Wonderful World Beautiful People | johnozed

Well this is the second attempt. Lost the first set. Word Press being difficult. Last night watched Bananas by Woody Allen with Bill.

It was ok, I had seen it a few times already. Bill liked it a lot, having seen it only for the first time. It left me wondering if a movie that was funny in 1971 be funny almost 40 years later?

It did have it moments but overall it doesn’t hold up. I can see why Woody Allen wanted to make movies that were different than that.

After that I went to bed since I had to get up early for a trip to Sandy Hook with Annemarie. I made arrangements with Julio to get my beach gear back. I’m sure Julio would have liked to go but he has familial duties for the next 20 years.

Anne and I were on the road after I made some sandwiches and it was smooth sailing until we got to the bridge on Route 36. They’re making a new bridge and everything stopped for major merges.

We did make it into Sandy Hook at 11:00 after leaving Hoboken at 9:00. We would have been earlier if it wasn’t for the traffic.

It wasn’t too crowded when we got to the last beach, but it soon started filling up. All day long people were trickling in.

We had plans to see Bill sing at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan at 7:00 so we left the beach at 4:00. We certainly did not expect the traffic on the way out of the park. For an hour, we inched towards Route 36.

We were soon on the highway to the Parkway to the Turnpike. Approaching the Holland Tunnel it was more bumper to bumper so I navigated Annemarie through the streets of Jersey City.

We were going to get back to my apartment, change clothes and take the Path train in, but by 6:30 that seemed highly unlikely. I suggested we just head right into the city.

Anne was a bit mortified at wearing the beach clothes to a nightclub but I assured her that it would be ok, and it was. She followed my directions for driving across town on Canal Street and then up Lafayette Street.

We found a spot on Lafayette a block away and found a cozy corner in the club just as the compère, Rome Neal was making his introductions.

There were a few excellent singers, but of course we were there for Bill who sung 2 beautiful songs. Anne and I split some brushetta and I had 2 Stella Artois to Anne’s 1.

We even made it to the party after the show, enjoying some banana pudding that Rome Neal made and satisfied our hunger.

Now Anne is back in Garfield, Bill is in bed and I’m writing this for the second time. I’m at least glad I was able to take a shower and change out of the bathing suit I had been wearing for the past 15 hours.

Now it’s time for sleep. No pics tonight, no time. I will post the beach pics tomorrow and also post 2 videos I shot from the show tomorrow on YouTube under the log in johnotoole99.

And it’s been quite a nice day spent with my sister Annemarie and her son Earl. Earl is now 6’1”. Almost as tall as me, and as tall as Bill. A not so angry inch on this end.

I met up with them last night. They stopped here in Hoboken where we had pizza at Grimaldi’s. They can’t get pizza like that in Arcata. It was a quick stop before they headed up to Garfield to my brother Frank’s house.

I stayed in Hoboken, eventually going out for a stroll, walking off the pizza I helped inhale. Nice night smoking a cigar, listening to some of the London Calling album up to Lost in The Supermarket before switching over to the first side of Talking Heads: 77.

Bill came home a little after that, watched Lawn hors d’œuvre Criminal Relent up to a point when Bill switched into stage manager mode and hit pause on the digital cable box for about 50 minutes. He un-paused it when the news came on and his phone call was finished. The news was nothing in particular, mostly bad.

Then the Simpsons came on and Bill was off to bed, me joining him a little while later. He was off in the morning and kissed me goodbye as I lay in bed.

No work today. Annemarie called a little while later, checking to see if I was awake and also to see if anything was planned for the day.

At that moment I didn’t have any plans but after a cup of coffee I had an idea. A trip to the city and visiting some art galleries. Always fun to do and also easy on the wallet.

Anne and Earl rode down to Hoboken and found a spot on my block and we walked over to the Path, riding to 14th Street and walking up Fifth Avenue.

I had hoped to go to the Not Fade Away Gallery to check out the New York City 1970’s photos of Allen Tannenbaum. Despite getting there after 12:00 on a Friday when they were supposed to be open, they weren’t. It was just a little bit disappointing but other galleries lay ahead.

We walked down 20th street and wound up having lunch at the Rocking Horse Cafe which was good as usual. Then it was off to the galleries, first stop was a Stephen Shore exhibition.

In the 1960’s, Stephen Shore was a young man in his 20’s and took a lot of classic photos of Andy Warhol and the Factory crowd. I had seen some of the pictures in books but it was great to see them blown up in a gallery.

Then it was a hodgepodge of gallery hopping mainly from 22nd street to 24th and 25th Streets. Earl had gotten a phone call from a friend back in Arcata about completing his college registration today so I made a call to Bill and the three of us hopped in a taxi and rode up to midtown where we met up with Bill.

Bill was kind enough to bring his laptop down to the street where Earl worked the wireless connection and my cellphone and spoke to Susan, the administrative help at Humboldt State.

The process didn’t go as planned and Bill needed to get back to his office so we meandered down Broadway, saw a big chess game in Herald Square and hopped on a Path train back to Hoboken.

We came back here where I set Earl up on Bill’s Mac and I played DJ while Annemarie read some magazines and eventually catnapped. After Earl completed his registration, they were going to get some food in Hoboken before heading back to Garfield so I joined them for dinner at the Karma Cafe.

After that a quick visit to Julio & Stine’s apartment where they were able to finally meet Alexander who clearly loved being the center of attention. Still an adorable lad, running around trying to communicate.

I sat in the next room and read to Alexander while Annemarie and Earl caught up with Julio & Stine. A perfect finish to a perfect day. Simply a nice, nice, nice day with some of my favorite people.

And now, the pics