Monthly Archives: February 2010

Dear Mr. Fantasy

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Listening to Mumford & Sons. They were on Letterman the other night. I really liked the song. Enough so to download a few tracks. Well it’s not all that. Perhaps they pull it off live, but all the songs have sameness to them which isn’t very exciting.

The song they sang on Letterman was Little Lion Man which was excellent. The studio version is decent. Another good song is Dustbowl Dance. But the rest merely leaves me whelmed.

What is actually really good are the tracks I’ve gotten from Hot Chip. Now that is something special. Well worth investigating. And danceable in parts. They’ve even taking to use a live drummer on some songs which could only help.

I watched the rest of the Terry Jones documentary on Barbarians and that was very good. Left me wanting for more, but there were no extras. They should hire Terry Jones to do more things like that. I received my bus pass in the mail yesterday and today I returned it via the mail.

No need for it. I was going to drop it off last night but I was here waiting for the cable guy to arrive. The scheduled visit was until 8:00 but Cablevision found someone in West New York who drove down here.

He was a handsome chap who thought I was smoking a blunt which I wasn’t but wished I was. He swapped the swapped box with an HD box which is fine if we had an HD TV but since we don’t all the channels that are in HD are now in letterbox format and if it’s not in HD then the whole screen is filled.

The cable guy noticed a picture of my mother and me in Amish country, 1976. We’re standing next to a sculpture of a pretzel and the cable guy asked if it was a real pretzel. I explained that it wasn’t. He asked when the picture was taken and I told him 1976. He then mentioned how cool it must have been living in the 1970’s!

Mom-Me

According to Harpy we’ll have more space on the DVR to record. But we haven’t recorded anything yet. Bill came home after rehearsing his latest play. He says I will love it and I guess we’ll have to wait and see about that. I am looking forward to seeing it though.

I have a few movies from the library that are recommended. My brother Frank suggested The Changeling by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich. Old Boy, a Korean film was suggested by Michael Hill, a friend from McSwells days whom I ran into the other day.

Hellboy which I hadn’t seen but caught part of it’s sequel, Hellboy 2 last night and I was entertained. Next Day Air got some decent reviews when it came out last year and I do like Donald Faison and Mos Def, so it’s good that they’re in it.

And finally Passing Strange which Bill and I saw at the Public Theater a few years ago. We loved it and it was on PBS a few weeks ago, so we recorded it. Never got around to seeing it that way since the box went kaput, so here is the DVD. So I have plenty of things to watch if I’m in the mood.

Tomorrow I’m going to see an exhibit of artifacts from the Titanic with my niece Corrine and my sister in law Elaine. Corinne asked me and I simply couldn’t refuse, nor did I want to. It should be fun, something out of the ordinary which is what I am always after.

I did get a haircut for the occasion. A trip to Mr L’s where Tony did his magic. He asked me about how the research for hair cutting was going and nearly dropped his shears when I told him one school wanted $12,000 and the other wanted $16,000.

Not like the $900 he had to pay all those years ago at Atlas Barber School. I would go there if they had financial aid but they don’t.

If I was a veteran or had a disability or in their words: No financial aid is available. We are approved for Veterans, Immigration, and for Vocational and Educational Services of Individuals with Disabilities (VESID). I tell you they (vets, immigrants and the disabled) have it dead easy.

And that’s the thing I want to do, be a barber. Not a stylist. Don’t want to learn make up, manicures, pedicures, rinsing, coloring or any of that stuff. Just a hair cut.

And it’s the other stuff that is putting me off.

2.20.10 etc 002

Gulls!

Gulls!


Nice enough day for some painting I reckon

Nice enough day for some painting I reckon

Me, post haircut
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Prime Time

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It’s Friday. I have spent a good part of the day waiting for Cablevision to come and do something about the cable box. Last night it started making clicking sounds then in the middle of Keith Olbermann it pixilated and froze.

A simple reboot, unplug the box, wait a few minutes then plug in again did the trick. No DVRing available. Not such a bad thing I thought. About an hour later, this time the cable box did it itself.

It stopped and started again all on it’s own.

I called Cablevision. No easy maneuvering through the phone prompts, you have to listen to everything. Don’t even thinking about pressing 1 for English before they tell you to. It will get you nowhere.

I spoke to the customer service representative from Cablevision and scheduled an appointment for today between 11:00AM and 2:00PM. At 1:59 I called up to see what was going on. They said they would call the man in the field and get back to me.

About 20 minutes later, it was confirmed the guy was running late.

He had my cell number and would call me when he was in the neighborhood. At 2:45 I get a call saying that he’s outside. I look out the window and there he is talking to another cable guy halfway down the street.

About 10 minutes later I buzz him in, all hard hat and tool belt. I offered him some water but he didn’t want any. He hit a few buttons on the box, lot’s of different screens popping up on the TV screen. He deduces that he’s going to have to swap this box for a new box.

So he goes back downstairs and comes back a couple of minutes later with another box, with the remnants of a ‘void’ sticker on the front. He sets it up, telling me everything that was on the old box is now gone.

No more Andy Warhol documentary, no more Bill on Late Night with Conan O’Brien or with Jimmy Fallon for that matter. Everything is gone. It’s a drag but what can you do.

He leaves after I sign a paper. There’s no charge for this visit. I turn on the TV a few minutes later. I start adding the favorite channels to the cable box and it’s pixilated again.

I call Cablevision again, speak to someone else again, and I am told that the guy will be back. An hour goes by. And another hour goes by.

I call again, speaking to someone else again and I am told a few instructions. Hit this button. Turn to the left. Now unplug it. Now stand on one leg. Now blink really hard. Turn to channel 500. Hit A-B-B-A on the remote control. You are the dancing queen. Turn it off. Turn it on. Show us your tits Coco.

Nothing had any effect. They tell me the guy has until 8:00PM to show up. It’s 7:04PM now. The clock, it is ticking. Harpy went through something similar with Time Warner a couple of weeks ago. I hope I don’t have the same problems.

In any event, here I sit waiting for someone who may or may not show up. He did call me earlier and I did have his number in my phone records. I texted him a few hours ago, asking if he had an ETA on returning to 616 Park Avenue. Of course it went unanswered.

I have little faith that they would show up. But I will be quite happy to be proven wrong. Again. There are still 50 minutes left.

Perhaps there will be a postscript to this entry. Or perhaps there won’t.