Have you ever been hit in the brain by such a vivid dream that you wake up and think whatever was in that dream actually happened? Or worse, you woke up the next morning or at some point during the day to get dressed and go somewhere that doesn’t exist? Yes, that sort of happened a few days back and I wasn’t going to write about it, but this sort of thing happens quite a lot to quite a lot of people, I hear.
Anyway, I had a dream about empanadas a few days back that had me about to take a bite of one of the dozen I bought, then waking up and wanting to head out to a take out place somewhere in Harlem, if the dream was correct. Well, my brain’s GPS placed the restaurant there and as I’d lived in that area for a few years, I thought I knew exactly where it was located.
This morning, I went to return some plastic bottles at the Stop ‘N Shop about a half mile or so walk away (there are many closer places, but it’s good exercise for me) and stumbled across a rather interesting exercise in capitalism taking place. On the way to the store, there’s a hospital complex made up of a few buildings spread over a few blocks and at the kidney dialysis building, I noticed two tall stacks of red containers marked BIOHAZARD a few feet apart and someone standing between and slightly to the rear of them. I was across the street waiting for the light to change, so I merely thought that person was a hospital worker waiting for that hazardous material to be retrieved by whatever company collected it. As I waited for the light, a woman walked up to the man and quickly handed him something, whereupon something else was quickly exchanged and she walked off back the way she came.
Yes, I was a bit more than a little curious at this. So I crossed the street in stealth mode. hoping to sneak a closer peek when suddenly, another person walked up and quickly passed what looked like cash to the man, whereupon they were handed and walked away with a small plastic-encased item. Did they just both just buy an organ or some other icky flesh waste? Was it homemade Soylent Green? Was there a secret society of vampires or zombie keepers in the Bronx I had no idea existed who came out during the daytime? As got closer, I saw that it was just plastic boxes of mixed fruit being quickly traded and there were two or three other people who were either taking cash or distributing fruit boxes as they were paid for. I guess Midge didn’t like the mixed fruit on the menu, or something. A few Midges actually, from the look of things.
Passing the people conducting their business, I stopped about 15 or so feet away, turned around, stepped to the right and watched for a bit. It seemed that the guys doing the sales worked in the hospital and were making a few bucks on the side selling that fruit. From what I gathered, these seemed to be low-level staff workers with a few regular customers, giving the speed of the transactions. After about two minutes, I tuned and headed to the store. It was hot out and those plastic bottles weren’t going to return themselves. This was a mystery for some other day. I did hope that those red containers weren’t full or at least clean and just used to block passersby from seeing from afar what was going on, or those fruit cases would be a total fruit surprise for the buyers soon enough.
I was relatively and comfortably dead asleep until 4:38:19 this morning, when a blast of very loud music woke me up. The car wash across the street was indeed, open all night and yes, I did not realize this (they’ve been open for what, almost 9 months or so since the renovation?) until that loud, thumping music kicked me out of whatever dreamworld I was inside of. I think I was likely dreaming of the news of late, as I was watching it a few hours before, all bad news and getting worse by the minute.
In case you’ve been otherwise occupied, in the US it’s kind of like this out there, but without the appropriate soundtrack. Monkey business, indeed:
Oh, that music went on for over an hour through a few radio stations, which led me to believe that the person was actually very deaf and getting their car detailed or some sort of full service job that took so long. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much after that, but I did oversleep quite well, thank you much. The square block=sized hole in the ground where a new hospital complex is being slowly built can’t come soon enough, as it will surely add a few QUIET ZONE signs to the area. Which by the way, is the nicest thing I have to say about the incoming building, as it wiped out a few too many family-run shops in the area, none of which have come back or even reopened elsewhere, including a family-owned and run bakery almost everyone I’ve spoken with misses.
So, we had a death in the family a few months back we all recently found out about (last week), which means it’s been a bit busy here with all sorts of shock and paperwork to tackle and quite a few ‘i’s to dot and ‘t’s to cross. Fortunately, the deceased was a very excellent record keeper, so most affairs are in good order and although there are a few important things to tackle for the near and far future, I think we have much of the important things covered.
Courts are all still closed here, so there’s the matter of waiting for a few important papers which need filing, so the waiting is the most annoying part. Well, next to figuring out a too smart Smart TV that was inherited that has a few subscriptions that need shutting down. After connecting the TV, it automatically started playing a film that wasn’t even chosen or someone who wasn’t me as I was walking into the kitchen to get some coffee pressed a button on that arcane backwards-designed remote it has (I need to go look up an online manual, stat!) and a movie no one ordered started up. While I was trying to figure out how to shut it down, this scene was playing in my tired head:
Anyway, I need to help out a family member in securing a few benefits and go through a few too many accounts and passwords as we play Match Game for a bit. I’ll be back in a bit or sooner if most things go smoothly as most seem to be so far. I just need to figure out that remote that has a list of pages of services and which services need that OFF switch. I have enough Blu-rays and DVD’s here to keep me busy for some time and nope, I just can’t afford more digital services than I can ever watch in a lifetime.
I’m sure that I noticed exactly when people stopped taking the idea very horrid fact of a still thriving pandemic a whole lot less seriously here where a few too many people have died from it or assorted complications arising from it. By my estimation, it was about two weeks ago, give or take. I know this because I live across the street from a car wash and in the past few months, it’s been busy there, but mostly quietly so. About two weeks back, a sudden blast of loud music woke me from seven floors up. It was some person who drove up and yes, was blasting their music for all to hear too early in the day.
