colgate crew that graduated from Colgate University in 1982. I fell in with that crowd while I was still living in Lodi. My job at that time was to drive twice a day from Saddle Brook NJ to 47th and Third Avenue in Manhattan. It was at 757 Third Avenue that I first met Rand and Jose, they had just graduated from Colgate so I guess that would make it 1982 as well. I remember walking down a hallway and seeing these two guys acting strangely, meaning they were acting just like me.

I found out that they lived in Hoboken, Jose had an apartment on Monroe Street when Monroe Street was real rough and tumble, Rand lived with his sister on Willow Avenue, not so rough and tumble. I asked them if they went to McSwells which is where I started to go a few months previously after my brother Frank had told me about it. Rand and Jose went there occasionally, definitely not as often as I did. Through Rand and Jose I met Lois and Martha who also went to Colgate and were sharing an apartment on Garden Street. They had a third roommate and that was Jane.

Jane was traveling through Europe I believe, and left her boyfriend Andy behind. Andy eventually moved in with Rand across the street from McSwells but I’m getting ahead of myself. Many nights were spent at the Garden Street apartment, getting jazzy, doing whippets and or nitrous oxide occasionally hitting the slopes. Not much drinking or sexing going on, just inebriation of the illegal kind. We were in our twenties which is pretty much a good time to do that sort of thing.

Everyone was always going on and on about how great Jane is, and what a great time we would have when she got back from Europe if anyone had an idea when she was coming back. Eventually she did come back, and I recall meeting her on 51st Street with Rand and or Jose and she was great though she paid more attention to the friends that she knew rather than the friend she was going to make. That’s certainly understandable. Eventually we hit it off. She was, and still is quite great. Jane is an excellent cello player by the way.

She eventually got a gig playing cello at brunch on Sunday afternoons at McSwells which was cool if you had a hangover from hanging out there the night before. Jane and I wrote a song together which we debuted at one of my first live appearances at a bar in Times Square called Tin Pan Alley. She titled the song O’Toole for some reason. I hadn’t heard from Jane in a while, in fact the last time I heard from her was on my birthday last year, she remembered and gave me a call.

Jane lives in Woodstock now, away from the hustle and bustle and the rough and tumble, a quiet life when she’s not on the road. She’s played with some fairly big names in the music business and toured with some of them. Just good to hear from an old friend. We made tentative plans to meet up next time she’s in Manhattan, country life is too boring for our Jane. It’s a nice life raft, a cabin in the woods, but I guess she’s just a metropolitan gal deep down. We can do a lot more catching up face to face rather than on a long phone call, though a phone is just as good if you can get together, face to face. And forget about being online, she has a dial up.