Tag Archives: Julio

$2.00 Off

Well today has been an improvement over yesterday. My niece and her husband returned to New Jersey safe and sound after the Boston Marathon. They were safe yesterday and I would like to think they are safer at home. The whole family is relieved and also saddened by what happened.

My niece posted a photograph of herself and two running friends, right past the finish line. It was hard to believe that within a few minutes after that the bombs went off. Their friends all made it safely home as far as I know, and that is by judging by what their Facebook pages said.

I slept fairly well last night and woke up in good spirits. Bill was up and doing his thing and soon after I showered and had my coffee a text from Juan came through, asking if he could stop by. Of course he could stop by. Bill didn’t mind and neither did I.

I did have some errands to run beforehand so Juan would have to accompany me on my rounds. It wasn’t so bad. One was a trip to the grocery store and the rest were on Washington Street.

I ran into Julio yesterday before all the shit went down and he asked me if I still had his pocket sized bicycle pump. We had a good talk. He’s a new guy, more mature. Good to see him one on one since when it with the wife and kid they all vie for my attention. I can take them all one at a time, but three on one can be overwhelming, sometimes joyfully so.

And Juan was pretty funny this afternoon. Where he gets his cutting remarks from, I don’t know. He did grumble when I asked him to hold a cigar when I ran into a store. I reassured him that it would only make him look ‘butch’.

We came back home, Bill getting ready to head out while Juan and I watched Archer which we had on the DVR. And then just like that, my two favorite guys headed out. Juan to go get some lunch and Bill off to Manhattan.

I was fine with it, not that I had any say in the matter. Julio was also in Manhattan so I didn’t see him today. Still I have the bicycle pump should he call or text me again. I’ll be around.
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Kashmir

I Start to Run

Document 35. That was the number assigned to this file in Microsoft Word. Document 35. The point of it being document 35 doesn’t seem random, not at all. It is just the 35th document, perhaps for the year 2013. That is the explanation that makes sense the most. According to Word Press, I have posted 2,476 entries and this will make it the 2,477th. I lost count after the first month, but it was easy back then. It was before I decided taking Sundays off from writing. That was when I was becoming a servant to this blog. Now I am merely a savant.

I came across a cache of some papers, papers that weren’t swept away by Sandy last year. I guess I rescued them, along with the 45’s I had a few months before. I found a couple of versions of a film script I was supposedly writing with Julio in the 1990’s, when Julio was a production assistant on a film that a mutual friend was making. There was creativity in the air and once again my up to then unseen writing skills were brought up and it seemed like a good idea to collaborate with Julio.

It was probably the last time I collaborated with anyone which sucks since I am a very good collaborator. I helped write a script in the early 1990’s with John Bruce, an amazingly creative guy from the Maxwell’s era. He liked what I wrote, so much so that he made it a point to tell me that it made him cry. If he Google’s his name and this comes up, well I am 100% sure that is what he said. No embellishment on my part. It’s one of the things in the 1990’s that is not fuzzy at all. I think the script was called ‘This is My Plus One’

I find it good to have someone to bounce ideas off of, it works for me. And in the 1990’s with Julio I went into it wholeheartedly. Perhaps too much as I took it seriously, feeling that it was my last chance at doing anything. The script is untitled and there are a few drafts of it. I remember writing it on an electric typewriter using the equation of one page being one minute of film. I think the longest draft has about 25 pages and we were aiming for a 10 minute short film.

I think it could be saved somehow. The dialogue is quick and conversational, not quite His Girl Friday or Gilmore Girls. It is snappy though. I’m no Ben Hecht & Charles McArthur nor am I Amy Sherman Palladino and I certainly don’t claim to be. Julio proved to be uninterested in writing the script and I probably came on too strong. He had more important things going on in his life and I had this script. And soon it was put in a drawer, or what is more likely, underneath the dresser.

It’s about 2 characters named Alan and Vincent and their escapades in the 1990’s. I based Alan on myself and Vincent on Julio. The dialogue is almost verbatim, at least snatches of it. Written while living in Weehawken it is based on the time when I was living in a basement apartment in Hoboken. It was right around the time when Julio and I became friends via Maxwell’s. Nowadays Julio has his hands full with his wife Stine and their son Alexander and work as a stage manager as well as being a landlord in Hudson County. And I am going to do is look into seeing what I can do with the script.
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Downtown