Whenever Never

I get up this morning and literally run to the bathroom.

Jeez, did I wake up, having to go. I pack up my shit and head out of the apartment to go to Starbucks, and upon opening my door, does my neighbor opens her door across from me. My neighbor from The Box, Paula. Great.

Hello, I say. "HI," she replies, just as happy to see me as I am to see her. "Where are you off to?" Oh, some of this and some of that, I respond. I give her my back as I lock my door. I had placed my garbage at my feet. With my garbage is my latest piss bottle, sitting there like an accusation. She looks down at it, no doubt wondering what it contains. I lift everything and take a walk down the hall. She follows in lockstep. You're going to the laundry? I ask over my shoulder, noticing her bag of clothes and detergent. This is something that I should be doing myself. "Yes," she replies. We stop at the elevator. I throw out my garbage while she presses the call button. The banter is friendly and goes back and forth as we ride the elevator down.

"You know we have a meeting to go to this Wednesday at The Box," she tells me. We do? "Yes, our Housing Class. You have to go there at the end of every month." I didn't know that. "Yes, you have to go. I'll ask if you do and leave a note under your door." That's funny, this Wednesday is New Years Eve. Why the fuck would we have to report to The Box on New Years Eve. Plus, this was my second Wednesday here and I didn't make the last housing group. Really, how important is it?

I wave her away and head over to Starbucks, rushing as my water pill is working me to death already. I hit Starbucks and I see him again. Some one who I've noticed before, two other times here at Daddy Day Care, with his laptop open, his headsets on. He is staring at the screen of his MacBook. Diminutive, quiet, unassuming, clean shaven, simply dressed. He is one of my neighbors. I saw him leave from a door down the hall from mine twice before. He stopped, looked at me, and probably recognized me before I recognized him today. He is my neighbor, and he is also a chip head.

I go to use the bathroom, and as I do so my mind starts churning data. Churning feverishly. He's down here at Starbucks. Wouldn't it be great whenever my Internet connection kicks in. He'll never have to come down here to Daddy Day Care again. He can jump a signal on ZAPRANOTH at anytime day or night and ride baby ride....oh shit.

I sit back at my seat and frown at him. He's down at Starbucks. I was down here before and I don't remember seeing him with the same frequency that I do now. He looks Italian, and the signal that I used to be on so strongly, which is gone now is NAVARRE. Could that be his last name? Could NAVARRE be his router, down for the time being and because it has been he is down here at Daddy Day Care?

Something to fucking think about. NAVARRE has been gone for some time now. A lower case Navarre is up now, and it is password protected. That's the only kink in my assumption. If he has a signal, why is he down here? Unless so too, he is not NAVARRE but a fellow piggybacker like I, and since NAVARRE has been gone, he's been forced to come downstairs like I have.

It's a bitch being poor. I return to the bathroom and take another leak, then return to my laptop to blog and blog more. I'm a blogging mother fucker. I make phone calls on my Skype. My account is running low. I'm going to have to do something about that soon.

The holiday season is upon me, and I am excited. There are a lot of things to be excited about. We have those days between the two major holidays of Christmas and New Years. There is an electricity in the air and people the world over are giving thanks. I sit there at my little table at Daddy Day Care while my neighbor...lets call him Cautious Carl, closes his MacBook, packs everything away, rises and leaves.

I stare, for some reason I thought he would be here like me all day.

Then I look at my watch. Nine Thirty in the morning. I close up shop. I'm not going to be here all day either.

Hobobob

Your ABC's

I sat in the abandoned building.

The ceilings were falling apart. Huge swaths of it covered with damp mildew, peeling plaster, and paint. The walls were in better condition, some areas sheet rocked and painted white, giving the space a studio-like appearance. The floor was unfinished with rotting wood and some other covering like cardboard.

Metal folding chairs were arrayed in a circle around the room, the front door, a triple laminate job, would not open even from the most determined of pushes. A handful of people had gathered to read their poetry, waiting patiently for the reading to start.

