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.

I Can’t Live Without My Radio

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It’s another lazy Sunday. Not much happened today. Last night was pretty good. Bill came home in a good mood. I was in a good mood too and happy to see him. I was watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and switched it off so we could watch Gone Baby Gone together. As expected, Bill liked it very much, totally engrossed within minutes. Even had a discussion about it afterwards. Timed it well enough to catch Lawn Hor d’oeuvre which was a good one.

Bill was able to stay awake and watched Saturday Night Live which was pretty funny, especially the SNL Digital Short. Jonah Hill and Andy Samberg produced several laugh out loud moments for me and Bill. Mariah Carey was Mariah Carey. Boring and possibly lip syncing. She’s still annoying to me, for real, not faux annoying like my disdain for Morgan Freeman. I went to bed right after the show, Bill stayed up for I don’t know how long. He woke me up as he was leaving for church this morning. It’s Palm Sunday.

I slept in, got out of bed around 9:00. Went out and went to the supermarket, came home had breakfast and read the papers. I then watched the rest of Harry Potter and I enjoyed it. I do enjoy those movies. Can’t even call it a guilty pleasure, I out right enjoy it. There, I’ve said it. Since the weather looked crappy and always on the verge of rain I decided to watch The Thin Red Line after that. Another movie I saw in a theater and while beautiful to watch, I just didn’t get it. Watched a chunk of it a week or so ago and got a little bit more of it and watched the whole thing from start to finish with an occasional interruption, phone call, bathroom break, or actually dinner. Nothing like eating a burger while watching a World War 2 movie.

Not much else to report. I did have a few cigarettes the past couple of days, which isn’t the end of the world considering how much I used to smoke. Just going to take more resolve, this much I know. Tonight, I plan to watch The John Adams docudrama. I watched the Adams Chronicles in the 1970’s and enjoyed it. Liked John Adams since then even though I didn’t know too much about him. Just that he seemed interesting, as well as his wife Abigail. This should be grittier since it seems that i was filmed outdoors, on ‘location’ whereas The Adams Chronicles were all shot indoors on sound stages if I remember correctly. Plus Laura Linney is in it and I really like her a lot.

In a related note, Jake Shears from the Scissor Sisters is writing a musical based on Armistead Maupin’s Tales of The City. Related because Laura Linney played Mary Ann Singleton in the original miniseries on PBS. Those were the days when PBS would show Tales of The City without fear. There was another season but the powers that be felt that honest images of life in 1970’s San Francisco was way too much for PBS decided not to broadcast it. It was shown on Showtime, but who had Showtime then? Or even now?

One of These Nights

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Yes, It’s a Saturday and it’s been a pretty good one so far. Slept until around 8:30 after going to sleep around 1:00AM. Decent amount of sleep, woke up rested. Called Julio and Stine to see if they wanted anything from Washington Street. Bagels of course. They were in a hurry to get to a Lamaze class. I got them what they wanted and soon had a nice breakfast for myself.

Read the papers, had coffee. Went to the library to return The History Boys which was overdue they said, when it wasn’t. Then they tried to pin a $2.00 charge for a book that was paid for last year but they can’t seem to clear from my card. That took a while.

I carry the receipt in my wallet from last year since this issue pops up every now and then when dealing with the library. Some library employees are easy to deal with but on Saturday mornings the staff is second string and they really don’t have much of an idea as to what they are doing. The computer perplexes and confounds them. After that, some errands, some dry cleaning, a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer in the pants.

I decided to head into the city and check out the next to last day for an exhibition at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street for the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. It was ok. No recharging of my Beat influences. It was all rather underwhelming. They had the scroll of paper that Kerouac wrote one version of On The Road.

It was about 60 feet long out of the original 120 feet. Everything was under glass and no photography was allowed which made for me at least, a rather uninspiring show. There was a tour going on that I overheard. The guide was talking about Lucien Carr, a friend of Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs. Carr killed David Kammerer after Kammerer traveled to NYC, infatuated by Carr.

Carr reacted to this infatuation by stabbing Kammerer to death. Kerouac helped hide the murder weapon, a knife, while Burroughs and Ginsburg implored Carr to turn himself in to the police. An early version of what is now known as Gay Panic, the ‘justification’ of when a gay man (or woman) makes overtures to a non gay person who is so repulsed, the only course of action that they can see is to murder the gay person, because saying ‘Thanks but no thanks’ just won’t do. Maybe slapping around the ‘stalker’ if a firm NO wouldn’t do would suffice.

Sometimes Gay Panic keeps one out of prison. Matthew Shepard may have been a victim of gay panic, and more recently, Lawrence King, the 15 year old boy from Oxnard, CA who was murdered by a 14 year old classmate after Lawrence stated that he wanted the classmate to be his Valentine.

Last night I watched a very good film, Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben Affleck. Based on a Denis Lehane novel, I think it might have been better than Mystic River. Not as top heavy with stars, this was low key and very gripping. Casey Affleck was excellent in it as well.

It’s a crime thriller so I won’t say anything about it, lest I give away a spoiler, but I do recommend it. Not that I am in any way familiar with Boston citizens, especially the lower classes, I thought it was true to life.

Walking around Hoboken, I saw a few characters that could have just as well been in Boston. Bill is coming over tonight and I decided to hang onto Gone Baby Gone for one more night before I send it back to Netflix. I think Bill would like the movie. That’s about it.

Here’s some recent pics.
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two doors down
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Fifth and Washington
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The New York Public Library Lions
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Inside
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west 46th Street
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Giant
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Waiting for Clay Aiken
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Hmmmm…..scary
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Pigeon in the Port Authority Bus Terminal
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This just in, at 2:00 this afternoon, a crane collapsed on 51st street a block away from where I work and where I walk several times a week. 4 dead, the crane hit the top floors of one building across the street then falling a block away on 50th street onto a 4 story townhouse, making it a one story building. No safety inspector on the scene and were cited for violations and complaints in the past. Lots of construction going on in Manhattan and lots of accidents as well.