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.

Praying Hands

It’s a Sunday again and today was an exceptionally nice Sunday. After all the cold weather and freezing temperatures, the fact that it was near 60 degrees made it feel like Spring.

Of course it”s not spring and we’re going to go back to the cold weather sooner or later. Lot’s of people out and about today on Washington Street.

It was a good day to wander around Hoboken, enjoying a Padron. I did stop by and saw my friend Lois, who gave me an iron she found. The plan is to start ironing my own shirts to save some money. I’ll iron the dress shirts after I’ve worn them once to take care of a day’s wrinkles.

Lois was pretty sick, seemingly with the same virus I just had gotten over. I brought her some generic Nyquil and some vitamin C.

There were a lot of people out yesterday including what seemed to be a group of kids, all related singing Ramones songs on Washington Street. The boys were on bass, guitar and drums and the girl was singing.

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They were raucous and shy if that’s possible. They had a good crowd and a zealous father who applauded the loudest after each song. There were quite a few dollars in the bag when I gave them one of mine.

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Perhaps this is how it will be, families out on the street playing music for money. This group did have their hearts I the right place though their fingers were on the wrong frets. I walked away as they started deconstructing Blitzkrieg Bop.

Yesterday before I went out I watched Alien. The first movie, with John Hurt, Tom Skerritt, Yaphet Kotto and of course, Sigourney Weaver. Still an intense movie, I remember seeing it at the now defunct Stanley Warner theater with my sister in law, Elaine.

I think my sister saw it before me saying it was a really gross picture which of course got my interest, hearing of a monster bursting through someone’s chest. I’ve seen it quite a few times since then.

A week or so ago there was some bulletin board about the movie and my post was rejected. I wrote about how horrible it was the way the Lambert character played by Veronica Cartwright gets killed.

The last shot of Lambert when she’s facing the monster is her lower legs. She’s paralyzed with terror and you see the Alien’s tail going between her calves and slowly heading upwards. The scene cuts to Ripley, Sigourney Weaver, hearing Lambert’s ghastly screams over the radio as she dies.

I wrote that the character was raped by the Alien, and that’s probably what prompted the monitor not to post my opinion. After watching it again yesterday and paying attention to that scene, I’m convinced that’s how Lambert met her too gruesome death. It’s an off camera scene which lends itself to the imagination.

Before I went out this afternoon I watched a documentary on Sweet Honey in the Rock on PBS. That was enjoyable. I’ve never seen Sweet Honey in the Rock but I did see Bernice Johnson Reagon’s daughter Toshi Reagon sing with her group Big Lovely with Elvis Costello when I saw a taping of the Letterman Show last century. I think I saw it with Harpy when he scored tickets for the taping.

Tonight is nothing special, back to work tomorrow. After being sick last week, I’m looking forward to it. Should be another intense week of rearranging the deck chairs.

I’m not complaining, at least not yet. Probably during the week I will. Seems to be a pattern.

Today’s Hoboken people
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She's in the lead.....

She's in the lead.....

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work it gurl!!!

work it gurl!!!

Shakin’ All Over

Oh that Kenny G. He’s on TV right now playing his horn on some ice skating program. He’s the butt of a lot of jokes but I talked with him a while ago on the phone while working for Arista Records and found him to be quite a nice guy.

So I have no beef with him. I won’t run out and buy his records or anything like that but I really have nothing bad to say about him. I wish I knew him better so I could recommend Harpy working for him.

I just got home from Manhattan. Nice day to walk around the city. I headed into the office and cleaned some vases with bamboo shoots in them and roots and rocks covered in algae. I try to clean them once a month but I’ve been lax in that department.

I was also able to take care of a few things that occurred during my absence yesterday. It’s true, these people I work with and support can’t do anything for themselves. They are spoiled. I’m not complaining since I’m the one who’s spoiled them and it keeps me busy. The smallest thing I do makes me look good I think and I intend to keep this up until the lease runs out in March 2010.

Last night I watched a little bit of Factory Girl (The Edie Sedgwick story) which had a bit of the song, Shakin’ All Over. I loved the version and went to iTunes to find out who had done it. Of course it’s a classic and covered by dozens of artists. I found a version I really liked by Iggy Pop and downloaded it. But still- who did the classic 1960’s version?

I enjoyed a Padron as I walked back to the Path train. I wasn’t going to take the bus home since it took forever to get into the city on the bus. One lane going in through the Lincoln Tunnel, plus the bus had a slight collision with a truck. Nothing bad happened and we only stopped for a few minutes.

I was reading about Caroline Kennedy in the New Yorker and a woman next to me asked what I thought about the article I had just finished. We would up having a nice chat about the Kennedy’s and politics. I mentioned that it’s sometimes confusing and infuriating that being so close to New York, we get all the information about New York politics, like Caroline Kennedy thinking about becoming a Senator for the Empire State.

Ultimately it wouldn’t concern me one way or another, but I was drawn into it due to the Kennedy myths. My seat mate felt the same way. She’s an Irish Catholic and I’m a Irish Atheist, formerly catholic. It was a nice chat. She was chubby cheeked enough that she could have passed for one of my cousins. And we both still feel bad about John F. Kennedy Jr and his untimely demise.

I talked with my sister on the phone as I puffed on my Padron and walked down Fifth Avenue towards the Path train. She and her husband, Rex are enjoying the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss CD I got Rex for his birthday this past week, Raising Sand.

Annemarie is going to burn it for me since I was pretty much intrigued by the song that I had heard. I, in turn promised to burn a copy of Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It. I posted the 100 Yard Dash on my Facebook page page and Annemarie liked it.

It promises to be another quiet night tonight. No plans really. Got the new Mojo and Uncut magazines which I will likely peruse while perhaps watching Renee Fleming on the Elvis Costello show, Spectacle. That’s it on this end. Hope all is well with you and yours, as it is with me and mine.