This is ABC-No Rio. The reading. I take a seat, lay my folder of poetry next to me and relax, ready to read. Everyone gets their chance at bat, with some standing to read, others reading from their seats. The reading is varied but good. Like any open mic, there is no telling what will come up. Today, along with the poets is a guitarist, who sings several of his tunes. Here, at ABC No-Rio, there are no rules, no time limit, nothing. You read until you stop. It continues on as long as it has to.

Earlier today, I worked hard in Starbucks, blogging, and blogging a lot. I had fallen behind because of the holiday, and, frankly, I had a lot to say. A whole lot. Electra was there. We're not talking a whole lot as of late. We had a little run in and she's a little miffed over it I assume. I could care less. Not that we aren't talking, I find that to be a shame. But that we had a run in. Everyone does. People who don't see eye to eye, people who don't have conflicts, have an angle. Something is up. Someone is not being honest or real. But to allow a 'run in' to get in the way of friendship is foolish. Electra and I have been friends far too long to let a disagreement get between us.

She's too prideful and self important, and it'll probably have to be me to mend fences. She'll only bridge the gap if she wants something. Since that's the case, I'll wait. I'll take my time. I'm in no big hurry.

My brother soon joins me. He has agreed to go with me to ABC No Rio. We eat, rest, recoup from something, I don't know what, but we are not all that energetic. I'm looking towards another interview, which started off oddly. One of the hosts has me call him up long distance. For reasons he does not say, and then when I do call him, he's surprised that I did ring him. What in the world for? He asks. I don't fucking know you asked me to call you. Remember. Well...someone else asked him to ask me to call him for an interview.

I knew that this was going to be trouble. I don't do phone interviews. And this off the cuff interview was not sitting all that well with me. I took a few notes, hoping to cover more ground in my taped interview. But that was a lost cause. After the reading, the interview with the hosts was like pulling teeth. I've had tough interviews before, but this took the cake. I honestly felt that I would have gotten a little more from everyone if we came down to blows. My brother is stewing in the corner. I wonder what has pissed him off here in this place. Something is bothering him.

My camera stops working, and the one picture that it does give me is washed out. Great. It's lasted with me for all of these years and just now, when I need it the most, when my interviewing career has just started to move forward, it starts to fuck up.

Maybe it's the building. Maybe there is some continuum here that is working against me. Maybe abandoned buildings and me don't work. Everything is quickly over, and for the first time in a long while do I have the feeling of missing the mark. These things happen though. That's life, right? Things like this happen all the time to the professionals don't they? They all have the unreasonably bad interview, the odd exchange that looks as bad on paper as it does in real life. Although this interview will not be on paper, it will still look as bad as it was.

I left with my brother, going over the wreckage of my interview in my head. He was still cranky over something and I didn't bother to go into it with him. We walked uptown a little ways and parted. I was going to head all the way up to the 14th street station, but punked out. I was tired and the walk, although good for me, would do little more than wear me out further. I hopped onto the Way at Astor Place and went home.

I stopped off in the corner Starbucks to get on line and finish blogging. I can't wait until I can get ZAPRANOTH up and running. I canceled my installation appointment earlier today and rescheduled it for Friday evening. Hopefully, this would be it, and the mornings and nights at Starbucks would be over. I would at last have the Holy Grail in my grasp. Heat, power and WIFI.
Life is indeed good.

I close up shop and head upstairs to bed.

Hobobob

Friends Be Told

I had to recover from the beverages.

I finally got out of bed a day later. My stomach stopped churning, my muscles began to obey. My faint dizziness subsided. Could it have been all of the organic stuff was just too healthy for me? A body that subsists on nothing but junk really can't make the transition so readily. Either that, or I'm too through with drinking.

I'm giving it a test today. I'm to meet up with KC and Betty for drinks and dinner today. With this being said, if it was from drinking that my malaise was caused, I'll soon have a repeat performance.

I got up, it was before light out. The kid was playing his guitar amazingly early, and the old man was singing out of his window. He constantly sounds drunk with slurred speech. This is one man that never sobers up. Never. And for some reason, he is enamored with his voice outside of his window. He couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle, and he mangles songs to such an extent that if you didn't recognize some of the words, you would have no clue of what he was straining out to sing.

