Watching Mad Men on TV, the main event is the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. I was in kindergarten and have no recollection at all of when it happened. I just looked it up and it was a Thursday, so I would have asleep by the time the news would have been broadcast. Like most days back then it is all a blur. Consciousness of the outside world, meaning the world that wasn’t Riverview Avenue or St. Francis de Sales school or the Romaine – Sinniger VFW Post, did not arrive really until maybe 1972. I did know of death, but it was more familial than anything else.

Before Mad Men I found myself to be more jazzy than anticipated. No plans were in the works, except for Juan suggesting a pint. I begged off pleading being at a cash disadvantage and Juan said he would pick up the tab. I was thinking Maxwell’s, Juan was thinking of The Pint, a gay bar in Jersey City. And not right over the border Jersey City but a few stops away on the Path train. Juan doesn’t know that gay bars are anathema to me and pleaded and texted to no avail.

He even played the guilt card and despite my atheism, I do have a catholic background riddled with guilt and it really has no effect on me at all. So when Juan texted that he was going to go home and stick his head in the oven, I asked if his mother’s oven was an electric oven. In the midst of all this Bill had come home after looking after his mother all day and was incredibly stressed from that as well as other things. Bill didn’t stay up that late and I wound up staying in and watching Mad Men.

The schedule at Maxwell’s is supposed to come out on Sunday nights. I called around midnight and there was no schedule sent in. I called again this afternoon and still no schedule. I can guess that since the next time a band is playing would be Thursday so I will probably be working then. I will call later on to find out what’s what.

The past couple of nights when working at Maxwell’s the jukebox has been untouched and someone’s iPod has been playing the songs. It certainly is a mind fuck to hear New Order sing True Faith, The Ramones with Bonzo Goes To Bitburg and Echo & the Bunnymen sing Lips Like Sugar (a crap song). It causes flashbacks to way back when, bar backing and cleaning glasses while singing along with Joey Ramone and talking with Eve, Carol and Steve Saporito as I worked alongside Martha Griffin and Declan.

Now Pedro is on my Facebook page trolling, calling friends ‘sheep’. He claims Obama voted “yes’ to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq. Pedro doesn’t know or refuses to acknowledge that Obama was a state senator in Illinois at the time and was vocal about his opposition to the Iraq invasion. But Pedro doesn’t let facts get in his way these days. I’m sure he is getting his info from Joe Farrah and his ilk. Which is too bad since I consider Pedro to be intelligent but with postings like that I begin to harbor doubts.

C’est la vie.