Category Archives: Happy?

I Shall Overcome

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Friday finally. At least I think it’s Friday. Wait, I am pretty sure that it’s a Friday. It was a busy enough day without a visit to the bibliothèque or the cigar shop. A lot of running around today. A trip to the supermarket, to the cleaners, to CVS, and to the optician. Yes I finally got my new eyeglasses. If you’re on Facebook or Google +, then you’ve seen them and you’ve loved them. At least 11 people liked them enough and I’m sure if Facebook had a ‘love’ button it would be worn out with love for this former stripper.

So here I am once again on a Friday evening, the rebroadcast of the Daily Show is on which was preceded by the Colbert Report. I caught the latter and now watching the former. Or do I have that backwards. I don’t know- it’s Friday. Let me breathe, let me put balm on where the tassels used to be.

Back to the eyeglasses- I like them and after a couple of weeks of not seeing very well through scratched lenses, it took some getting used to. And having progressive lenses to match my political outlook, it also takes some time for full appreciation.

Things are a bit curvy at the bottom of the lenses which makes a simple walk down the street feeling like the edges were done by Salvador Dali playing with a fish eye lens. The clocks do seem to be melting a bit more than usual. I always forget persistence. And they are transition lenses which get darker in the sunlight, though when I am wearing them I can never tell and find myself trying to catch my reflection in store windows or passing cars. And the glasses are not branded, though they do have Ernest Hemingway’s name on the inside.

Which means if Ernest Hemingway ever turns up and asks for his glasses back, all he would have to say is that his name is on them and I wouldn’t be able to deny that. Then he would punch me in the mouth before taking the eyeglasses away.

I’ve been wearing eyeglasses since the 5th grade. Everyone in my family wears eyeglasses and despite being told I was adopted most of my life, I guess nurture usurped nature and through a strange osmosis my eyes needed corrective lenses as well. I was seen squinting a few times at the blackboard in class and was able to use that excuse for lousy grades, ‘I couldn’t read the black board’.

With the proper lenses I was able to see better and my grades stayed the same, fair to middling and always room for improvement if I just applied myself. I was only supposed to wear them when reading but wound up wearing them all the time which did not make my eyes any better. My eyes gradually got worse and every year or so new glasses would be in order.

But you won’t find me wearing Dolce & Gabanna or Burberry or Tom Ford eyeglasses, not unless they were paying me to wear their products, paying me to advertise them. Since that is unlikely to happen, their eyeglasses won’t be adorning my face anytime soon.
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Happiness

I Remember (with YANG YO SEOP 방용국)

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Tuesday Tuesday, where would I be without you? Possibly in a Monday or Wednesday, I don’t know. I slept well last night. I am sure that you were all wondering about that. Well enough that waking up this morning was somewhat difficult despite Bill’s words of encouragement and farewell kiss. I rallied, showered and ate and then I found myself thinking of what to do. I didn’t have to think that much since I got a phone call from Shlomo. He needed to run some errands and asked if I could sit in the cigar store for an hour or so.

The promise of a couple of free cigars did the trick. It was a fair barter. Hard to believe it had been a while since I had the La Trompeta by Avo. Back in March I had to attend the unveiling of the Trompeta at a exclusive cigar club at the former Top of the Sixes restaurant. Now it’s a pricey cigar club, with nouveau riche and those that aspire to be. It was fun to watch silly men with ‘money’ getting very excited over scantily clad girls handing out free cigars. As Mark E. Smith said, ‘it was like peasants getting free milk!”

It was my day off and I was required to attend this event and my job was to take photos which I did.. Food was promised and also scarce by the time my co-workers and I were able to eat and what we were fed was an expensive version of a White Castle slider. It was a cash bar for the underlings like myself and I couldn’t get out of there soon enough, it was funny watching some supervisors and underlings nodding off drunk. I have seen junkies with more stamina. The reason I write about that is because I found the text I wrote for a blog I was writing for some group earlier this year.The blog is dead and gone but I still have the photos and the text

Last night Bill and I did not watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Instead we watched The Late Show with David Letterman. We don’t usually watch it but I wanted to see Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. They didn’t perform, the three of them sat and chatted with Dave for the first 20 minutes. I enjoyed it and also enjoyed Bill’s questions regarding Led Zeppelin. Actually he was asking about me and how I would feel should I meet them on the street like when I met Mick Jones from the Clash on the street.

It wouldn’t be like meeting Mick Jones, I told Bill. Mick Jones was more of a personal thing, whereas Led Zeppelin was something that I didn’t always like. I explained that when I was growing up, the ‘bad’ kids listened to led Zeppelin and I was a goody goody kid into pop music. I didn’t mention that Jimmy Page had such a power over budding guitarists when I was starting to be interested in playing guitar that most kids figured out how to play Stairway to Heaven.

I didn’t see the point in learning the songs I didn’t much care for back then. Nowadays, thanks to Ultimate Guitar or the Led Zeppelin songbook I own, I could play their songs (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), but still I could not play Stairway. We did enjoy the show and Bill went to sleep soon after Led Zeppelin and I stayed up and watched the rest of the show. It’s been one of those nights I suppose.




One of these Nights