But he was up too this morning. I cleaned my room, tried to get online. Did all the little things that I had to do, and then packed and straightened everything up for the SHOUT OUT later today. I hitched my gear on my back and headed to the Way, going downtown to Smith's Bar and Restaurant, and got there long before our arranged meeting time. I sided up to the bar, and ordered a boilermaker. It was a long time since I had one, and wanted to break my cherry in right.

Soon, KC and Betty arrive and the drinks went around the second time. I still felt very little of a 'hit' so I kept on. OBSIDIAN arrives shortly after that, and the four of us quickly move on to Ruby Tuesday for lunch/dinner. God, I'll be honest. I didn't eat in a day and a half. I spent all of yesterday in bed asleep, recuperating. This morning, just two cups of coffee and I was out the door. But now, sitting before a plate of food, and a flight of red wine, I suddenly felt quite hungry. I scarfed everything before me like a Skeksis on the run. I looked at KC's plate when he was done, and he was kind enough to hand over his leftovers. I scarfed that, and then looked at my brother's ribs. He let me cut off a piece of that, while Betty handed me a piece of her chicken. GOD. I was an inhaling ravenous beast. No wonder I'm so big!

From Ruby Tuesday we headed to the park and hung around while everyone smoked cigars or cigarettes. I abstained. I had long ago kicked the habit. It was nice out, the weather had turned in the favor of warm instead of the blistering cold that we had over the past few days. Time slipped by as we hung out together, and then it was time to hit the Way and head for the SHOUT OUT. We bade everyone farewell, passed around our hugs and best wishes and then were off. We flew to OTTO's only to find Cyndi Lauper on time today. The doors were open and our guests were already in the back waiting for us.

OBSIDIAN was feeling good. The hooch in his system probably charging him up. He wanted to do the intro dance, and damn if I felt like dying. Not that I was ill or tired, it was just the thought of jumping around to 'Mama Said Knock You Out,' was just too much for me to bear. I begged off and got right into the SHOUT OUT. My brother took the first half, I the second. It went pretty smooth, and before we knew it, we were standing outside of the front of Otto's at the close of the SHOUT OUT, bullshitting with Oz, James, Steph with chicken on our minds. I don't know how it has come to pass but eating chicken after the SHOUT OUT has become a luxury, and one of our guilty pleasures.

That's where we ended up, slumped over a narrow counter, with chicken between our teeth and conversation in the air. We stay for quite a while in Kennedy's Fried chicken and afterward I head for the Way and home.

It was a damn good SHOUT OUT.

Next I have the interview for the online magazine.

I'm going to change up articles soon. Before the editors do it for me.

Hobobob

Girl crush

I'm in love with this girl on Garance Dore. She looks beautiful and cozy in her A.P.C. coat. And big congrats to Garance for the glowing mention in the New York Times Magazine!

DIY Famous Photos

Do you ever find yourself in a museum thinking, "Hey, I could do that"? Well, Flavorpill just published a rad feature about recreating famous photos. See the awesome slideshow here. (P.S. It's harder than it looks!)

The Healing Wound

I am in pain.

I am suffering immensely. It's been a long time since I've been hungover. The day after Christmas and I can't even get out of bed. My muscles twitch uncontrollably, larger muscle groups are too weak to move. There is a general malaise over my body. I am close to death. This is what I feel like when I'm hung over. I feel wasted. Really. Wasted.

I woke up this morning, not sick but not well. I knew what it was from, this kind of overwhelming illness. It wasn't because I drank entirely too much, but instead that I drank too many different beverages. I had hard cider, beer, wine and champagne. A mixture like that can and will turn damaging. Especially when they are all organic. Yeah, organic.

My brother and I meet at Madison Avenue Starbucks, which happened to be closed on Christmas for our regular Christmas Dinner at Madison Square Garden. We do it every year. We live for it. It's a chance for us to go and enjoy Christmas with New York's population of Skeksis'. Why do we do it? Well, not just because the food is quite good, but because we don't want to forget from where we came from. We don't want to lose track of the fact that there were Christmases where we had nowhere to go and because soup kitchens were closed, nothing to eat. How many people now currently feel as if they have nothing to attend and that no one cares. No reason to count themselves as one of the living, no reason to be of any cheer.

