IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, REVIVE THIS THREAD

I dunno about Joe, but I would have to answer that by saying watching old reruns of some idiot reality TV show.

I adore this place, but I have to say I've had some insanely boring nights refreshing the "New Posts" list over and over again..... nights when not many people are posting, but I can't quite seem to give up on the place and go read a book or something. Those are the worst.

Yup.

I feel like I wasted a whole night and have no one to blame but myself.....

Yup.

OK, I should take this thread as a sign and log off right now ... cause I seem to have been having one of those nights for almost two hours now.

Aw, see ya.......

Don't know why but they won't even let him sign back up. I thought it was his choice to go, but now they won't let him back in. Believe me, there have been times he has REALLY wanted to.

I won't give him my password for fear of him posting something under my name when he comes in at 2 in the morning and has had a bit to drink.

He sends ya'll hugs!

Hugs back to him.....

Hugs to bpb from me too.



My most viscerally annoyingly boring two hours were when I wanted to rise up and kill the movie theater screen when I watched Fellini's Satyricon. My other boringest hours were watching some small theater plays (bear in mind that I have watched hundreds, or it seems like hundreds). In both cases, there were social constraints for my staying and watching, vis a vis disturbing the whole audience while my night blind self waltzed out lurching into other people in their seats and then trying to go straight up the aisle to the red velvet curtained door or red velvet curtain equivalent and out into air.

Some of this has to do with being exhausted from work before going to these things. I remember feeling battered by a Tom Stoppard play when I couldn't stay awake, and I like Stoppard. Ooooooooh, moan, stop already with the quips.

The most boring night

How close is being bored to being depressed? This was a long time ago.

My first wife had run off with my best friend and left me with two children under the age of three. I was going to the University of Tulsa full time on the GI Bill and painting apartments (25.00 for a one bedroom) to make grocery money or playing guitar Friday nights at O'Henry's (a good meal and eighty dollars plus tips). Most of my money went to babysitters or daycare, I worked seven days a week at the television station (6:45am to 9:00am Monday thru Friday) then off to school till 3:30pm and, incredibly it seems now, 6:30am to 10:45 PM Saturdays and 6:30 am to 5:pM on Sundays.

The kids and I were alright, we read stories every night after the baths and we sang songs, then they went to sleep and I would stay up and study.

I had a 3.8 in my classes and won a couple of scholarships and one internship in my second year.

I was very lonely. My job at the station was in audio, I was alone in a booth and only had to come alive for a few intense moments on the half hour. I went to class every day but I was the oldest (at 24) person in most of my classes except for the ones that a matronly woman attended. I made friends but the friendship seemed to evaporate at the edge of the campus.

Most nights I studied until ten then turned on the news before sleeping, that is, if I could sleep. Most nights I would lay in bed looking out the window at the street, counting cars to see how many would pass before I dozed off.

I tell you all this so that you will understand how it was on the night I was the most bored in my life. It had been a bad week. I was feeling a cold coming on and had passed up two chances to paint apartments for cash and I was more than broke, I was counting nickels to buy gas. It was a Sunday and I wasn't looking forward to starting the whole thing over when the phone rang. My phone never rang.

Answering it was just another disappointment, it was the operator with a collect call from my sister-in-law for my missing wife. I refused the charges and said out loud that she should call directory assistance in F________, Indiana. I hung up. Then it occurred to me that maybe I should call directory assistance in F___________, Indiana. I did. I gave my wife's name to the operator. She was a bubbly girl and told me the information, (remember how operators used to actually tell you the number to call??) I hung up.

And now, here's the thing. I already had a way to get ahold of my wandering wife, I didn't need the number, but what had struck me was how nice the operator had been, how sweet she had sounded. So I started to try and think of other people I could call about, I remembered an Air Force buddy still lived down in Texas. The operator on that call took nearly two minutes to tell me that there was no longer a listing for M_____ C_________. She wasn't as nice as the Indiana girl but she was a lot nicer than the one in Massachusetts when I asked about a cousin of mine. Trying to stretch the conversation I pretended not to know his address and then later that I had remembered it. She was not amused, maybe she was having the bad kind of night I was having.

I even called Nova Scotia. That's right. I had a couple of guys I knew who had gone up there to go to school (and avoid the war) and that operator was efficient and friendly and even asked about the weather in Oklahoma.

When I looked at the clock it said 1:45 am, I had spent more than three hours phoning around the country just to hear a few friendly voices. I had to be up in four hours to start my week. I looked out the window for a long time but no cars came down the street.

My life was like that for about another year.

Joe(If I painted the ceilings, I got an extra ten dollars)Nation

Joe, I swear I'm gonna meet you one day in person just so I can hear your stories through your own voice rather than just the one I have made up for you.

Personally, I think depression and boredom are twin cousins. Not being able to think of anything I was interested in reading at Borders last night was very depressing. Made me that much more aware of how uninterested in much of anything I am of late.

Wish I had known to make a few phone calls.

s (you can still can an operator if you mumble) quinney

And here I was whining about Satyricon.

You paint a complete picture, Joe. I have surely been there.

Joe...apropos of whatever...did you really see the Unicorn Tapestries?

And you too, Squinney. I do relate to your bleak Borders visit.

Joe. Wow.

Sometimes I forget that on this site where there's a whole bunch of true crap (much of it mine), there's also some true greatness.

Thanks for the reminder.

Wow, Joe, hats off!

They got phones?! I didn't think even Oldus Scotia had them yet!

Words fail me.........

Panzade wrote:



Yes. And when you get your skinny ass up here to God's country, I'll take you to see them. They are hanging in the Cloisters Museum which is about a mile from where I presently sit.





There's two ways to get there. Trudge up the long hill, turn right and meander throughout the flower gardens of Fort Tryon Park, climb the stairs to see the view of the Hudson and then walk a short way to the museum's entrance. Or go up the elevator and wait for the M4 bus, it takes you right to the door, but you miss the views of the river.

The The Unicorn Tapestries, which the first two times I was at the museum I scanned as ever tourist does --ahmm, very nice, (yawn)-- are huge pieces with a complex story to tell.

This thought always strikes me as I walk around amidst the medieval art:
they made all this by hand, no cordless drills, no chippers, no power planes, measurement by thumb, hand and limb and level by the sight of your eye. These suits of armor, these coffins, this lacelike crown of gold and jewels, all made without the sound of a motor. There is something purer about it than what we do today.

I was talking with a sculptor yesterday, he was looking for some mini-spikes, a smaller version of the ten inch kind of thing one puts railroad ties down with. These needed to be about the size they probably used to crucify the Christ, three and half inches long with a knobby top. I asked him why he didn't make them himself for his sculpture. He asked me if I thought maybe a garden supply might have something.

Joe(Yes, and see if they have any sculptures for sale while you're at it.)Nation

Aw, Joe..