June | 2011 | johnozed

I am home, Bill is not. Neither is access to the internet. It’s a Thursday and I just got home from work. Tonight was Thomas’ night to close so I got to leave a little bit earlier than usual. It was not a busy day at all at the cigar shack and it took almost all of my 9 hour shift to break a grand. I wound up in second place behind Thomas but ahead of Bradley.

It was slow going throughout most of the day and since Thomas was controlling the register, meaning it was opened under his name and all sales go directly to him unless you manually change the name, and if you enter the name of the credit card user (which is most everyone) it defaults back to Thomas’ name.

So a few sales went to Thomas and not me. I was able to void a few of those sales and bring them back to my name so that worked out. After a while of doing that I just gave up and let Thomas have whatever sales I lost. The computers are so old and terrible that I sometimes make jokes that they were bought at a garage sale when the Soviet Union collapsed. I’m sure I had written that before but I think it’s a funny joke and worth repeating.

The cigar shack has been repainted, the man cave is now a light brown color and it makes the man cave seem that much more claustrophobic. Even though it was somewhat rainy today I opted to go out for lunch, sitting on a bench near the park.

I enjoyed a cigar as I sat on the Village Voice with AM NY giving cover for my back so I wouldn’t get wet. I know it was drier in the man cave, but I just needed to get out. Despite a few errant drops of rain falling off the leaves of the trees nearby it wasn’t so bad and I was able to read all about the Minutemen in Michael Azzerad’s ‘Our Band Could Be Your Life’.

Man, the Minutemen were my favorite indie/SST band from the 1980’s. I was fortunate enough to see them a few times at Maxwells, one time it being so crowded that I stood next to Rand on the back bar itself since there was no room on the floor. I never said hello to D. Boon, Mike Watt or George Hurley since I always figured I would further down the line.

Then D. Boon died in a car accident and that ended that dream. I played Double Nickels on the Dime by the Minutemen as I read their story and felt really good walking back to the cigar shack. It was nice to get in touch with my punk rock roots and it was a reminder that punk was not just about music, it was about the DIY attitude.

Oddly enough before all that Thomas asked about punk rock and why it was so nihilistic and all sounded the same. It was an odd thing to hear, something that I hadn’t really had to explain in over 30 years, since high school where I was sometimes abused verbally and physically for liking music that was not what my classmates were listening to.

I explained that the Fall doesn’t sound like the Ramones who don’t sound like Television who didn’t sound like The Clash or the Minutemen. I had to keep in mind that Thomas is 25 and his idea of relaxing music is Nat King Cole. Juan is the same age and he gets it. ‘Some people do and some people don’t’ I thought to myself and played the Ramones first album in its 29 minute 17 second glory.

A day off and it’s been somewhat busy. After shaking off the strange dream of me trying to kill Rosemary’s Baby I got out of bed and started my day. I woke up with I Can See For Miles by the Who in my head.

A shower, a shave, some breakfast and coffee and soon I was off to the bibliothèque to find out what the hell is going on with my library card. I dropped off some CD’s last week and they were still on my card and in danger of being late. Bob Dylan’s Witmark Demos (Volume 9 of the Bootleg Series), The Scissor Sisters Night Work, the Jimi Hendrix Experience- Are You Experienced and the motion picture soundtrack of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The quite helpful librarian took a look and saw they were back in stock and dutifully removed them from my online library card. I love my bibliothèque.

From there it was off to the supermarket to buy groceries. Then it was home for a spell, did some cooking for tonight as well as for the week and also made some tuna salad for lunch for when I go back to work tomorrow and the days following.

Right now it looks like a major storm is approaching from the west. Yesterday, one of the bright spots in the day of staring into the abyss was seeing a hawk flying above the border of Hoboken and Weehawken, above the area called the Shades, in the shadow of Troy Tower. It took a few seconds to recognize it as a hawk and not merely a sea gull and yes it was majestic to watch. It was the high point of my day. I neglected to write about it and wish I had a taken a photograph of it.

And now it is raining.

I was also thinking about my education today and why I didn’t continue onto college. Would things have turned out differently? Probably. I had 13 years from kindergarten to senior year of high school which was mainly spent trying not to fail and get a passing grade.

I remember in junior year of high school, Sister Reginald telling the class that we were there because we had to be, but when we continued onto college there would be no one forcing us to go to class. Me being the type of person to not do something that he doesn’t want to do, had an epiphany and realized that it would be a waste of money since I loathed education and more than likely would be skipping classes.

For some reason I also remember a classmate, Don Francis being made to stand out in the hallway for something that he had done and slowly unzipping his zipper with a smile on his face while staring at me in class as he looked through the door. Don Francis left my school that year and I never saw him again though perhaps if he told me to go to college with him I might have, even though I believe he was straight.

So from Mrs. Burson to Mrs. Talamini to Sister Carla to Sister Reginald I did not enjoy school, going through it with much difficulty and when I graduated high school it made more sense to go from part time to full time working for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich where I worked in the college department and read a lot of the books on my own time that my classmates were paying hundreds of dollars to own.

Who knows, perhaps they bought the books I had already read. In any event, I don’t have any regrets about not continuing my education and with the employment situation today and knowing a few college and university graduates who are currently out of work it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference anyway.

And still I delete hundred, perhaps thousands of spam subscribers to this here blog. It’s an ongoing process and if I don’t stay on top of it, it turns into several pages of names and email addresses to be deleted. I don’t know what will happen if I do not delete, but I am more comfortable with the three subscribers that I have.

So thank you Rand, HarbCard and Denali Kid for subscribing. And I guess some recognition should also go to lazy teat Greg who reads this blog every day. Well scratch Denali Kid off the list. Just sent an email and it came back as undeliverable.