May 24th, early morning, and the weather says it’s 49º out, with “feels like” of 43º. A month ago it was getting warm, too warm, and the heat was still on, and I longed for the A/C to start. Well the A/C started last week on the 15th and almost immediately the weather turned cool. Cool and rainy. It rained most of this week and last, with temps in the 50s and now the 40s.
I spent yesterday morning cleaning out my fountain-pen nibs, soaking them in isopropyl. One of my old ArtPens has no barrel. The black-and-red retro fountain pen writes reasonably well with ink cartridge, the Rotring blue-and-black pen not so well. Later yesterday I put a bid on two used ArtPens on eBay. One has an EF nib and one has an M. Just like the two i have now. I find there are no new ArtPens being made, or have been for years. But there are similarly shaped “SmartPens” in different colors, apparently manufactured in the Far East and shipped from Singapore.
I lie on bed and watch The Sopranos. Now at S2 E9. This is the part of the series where Richie Aprile appears, moves in with Janice, after smashing up Beansie Gaeta twice and putting him permanently in a wheelchair. Tony’s crew make Richie fork over the money to build a wheelchair ramp, but that’s taking some time and I don’t think we ever see it. Meadow is applying to college, Carmela gets her nextdoor neighbor Jeannie Cusamano to ask her identical-twin sister (same actress) to write a letter of recommendation to Georgetown. I’m pretty sure that most respectable attorney does not, in spite of Meadow’s shining record and Carm’s ricotta and pineapple pie. Christopher started this season having some Chinese kid take the Series 7 for him, so Chris could get a sinecure in a brokerage office, but now he’s abandoned that plot arc, and is blowing safes and planning other capers. Two of his dumb colleagues from the brokers’ imagine that Richie’s dislike of Christopher means Chris should get hit, so they shoot Chris and now Chris is in ICU. Later on we find Richie’s son Richie Jr is sort of a fag, a competitor in ballroom dancing. In one of these episodes, maybe the next one, we start with Richie Jr and some girl waltzing all over the new house Richie and Janice have taken on in anticipation of their wedding.
Curious thing about watching the series again is that each time it’s as though they’ve created lots more episodes and plot arcs since I last viddied. My first viewing of the series, during its first run, was admittedly spotty, so seeing it again I wasn’t surprised there were thing I missed. Now I’m watching episodes for the third or likely the fourth time, and there are brand new subplots and characters.
Audible booted up again after a long pause. I may have to stifle it again soon. But I was happy to get the Keith McNally book, narrated by Richard E. Grant. His acting career may have floated away, but he’s a damned good narrator. Likewise with Jane Curtain, who marvelously read that Lee Israel one I got from the library, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Skipping and sleeping through this one, I seem to have missed the business about him having the sexual relationship with Alan Bennett that began when Keith was in his teens.
Brian Patrick McGuinness and the other poor souls on FB keep parroting the story that there was a picture of Congo body bags in amongst the news printouts that President Trump was flashing at the press conference in the White House with President Cyril Bongobongo of South Africa. This one Congo ringer is supposed to cancel all the legitimate stories of militant black politicians urging the genocide of whites in South Africa.
Grimm has a new pinwheel notion of a wage job for me, and I have signed on so far. Seems there is a Medicaid program where I can be his “carer” for 20-40 hours a month. Monday, Memorial Day if you can believe that, I am to go out to darkest Brooklyn for a one-day training session.
Friday the 16th, just over a week ago, I made it down to that E 16th Street DSS office just off Union Square. After waiting around a bit in a molded plastic chair, with a lot of orientals and nogs and deminogs, I was called over to Window 17, where a nice elderly colored woman took my ID and gave me a temporary EBT card. It had $808 in food credits on it, and $21 in cash. The cash can be used for non-food necessities, I think. Or utilities. After this I intended to go to Wegman’s and try to use the card there. Instead I went to the Trader Joe’s on 14th St. Spent a whopping $18 on honey, maple syrup, chicken thighs, and frozen broccoli. Over the next few days I hit Target, Trader Joe’s on Bway and 72nd, and Whole Foods. I spent $180 total, including $16 for a rib steak, and maybe $30 on more honey. It’s been my intention to spend much of this free-food-money on red meat, canned goods, produce, and locally grown honey. I have three bottles of honey from NYS and PA in the cupboard now. Most of the honey you see on grocery shelves, especially the the honey in little honey-bear bottles, is a mélange of stuff from Brazil, Argentina, Canada, maybe America. Fuck that shit.
What none of these places seem to have is Familia Müsli. Does Fairway carry it? That’s another staple that should be stocked up on. Also Wolf’s Chili if we can find it anywhere. (ADDENDUM: You can order the Muesli from Amazon. But not EBT there.)
Yesterday I ate a thin Wagyu steak in the morning, from Wegman’s, and a thick rib steak at night, from Trader Joe’s. Didn’t eat much else yesterday, other than two very nice baked potatoes, one baked at 450º, the other mikeywaved.
Not drinking any real booze lately. Went through that liter of Vesica two weekends ago, and a pint of Platinum a few days later. In the past week, no alcohol at all except a Lagunitas 9% IPA last night and I think a Resin a week ago. The only Resin left at Morton Williams.
