I got a swank new keyboard, after the last one my sister gave me started to crap out. I should have procured this one a long time ago. It’s way superior, though the one my sister got me was not bad at all. I do not exactly butcher these things but I go through these portable keyboards more quickly than I would expect. I guess as mobile gadgets go they are, by necessity, flimsy. This one feels solid, though. Yeah, this matters.
…
I walked around a bunch today, even in this cold and wind. I was using the payphone on 21st Street and 33rd Road when I overheard someone say “Can you believe those things still work? Public phones?” I was making a couple of toll free calls and one coin-paid call to keep help John in business. He’s had an “ADVERTISE HERE” sign on that phone for years. It used to say “YOUR ADD HERE.” It always bothered me that a guy whose livelihood depended on ad revenue did not know how to spell “ad”. I learned recently that he is a rabid Trump supporter, and went to some of his rallies.
Unlike last time the phone handset was back on the hook. I always leave it off the hook, in a very specific position. Thus, it seems someone besides me used the phone between yesterday and today, either to make a call or simply extend the courtesy of putting it back on the hook. I should camp out one day at the Dunkin’ Donuts to see who, besides me, ever actually uses that thing.
My head feels like it will explode from being in the cold so long, but it is reasonably warm here at the ghetto coffee shop. People are talking about cheeseburgers and Philly cheese steak. I look forward to playing through a bunch of fairly obscure Russian piano music I copied down from the IMSLP. Felix Blumenfeld turns out to be way more substantive a composer than I realized. I thought of him as having a couple of one-hit-wonder type pieces that appeared in compilations but man, the stuff I discovered the last few days is damn impressive.
Time to find someone new to talk to.
