3 Legs

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Another weird day. The proper term I think is ‘off’ day, but I think people would get that confused with day off so I’ll just stick to weird. And weird it is, weird it was and probably- weird it will be. It didn’t have to be that way but circumstance was out of my control. Last night was mellow, once again with Bill and Juan manning the couch, me playing the role of ‘guy in computer chair’.

We watched Olbermann and Rachel Maddow followed by the Thursday edition of Weekend Update which was 60% good. The Hall and Oates thing maybe would have been funnier 15 years ago. And the debate could have had 6 questions instead of 8, but then what would you cut? It’s a good thing I don’t work on Saturday Night Live. Yeah, it’s a ‘good’ thing.

Bill went to bed and Juan and I watched The Daily Show then I kicked Juan’s butt out and went to bed myself. Hopefully he got home alright. Woke up tried to take my time but somehow wound up getting to work about 10 minutes earlier. I must have stepped into a worm hole somewhere. Got to the office, no one in.

It’s a Friday and the expected number was 5 and eventually the other 4 came in. Me and Vivek on my team. It’s getting weird I tell ya.

In the lobby of the building they play a lot of songs from the 1970’s. This morning I heard Dream Weaver by Gary Wright. It brought me back in a Proustian rush to the edge of puberty back then. No, I’ve never read Proust but I think I get the gist of it. No madelaine for me thanks.

In Search of Lost Time is one of those classics that I will never get around to reading, especially if I have a New Yorker subscription. I did try reading Ulysses by James Jones a few times, but never got past page 48 each time. Don’t ask me what happened in those 48 pages since it was maybe 25 years ago when I had literary ambitions.

Anyway, Dream Weaver was prominent in my memory, and I was dealing with feelings that were unknown to me before that. It was 1976 and puberty was down the road. As I wrestled with what was happening to my body and my mind the radio was on and Dream Weaver is what I will forever associate the adolescent feelings with.

I also remember a specific night when my sister was coming back from Aspen I think late at night and my family went to Newark airport to pick her up. This was before 9/11 when you could still walk right to the gate. It was late for me and I was an emotional wreck. I remember crying when I saw my sister walking towards us.

I was happy to see her definitely but I think I came to the realization today, that I was also crying because she was probably the only person I felt I could talk to at that time, though I never did talk to her about what was going on within me. I couldn’t talk to anyone and since I was in catholic school, sex education was out of the question. So in effect I had no one to talk to, not even the person I was probably closest to.

All that from 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

Seems like a quiet night tonight. Juan is probably in Trenton and Bill is at some rehearsal so he might just stay at his mother’s apartment in Stuyvesant Town. Got the new Mojo and Uncut and the latest New Yorker that Harpy said was very good and once again he’s right, dammit!

This is from BettiCola

And a big round of applause for Connecticut!
California still needs help though, the haters are gaining ground so
NO ON PROPOSITION 8!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yay Connecticut!

Watching the Wheels

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Well today was an alright day. No vendors, no real estate agents. The stock markets all around the world are doing poorly and no one knows what will happen next. The government has cut interest rates to no avail, other countries have done the same. Pakistan is thisclose to bankruptcy and that will affect us somehow, one way or another.

Last night was nice. Juan came by again. Always good to have him around. Bill and I talked about his situation with his mother. She’ll be staying with his cousin for the time being. Awfully nice for her to offer and I know Bill is grateful.

He’s doing all that he can and he’s doing the best job possible. He’s totally stressed though. If anyone could use a puff, it would be him. But he’s not one to pass the dutchie ‘pon the left hand side.

We watched the usual programs that get our blood pressure rising. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report provided some much needed levity but still, it isn’t enough. A little less than a month until the elections, and then hopefully I can laugh again.

Does anyone remember laughter?

Today is John Lennon’s birthday. He would have been 68. I would have loved to have met him, but then again I probably would have embarrassed myself. I listened to a few Lennon tracks today. My favorite John Lennon album is probably Walls and Bridges, his last album of his own material before he retired for five years.

The vinyl edition had a really fun flip cover where you can change John’s glasses and face over and over. Also had a nice booklet with lyrics and drawings from his childhood and an excerpt about the Lennon name from an Irish lineage book, that stated that no Lennons ever amounted to much. It was signed at the end, ‘Oh yeah?, John Lennon’.

It was things like that that made me love him. You have to feel bad for Paul McCartney though. If he had to deal with being compared to John while he was alive, after John’s death the legend loomed larger than ever before and still to this day grows and grows.

John was definitely a flawed individual, and it’s been said he had a violent streak which probably fueled the fire for peace in his life, realizing that what inside of him and peace would be the only way to take care of that.

It would have been nice if John was able to follow his plans, to visit England again, to go on tour again. More records, perhaps they would have been great, perhaps not. We’ll never know. It did mean that the Beatles would never get together again which could be seen as a heartbreak. Or a relief since you really can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

In any event he’s probably frolicking around the universe, met up with George and Stu and Brian Epstein and Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix, my mom, Jet and Zed and Abraham Lincoln. That’s how I see it. When you die your essence or soul goes out and becomes part of the ever expanding universe and life flows on within you and without you.

This video is relatively new (at least to me). It features Rick Nielsen and Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick and Tony Levin from Peter Gabriel’s band and King Crimson. The track was rejected for the Double Fantasy album at the time and eventually resurfaced on the Lennon Box Set which is probably when the video was made with clips of John and his drawings sometimes interacting with the band.

Then there’s Well Well Well from John and Yoko at the One to One concert in 1972 at MSG

and here’s an oldie but goodie…