the day after yesterday | johnozed

Yes once again it’s a Samuel Beckett kind of day. I can’t go on. I’ll go on. Nothing bad is happening, just an overcast day. Major storms broke out last night and it’s just as well I did not go to the really big supermarket since a little while after I finished the posting, I checked a local blog and there were pictures of flooded streets surrounding the really big supermarket. I did make it to the store today and there were signs of flooding. I spotted a woman headed in that direction about 40 feet in front of me, making a U turn with her stroller.

She walked past me and I asked her if the street was flooded and she said, ‘Yeah, I think so’ and scampered off. I thought something was a bit off about her response and proceeded to see for myself. Sure enough, there was no water, some mud, some sludge but that’s about it. I guess she did not know what a flood was and seemed to hurry off to the smaller supermarket. I admit it would have been a drag if I was unable to shop where I was, after walking all the way there.

I do love Hoboken and I am nostalgic for the time when a young family had a child and soon left town to raise their kid somewhere else. Nowadays they stay and clog the streets with their strollers. I must have passed a half a dozen strollers in a block and a half, opting to walk in the street rather than get hit by an oncoming mother pushing her kid in my direction. I suppose it’s nice that Hoboken is more child friendly but since I don’t have kids I really could care less. Off to the suburbs with them!

Another visit to the bibliothèque this afternoon, I picked up The Life Aquatic, deciding to give it another chance after seeing Moonrise Kingdom with Annemarie the other day. I do like the soundtrack, but after seeing The Royal Tenenbaums and absolutely loving it, whatever followed was bound to be a letdown at least for me. So another chance it is then. I do love the soundtrack. David Bowie songs sung in Portuguese by Brazilian actor/singer Seu Jorge. Bowie reportedly loved it as well. Too bad no one has heard anything from the Dame since his heart problem in 2005.

Today I sat by the river and read the latest Mojo, finished up reading about John Lydon and Public Image Limited as well as an interesting cover story on Brian Jones. John Lydon, easier to get along with sort of, Brian Jones, great musician, lousy human being. Almost got into the record reviews but held off for another day. I came home as it started to rain a bit and that’s about it for my day so far. Resumes still going out, job listings still being perused, emails and contacts resent and reestablished. Same old same old one would reckon.

So it goes.

Before the feast

05 The Great Pretender

Saturday night, after I wrote I walked over to the river and enjoyed a cigar and sat reading Maggie the Mechanic, a Love & Rockets compilation by Jaime Hernandez. I started reading Love & Rockets soon after it came out in the mid-1980’s and loved it. It initially reminded me of a punk rock version of Archie Comics but I soon found it was a lot more than that. I really identified with the many stories written and drawn by Jamie and his brother Beto. Jamie’s stories took place in Dairy Town and Beto’s stories took place somewhere under the border in Palomar.

I think I wrote last week that I initially was drawn to Jaime’s stories a little bit more than I was to Beto’s. Jaime’s compilations ate softcover trade paperbacks whereas Beto’s is quite a heavy tome. But reading Beto’s stories I felt how he put so much heart into his work, so much so that I would just look at a page and then the next thing I knew an hour or so had passed. The same thing happened with Jaime and the Maggie the Mechanic stories. I know Harpy understands what I am talking about. And the stories, reread 25 years later were all so very familiar. Just sitting by the river reading reminded me how I used to envision the music and art scene in Hoboken back then as very similar to what was going on in Dairy Town with the Hoppers.

And as I sat and read, I started to think that it still resembles the Love & Rockets stories somewhat, only all the characters in Hoboken, myself included are just a little bit older and perhaps a little bit heavier. Children that I saw back then are now adults and some of those former kids have children now. It’s the nature of things and it can be unnerving a bit. One kid I used to babysit for in the 1990’s is now a young man with a website for his musical endeavors. He’s quite talented and a good singer. It also helps that this young man is quite a handsome man and the ladies just love him.

Yesterday was Gay Pride day and it was good. I didn’t make it to the parade, I stayed in the apartment waiting for Bill and once he got home I waited for him to wake up. Rand wanted to explore a bike path to Newark but I decided not to go, just staying local, and staying online. I posted a ton of videos of gay and lesbian musicians, starting out of course with the Tom Robinson Band’s Glad to Be Gay. Bill was up a few hours after sleeping and had an errand to run in Harlem. I stayed home and eventually took a nice nap. There is nothing like a Sunday afternoon nap.

We did make plans to see the fireworks on then Hudson for Gay Pride like we do every year. We watched News Radio and an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati on some cable channel that plays old TV shows like that. The WKRP episode was all about the fateful Who concert in Cincinnati where 11 kids were crushed to death outside the arena. Bill had a vague recollection of what happened but being a rock and roll fan I remember it vividly. In fact the next week’s issue of Time Magazine had the Who on the cover asking them what happened as if they had any idea.
It was a fun night out once we turned off the television and went outside. It seemed there were a lot more people out for the fireworks this year than previous years. I told Bill a few stories and as I was telling him I realized that most of my stories finish off with ‘And then we all wound up at Maxwells.’ The fireworks were nice but ended rather anticlimactically. Usually there’s a big finish but this year it merely seemed to peter out.

We made it home a few minutes before it started to rain. Bill went to sleep after that and I stayed up watching the west coast broadcast of True Blood and Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom. True Blood was good, since it was only the second episode of the season I can hope things will really kick in. The Newsroom was clever, Jeff Daniels playing a Keith Olbermann type, not that likeable. I enjoyed it the way I used to enjoy watching Lou Grant after the Mary Tyler Moore show ended. That was the first episode so I hope things will get better, though I did enjoy it.