I have taken three aspirin and three capsules of erythromycin in the past hour, and the pain in tooth #1 (upper right wisdom tooth) is subsiding. Actually not in the tooth proper but in the gum above it. Never had any pain or abscess there before. This seems to have been brought on the other day when I ate an entire half-baguette I got at Morton-Williams when I went out in the morning for milk and a munchy, not realizing that it was only 6:45 am. I usually don’t consume half-baguettes all at once, but I did this time. I’d been living on the occasional banana and instant oatmeal for a few days. No vodka, and scarcely beer. Since then, one beer and one half-pint of Pinnacle.
I’d been terribly sleepy all week, ever since taking to bed on Sunday after Governors Island. Sleepy and weak. Feeling much better now, thank you, but not exercising. Will try a few miles in the Park.
Fried up a package of bacon this morning and ate half of it, downing it with a few cups of coffee. The bacon inflamed my gum again. hence the recent erythromycin and aspirin. I also mixed up some pizza dough, which continues to rise on the counter. Slightly different from the Wolfgang Puck modification I made a year or two ago. Only two big balls. Yeast and spices and sourdough-starter discards as well. I began the sourdough starter about three days ago with whole wheat flour, bought some unbleached all-purpose yesterday at Whole Foods, to keep the thing going. I don’t think the starter is ready yet as leavening, but it may be helping the pizza dough to rise enormously. I can’t make pizza just now because I don’t have any sauce or cheese. Not a big one for cheesy pizza. I may just get some mozzarella, as with a margherita pizza, and put bacon on that.
Watching TV: looking at 3rd and last episode of 1992 series, When the Lion Roars, hosted by Patrick Stewart. About MGM. The first episode covers the whole history of the studio to that point. The next two retrace the 30s onward, so much of the material is repeated. I don’t mine. Better and more entertaining than I’d have expected. I am much taken by Kathryn Grayson singing a song to Tchaikovsky (“Serenade Waltz” ) in Anchors Aweigh. How this figures in the plot I don’t recall, but the setting is a movie studio, probably the same one where Gene Kelly dances with a cartoon mouse.
Yesterday I watched, once or maybe twice, the film Heist. Saw it here with Moki a year ago, didn’t pay much attention to it, but caught the Ricky Jay line, “Cute as a pailful of kittens.” At this point I was into the search engines. Written and directed by David Mamet. The gamine wife of Mamet, Rebecca Pidgeon, plays the disloyal wife of Gene Hackman.* The story is derivative, and contrived, but paced and edited so well you don’t notice or mind all the missing exposition. Superficial action keeps you rolling along fast enough that you don’t have much time to scratch your head.
After a few cups of coffee my mind raced back to one of my wheels-within-wheels theories about how life and astrology keep rhyming. The 30-month cycle, something I first observed about the late 1970s. A definite break and shift of gears every 30 months or so:
Jan 1979 – Aug 1981: the move, the change, another move, Touche Ross.
Aug 1981 – Jan 1984: apt share with Margie, to move-in with Karen; American Bystander; orthodontia; Ihlenfeld.
Jan 1984 – July 1986: Karen; surgeries; Chuckleheads; Carto and Spotlight; Bruce interim; move to Hoboken; quit Touche; end of orthodontia; American Express temping period.
July 1986 – Jan 1989: temping and lost; then a secy at Amex; grad courses at NYU; fading out of Cheads; Stimely; Instauration.
Jan 1989 – July 1991: the lezzie delusion/fiasco; back to Manhattan, then to San Diego; SDR; disastrous Mary Lang relationship.
July 1991 – Jan 1994: catastrophe at SDR; Laura relationship; travels to London and Bluehnbach; Gallery News; IHR coup.
Jan 1994 – July 1996: IRS lien; The Oldie; collapse of Gallery News; CTS/WXL; London fiasco.
July 1996 – Jan 1999: from London to Seattle; Punch; to New York and Moki; Citigroup; travels with Moki and then souring.
Jan 1999 – July 2001: Moki moodswings; move to Hoboken; a dead period I scarcely remember; lots of travel to England; real terminus of this period would 9/11 but nothing is exact.
Sept 2001 – Jan 2004: spending most of my time with Moki again, while keeping Hoboken apt; corporate design and illustration at Citigroup; return of K Peterson; Tinytown; fitness regimen, lose 25 lbs, running seriously.
Jan 2004 – July 2006: sort of a peak time in mood and career; join CPTC, do marathons and a million road and track races; get promoted at Citi.
July 2006 – Jan 2009: last happy days at Citi; happy times at CPTC; layoffs, economy crash, awful Obama time begins; two years of unemployment, on and off.
Jan 2009 – July 2011: unemployment, contractual work; Amex/Time Inc., finally hired in 2011; perturbed at CPTC, attempting triathlons.
July 2011 – Jan 2014: crash and burn at Amex/Time; initiate arbitration; temp work, unemployment, Double-R Ranch.
Jan 2014 – July 2016: Jared Taylor, AmRen, C-C; New York Forum; NPI conferences; shitlord era; Pepe the Frog; Donald Trump.
July 2016 – Jan 2019: Trump era, shit hits fan; Antifa/BLM craziness begins; “We did it, fam!”; we all get doxxed; Elizabeth Gray at NYAC; I begin again to write, as Meg Burns, for San Diego Reader; Splice Today; my mother dies intestate and money is probably stolen.
Jan 2019 – Jul 2021: overextended on credit, writing constantly; bad temp job; bad communications with Timmy; Census2020; Covid lockdowns and masks; I get my jabs; pleasant time with Moki, then Brian is ill and dies in August 2021.
July 2021 – Jan 2024: Brian dies, Moki dies, my sister dies, I am at a loss; mouse infestation, fruitfly infestation, rat infestation; many visits to 111 Centre Street, for T&L court and consumer debt.
The 30-month segments are fairly neat a consistent, except for a month or two overlap both ways; and so many varied things happen in some of them that it’s hard to find any commonality of coloration. The segments however seem to alternate in level of activity: from stability/stagnation to instability/movement/excitement.
Looking for something else (a Eurostar pamphlet with Nicki Slater illustration) I came across the sheaf of cosmetic and fashion cartoons I did for Tom back around 2000 or 2001. Scanned them in, posted some on Facebook. Also scanned and pieced together one of the Eurostar posters. I was thinking of printing up a bunch of postcards through Vistaprint. But they have a $100 minimum. I had the Diego Rivera painting reproduced a few years ago, but completely lost the stack of cards. Must have thrown them out inadvertently, yet surely I’d remember that? There were nearly 50 copies. I thought moving all the bookshelves and files around would uncover them, but no.
I did not run in the Sheehan Classic 5k in Asbury Park yesterday (of course) and did not even go to Shrewsbury to pick up my shirt and bib. I decided the $16 I’d already spent on a RT ticket (and the $40 race fee) were enough of a loss. If I took the train to Red Bank, then walked to Shrewsbury—very boring, I think—I’d be spending at least another $20 on lunch and then come home exhausted. And it was a rainy day. It rained most of this week. Yesterday dawned fair, but I not regret missing Asbury Park.
*Actually this was some Mamet cleverness that eluded me for a while. Recalling the film after a couple of viewings this time around, I realized that the actual denouement to the tale happens after the movie formally ends. All along the Hackman and Pidgeon and Jay characters have been running con jobs, acting out prepared scripts in front of Sam Rockwell and Danny DeVito. Pidgeon goes off with the Rockwell character to put him off guard, while Hackman makes off with the gold. But Hackman and Pidgeon surely end up together AFTER the film ends; they’ve once again tricked that dolt Rockwell.
