Cooling weather,, rain last night, a nice night at home with a friend from college who visits once in a while. He seemed in good spirits, and I was happy that he did not expect us to go to a bar or restaurant while I’m on austerity mode. He did, however, offer to pay my tab, which was also appreciated considering how much I know about the perilous financial precipice on which he is perched. But i was honest, I just did not feel like going out to a Union Square bar on a Friday night, to which he responded in the affirmative, that the place was getting stupid crowded and he’d be getting his food and skedaddling to my place asap. I later learned he got a little lost, finding Jackson Avenue in LIC but somehow driving it full circle and driving right back to Manhattan. I gave him good directions for using the lower level but he thought he had the route memorized from years past so must have ignored my tips. Thinking I should have encouraged him to use the upper level of the Qboro, not that he would have paid attention to that either. No worries now. It was a nice, calm night of no drama or recycled alumni gossip from 25 years ago, just a lot of talk about piano music. It’s been years since I had anyone to talk about piano music with. He was here over a year ago but time was scarce for that kind of conversation, and I think I missed him the year before that.
At the ghetto coffee shop now, from which I ordered a triple patty cheeseburger last night. The burgers from here seem promising but they always fall apart, into virtual pre-chewed shreds, and I end up eating it like a fucking lion scooping meat out of a freshly killed cattle (or whatever the hell lions eat, maybe I meant tiger, not lion…). I ordered the burger here after being foiled in my attempt to order swordfish from Tastee Corner, a place from which I’ve never ordered. They called Grubhub and Grubhub called me to say that Tastee Corner was fresh out of swordfish. Bummer, I was really primed for good seafood but no one around here delivers it any more. Psari does not deliver, at last they did not last night, and that was really my goal. I came into a minor windfall of a few hundred dollars so I thought i’d splurge, even though splurging is the absolute stupidest thing to do with an unexpected windfall. Part of the $$ was expected: $300 from FiOS for subscribing for 3 three months. The other $ was more humorous. I had stuffed a bunch of the bills I used for the “Stuff People Write On Money” web site into a wallet and forgot about it. Found it the other day and had an extra ~$160 to blow. That was partly why I wanted to go to that bar the other night, but I’m glad I did not. In the days since I’ve gone without booze altogether.
Thinking today that I’m on screens in 2 places, or rather more than 2 places but no way for me to know what more than 2 places. A payphone documentary I helped with last year is playing in Brooklyn on Sundays during October, and an infomercial type thing for the Lenovo Horizon (now called Yoga Home) allegedly started playing at electronics stores around the U.S. last month. I’ve passed through the local Best Buy a few times, where I’d seen the earlier models of the Lenovo windows tablets on display, but have yet to see the newer models or my complicated-looking face as featured in that weirdly-filmed spot. I’ll probably take a pass on the Brooklyn showing of the payphone thing. I had a chance at seeing the outtakes from that film, which comprised more hours than I even imagined remembering. Browsing the quantity and quality of those outtakes made me appreciate the finished product all the more, for the endless hours the director put into it.
I’ve been getting a bit more mileage out of the Lenovo lately, as a compositional aide more than a music reader. Tonight, however, I intend to stock it up with more piano music, inspired by last night’s conversation with the old college friend.
I e-mailed him today to ask if it’s OK for me to refer to him by name in a story for sorabji.nyc. no reply yet but there is legitimate reason to ask. His reasons I’ll leave aside, but my reasons date back to the old days of my site, when all kinds of weirdos circled, making my life something like a tiny version of hell at time, that circle of hell widening from years past into more recent times earlier this year. I kept most names as aliases or simply unmentioned because I did not want those weirdos expanding their circle of harassment to people I know simply on account of the fact that I knew them.
By now I think most of those weirdos (the ones not in jail) have moved on to Reddit lynch mobs and the gleeful public shaming of insignificant strangers.
