Skip to content

TV Sky

casinoHave not written here for a while, or anywhere else for that matter outside of wedding cards and credit card receipts. Seems I skipped an entire month. Oh well. In the time since my last post I’ve been in London, Scotland, New York, San Francisco, and Princeton, New Jersey. I’ve touched base with old, new, and even international friends. I had a milestone birthday, received a new guitar and Roomba vacuum cleaner, smoked a few quality cigars, and had a nice dinner out with my mother. Kind of reminds me of the Neil Young song “Music Arcade,” which I won’t reprint word for word, but will include the following sample:

there’s a comet in the sky tonight
makes me feel like I’m alright
I’m moving pretty fast
for my size

Caught up with my buddy Dave Glass at Specs bar in San Francisco on a few separate occasions last month. Specs is one of those rare joints where folks from 20 to 80 can gather comfortably and laugh, bitch, drink, pontificate .. do what people generally do in bars. You can’t order a Long Island Iced Tea nor pay with credit card. In exchange for these mild inconveniences, though, Specs offers something that few public houses in this country can: longevity. It’s the same joint you went to at 17, hoping you didn’t get carded. It was your weeknight spot when you lived in the neighborhood for a few years, keeping mostly to yourself and the bartender at the end of the bar. It’s where you can see the same folks, night after night and over the course of decades, their faces as familiar as any relative, and never speak a word to most of them. The same stuff that was on the walls in the early 80s remains today .. framed articles about the owner’s near-death exploits and rescue by the Coast Guard, pithy sayings (“it’s always darkest just before it goes completely black”), mounted whale bone from key anatomical section, and countless artifacts in need of dusting. Hell, these all go back back to the 70s, and likely 60s as well. What’s most valuable, perhaps, is what’s hanging in the balance currently: the simple assurance that the place will be there when you walk down Columbus and make a short left at what used to be Adler. Because if and when it goes, a large, last chunk of “there” will be gone, too, boxed in by whatever the fancy new McBar is just above and the new-money, out-of-towner version of Tosca just below. None of us escapes such loss; it’s worthy of a new paragraph but I’ll close this one with it, instead: what was there and remains always deserves consideration.

Then again, out with the old and in with the new. There’s something to be said for this as well. My old vacuum was a birthday gift, too, and did a very decent job. Enough so to make me think “what the hell am I going to do with this thing?” when I opened the Roomba, a present from my brother. Then I turned it on and watched as it made its way around the room, skillfully avoiding electrical cords and all manner of obstacle. Some guy spent some real time thinking this one through. Truly a “set it and forget it” kind of deal, like Ron Popeil’s rotisserie chicken, if not so much his spray-on hair. Why would anyone need a robot vacuum, you’ve perhaps asked yourself. Well, there is no more satisfying feeling than sitting on a couch (as I am now) and knowing that the floor is being cleaned beneath you. It does require a sofa with at least six inches of clearance, but small price to pay indeed.

I was walking down Main Street
not the sidewalk but Main Street
dodging traffic with flying feet
that’s how good I felt

And so the Roomba returns to its base with pleasant electronic ditty announcing that it is done with the room. All I’ve got, for now. To paraphrase Paulie Walnuts, observing Christopher with trow dropped in the Bing, complying with anti-wiretap measures for newly-made guys: “I guess you could call that a post.” More as it comes, or not, but either way with the assurance of dust-free floors.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *
*
*