Category Archives: So how’s band camp?

Here Comes The Summer

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For some reason, Everything’s Gone Green by New Order is a perfect morning song for me. I don’t know why but it really gets me going, or at least it did this morning. Last night was more of the same, Daily Show, Colbert Report, Keith Olbermann. All rather hum drum I’d say.

I did watch Fear Itself, a Night Gallery, Twilight Zone type of show, scary stories for a spring night. I tried watching it last week but I didn’t care much. Last night I watched and it was surprisingly good. Good story, murderer somehow switches bodies with an innocent guy during a car accident.

Murderer behind bars with the innocent guy’s mind while the innocent guy is with his family with the murderer’s mind inside. A very good twist at the end. It wasn’t perfect but it was pretty edgy, especially when you’re rooting for the murderer in the final showdown, then the twist which I didn’t see coming, hence it being a twist.

After the news, it was bedtime for me. I’ve been sleeping really well and getting up in a good mood, ok, a decent mood a little after 6:00. I found myself this morning leaving early rather than waiting for 7:00 to come rolling around. Bus ride was pleasant and uneventful, I was reading about Hugo Chavez in the New Yorker.

I played more New Order walking across town to work and found that it’s basically a six minute walk from 42nd Street and Third Avenue to 50th Street and Third Avenue. I timed it by listening to the Perfect Kiss by New Order. I had hoped to get out of work early today, I was aiming for 2:00. That didn’t work so I left at 4:00.

Walked back across town, listening to N*E*R*D* and enjoying a nice Padron 5000 cigar. Back to the nonsense of dealing with NJ Transit. Bus driver wouldn’t open the doors for ten minutes, waiting for a line to form behind me. I read Nic Sheff’s memoir of his drug addiction, knowing that he must be alright since he lived to write the book. Such a dark tale from a young man.

It’s graduation night at Hoboken High School, boys and girls in caps and gowns milling about outside the school. I congratulated them as I passed through the crowds. Last night as I was checking my email, I received a notice from Classmates.com. I sort of signed up for it, more interested in the kids I went to grammar school with than the ones I went to high school with.

The website was always after me to upgrade my membership but I never did. Last week they sent me a password so I went onto the site. I checked out a few friends, including Donna Rinaldi, one of my two girlfriends from the past. I also received a message from Andrea Voto, who was also a pal from back then.

It’s been 32 years since I last saw her and sent her a nice message in return, giving her a quick catch up on what’s been going on in my life. Who knows where that will go, if it goes? It would be interesting to see where our lives took us after our Bicentennial graduation, or it could be quite painful. I did mention that those days were some of the happiest days of my life. But you can’t go home again, and I ain’t never going back to my old school.

Can’t.

They shut it down.

Who Has Seen the Wind?

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Oh what a weird bus ride home. First off, the bus was crawling back to Hoboken through the Lincoln Tunnel. I thought we were going to breakdown. It was like the driver had the emergency brake on. There was also a priest on the bus and I should have sat next to him, if only I had a Christopher Hitchens/Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins book on me. They wrote books in the past year or so in favor of atheism. I could have engaged the priest in a discussion on the existence of god.

It might have been fun, but no, I took an empty seat behind a cat lady with one of her cats, a white cat with hair all over the place. The cat or the cat lady was heavily medicated, you can smell it. Oh it was a nasty pharmaceutical odor. It started to turn my stomach, enough that I almost got off the bus at the first opportunity.

I have nothing against cat people or people on medications, this was just a foul odor. I’m glad I’m not allergic to cats since there was cat hair all over the seats. And there was another cat person on the bus but she had her cat in a carrier, whereas cat lady had her white cat in a duffel bag that she alternately murmured to and cursed at. I did get off the bus at the usual stop.

Work once again was dreadfully slow. Just three of us in the office out of eight. Greg Stevens one of the three, left the office at 12:00 to head out to the Hamptons. Then Marty Allen left at 3:00, leaving me solo. I stayed until 4:30. I’m taking off tomorrow to get my crap ready for the gate sale on Saturday. Bought some dot stickers so I could price things properly.

Some things were gifts from friends and family that I have absolutely no use for, and I could use the money. I would rather sell these items rather than lugging them back up five flights of stairs. If you’re in the neighborhood, I’ll be out from 10:00-4:00. In theory that is. If nothing is happening and it gets too hot then I might just quit early and call it a day. Who knows? Maybe I’ll sell everything really quick. That would be nice.

I just got an invitation to a wedding party in Walton NY. My friend Lois just married her guy, Fred. They’ve been going out for more than twenty years, so I guess the time is right. The party is August 2, which may be doable, but I am also trying to finagle an invitation to go down the Jersey Shore and stay with my brother Frank and his family. I was invited last year and couldn’t go, so this year might be possible. I’ll find out more this weekend when I see the Garfield contingent on Sunday.

I can still smell the meds from the bus ride. I also got the latest Mojo Magazine with the Sex Pistols on the cover, looking their age, fifty something and Uncut Magazine with CSNY on the cover not looking their age with a snapshot from 1969. I guess if it was a shot of CSNY today, people might get confused and think they were picking up an issue from AARP. I really shouldn’t talk. In five years I’ll be eligible for a subscription to AARP.

Just got back from an errand. Went to the library and picked up ‘We All Shine On: The Stories Behind Every John Lennon song from 1970-1980’ by Paul Du Noyer, a Mojo/Uncut writer. Also picked up ‘Tweaked’ by Nic Sheff, the son of David Sheff, who wrote the last book I read, ‘Beautiful Boy’ about his son’s methamphetamine addiction. This is the son’s side of the story. And 2 slices of pizza at $3.00 per slice. It’s that price all over Hoboken, blaming the cost of shipping flour.

There’s no escape.