Search and Destroy

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A nice Saturday afternoon, unspoiled. Last night was nice too. Bill and I hanging out, watching a recording of the Office from Thursday night and Talk Soup. Both enjoyable and filled with laughs and as usual the Office provided nervous chuckles.

Bill went to bed midway through Bill Maher’s show on HBO. It seems I enjoy Bill Maher if someone else is watching with me. Otherwise I just pick up a magazine and read while it goes on. I did pay some attention though.

Bill Maher’s guests last night were Andrew Breitbart and Michael Eric Dyson. Breitbart playing the role of conservative blow hard to a T while Dyson intelligently explained his own point of view (the liberal side) which effectively made Breitbart look like exactly what he is, a conservative blow hard.

I went to bed a little while after that, Bill fast asleep in the bed. It is nice to have him there though and I find myself falling asleep to the sound of his snoring.

Woke up before 9:00 which was nice for a Saturday. Had my cuppa before heading out for morning foodstuffs.

Totally unlike last week, Fake Patrick’s Day. No groups of twenty somethings heading off to parties at 10:00AM. Came home and Bill was awake and puttering about.

Read the papers and helped Bill with cleaning up the apartment. Needed to get vacuum bags for the new vacuum cleaner I got from work last week.

He was planning on heading out at 1:00, at least thats what he told me at 12:50. We actually left together at 2:30. He was off to the dry cleaners and laundromat while I stood outside smoking a Joya De Nicaragua that I picked up yesterday.

Walked Bill off to the bus stop and then I ambled down Washington Street. . Nice enough day in the sun, chilly in the shade but I didn’t mind. A good cigar and I listened to the second half of A Hard Days Night on the iPod.

Came home and finished Mojo magazine with Pete Townshend circa 1967 on the cover from The Who Sell Out photo sessions. Very good interview with Nick Lowe inside and for once a not too pretentious article by Dave Marsh about the Who.

Picked up some adequate vacuum bags and came home and started vacuuming. Very powerful vacuum cleaner, it sucks so strongly that if you put the nozzle to the floor it takes two hands to lift it. Good to know I think. I don’t think it was ever used in the office.

While I vacuumed I listened to Dark Was The Night, the Red Hot compilation that I picked up last week. It was better than I expected it to be. 2 discs that I played in sequence. Even Antony sounds good on it which for me, says something. Highly recommended.

I’m presently listening to War Child- Heroes, another charity CD I bought last week. It’s fun, but I tell you the guy from the Hold Steady who sings Bruce’s Atlantic City seems to have graduated summa cum laude from the Springsteen School of Singing. I find it annoying, but the singer is known for his love of all things Bruce.

Hot Chip’s cover of Joy Division’s Transmission is a lot of fun, a lot more fun than Ian Curtis and company. I never really ‘got’ Joy Division. Always found them depressing. New Order I liked. Go fish.

Rufus Wainwright singing Brian Wilson’s Wonderful/Song for Children is a wonderful reminder of what a beautiful voice Rufus has. Scissor Sisters singing Roxy Music’s Do The Strand is as much fun as their cover of the Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb.

And after trying to figure out why the Blood Bank EP by Bon Iver was so pricey, I downloaded a copy. 4 songs, pirated. Argh.

I would have purchased a physical copy if the price was right, but it wasn’t.

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It's a trap!

It's a trap!

No Easy Way Down

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It’s Friday evening. Just had 2 slices of pizza which was ok. Don’t eat pizza as much as I used to, but I didn’t feel like cooking and there was a pizzeria on the way home. Who am I kidding? There’s a pizzeria on almost every corner in Hoboken as well as real estate offices and nail salons.

I had gone out for a walk late this afternoon, went and dropped off a Netflix DVD at the post office. On the way to the post office I went to Tunes, the local record store. When I was in the Village the other day after I took that photo of Farfetched (which was actually a photograph of a mirror on the other side of the window) I went to the Virgin Mega Store.

I checked to see if they had the EP of Bon Iver, Blood Bank. They did for $12.99. 4 songs, for $12.99. Very steep for me. I checked to see if they had it at Tunes and they did, for $10.99. Still a bit much, considering it’s on iTunes for $3.99.

I asked the girl working the floor, what was the deal with the price? Does it come with a poster? Bon Iver’s phone number? She said I could open the pouch it was in and I did. There was nothing extraordinary, nothing worth the high price for an EP.

She said there might be a used copy but there wasn’t. I bought the NASA CD instead. I find myself buying more CD’s than I have in a long time but reluctant to spend that much on a 4 song EP. Years ago I wouldn’t even have blinked. Now it’s a different story.

I put the EP in my iTunes shopping cart at home. NASA is pretty good, definitely funky. The guy behind the register at Tunes recommended it as I was paying for it.

He asked me if I knew anything about NASA and I told him friends had recommended it and I saw a couple of their videos on YouTube. I said they were on Anti Records so they can’t be that bad. He didn’t know anything about the Bon Iver pricing though.

After that I wandered over to Hoboken Cigars where they were having an event for a cigar maker. I sat and read a newspaper and enjoyed a cigar and listened to some local guys talk about men fist fighting with sharks and the economy.

Of course one of them was complaining about politics in general then he started ragging on democrats in particular, minutes after. I mentioned that he should check out the flip side of what he was saying and he went ‘Oh yeah, the republicans are bad too’.

He was also stunned to learn that there was a Communist Party in this country. I told him there was also a Socialist Party as well and he basically felt they were the same thing.

I knew better than to follow that line of conversation since they cigar store owners could be Cuban and you know how the majority of Cubans in the US feel about Communism and Socialism.

I just wanted to enjoy a free cigar in peace. And the Joya De Nicaragua 1970 Robusto Grande is a good, free cigar! Viva la revolucion!