I was of course, annoyed by this, but I did take it as an alarm clock of sorts as I’d overslept (again) and dragged myself out of bed. A pot of coffee/chicory blend went to brew up and it was decided to kick off another Groundhog Day of mostly staying indoors and side-eying both the news and my backlog of work to do. It’s harder to concentrate on fun stuff with actual life now a lot less fun, but it is sort of a necessary non-evil these days. To be honest, I liked the solitude for the most part except the MIA partner in crime part. But that’s part of the job description when you have a new virus, a new potential thing to kill you added to all the other things than may or may not set your expiration date to SOONER THAN YOU’D CARE FOR. “Did you hear? That guy died when he slipped in the shower while trying to dodge the plague!” makes for a rather poor epitaph.
So, in the middle of this more very urgent chaos taking place, I have 19 pounds of someone else’s medical supplies here. They’ve been here over a week and it’s FedEx’s fault for “just doing their job”. Hi, FedEx. Anyway, here’s the deal: someone ordered whatever is in this box and had it shipped here, but they seem to have mixed up their address with mine or the person who took the order scrambled the numbers or couldn’t read someone’s handwriting properly. I say this because just over two weeks back, I got two large boxes bundled together that for the same person.
After about 45 minutes to an hour spent going to the FedEx website which constantly sent me to an automated call line no matter what I tried, I held on for a live operator and explained the situation. The problem seemed to be solved when he said the box would be retrieved (which took a few days), but guess what? It wasn’t. A week or so later, another large box labeled medical supplies arrived and was left at the door before I even had the chance to open that door and explain to the driver this wasn’t the correct address. FedEk was called again, and almost 52 minutes of looping muzak later, someone said they would be picking up the box… and that was what, almost a week ago?
Yeah, I’m still here – just thinking about too much stuff as I guess we all are these days. Or most of us, as a few folks clearly aren’t much for sensible thought. There are a lot of half-written things here because it’s hard to concentrate on being entertaining when the planet is spinning in “Stop The World – I Want To Get Off” mode, whee.
Anyway, I’ll pop in here later in a more “reviewery” mode as I’ve actually been playing a load of stuff that’s been quite good, but I don’t want to give the total impression that I’m totally clueless to all this distress going on. The blinders were, in fact, never on here. I just keep my annoyance with many things in check with the insane hope that we figure out one day that we should maybe have a test for leaders like the ones they give sanitation workers or some other public employees or maybe even the those that choose to volunteer for medical research for a few spare dollars to live on.
Some music to lighten the mood (not by much, though):
(Or: Trick or Treat III, but I didn’t want the title to be too long.)
I: The Chair
“What’s up. doc?”, indeed.
Yesterday afternoon, I was about to go downstairs to get my mail, when I opened the door, stepped halfway outside and immediately saw some monsters in the hall about 15 feet away. I calmly walked back inside, shut the door and shook my head, then got a bottle of cold water from the refrigerator and took a seat on the couch. The TV was on and it was the usual news of the day, all bad all the time, of late. It was going to be a long wait before I went back outside again.
Okay, so it wasn’t ‘real’ monsters at all and no real monsters like you see in the movies actually exist no matter how good the film is. But there was a young guy sitting in a chair in that hallway getting his hair cut by another older guy who was standing up, and no, the guy doing the cutting didn’t have six foot long arms, either.
When I sat down, I shook my head again, then laughed for maybe a good two minutes. What came to mind at that point was this:
In terms of retrospective career highlights, I’ll let the music historians do their thing far better than I. I just wanted to do a very quick post to note two films that featured Little Richard’s music in key sequences. 1987’s Predator has that key introduction to Arnold and company and the scene is funny as heck because of its burly mcbeefcake manly men riding that choppa listening to” Long Tall Sally“, which is not at all what you expect them to be listening to, but there it is, and it works perfectly.
Two years earlier, Joe Dante’s surreal sci-fi flick Explorers featured Richard’s performance of “All Around The World” sung by a comical looking space alien. That may be Robert Picardo in that suit, as he’s credited for the film as that alien. A cover version of the song was done by Robert Palmer and appeared on the film’s soundtrack, accompanied by a music video:
Ah, the days of actors in well-crafted slimy-looking rubber suits and good ol’ practical effects, right? The film also had a great Jerry Goldsmith score and is worth a look if you like a bit of mid-80’s nostalgia and one of those flicks that’s a bit of fluffy popcorn fun.
So, I got a birthday card last week (it’s today, so go get me some cake, please, thank you) and I laughed aloud when I opened it because the card had a portion of a painting I’d seen a while ago and it impressed me so much that I went and wrote a (bad) short story based on the image. This was some decades ago, but I recall more or less it was about humans being briefly ruled by a flower race and it not being so bad because it was more a symbiotic relationship at the end of the day.
As those flowers smelled nice and only tasked humans with carrying them from place to place, things were pretty laid back. If I’m not mistaken, this period of peace ended with a few servants, tired of allergies and a few bee stings, attacked their masters and realized they weren’t able to do much in the way of defending themselves. Hey, I said it was a bad story, didn’t I? Okay, it was VERY bad. Anyway, the point was today’s flower markets are reversals of how flowers once shopped humans to work for them and my, how things have changed, haven’t they? Yes, I used to write some weird stuff. Eh, oh well.
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 