It’s Thursday again. It’s been a hell of a week. Bill and I have been getting along fine lately, though his back is messed up and he hasn’t been to see the chiropractor yet due to the financial squeeze we both find ourselves in. Friday is when he’s planning on going. He is also in a new, different play which should be presented at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. It was written by his friend, Rome Neal who is the star of the one man show about Thelonius Monk called, Monk. Bill is making sure I will be at opening night, though with his back acting up, will he be at opening night?

Woke up as usual and did the routine and was out the door. It was a nice 27 degrees and not as windy as it’s been. I returned a book in the deposit box at the library and walked up to Washington Street where a bus just pulled up. I ran through the traffic and got midway to the door of the bus when it pulled away despite my hitting the side of the bus with my gloved hand. I know the driver heard it because he hesitated but then he kept on going.

I was pissed and because the idiot was in a rush to get to the next traffic light I was going to be a bit late for work. I caught another bus a few minutes later and sat down, pulling out ‘Claudius the King’, Robert Graves’ sequel to ‘I, Claudius’. So far it’s been about Herod Agrippa and his being raised in Rome in the palace of Augustus. Not as good a read so far but I’m sure it will get better. I walked to the office and got to work 5 minutes late. I sat at my computer and sent a complaint to NJ Transit about the douche bag bus driver. Hey, I am paying his salary and they can’t all be as dedicated to driving a bus like Bill is.

I told Bill about it and he gave me the lowdown about how to properly file a complaint with NJ Transit. Rule #1, no big words. Work was all about data entry which was a change from proofreading a website for the past two days. That was tedious because in one hand I had a pile of notes for the website designer from the past few weeks, most of them repeated suggestions and requests. Such bad grammar and punctuation. Not the designer’s fault. Mainly it was Naomi and Wally.

I did get an email from Mindy one of the headhunters I communicated with the other day. I like where I’m at now, but the money isn’t there. It sucks because I’m feeling comfortable with the people I work with and I think they’re getting comfortable with me. The job Mindy was suggesting was a better paying job but with a 7:00AM start time. Can I do that? I’m sure I could. It would be difficult at first, but I’d be missing the rush hour by an hour. I don’t go out anymore, I just stay home so it’s not like I’d be missing any sort of social life. I did express an interest though. I hate this decision making. If only there was a decider.

An interesting event on the web the past few days. I’m sure you all heard Ann ‘Why the long face’ Coulter’s fag comment about John Edwards. One of the other conservative speakers was a Cpl. Matt Sanchez who is a 38 year old Columbia student who says he was verbally assaulted by the International Socialist student group. This made him the darling of Bill O’Reilly, with Sanchez receiving an award named for Jeanne Kirkpatrick. It turns out that in a Jeff Gannon-esque way, Cpl. Matt Sanchez is a gay porn actor.

Here’s a link about it. cut n’ paste time
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2007/03/jeff-gannon-redux.html

here’s a more sexplicit link
http://tombacchus.blogspot.com/2007/03/dirty-sanchez.html

and for good measure, here’s Pierre LaBranche…I mean Rod Majors…I mean USMC Cpl. Matt Sanchez’s blog.
http://mattsanchez.blogspot.com/

see? I can be fair and balanced. Give me a job at Fox. I’m better looking than Alan Colmes.

Wednesday, the humpiest day of them all. A late entry last night, over 1000 words, took a lot out of me, but I was more exhausted from the cold and Arif Mardin’s memorial. It was a great tribute to Arif. I sat there watching the tribute, listening to his family, the speakers, the video clips and noticed that I had come this far to be sitting in a theater at Lincoln Center surrounded by various executives, producers and musicians and how I’m just not involved with that world anymore. I had some good times while working in the music business but overall it sucked.

I remember when I was working at Arista Records outside of Susanne Savage’s office and I looked around thinking that that was the place where I always wanted to be, not necessarily outside of Susanne Savage’s office, but in ‘the biz’ and that’s when I had the epiphany. This was a horrible place to work, filled with horrible people promoting crappy records. I was only freelance so I had no strong ties to anything and the job was going to be ending soon enough. A very similar epiphany happened last night and carried over into today.

It’s just that I’m not involved in the music business anymore and don’t really have any contacts in that business anymore. No more free cd’s, no free tickets, that’s all gone. I’m fine with it. I’ve been getting my music lately online, sometimes legally, sometimes not. Juan has been doing a wonderful job of turning me onto new things, things I would have sneered at previously. Things like Justin Timberlake. I downloaded three of his songs, more surprised than anything that these songs were actually quite good. I remember Steve Fallon back in the day, telling me I was born 10 years too late, how I would’ve done great in the music business in the 1970’s.

I’d also probably would’ve been dead by now if that was the case. Drugs, Aids, something would’ve killed me. I’m glad to be in the time that I’m in, despite various difficulties. These are the good old days sang Carly Simon. She was at the tribute last night by the way. Last night I ran into Donna Kloepfer and Barry BonGiovi at the tribute. Donna, who’s been working in the recording studio world for quite a while, over ten years is itching to get out. Barry is already out of the business, I think he said he was selling cars in Central Jersey. I guess his cousin Jon couldn’t help him out. Or maybe he did and Barry politely declined.

Gloria, Arif’s former assistant is out of the business also having reached the heights of Vice President at Atlantic Records. Both worlds collided this afternoon when Corey Williams, a dear friend who married his wife Ann Marie on September 12 stopped by. I knew Corey from when I worked at Right Track, then worked alongside him at Arista. Now that Arista has folded he’s now at Atlantic and he too is looking to get out. He stopped by the office after I received his resume and he interviewed with Naomi (who certainly has a wild hair up her butt lately).

We talked a little bit, a few jokes from the past. I think it was the first time the people I work with ever heard me laugh like that. I hope Golden Staffing could help him, but in the meantime it wouldn’t hurt him to cast a wider net. One of these days, I’ll write down all the artists I worked with through the years. One of these days.

I found this on the net regarding Arif Mardin’s tribute last night.
“I feel like we’re one step closer to the end of an era,” Phil Collins said last night at the star-studded Lincoln Center memorial service for famed record producer Arif Mardin . “I liked that era, and I don’t want it to be over.” But it is, isn’t it?