Author Archives: johnozed

About johnozed

I'm 50+ years old, 210-ish#, 6'2", reddish blonde, blue eyes with glasses (and without) masculine, funny, relatively intelligent, enjoy the company of assorted friends and family especially sordid friends and family. I love music, reading, writing, conversing, laughing, going to films, shows, concerts and smoking cigars. And I also enjoy looking nice in a suit and tie. Looking more like Lewis Lapham than Tom Wolfe. I'm sure there is more, but we'll just have to find out when I write about it. In a lifetime relationship with partner Bill Vila.

Yancy’s Delight

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The day of the hump. It was a good day. Last night, I changed up my sleep routine and had 2 gummies instead of the usual 1. It seemed to worked just fine. I slept soundly, just one visit to empty a 63 year old bladder. It takes about 2 minutes to complete and I am not complaining. I do wake up before the alarm clock, sometimes 30 minutes before and I attempt to sleep soundly though the tick tick tick of the clock plays softly in my head.

I was up and out of the apartment before my usual time. Yancy was expected at the office as it is his schedule to sit in my area every other week, just like every other week, I go to the main fruit stand and work there. And Yancy and I got along fine.

He expressed his continued support for me following last week’s debacle regarding interviewers and the people that they interview. I certainly appreciate it. Marcus added his support with regards to the incident yesterday and the moving of equipment in passenger elevators.

It was stated a few times that it is not my responsibility to tell the visiting artists and their crew how to move their equipment. I knew that but I expressed a willingness to do just that. Yancy headed out before noon allowing us at the fruit stand to breathe a little bit easier though we did not have any difficulty doing that while he was there.

I know what kind of music Yancy likes and thought of the playlist to play as he sat next to my spot at the fruit stand. I decided on a Cole Porter playlist. I knew some of the songs way back when. In 1990 the Red Hot organization released the first in a series of charitable releases for AIDS research, Red Hot & Blue, contemporary artists covering Cole Porter songs.

I was working at a bourgeois bookstore in Soho and one of the store CD’s was Night & Day, a collection of yesteryear artists singing Cole Porter songs. I was not that thrilled to have to play those songs but they eventually wound their way into the jukebox of my mind and I bought both volumes of the Cole Porter collections on Verve.

Now it is a favorite of mine, so much so that I played it this morning to Yancy’s delight. It wasn’t all about Cole Porter today though. I had my usual playlist called White Mice which contains various songs that floated through my head over the years, that I heard in various places or just echoing in this skull of mine.

Of course there were the Beatles/ The other day I played Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in its entirety. Today it was A Hard Day’s Night, which held memories of driving back from the shore with Annemarie and Earl, singing along to the songs 2 of us knew inside out. All in all, it was a pretty good day.

Another Day Another Donut

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Another day, another donut. It’s a Tuesday. So far, everything is going nicely, so good. I am listening to an XTC playlist. I saw them twice with my brother Frank. He adored them; I liked them. We saw them at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, NJ, and a week later at the Palladium on 14th Street in Manhattan, just a block or two from where I am right now.

The Palladium is gone, the Capitol Theatre is gone, and Frank is also gone. The first week we saw the entire bill, Jools Holland, Joan Jett and XTC. Jools Holland, while talented, was not my cup of tea. Joan Jett, though a few of my friends liked her a lot, I was not one of them. And I did not like the Runaways either.

I sat in the fifth row, Frank and Elaine in the fourth row directly in front, and we suffered through ‘I Love Rock & Roll’. XTC were brilliant and I just heard Roads Girdle the Globe in the playlist, and I always picture Frank in my head being so into it. I am not sure if Elaine had the same enthusiasm; it seems unlikely. She was a team player, though.

The next week the same lineup was playing the Palladium in Manhattan, and Frank and I had seats together as well as the brains to avoid the opening acts and arrive in time for XTC. Tickets were bought for the next tour a year later but that was not going to happen, what with Andy Partridge having a nervous breakdown or valium withdrawal or a combination of the two.

And thus ended the touring years of XTC. I was happy to have seen them twice. Frank saw them a year before at the Ritz, but I was preoccupied and Frank did not ask me though I was the one who turned him onto XTC. And Frank no longer with us, I can write it as history. Very McCartney-esque of me, if I do say so myself.

At the fruit stand there was a kerfuffle. There was a UK Hip Hop singer that came in with an entourage. They were fine but they brought their equipment back and forth in a passenger elevator ignoring the freight elevators which are there for that exact reason.

The superintendent of the building where the fruit stand is supposedly had words with one of the entourage and his feelings were hurt, though the lobby security said nothing like that happened and the superintendent is a bit of a drama queen. It added a layer of uncomfortableness over the rest of the afternoon.

I left on time and caught the Path train which was not as crowded as it had been lately and there were no ample bosoms to brush against, much to my relief. I walked up Washington Street and heard someone call my name.

It was Jason Stasium with whom I worked with for a few years in the nineties. Jason is a genuine good guy and we chatted as we strolled up the boulevard, promising once again to meet up for a coffee and a chat since neither one of us are drinkers these days. He was off to see one of his kids perform in a school concert, and I went off to vote in the primary.