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 Can Help Too

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LATE BREAKING NEWS: Marriage Equality comes to New York State! The same-sex marriage bill was approved on a 33-to-29 vote.

It’s a Friday and everyone seems to be in a good, if not decent mood. And it was fairly busy at the cigar shack. Two special guest stars came in one was Casey Chasm who I hadn’t seen in a year or so. Good to see him, he was with a friend named Parik.

Casey looked good, clean shaven since the army frowns upon beards and whatnot. He’s probably going off to Afghanistan in a few months to do his Judge Advocate General routine. Luckily that doesn’t require being in the front, but still I worry.

And if I worry I can only imagine how Mrs. Chasm is feeling. And she now has 2 babies to look after, 2 girls named Annie and Clara. Casey wasn’t able to stay long, I was just one stop on his visit to Manhattan, he had a few other people to reconnect with. I was able to purchase a cigar for him as well as giving him a free cigar which was part of the promotion going on today.

And that promotion was what made the store extra busy. Quite a number of regulars and guys that hadn’t been seen in a while hanging out in the man cave smoking up a storm. The other special guest was Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam. He was in the other day and today he came back to buy some more items for his manager.

I don’t think Eddie Vedder is a cigar smoker but his manager seems to be, enough so to warrant a second visit. He was nice and trying to be incognito which explains the lack of photographs. I would be more impressed but I can’t say that I am much of a fan of Pearl Jam.

I spent my lunch hour once again on a bench near Central Park, smoking a cigar and reading Michael Azzerad’s entry on Mission of Burma. I totally missed out on seeing them, but did have Academy Fight Song which could be their most famous song.

Another story about a band too far ahead of their time. I did see a spin off band of Mission of Burma called Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. Almost as noisy and dissonant as Burma and I am pretty sure I saw them at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC with Jet during one of my sojourns down to the nation’s capital.

Bill is driving to Atlantic City tonight as well as tomorrow night so chances are I won’t be seeing him until Sunday which happens to be my next day off. He’s been busy at work lately so my occasional phone call with him has been a bit intense.

It’s all good, but today he was talking so fast that I could barely understand him and even though I asked him to repeat himself twice I wound up missing the gist of what he was saying. I told him so later which got a laugh. Just treading water now, it’s killing time. And now I am home and happy to be here.




I Can Hear Music

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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.