Category Archives: moldies but moodies

Come Together

4 Replies

Nothing much happened today. In fact I just left the apartment building for the first time at 5:15. Ran out of juices you see. Too hot to do much of anything except lay in front of a fan.

It’s a scorcher. The most that I did today was take a nap.

Over the weekend, I bought a selection of songs from the Fun Boy Three on iTunes, after which I was asked to do a back up.

It seemed like the thing to do. As I ran the back up onto 6 discs, I lost my playlists, some of which were a few years old. So I’ve been trying to find them to no avail, but I also found something that I wrote in 2002, about 1991.

Since I didn’t do anything today, I thought I would serialize it. Today is part 1. In case I don’t do anything else this week, I may add the following parts as installments.

Riding the bus with Miss Pasty. I was unusually charming despite the unwelcome hour of 8:20am. I would’ve preferred being alone, but hey, she is my landlord. Or Landlady. Or something resembling both.

“I heard on the radio there was a 40 minute delay in getting into NYC. I’m gonna take a van” Now this would ordinarily sound fine, but Miss Pasty has a relatively shrill voice and for a non-morning person like myself it was nearly unbearable, and that was after my initial three cups of coffee, rocket fuel.

Miss Pasty and her brother Mr. Derf are my landlord and lady. Quite royal I think they think. It feels like I’ve been living above them all of my life though physically it’s been 11 years.

It’s been an up and down ride with them and any problems I’ve had with them are generally because of my room mate, Little Willy Archas.

For example, in 1991 when Carl and Katie Archas told me about the apt, Carl had mentioned that his brother Little Willy was probably going to look for an apartment since when Little Willy got back from Mexico he wouldn’t be living with his parents in Jersey City.

I took it into consideration.

So one day when I was walking down Washington St in Hoboken from Take 99 video to Blockbuster to pick up an errant video tape, I spied a dilapidated van with 2 even more dilapidated passengers within.

It was Little Willy. He was with Monica. Some chick that was in love with him, enough to travel to Mexico and back with him. Of course I had the luck of bumping into him as soon as he pulled into town.

“Your brother told me you might be looking for a new place. I might be looking for a room mate. Into it?” “Yeah, sure, I guess. Where is it?” “Weehawken. You know Pasty K from McSwells?” “Uh, I don’t know.” “Well your brother knows her. I once gave her a ride home. Nice neighborhood. Anyway if you want I can set something up for tomorrow night.” “Uh, yeah sure. I guess so.”

Little did I know that his vocabulary skills wouldn’t really go farther than that. “Alright, call me at the video store and I’ll see if I can set something up.” “Uh yeah sure. I guess.”

I called Miss Pasty and set it up. Little Willy met me at Take 99 Video the next night and I was able to take some time off and see the apartment.

We met Miss Pasty and Mr. Derf’s parents, Adele and Derf Sr. A very old couple. A bit strange at first. But so was my room mate to be. I wasn’t used to being the most normal in a group but that is how it was turning out to be.

We left 129 Jane Street, climbing downstairs in order to get to 127 Jane to climb upstairs. Little Willy was able to turn on the hallway light which greatly impressed Miss Pasty and Mr. Derf.

We saw the apartment which was previously occupied by an old man who really didn’t or couldn’t walk around much. Miss Pasty and Mr. Derf were quite used to this fact that no one was walking around the apartment above them.

Little Willy and I both liked the apartment and since Little Willy painted houses and apartments, offered to paint the rooms from a purple yellow Easter combination to something more than that.

We went back to Miss Pasty and Mr. Derf’s parents and told then we were interested. Derf Sr. thought that was fine and since it was the beginning of October we would be able to move in anytime and not have to pay any rent until November 1.

Wishing Well

Leave a reply

It’s yet another rainy day. Woke up and it was pouring out. Last night it rained too. Rain rain rain. It’s tiresome. I hope it’s not like this when Annemarie and Earl come over from Arcata next month.

It’s always like this in Arcata and I think that coming east is an escape from that crappy weather for Annemarie and Earl. At the moment it has stopped raining but more is expected.

Last night was yet another mellow evening. Instead of the usual viewing fare, I watched The Public Enemy starring James Cagney and Jean Harlow.

It’s a classic, pre-code movie from 1931, the story of Tommy Powers rise to power in the world of criminal enterprise. I had never seen it before from start to finish and it was a good movie.

Just a little unbelievable was a scene where Cagney and his accomplice are running from a policeman who just shoots at them over and over while blowing his police whistle.

The chase goes around a corner where off camera the policeman is shot and Cagney and company run off.

It’s also the movie where Cagney smashes a grapefruit in a moll’s face. The moll by the way is not Jean Harlow but Mae Clarke. That is the classic scene.

As I watched the movie, there was a scene where Cagney and his buddy pay a visit to Putty Nose, someone who had done them wrong years before.

They want revenge and catch up with Putty Nose outside his home. They drag him in and Putty Nose realizes whats going on and tries to reason with them.

As I watched I wondered if that was where a line that was sampled by Coldcut on the remix for Eric B. and Rakim’s Paid in Full. ‘Back in the club, why you kids used to laugh at this song’.

Sure enough a minute later Putty Nose comes up with the line launching into the song and getting killed right before the chorus. I was surprised that I figured out where the line was from a moment before it was said.

Perhaps Tommy Powers mother was a little too loving, always willing to turn away when Tommy was up to no good, or when Tommy was getting the strap from his policeman father.

After that I watched some of Bill Maher from last week. I’m pretty sure that they use canned laughter a lot on the show since some of the jokes are just not funny at all.

And I’m not that fond of Bill Maher either, he’s too smarmy and way too fond of himself. PJ O’Rourke is another one I don’t get. He also laughs the hardest at his own jokes.

I’m sure he might have been funny back in the day when he was working at National Lampoon, but nowadays he’s merely a lampoon of himself.

The weather forecast is more rain. It’s supposed to be nice on Sunday, so no major bicycle ride on Saturday. Then again the weather forecast is wrong half the time but even that makes me wary. I suppose I will have to just wait and see.

Nothing to report on the work front. Nothing has changed. Still no info.

Tonight promises to be another quiet night. Which is better than pandemonium I guess. Bill just gave me the brush off, so maybe it won’t be so quiet after all.