Send two checks to Jeffries Morris Inc. yesterday. They should get them for deposit by Tuesday. I have to monitor all my accounts to make sure they can go through. I sent a check for $1200 from the WF acct, and $688 from the Citi acct. This will cover the $1877+ owed for the rollback and freeze of rent by SCRIE, which went through four weeks ago. (During that glorious week when I saw T&L court on Monday, had the law intern Rebecca urge me to file for SCRIE and look into that ERAP application, and met KP at St Luke’s/Mt Sinai up near Columbia on a Tuesday night to exit him safely, then had that little Italian dinner near his flat by Tompkins Square. Then on Wednesday-Saturday worked the Expo for the half marathon, and set up and closed down the Festival in Prospect Park for Sunday. On account of which I netted over $700 in Gusto, with another $300 coming in yesterday. However, I have not worked for nruns in the past two weeks, back-to-back Gov Is races two weekends ago, and will not have anything from them for another month. In fact, I am not booked for any race at all in the future. Nruns is closed for a week and the next race is June 17, with two races in July. Slim pickings there and I will need this Grimm carer job very badly if it comes through.)
I also cashed out most of my remaining crypto yesterday, about $275 to be deposited at USAA when it clears. At present I have about $990 in WF and $1100 in Citi, so I’ll need to do careful transfers by cash and mobile this weekend. For ultra-emergencies, I still have about £800 at HSBC ($1000) to lean on. After that, zilch. Except SS on June 3rd. I can’t see spending that SS check on the rent; at best I’ll send them $1000 to keep them happy and hope the SS adjustment and DSS request comes though later in the month. I have T&L court on the morning of June 4th; I’ll wait for that.
I believe I’m squared away with DSS for emergency $6000 request for the rent. A long tearful screaming I’m-going-to-commit-suicide call to the do-nothing customer service office at SSA HQ on Tuesday told me my recompute was deadlined now for June 20.
After the Union Square outing to DSS and Trader Joe’s a week ago, I found the lease succession letter, the original, a copy of which I had used to get the SCRIE. The original seemed to have gone walkabout but it turned up in a pile of SS envelopes relating the $255 lump-sum payment last month. So I made yet another photocopy and filed the original away with the Jeffries Morris and Belkin correspondence from last year. Another thing I noticed in this pile as that the lump-sum notice said I had declined SSI. Now, I should really have applied for SSI. I could get as much as another $900+ per month. So I filed an app online, but am not sure that they got it.
Must do some CC writing for nickels and dimes. Do a review of Celine’s Londres. Skim through the French. The thing is vast and wobbly. I have it on Kindle.
A 1972 Joseph Losey film with Alain Delon. WHY HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS?
And while it is still May, get out “The Day They Shot George Orwell.” Begin with the May 1960 stories about Ramon Mercader, alias something else. I came across these while thumbing through the H-T for comic strips. According to the 1960 stories, his name was Jacques Monard. Freed from Mexico City prison, now in Havana, about to sail to Europe with the help of the Czech embassy. (“Frank Jacson” as he presented himself to Trotsky, pretending to be a fan and a comrade, coming with letters of introduction from New York. The murder of Trotsky was amazingly intricate, superbly planned, brilliantly executed. It should be noted that there had been another attempt on Trotsky’s life during Jacson’s series of visits, and yet Jacson/Mercader still got in to see Trotsky because by this time Trotsky and his guards trusted him. When arrested, Jacson revealed his name to be Jacques Monard, from Belgium. Perfectly plausible, as Mercader was raised mostly in France and had connections there in and in Belgium through his Stalinist network.)
Mercader/Monard/Jacson, son of a wealthy Barcelona textile manufacturer and a spoiled pro-Bolshevik mother, found himself back in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, in which his mother was likewise a Red partisan. Mercader pulled the strings for the local NKVD network. One of his lieutenants was a British Jew named David “Crooks”, and Crooks was tasked with with keeping tabs on Eric Blair and his POUM friends and his wife. His gang rounded up Orwell’s friend with the wirerim glasses, what was his name? Bopp? Kopp? Rapp? One of those suggested as the model for O’Brien though of course he was not. He may have slept with Eileen or hit on her while Orwell was away or in hospital.
The other day I took myself down to Union Square again and walked down to Blick’s, which gobbled up the Utrecht art supplies shop in the area. Went mainly to buy some Sculpey. I find there are different levels. Premo, which is supposed to be artist-grade, is harder, costs a little more, bakes a little longer; and the Sculpey III. I bought one black and one white Premo. I wanted the Sculpey to finish the repair on the College Inn mug that fell and smashed into many pieces when I was doing the dishes 2-3 weeks ago. I did not gather up all the pieces, apparently. Many holes in this jigsaw puzzle. First used Gorilla Glue but that expanded into thick mortar when dry, and gave the mug a real jerry-built look. Sculpey liquid and now the Premo has filled in most of the gaps. And then we have the Tate Modern cup from the Picasso/Matisse exhibition in 2002. It lost its handle 20 years ago. Now it has another, a funny, Goudi-looking thing.
I should give them both a wipe. Neither of these will ever be used for coffee or tea, of course. These are pen-and-pencil-holder mugs forever. The 2005 Falmouth Road Race mug, black, worked as a caddy for nearly 20 years and now will be returned to its proper place in the cupboard.
Funny, there were originally two of those. Because Moki got one as well, because I signed him up for it back in 2005 when we were staying at Regina’s, ha ha ha. And then the following year I had another mug, similar, but white I think. They must have been smashed in time, like most of our terracotta mugs. My 2013 Falmouth mug is much nicer, but I am not proud of that race at all.
Before going down to Wegman’s the other day, I got around to returning the two last oustanding books to the library. These have been out since that period in March when I did 3 pieces for CC. One is The Ambassador (Susan Ronald twice tells the fake story about Hyde Park) and a bio of Lawrence Tierney I never opened.
Today I run, or at least walk, for a good 5 or six miles. In CP? Probably. In the 50s all day. Good running weather. And write. And maybe try to draw a little bit, to loosen up the hand for the comics. And perhaps even color the hair. Picked up some Light Brown shade of L’Oreal Excellence last night.