This big spread at Madison Square Garden is a thing of beauty, even because they anticipate the approach of the Skeksis. Not only is the food good, it is plentiful. More plentiful than you can possibly imagine. The Skeks, being true to their nature, come in droves and at one time, probably when MSG first arranged this dinner, they were allowed to go for seconds. True to Skeksis fashion, they no doubt went for seconds, thirds, fifths and eighths. Being slick, they probably went through asking for something to hold the food in and left with bags of dinners for themselves, to waste. The proverbial saying, eyes bigger than stomachs applying here.

The gods of MSG no doubt saw this and compensated, by bringing even more food than the greedy can carry. And like greedy flies, these buzzards swoop and gather in larger and larger numbers, leaving with shopping carts filled with dinners, sodas, cakes. One would almost feel for these wretched cretins if it wasn't for the fact that many of these people aren't taking this food home. They aren't taking food for family and friends on this festive occasion. They are taking it to horde for oneself. How do I know this? Because THAT is the WAY of the Skeksis. It's a zero sum game to them. All for me and none for you.

The Skeks can be seen running from MSG less than an hour after it opens with bags of food larger than they are. Like ants at an anthill, pushing a sugar cube larger than their bodies. These fuckers pile it on thick, and MSG is ready for them. They fill hungry hands and still have enough for everyone else. Incredible. We go in, grab an enormous plate of food between the two of us, and then search the expansive dining area to find a table where we can sit. We find one filled with Skeks, doing what they do best...getting up to go to the food lines, to gather up seconds and thirds. They work at the table with mechanical efficiency, packing food in bags, sorting meats from vegetables, from cakes and sodas. They are up and down, going from line to table to line to table. Of the eight people, male and female at our table, my brother and I are the only two that do not get up to get seconds and thirds. We remain bowed over our plates, eating away. We pack food in our bellies, not into tupperware.

These skeks are obnoxious, sloppy, outrageously loud and incredibly dimwitted, even though they are very careful to pack away the foods that they want and to us all the space in their bags available to them. They are busy working like beavers on a dam. We finish and OBSIDIAN and I make our way out, with my brother stopping for a brief moment to get a take home plate to go. We roll out of the door happy, loving this part of Christmas, thanking everyone there. It was time to move on.

We hopped the Way and headed across town and then into Brooklyn only after walking back and forth across the length of New York in search of a liquor store that would sell wine on Christmas. There were none open. We looked and looked and came up goose egg. Finally we decided that we might have better luck in Brooklyn and rode in.

We didn't fare any better in Brooklyn. We stopped by a corner bodega and bought a few six packs of Heiniken and carted them upstairs with us. My brother and I were the first there, and we started off playing music on 'Nessa's cool turntable which played vinyl records. Impressive. Soon, others arrived and we settled down to dining and drinking and engaging conversations. It was a wonderful evening and we skated right through it to the point where no one wanted to leave to go home. But these things are inevitable and in time, I could tell, 'Nessa was getting tired. Late became later, and there was no letting up on the conversations. I played wet blanket and called the party to an order to dissolve it. It faltered, but did not close down. On my second attempt, about an hour later, it finally folded. It was time to leave 'Nessa to her home.

We stepped out into the night and we said goodnight to the rest of the company, a pair of brothers who were sharp as razors conversationalists and we promised to stay in touch. My brother and I made our way back to the Way, and on the train back to the city. I left him in the subway, heading up town to 96th Street.

I had made it home.

It was an excellent Christmas. I just drank too much organic stuff.
Or maybe just too much.

Whatever,

Hobobob

Bicycle Built for Two

I'm at my sister's house in San Francisco, and we're about to eat Mexican dip. Easy times! I just wanted to show you this cute poster by Emma and Mike (of wedding fame). Happy almost New Year! xo

The Good in Your Life

This is Christmas morning.

It seems just like any other day. I brush my teeth, make coffee, do my exercise, AND I'm very pleased with my exercise, and sit behind my laptop. Just like any ol' day. Even the baby Jesus wasn't officially born on this day. It would be something if an angel from heaven would come down for each of us and slap the living shit out of us for all of the stupidity we've committed during the year. But no, it's just another day like any other day.

