Two for Tuesday

Second installment and just like that low growly voice of any american classic rock dj, there might have been a time in my youth when I looked forward to that particular day, Tuesday, where I got to (in stoned out barbituate dialect introduction by the DJ) hear a couple songs of the complex sounds of Rush, then on would come that intro guitar riff for Limelight and I almost felt ripped off, shit I could hear that song anytime on most FM stations during the early eighties, maybe the two for tuesday thing started in the seventies, so down the quaaludes and be sent off to the bombastic rock free for all of Led Zeppelin, but after getting disinterested in Limelight with not much else to do in my room considering, I had found a way to get restricted to my room for the entire summer by stealing money from my mom and having some friends over who went about drinking all my mother and stepfathers alcohol, as the cat trashed all the liquor bottles off the table onto the ground as one friend tried to swing it by its tail, peer pressure is such a bitch, just like getting high for the first time, hanging with the cool stoner kids in seventh grade as they push some low grade metal pipe full of shake into your face, come on, just put your lips on the pipe and suck in, I will light it, while standing in the infamous court 10 of the racquetball courts, why we had 10 raquetball courts in junior high who knows, maybe just school in a nice area, I did not live there, had to take the bus every morning fifteen miles to go there, then back home, or wait for my mom to pick me up so she could yell at me about how shitty having to go to work and dealing with the entire human race she could not stand in the first place, which sent her straight to the bottle every single day she got home, I knew the married life long before falling into that trap, but much earlier in my private castle tower I remained prisoner, far away from all my friends outside throwing rocks at my window, giving me the finger, and laughing at my general state of being in lock down mode. Limelight ends and on comes something more worthwhile, a song to really marvel at, I was amazed at how three expressionate musicans could sound like a damn symphony, not that I had a grasp of classical music, but something that sent me into a dream like state, the song Red Barchetta was a virtual musical imagination video like song.

Music helped passed this particular summer, had no need for sports, my parents did want to pay for them, so I'd go play pick up games with the little league teams of my friends while their parents marveled at my athletic talents, what did it matter. I use get my ass kicked by sixteen year olds when I was eight, then go shoot up the neighborhood with those same kids using BB Guns to terrorize the children down the block.

I spent a lot of time in trouble, maybe just I was too stupid to know any better or having been given so much freedom to come and go by the time I was five, by the time I was twelve it felt as if I had no parents at all, except for the fact that they were legally bound to look after my welfare. Yet music, this strange companion, confidant, and the only thing in the world that seems to empathize with all the complex emotions swirling through my head became the only guidance I ever really needed, rebellion, hate, information, sex, beauty, loss, heartbreak, dispair, as well as the demonstration of the out right willling enslavement by the citizens of this country for an orgasm, a drug fix, a fine wine, food, or ancient civilization across the globe and who can forget family, isn't that the great one, I have to do this for my family, load myself up with shit I don't need, stay together with someone I can no longer live with, creating an invisible prison that wares on you like hurricane force tides on jagged edge rocks that over time become smooth and faded.

Music has never let me down, musicians, concerts, sure, expectations run higher on human performance than on that now piece of digital music on MP3 players, a time when having less meant more, when the bar for accumulation of senseless objects and commodities was at ground level, now I have so much shit I don't need that setting fire to the lot of it feels like the only rational thing left to do. Whether it was the Sex Pistols, Lou Reed, NWA, Nirvana, King Tubby, Zappa, Sun Ra, The Beach Boys, or the Stones, those invisible but audible voices, guitars, and musical instruments made me feel safe, joyful, alive, and at times ready to burn the whole shit house down. Even today listening recently to the likes of Dylan and Santana just reaffirms my belief in the healing power of music, yes my followers, you too can exorcise the demons of high interest, unemployment, binge habits, and the embracing of bland mediocre culture, just put this Stooges album on or maybe Pink Floyd and for the truly daring turn up some Ennio Morricone, if you have seen the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly than you already know his work, right up their with Nino Rota (Sp?) who did the early Godfather soundtracks, enough of the music on to the people.

After the triumph kickoff of my foray into the digital goo, it was time to go get a drink down at the local pub, fairly nondescript, except for a couple particular customers across on the other side of this horseshoe shaped bar, let me preface by saying I had just returned from three days in NYC which is like in any other place comparable to a month, so after hunkering down in a few midtown bars where the patrons were so individualistic, fascinating, talkative, and cool as hell, my mind was sort of undergoing a slow depression as well as rapid deacceleration, I took time to reflect on a conversation with an Italian man from Rome who was living in New York now, convo began over soccer, then crossed over into his travels to and from his homecountry, as he had lived in NYC for now over 15 years, heading back only recently to see family. He described how he used to walk the same Rome streets so long ago and never acknowledged their beauty, their history, and value while heading into work, day after day, only as a visitor did he retrace his steps and marvel at the wonders of the archetectual history surrounding him on all sides, completely mind blown, he said he just sat there for hours looking, reflecting, astonished at his lack of observation so long ago. Found out he was a painter, after a couple of Jagers and beers, then looked down to see four bags full of all sorts of paint cans, large white Sherman Williams bags taking up nearly half of the floor space in the bar, sure as hell did not see him, as he made his way out, offering me a place to stay the next time I came back to Manhattan.

