Category Archives: Abstract Absurdist Otherness

Read it and weep! I’ve published and now, I be damned! There are some diamonds in this coal. Proceed with cautious carelessness.

You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)

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Tuesday today. Let’s see, Bill woke me up again this morning at 6:50 which was fine. I was out of bed and doing my thing. Bill is off to his sleep apnea test tonight which leaves me solo. Not such a bad thing, though the bed will be emptier than it should.

Looking forward to President Obama’s press conference tonight. Still a refreshing thing to see and hear a world leader speak so intelligently and with authority. For some reason the right wing nuts have been going off on the fact that Obama reads from a teleprompter. What the fuck is that about?

I know the previous President, you know, the door knob, had difficulty pronouncing nuclear correctly, but all they could do is complain that Obama reads from a teleprompter? What? Did they think Bush was talking off the top of his soft skull?

They also have been complaining that Obama is busy multi-tasking. I know, that’s not right, especially since the door knob before him had difficulty watching TV and eating pretzels.

Yesterday was a busy Facebook day. Last night I was posting with a few other people, specifically Pat Longo. Nice guy, friends with my brother Frank and other WFMU types. Pat doesn’t like the Beatles. Says they’re overrated.

I can see how he might say that though I obviously don’t agree. For me, my love for the Beatles, isn’t just the music. It’s the whole cultural phenomenon that started 45 years ago and continues to this day.

They still sell plenty of records and books, and soon they’ll be on Guitar Hero or perhaps Rock Band. I don’t know, I’m not a gamer. For the seven years that they were active, they were in my eyes, four of the coolest people on the planet. Clothes, hair, & attitude still resonates. I know, I’m biased.

I love playing their songs on guitar and singing along. I’ve read their books, from badly written biographies to trainspotters writing about every recording session to the smallest detail. Moms and dads and kids liked them and still do.

I was devastated when John was murdered, and was very upset when George was attacked by an intruder and I cried when he passed away a year or so later. I shed a tear or two seeing Paul live at Madison Square Garden in 2005, and smiled sweetly when I saw Ringo do a morning set at Bryant Park for Good Morning America.

I think they were and still are amazing. There were moments that I resented them for casting such a large shadow on everything that came afterwards. The resentment was momentary and faded away and still I loved them. They probably resented the shadow that they had created and were forced to live in. Still, they weren’t going hungry.

I think one of the first musical memories I had was of my brother Frank playing Strawberry Fields Forever and when it faded out and in at the end he turned out the light in his bedroom and scared me. Strawberry Fields Forever makes for a better musical memory than Winchester Cathedral which could actually be the first song I actually recognized.

I owe my Beatles fixation to my brother Frank who gave me my first Beatles LP as a consolation for not taking me to see the bicentennial fireworks like he had promised. It was Abbey Road, their last album. Which in a way makes sense for me since I tend to do things backwards.

I started collecting their records, looking for the original Capitol Records rainbow edged albums, or releases on the Apple label, buying import singles with songs I never heard before, like The Ballad of John & Yoko.

Side note: one of the reasons that I took the job at McMann and Tate aka Wolff Olins was because they helped design the Apple Records label back in 1968. And that didn’t go so well for me 38 years later.

I just figured out a few weeks ago that John, Paul, George & Ringo, which I’m sure you know is sometimes how they’re mentioned, is the order that the band was formed. Maybe it was obvious, maybe I’m a dunce.

From July 5 1976 until December 9 1980 I felt I might have a chance of seeing the four of them perform again, or at least release a record. We know how that turned out.

But I still play them, I’m still enthralled, and I’m still a Beatles fan, and you know you should be glad. Yeah yeah yeah!

Bedsitter

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Well last night was Tuesday night and actually the first night since New Years Eve that Bill was able to sleep in our bed. He came home around 8:00 and was very happy to be home. I greeted him with a hug and a kiss.

Almost immediately we fell into our old routines, he sitting on the couch and me sitting where I am now, in front of the computer. Also like our old routine, we watched Scrubs from this past season which is now on ABC. And we had seen both episodes already.

I was surprised that he went to bed before the old stand by, Lawn Hors D’oeuvre SVU. It was a decent episode, but it lacked the made up lyrics that Bill and I used to sing over the theme song.

I watched the Daily Show after that, more of the Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer showdown, of which Jon Stewart has been hitting home runs with a ball that might as well be shaped like Jim Cramer’s face. Jon Stewart was on point.

I tried watching the Colbert Report but couldn’t keep up and soon went to bed. There was Bill, fast asleep and snoring. That kept me awake for a while but soon he stopped and I was able to fall asleep to the sound of the recyclables being dragged to the curb a little after midnight.

Getting up was out of the ordinary. It used to be that Bill was up around 5:30 to head to the gym but he was up around the same time as me after both of us kept hitting the snooze button on our respective alarm clocks. He was gone before I was, and I made my way to the bus stop.

One aspect of getting up earlier is the fact that it isn’t as crowded at 7:00 in the morning than at 8:00. Lot’s more people but still I found a comfortable seat and finished the article in the New Yorker about David Foster Wallace and the depression that eventually caused him to take his life.

It mentioned a few of his books, except for the book that I received as a gift about 5 years ago from Sarah Fortner, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. I tried reading it but found it too dense for my taste. Sad that he killed himself, the medications he was on didn’t help him at all.

I remember a quote but can’t figure out who said and I probably have it wrong anyway, but basically I relate it to how if a person would take their medications to deal with their inner devils, their inner angels would never forgive them.

The inner struggle that takes place and can cause creative urges. I still have the David Foster Wallace book and one day I’ll get around to reading it, perhaps with the proper dose of medication.

Work was quiet for me, and I wound up being more of a DJ than an office manager. Not much going on, Tom Chin out, Vivek still on the road. Since I wasn’t busy at all, the day crawled.

No ‘real’ errands to run, so I found the time to go to Sym’s where I bought a nice Ben Sherman tie, a skinny tie for $15.00, originally priced at $30.00. I plan to wear it tomorrow, Thursday which is the last day of my work week.

Bill is coming home tonight again, which makes it the first time since October where he’s spent 2 consecutive nights here in Hoboken. His mom is being monitored in Beth Israel hospital and she seems to be doing better.

Bill has a stress test on Friday morning so he’ll be staying in Stuyvesant Town Thursday night so he can get to the test on time with a minimum of fuss. Me, I’m looking forward to Lost tonight. Probably won’t be as focused on Sawyer as it was last week, but I do hope it will be as good as it was.

I’ve been playing the War Child- Heroes CD and so far it’s pretty good. Rufus Wainwright does an excellent cover of Brian Wilson’s Wonderful/Song for Children from Smile, and Franz Ferdinand’s live cover of Blondie’s Call Me is killer!

Beck’s cover of Dylan’s Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat isn’t as good as it should be. He changes the line, ‘I saw you making love to him/you forgot to close the garage door’ to ‘you forgot to close the Pill Box door’ which makes no sense at all.

Damn thetans!