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.

I Don’t Need No Doctor

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Last night was a wee bit intense. Juan came by after going head to head and toe to toe with both his mother and his father. He was fairly livid when he came by and I did my best to chill him out. Ninety minutes of Weeds and a half hour with a London call girl did the trick or at least that is what I had hoped.

He also used the computer and I was silently amazed at how fast he can type. Then again he was basically raised with a computer keyboard underneath his fingers. His words per minute skills must be close to triple digits. Impressive. I did have to kick his ass out so that I could get ready to go to sleep. He understood, he’s good like that.

Also chatted for a bit with Song in Sydney. He got his visa and should be back in the states next month. It would be good to see him and Ray again. Been a while. Last time they were in town I fell ill.

Slept really well, good old air conditioner humming along as I slept. I didn’t want to get out of bed, but of course that is what I had to do. I was out the door before 7:00 again and got on a soon to be crowded bus.

I sat in my usual spot and read An Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, author of The History Boys among others. He’s a favorite author lately. This is about the Queen taking up reading which she never had time for before. That description doesn’t do it justice, but it’s not much more complicated than that. It’s an entertaining novella and after starting it yesterday I am almost finished with it. I’m so lucky to have the library just down the street.

Oh what an idiot day I’ve had. Work was busy, Tom Chin out of the office and John could you do this, John can you do that all day long. Not that I minded, not at all. It makes the day go faster and makes me feel somewhat needed. Vivek, the managing director and Greg Stevens the president of the company were getting a letter together to send out and I had to rewrite it an proof it a few times.

Unlike this blog where I sometimes post without fully checking for errors, I sometimes go back and make the necessary corrections after it’s been published. Today with Greg and Vivek I looked like a buffoon. They’d make edits, I’d work them into what I was writing and occasionally I’d omit something that they would point out after I printed out the letter.

I did my best and tomorrow is the day they go out so I’ll be bringing a fine toothed comb to the office.

But the thing that was the most idiotic was truly my fault. I’ve had some problems with the eyeglasses I got in November of last year. I had them fixed, then there was a problem with the lenses. So I brought them back after Evan, the nice guy who may or may not have a ‘thing’ for me was going to have a new pair made.

The lenses came in last week and he told me to bring in the frames. I said that I didn’t have the frames, that I left them with him. He looked and looked but they weren’t there in the shop. I wound up getting a whole new pair of glasses which I got today.

They look great, better than the old pair. As I was dealing with Greg and Vivek, I was cleaning up my desk getting ready to go home. I open a drawer and find an eyeglass case. I open it and what do I find, but the eyeglasses I said I left with Evan.

Oh I laughed through my horror, my idiocy. I guess I have to do the right thing and bring back the old pair that was missing and tell him it was all my fault.

I’m an idiot.

Tonight, I’m going to McSwells again. What is this? The eighties? I’m meeting with my friend Lois to discuss music since I am DJ’ing at her wedding party at the Rainbow Lodge in Walton NY on August 2. Then I’m meeting my brother Frank to see the Individuals reunion.

Oh but tomorrow, going back to Evan, humble and apologetic. Years ago, I would have had the ‘get over’ attitude, nowadays, I just want to do what is right.

And that means eating humble pie.

Croaking Lizard

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Day something or other of the heat wave. Yes, it’s hot again and the question on everyone’s mind is, ‘Is it hot enough for ya?’ Still while walking through midtown Manhattan today I do see the occasional Asian Indian wearing long sleeved shirts. So for them- No, it isn’t hot enough.

Last night I watched Generation Kill which for me brought the early days of the current war home. I had heard about unarmored vehicles but last night watching the troops heading into Iraqi towns, you could see they were sitting ducks.

I still don’t see why they just don’t grab Donald Rumsfeld and strap him to the front of a jeep and let him catch the bullets. Stupid fucktard that he is. He’s been out of the limelight lately so that probably means he’s going to die soon.

Before I watched Generation Kill I watched a biopic on John Lennon called , ‘In His Life: The John Lennon Story’. It focused on the early years of John’s life, having to choose between living with his mother or father, the battles with his Aunt Mimi, his mother Julia’s death and of course meeting Paul McCartney and George Harrison. That’s as far as I got before switching over to Generation Kill.

After that I watched the Simpsons Movie which is still pretty funny. It’s aged well, after a year.

This morning was back to work. Three days off seemed longer, but that may be because I stayed indoors most of the weekend and napped quite a bit. Time crawls when you’re climbing the walls.

I played Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Reggae Greats album on the iPod walking to work. It’s a collection of ten songs that Lee Perry produced. I hadn’t heard it in a while and it is a fave. It brought back a few memories of how deeply immersed I was in Reggae for a number of years.

It was basically all I listened to. I have a deep love of Dub as well. Reggae and dub go hand in hand. I listened to Bob Marley in the 1980’s but didn’t buy anything except for the Legend collection and also Black Uhuru, Red. I did see the original Black Uhuru open up for King Sunny Ade at the Dr. Pepper music festival on the pier with a bunch of friends. I could swear that show lasted about six hours.

Somehow in the 1990’s I became totally infatuated with reggae. I was working at Skyline Studios and out on the street there were usually some Rastas hanging out selling weed. My friend Miriam was into reggae as much as I was, so I got a lot of music from her when we weren’t fighting. Usually the peace pipe brought us together.

I learned from Miriam about Gregory Issacs, Dennis Brown, Jacob ‘The Killer’ Miller, Burning Spear, U-Roy, I-Roy and Big Youth among others. The Rastas outside became friendly enough to invite inside. No work for them indoors. They were welcome until They Might Be Giants complained about feeling uneasy with the dreads hanging around my desk. Friggin’ nerds ruined it and I’ve never liked They Used to Mean Something to Someone ever again, though I didn’t much care for them beforehand.

True they had the run of the studio and at $2000 an hour they were entitled to having whomever they wanted around. I became good friends with a Rasta named Marcus and his brothers. They came from Guyana one by one. First Marcus, then Clarence, then Kenneth and finally the baby, Jamal.

Marcus was the oldest and lived in the States for a number of years. The other three came from the country and understanding them was a challenge. After hanging around with them for a few months I started to slip into a patois whenever I was talking to them.

It came quite naturally and raised eyebrows when I would talk to them on the phone. I’d hang up and whoever was around would ask what the hell it was I was talking about. I couldn’t really tell them.

Marcus was nice enough to lend me his giant sound system during my DJ’ing heydays. Two giant speakers, a mixer and amplifier and I was soon spinning classic selections at Johnny’s Bar in the Village on Wednesday nights. A small bar the size of a shoebox filled with my friends and Rastas on Wednesday nights. Too bad it only lasted a few weeks, but oh well.

I remember one night at McSwells, a drunken Joe Kindarotten (is there any other kind of Joe Kindarotten?) gave me a hard time about the homophobia in Reggae. I told Joe that the homophobia was more with Danehall Reggae which I didn’t like, I was more into Roots Reggae, which is a big difference.

I guess it was just a phase, my passion for Reggae a highly enjoyable phase. I resented Carly Simon’s brother, Peter who told me that my immersion into Reggae culture was a phase. Like he would know after publishing two photo journals about Reggae music. After countless shows, spliffs and late night laughs, Reggae stopped being in the forefront of my musical tastes.

It still is a music than enabled me to make friends, easier than Rock and Roll ever did. My love for Reggae is still there, it’s in my DNA and usually comes up during drug testing.

Under construction

The tying of the shoe

Bomb sniffing dogs at Grand Central