Tag Archives: Lovely Rita

Goodbye

Ah, just got off the phone with Lovely Rita. Hadn’t spoken to her in a while. Always a good chat. She’s another woman who I love to make laugh. Getting off the phone is a bit abrupt. It always is. Just an uncomfortableness.

I guess Rita’s not one for long goodbyes. I know a few other people like that. As soon as the ‘e’ in ‘goodbye’ is said, they are gone. Personally for me, I don’t mind the long goodbye. It’s a warm feeling.

The goodbye/I’m outta here is too cold, leaves me hanging. But that’s some people and not me and if everyone was like me, it would be a better world, yet it would be a boring world, so here’s to them, the short goodbye people.

Goodbye.

It’s a Thursday which for me is a Friday. It’s been a week of oddness. Monday off, Tuesday substituting for Monday, making Wednesday feel like Tuesday and today feels like Friday. As you can guess it’s very confusing.

Goodbye.

I spoke with my brother Frank today. He called me, a bit bummed that I hadn’t spoken to him in a while. He’s been trying to deal with his retirement. And he still has issues with life, specifically growing up.

Apparently my parents wanted him to be a priest. By the time I came along 11 years later, the parents were tired and didn’t really seem to care what it was that I would do.

No red flags with regards to college. No red flags with regards to anything. I don’t blame them. Wouldn’t do any good to blame them anyway. I’m not one to go to a cemetery and yell at a tombstone.

Work was busy somewhat and also quiet. Vivek was in and when I finally had a reason to see him, I find out that he’s on the way to the airport.

Goodbye.

I was able to make a few phone calls with regards to the new position I find myself in. I call it, ‘inroads’. It’s funny, last week on Thursday I was totally stressed, at wit’s end. So much so it affected me physically. Today, not so bad. It must be the new outlook, to just plow through.

Goodbye

Today was humid and drizzly, tomorrow they are expecting thunderstorms and showers. I have 2 new DVDs from Netflix, The Naked Civil Servant, starring John Hurt, who is one of my favorite actors of all time.

John Hurt portrays the late Quentin Crisp, a bon vivant from the UK transplanted to Manhattan. It’s said that Sting wrote An Englishman in New York about Quentin Crisp. Very dry that Crisp was.

The other DVD is Resident Alien, which is also about Quentin Crisp, this time a documentary. Since Sting is in the documentary, I guess I’ll find out the story about An Englishman in New York.

When my brother Frank was on the radio, instead of the web these days, he would occasionally mix in some spoken word recordings of Quentin Crisp on top of what ever music Frank happened to be playing.

Quentin Crisp, from the old world of Oscar Wilde. The was no closet that contain him.

Goodbye

Black and White

Just got home a little later than usual. Stopped by Lovely Rita’s apartment and dropped off about 40 copies of her resume. I was there for an hour, just drinking diet Sprite and chatting. She has a cute little dog named Lulu.

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I had never met Lulu before, I’m usually standoffish around small dogs but Lulu was adorable and a perfect companion for Lovely Rita. After some quick catching up I had to head back to Hoboken. Lovely Rita and I made plans to check out some art galleries this Saturday, weather permitting.

I’ve known Rita for about 26 years. Her brother Rich was friends with my brother Frank. Somehow we met each other and got along great. We formed a band in the early part of that decade, called ourselves The Nift. Why the Nift? I don’t know. I named it, it’s merely a nonsense word.

Rita’s then sister in law Loren played guitar along with me, Rita played bass and Dave Bell, a friend of my brother Brian and myself played drums. We wrote maybe two songs, and rehearsed in Hoboken which was the best location. I was living in Lodi, Dave was in Wood Ridge, Loren was married to Rich and living in Newark and Rita lived in Chelsea.

We were all very much in love with the then vibrant music scene at McSwells We were big Bongos fans and we all liked the dB’s and fancied ourselves playing songs like theirs, though we weren’t as technically adept at our instruments. Dave was probably the best musician out of all of us.

Dave and I once cornered Peter Holsapple on the Path train and talked up The Nift to him. Unfortunately, he was in his heavy drinking phase and though offered words of encouragement to us, nothing ever came of it. We never played outside the rehearsal room.

Our repertoire was Anytime At All by the Beatles, Oh Boy by Buddy Holly, a song that I wrote the music for and Loren wrote the lyrics and a song that was more than likely about some guy that Rita went to high school, with, some guy named John Genzale.

You might know him by his later name, Johnny Thunders. I met Johnny Thunders through Rita when Johnny played a show at McSwells towards the end of his short life, it was fun to see Rita messing around with an old school chum who happened to be Johnny Thunders.

It was quite windy out and Rita, Lulu and I were going to walk halfway to the bus terminal but there’s a lot of construction going on in Rita’s present neighborhood and rather than fray Rita and Lulu’s nerves with the wind making loud noises on the construction sites, I insisted they go back home.

She really appreciated the resume copying and I was very glad I could help. I would have stayed longer but I needed to get some groceries since my cupboard was bare. Thursday night is still somewhat cruisy at the supermarket but as usual I was oblivious.

I saw the same guy who works there that Juan had a fling with a few years ago. I never have the nerve to say something like, ‘Juan says hello’. I think he’s a closeted fellow and might freak out. I just glance and think to myself, ‘I know what you like…’

On the work front, Vivek and his partner got on their plane to Pensacola, no complaints, at least so far. The right wing trading desk subtenants have taken to watching Fucks Business Channel, which had a speech the President was making.

The crowd loved Obama, even though it was a group that didn’t vote for him. One of the right wingnuts made a comment that it sounded like a high school pep rally.

He said it in a derogatory way to which I just had to mention that it wasn’t a pre-screened crowd like BushCo used to have at their rallies. It actually shut them up. I think they were used to having their outbursts go unchallenged.

Well not anymore.

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