But that's if you want to make it like any other day. It is my belief that Christmas is in the heart. It's all about the Christmas cheer. That's what each of us should know or remember when we stop to celebrate the day. It's really nothing without us. Will we say: Merry Christmas, Peace on Earth to everyone we meet today? Or will we grumble because we had to go into work? Will we sit around alone at home, or will we go out and do something other than feel sorry for ourselves? Because of the Christmas Cheer, there will be scores of volunteers helping to serve hundreds or even thousands of people at Madison Square Garden today. So now, there's no excuse for staying at home and feeling sorry for yourself. Go out and get you something to eat and be around people. There's no need to sharpen the knives in the kitchen.

That's what I'm going to do. And then after that, go to a friend's house and meet new people. I could have said, be surrounded by strangers, but no. The Hobo is going out to meet new people.

I would tell you what I could do today if I had nowhere to go: spend it on the Internet. My true home. I love the Internet. I can whittle away hours on it and not feel sad. Not feel like I've wasted a day, as I would have if I just sat around and watched television. Yes, I am amazed with the Internet since the first day that I met with it, which was a millenia ago when I configured my first web browser, NETSCAPE.

Funny story for Christmas: Well, maybe not so funny. But way back in the day I used to work at this now defunct law firm called Coudert Brothers in the library and we all had access to computers and used modems to tie our law firm library with a number of libraries all over New York. It was a rickety system but it worked. Well I used to dial into Bulletin Board Services, or BBSes which were like email, but you had to dial into a server hosting it. Much more primitive than the Internet. Well, word was on the BBS that with the use of a BROWSER, you can dial into the Internet, which was changing from a text base medium to multimedia. Multimedia at the time simply meant pictures and text. It was a big fucking deal at the time.

So I downloaded this browser, NETSCAPE to be exact, and it took me the entire day at work to configure the damn thing, but when it did I showed it to the head librarian who was taken with it immediately. It caused quite a stir. What I didn't know was that I had to 'unhook' the motherfucker from the modem to get it to hang up the connection, so when I left for the night, I left the circuit open, or more exactly left the phone off the hook. Days later we were hit with a whopping phone bill of hundreds of dollars.

Needless to say, if it wasn't for the twinkle in everyone's eye that we now had the Internet, I would have lost my job. Lucky me. Funny story huh? Well, like I said, it may not be all that funny and it didn't happen on Christmas either.

What got me on this subject? Oh yeah, my love of the Internet. I was smitten then like everyone else in the law firm. They let it become my job to surf. Now that was unbelievable. It was like getting paid to fuck for a living. Which has got to be a paradoxical torture, but I'll get into that on another post. Still it was amazing to me. Yes, I love the Internet immensely. That's why my blog is so addictive to me. It's a mental panacea. I could probably stop taking all my head meds if I was allowed to blog alone for the rest of my life.

Blogging also gets in the way of my writing, although it is writing. It's easier to compose sentences. It's easier to get mental pictures of things. It gets in the way of almost everything...except my exercises. Which brings me back to WHY I'm pleased with my exercising. Just a few days ago I used to dread my pushups. It was a trial to get to thirty, almost like lifting the ass end of a car. And if you've seen me, you'd agree. But I had to crank out a thirty count with a great deal of agony. This was until I found the gift of 'repetitions'. With reps, I can do my push ups in sets, and sets don't hurt all that much. When done, my muscles feel tight, not worn. AND I find that I can do more. Now I do forty five pushups with increased energy. Three sets of fifteen. It's fucking wonderful. For Christmas I treated myself to forty five pushups and thirty sit ups. Light shit in the world to you but a big deal to me. I'm going to go until I can reach a hundred a day. Whenever the weather breaks I'll go and add walking to the mix. I'm Hellbent into losing this weight and getting back into shape. OR at least in better shape than I'm in now.

Which brings me back to Christmas. The reason for this special day, and that is to be happy for all the things that we do have. We have our health, we have our loved ones, we have our thinking facilities, our comprehension of self, and that we aren't Skeksis' for another year in a row. Let's give exquisite thanks for that one.

Give thanks for all the good in your life people. It may not be much, but at least it's something.

Give thanks, at the very least, that you're not a Skek.

