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.

It’s been another quiet day, especially since Hoboken kids went back to school today. Even though there are 2 schools within 100 yards of my apartment I heard nothing.

I was so tired from going to the museum and walking downtown afterwards that I slept really well which may have helped not hearing the kids on their way to school.

Oddly enough, I’m not feeling the pit of despair that I would feel for the first week or two of September. That sinking feeling of the beginning of the school year followed me throughout my life.

But apparently not this year.

Last night I watched Weeds with Bill. Well he was partially awake and only watched part of it.

What a surprise ending. Blew me away enough that I might have ruined the season finale with my reaction of the Facebook.

I certainly would not have expected the HBO/Showtime crossover with Eric draining Esteban of his Mexican blood, and neither should you.

Then I watched Letterman and Conan, alternating during commercial breaks. The Dirty Projectors were on Letterman and Pitbull, a reggaeton singer was on Conan. I opted for the Dirty Projectors.

Today, like I said, was quiet. The streets of Hoboken were devoid of kids. I made tentative plans to go gallery hopping next week sometime. There will be different shows than those that were hanging in July when I went with Annemarie and Earl.

Juan has extended me an invitation to visit him in Trenton but with his schedule he will have to tell me when it would be good since I have no set schedule to speak of, really.

And Pedro mentioned a visit to Otisville again this Friday but I am waiting to hear whether or not that’s still going on.

And Billie in DC has invited me down to Washington DC, perhaps in October if I’m not working, and I might even be able to go down there for the march on Washington. But that, as most everything else remains to be seen.

So things are low key and percolating along nicely.

Bill is at rehearsal tonight, getting ready for a reading in a week or so. He’s also singing at a NY Liberty game a little ways down the way, I think on the 14th. The play is the 14th, NY Liberty is the 8th.

Weather permitting, it would be a good reason to doff the suit and tie. Believe it or not I’ve been jonesing for it.

When the weather gets cooler and things start happening, I’ll be going out on interviews wearing a suit and tie.

I don’t know how guys do it during the summer. I think they really don’t spend any time on the street. They go from air conditioned apartment or house to air conditioned Town Car to air conditioned office. Maybe an out of office air conditioned lunch and then back to the air conditioned office.

Me, I like to walk and that makes me sweat like a horse.

That is what you get for shank’s mare I guess.

Well I just got back from a fun visit with Harpy to the American Museum of Natural History. It’s a great place to visit, to see your relatives. Always busy and always crowded though.

The first time I had ever gone to the museum was on a class trip with St Francis de Sales in 4th or 5th grade. Somehow they had gotten it together and got a bus or two full of students into the city which was not as kid friendly as it is now.

Eventually, we were herded together into the museum and the Hayden Planetarium. It must have been 5th grade because word was Jimmy Murray had copped a feel on a girl during the planetarium show in the dark.

He said he did, whether or not that was true remains unknown. She was a girl that I recently re-friended on Facebook and if we ever meet again I’ll have to ask her.

I do remember the big blue whale in a great hall. Not as darkly lit as it was today. Creating an environment that looked as natural as possible wasn’t a concern then.

The other thing I mainly remember was most of the boys fleeing from the class mother, Mrs. Munafo and running wild up and down the stairwells in the museum creating a ruckus.

The second time was probably 15 years ago with Meghan Taylor, the funniest girl alive. Meghan and I took Meghan’s daughter Lily to the museum. I believe it may have been an early spring day, with Meghan and myself pushing Lily in her stroller.

Meghan and I enjoyed ourselves as did Lily. The main thing I remember from that is that the three of us with our Irish faces looked like a family which cause a few other people to comment on what a lovely family we were. We didn’t discourage them.

That is when Lily became my ersatz daughter basically. We decided to run with that and we are still running to this day. The other time was when I took Perry Brody for a trip to the museum.

Perry lived around the block from me in Weehawken, the son of Cheryl Welch and the late Don Brody. Cheryl thought I would make for a good male role model in Perry’s life at that time and a trip to the city sounded like a fun idea.

Perry must have been around 6 or 7 at the time. We rode in on the bus and took a subway. I chose the first car of the train and Perry and I stood looking out the door window next to the engineer. It had a roller coaster effect that we both enjoyed.

Perry, of course loved the museum but we had to hurry through the dinosaur skeletons since they were a bit overpowering and scary for his young mind. Basically I picked him up and hustled him from one end of the hall to the other which his face buried in my shoulder.

After that was a trip to a playground in Central Park where Perry fell and nicked his knee. He cried a bit so I made it looked like I had hurt myself too and I wasn’t crying, so why should he?

It seemed to have worked but that was the last time I ever went anywhere with Perry. I did babysit a few times for him and his sister Molly though where I was declared to be cooler than Coolio.

I went once again after going with Perry, this time with Annemarie and Earl when he was a kid. Another good time with Anne and Earl but the main thing I remember was running around in the summertime heat in the Diana Ross playground, getting wet in the sprinklers.

So today was a visit with Harpy and it was a lot of fun. But by the end after schlepping around the museum, dodging strollers and restraining ourselves from braking the mini-mega phones that a few kids had going on and on, we were exhausted.

We parted ways, Harpy and I. He getting on the C train heading uptown and me trekking south to get a hot dog at Gray’s Papaya. Most of the pictures were posted on Facebook but there are some posted here as well.