\t\t\t\t At the LIC Beer Project. Not impressed so much. Bartender was not exactly rude but sure was not happy to see me. She poured a glass of beer half filled with foam. Big space but limited seating. Sausagefest, save for the bartender, who is talking with her homies and smoking a cigarette basically right in front of me. They are outside smoking but I am near the big door. Bollocks. Will only stay for one.<\/p>\n
\n \u2026<\/p>\n
\n That was yesterday. Don\u2019t think I\u2019ll revisit the LICBP unless there is some occasion or reason to do so. Decent beers but the place just sucks. <\/p>\n
\n Presently I am at O\u2019Lunney\u2019s Times Square, having paid another visit to the phone booths. I don\u2019t think anyone gets the art project. I see people pick up the phones and listen for several seconds then walk away, heads shaking. Again, when I picked up one of the phones I heard someone speaking in a language other than English. That might be passable if the language was, Idunno, Spanish? No, not even. But the services of a translator should really have been enlisted for stories told by people speaking exotic tongues from everywhere. If these stories were recorded as part of a radio documentary then translators would certainly have been employed. How is this project any different in its responsibility to make its subjects understood?<\/p>\n
\n I walked over here. Not walking back. This getting up at 5am is like getting an extra day. How long will it last?<\/p>\n
\n I posted a story to \/yo in which I revived a story I wrote in 1992, and which turned up in a mysterious 70MB .TAR file filled with IRC chat logs and emails from before I even owned a computer. I must have written the stories at that weird job I had in Long Island, working for a woman who was in the business of promoting contemporary composers. I never understood her business, which might help explain why I got FIRED. <\/p>\n
\n She was at the center of an odd moment of schadenfreude gone sour. It must have been about 4 years after she fired me that I got the job at Time-Warner, where I swiftly moved up the ranks from Production Assistant to Director of Technology. I was talking to Lee, one of my new \u201creports\u201d (always hated that word). We were getting to know each other\u2019s professional pedigree when I said that I used to work for this woman, who had a very distinctive name. <\/p>\n
\n The instant I said her name Lee\u2019s face lit up. He was positively beaming, informing me that this woman had been his best friend in New York for all of the 35 years he had lived here. As he said this all I could think was: I can\u2019t wait for this guy to tell that woman who fired me that I\u2019m his new boss. It might have been as close as I\u2019ve come to entertaining thoughts of vengeance or schadenfreude.<\/p>\n
\n No sooner did those deplorable feelings emerge when they were crushed. Lee, still beaming, said “I was there with her, holding her hand when she died.\u201d I don’t remember what happened, but there was a cause of death in her New York Times obituary. God that must have been a fine mess she left behind. Two or three young kids and a husband whose career as an airline pilot evaporated when Pan Am went out of business. <\/p>\n
\n I am sitting next to three tourists visiting from Fort Myers, which is a 2 hour drive from Tampa. Somehow I am not inspired at all to talk to them, even though I grew up in Tampa and was just down there a few months ago. They look tired. They are shocked that this bar is open until 4am, that any bar is open until 4am. BIG CITY. The one woman says she lives on a 6 acre ranch in the middle of nowhere. That is where she was yesterday. Today she is in awe of Times Square. I guess that is quite a stark change of pace.<\/p>\n
\n When I worked at Tower Records I remember people coming in and asking if we were open 24 hours a day. No, but somehow that myth got out there and would not go away. <\/p>\n
\n I seem to remember the anecdote du jour being that the Lincoln Center Tower Records was responsible for something like 50% of all classical record and LP sales in the U.S. That was a function of its location. All those Lincoln Center concert halls were filled with people who left the concerts and headed to Tower to buy CDs of whatever they had just heard performed. For some reason my mother found this scenario ludicrous. I could never understand why. It just makes sense to me that people would be inspired to buy recordings of the music they just heard live at a concert. Mother thought the very idea was simply ridiculous. Why? I could never get an articulate explanation from her as to why. I think she realized the weakness of her gambit and, in a sort of retaliation, shored up more vim to energize her argument. <\/p>\n
\n As has proven to be true throughout my life, she won the argument by yelling louder than me.<\/p>\n
\n I gotta get outta here. Bartender is from Queens but I couldn\u2019t understand what part. <\/p>\n
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