Hobobob

Eat Drink and Eat Some More

I wake up.

You don't know how much I appreciate my being able to do just that. To wake up. In the afternoon, in a bed. When you are homeless, you have to get up early, like Five AM, and stay awake until late, around Ten or Eleven PM, and not sleep in a bed. There are no such things as afternoon naps. There is no such thing as sleeping in a bed. The bed thing can get to be addictive.
I'm growing soft. Ever since the shelter, my rough exterior has been falling away, along with my lean frame. I've gotten fat and lazy, soft. I'm no longer in fighting trim for the streets as my brother is. I'm no longer made hard, with a body like balsa wood. I'm more like a muffin, or a marshmallow now. A Moon Pie. I sit on the edge of my bed and think of all the shit that I accumulated so far. In the shelter I got a printer that I hated to be rid of, and when I thought that I would be kicked out, my greatest fear was to be without it.

What kind of shit is that? I've lost everything that I've ever owned in my whole life. Photo- graphs, books, televisions and even a refri- gerator. Letters, written collections of works piles of irreplaceable things. I've lost it all, and the shirt off my back, and now...now, I'm worried about a single printer.

Then my eyes stray to my DARLING and ZAPRANOTH. Now, because of this room, I have my coffee maker and my wireless router that I can't do without. My baby goes without saying. Even now, it goes everywhere that I do. I never leave home without it. I can't bear to.

But now that cold dread falls upon me. Tomorrow I'm off to a Christmas Day meal. My brother and I are going to meet at Madison Avenue Starbucks and from there go to Madison Square Garden for their annual Christmas Dinner, or more accurately Christmas Day meal where they serve millions of people some of the best food in town. The Skeksis live for this day. They come from miles around, a fucking convention of the living dead, shambling in tattered clothing in long lines to get into this meal. And guess what? Homeless people are on this line too. And even shelts and people in SROs like I am now. We're all on this line. I'm on it, not just because they cook better than me any day, but to also remember where I came from.

My circum- stances may have changed, but all changes can be temporary, and it's best to not grow too big for your britches. We all, every last one of us, can be laid this low at any time in our lives. It's useless to claim that it will never happen to us, because we just don't know. We just don't know.

But, we are to meet there, feed like ticks on a dog, and then leave there to go to 'Nessa's place for...guess what? A Christmas Meal. Now you might find this to be terribly greedy, and you may say, 'Shit Hobobobby, you don't need to eat twice of anything!" But this is simply a precaution. 'Nessa is single, just like we are, and single people usually don't excel too much in cooking. I'm not saying all don't. Some can do a rather passible job. But in general, single people can't cook. Or cook very plain. With this being said, we can fill up and have a good dinner in the day, and in the afternoon, just pick and not grouse and complain if 'Nessa's best efforts fall short. We're also planning to take a few bottles of wine to get our swerve on. At best, we'll be among good company, full stomachs and filled with Christmas cheer.

With all of these plans in the works, there is a plan that I have yet to feel good about. Leaving behind my baby in my apartment. I've taken her with me every day, strapping it to my back and carrying it around like the newborn that it is. My laptop has constantly been by my side. Tomorrow will be the first day that I will be leaving her out of my sight. Now I know what Separation Anxiety feels like to a parent. I'll be worried about a break in all day long.

A thief might come in and leave with the printer, thinking it, rightly so, to be of some value. The router they would overlook as some flying saucer. The coffee maker...well it's a fucking coffee maker. But the laptop would scream valuable. I'm putting it in the bag, and stashing the bag underneath the table. No...in fact, I'll do one better. I'll stash the laptop beneath the bed. Leave the bag under the table. If they take the bag, so be it. But the laptop will not be in it. IF they go through the bag first, all they'll come away with is cables and wires and shit. Nothing of value.

That's the plan for Christmas day. That might work.

It's hot in my room tonight. I've washed dishes and folded clothes. I've done everything save make my bed. I've even got on an Internet connection long enough to post to my blog.

I'm just blogging offline now. Sitting in my underwear. Not a pretty sight. I'll go to bed soon, after making it. I've ate a good Boston Market TV dinner.

This is Christmas Eve.

Ho ho ho

Hobobob