Also had a brief chat with the female bartender, who was attractive and come to find out she had just graduated NYU film school, a place I obsessed over as a teenager, in my full blown film/art craze, this was the place Scorsese and Stone amongst other filmmakers popped in for talks. The main point in NYC is I feel more like myself at least the self I would like to project more often if it did not make others uncomfortable for whatever reason, so now to last night.

Two guys and one woman, the woman is your standard Vegas blonde probably flirting with her early thirties, has a boob job, has either stripped, cocktailed, or played human sex toy. She is wearing a forest green shirt that says " I don't make mistakes; I date them", which by the looks of her it seems very plausable especially when you see the guy she had shown up with. Typical LA. Vegas type, has been on the Creatine shakes for many years or steriods, bulked up Affliction/Ed Hardy type of shirt, arms covered in tattoos, puffed up like a male pigeon in heat, sporting the spikey hair cut with sideburns, at least it was not a mohawk. They have a friend who is also of the same musclehead overpriced clothing tattoo mode, sort of a third wheel of the bunch, yet there seemed to be some sort of latent homoerotic thing going on with them, maybe it was the vain masculinity. The woman was playing video poker, the posterchild of the braindead in this city, not quite as bad as television, there are free drinks and a chance at some money, but lot of quiet types go for that stuff, and speaking of quiet there is this brother sort of hanging by himself, lost in his own thoughts, playing and singing along to the nineties music echoing through the pub, this kat looks deep as he has not said a word in the past two hours, just sort of dreaming, pondering, maybe wondering about what I am observing at the moment, yet somehow if I have an audience, I think this guy would be part of it.

Anyway there is a new female bartendar tonight, she is attractive, boob job, cute face, no ass, but rather shapely, so as the bartendar comes over to ask the cool trio for another round, they order and as she leaves the third wheel starts in on her flat ass and big nose, talking to his butt buddy, saying how she's okay but a bit nasty, of course the blonde adds her two sense in sexual prowess jealousy by adding how she is nothing but a little ho bag in a plaid skirt shaking her tits for tips, the very antithesis of their west coast flare. Yet the third wheel starts up a conversation with the female bartender anyway, as if to prove that he could get her if he wanted to, while attempting to subtly degrade her at the same, for she will be too dense to get it. I get caught up in sports highlights from the media dept that will never let up. Look at old Tiger Woods, once the poster child of sports, period, drives his car into a telephone pole and now he is an alleged spouse abusers and philanderer, as the news broke it seemed that Woods might have been dead like Paul McCartney back in the sixties, stone dead. All those advertisers pucker assholes across the globe, one of the biggest cash cows on the planet, drops dead, investors go into panic mode, PGA tour is canceled, all because of instant yet not always accurate media. Woods is officially no longer a human being, he is an investment and a commodity, this kind of behavior, alleged, is only given to special people like actors, rock stars, and politicians. Ol Tiger has to be Fortune 50, maybe higher, too many retirements, young hot pussy, and party business trips on the line for Mr. Woods to be stepping out, I am sure the authorities were not the first ones to greet him at the hospital, it probably was a group of suits and muscle offering the proverbial slap on the wrist, ending with a bone clenching grasp, this is it, back to work, or you can caddie down at the local muni course.

Back to the hipsters, well third wheel is having no success which has him resorting to calling her all sort of nasty things, a last gasp of the no gaming having loser, so the bartender starts talking to me, as I tell her what I do for a living, the conversation is forced which always makes me uncomfortable, rather not talk than pretend to have something to say, have to do that at work enough as it is, she starts telling me about a patron who tried following her home one night and how she had to call her ex-boyfriend who did not confront the guy figuring him as a pussy as well, anyway she just moved into town about a year ago, fresh meat, no wonder she did not seem as jaded as the blonde with the shirt sitting on the other side that woman was rode hard and put away wet, pure evil, looking for a way up or out or something to make her feel younger than her features indicated. I was really trying to leave by now, go home, but who can turn down a free beer, so I stuck around, as a couple more members of the west coast posse rolled in, the guy standard issue,the woman with trucker cap casually slid to the side of her head dressed in bmx brand clothing, so the girls go play darts and the guys start in on the bartender again, she ignores them completely, which leaves them to fag off with themselves, one guy is pretending to blow the other guy, the bartender replies, I was right, pegging them for gay or whatever, they had a good laugh when one of them put one of the other guys phone number on the chalkboard in the mens bathroom with the old call for a blowjob routine, they were all rolling on the floor. On my fifth beer, the volume gets turned down as the bartender talks about leaving, more than once, with me, not sure, doubtful, but she starts nesting on my side of the bar, it gets uncomfortable especially with all the stalker talk earlier, time to bail, get away from this three ring circus on a Monday night.