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Aladdin bro:
https://youtu.be/VcBllhVj1eA
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Is Billy Joel talented or what?
Better listen again
https://youtu.be/hCuMWrfXG4E
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Interesting: Israel bombs Iranian targets with the F35
https://youtu.be/Zs1J4VFZv_o
Billy Joel January 2017:
https://youtu.be/BEXQaxUjesE
Agree with Billy on his number one choice but not the other four for his top five. But anyway they're his songs. Strange choices though for a top five. I'd pick his number one plus uptown girl (my favorite) ... The Stranger
https://youtu.be/bnlvPoDU5LY
We didn't start the fire:
https://youtu.be/eFTLKWw542g
Will probably just leave it at three songs and just blog about my brief days in NYC. As mentioned earlier, I did a bunch of carpentry work with some first generation Italian American guy David, with the same birthday as me... A typical day... David wants to listen to local pop music radio which is playing 50 cent candy shop on high rotation. White Americans are obsessed with 50 cent like he can solve all their entertainment needs. The NY times is publishing lengthy articles about his mansion presumably featured in the candy shop video clip. David has beautiful tiles on this day, they're about a foot square and look quality. Looking back now they remind me of a gypsy from East coast Spain I met transitioning to southern France like six years ago, he was talking about stonemasonry and the effect of 9/11 on the Levante's stone exports. Back in NYC in 2005 it was only four years after 9/11 where I first visited NYC and the police are everywhere using an odd technique of ramping up their sirens for a few seconds as if that's going to scare criminals away. One day I come to work in army pants and David salutes me at Home Depot, he wants to play racquetball. The general thing is he likes yelling at me like a nutjob for hours. He's going to get his big break then because one day I cover one of his client's walls in 'spermicide' (his nickname for pre paint primer)… I have failed to follow his instructions to remove all wallpaper first. Go ahead bitch, you like screaming. Go crazy. No doubt my subconscious is desperate to recreate some conditions where I can get yelled at. About three years previously one of my language students in Paris was telling me how her boss, an important French movie producer was constantly screaming at her. Back to the day of the beautiful tiles and 50 cent on high rotation. David is calm and in a good mood, his work looks professional, I'm not a professional tradesman myself but somehow I can appreciate his tiles are flat and even and we'll spaced. I take a step, 'are you fucking insane?' David's good mood goes out the proverbial window. Fudge, he's got a point, why the hell did I step on his tile he just laid, I guess I assumed it was dry. He is pissed again. No time to tell him that old joke, why are men like tiles? Because you only need to lay them once before you can walk all over them, not that that would have occurred to me in those days because I've been travelling so long I barely ever think or remember much, maybe just read a book, listen to music. At a library in Queens or somewhere a white male voice begins arguing with a sassy self empowered black female voice, 'kiss my ass!' she angrily tells him. I'm guessing she works at the library and the white guy is a customer? David is scared of African Americans. We're at a ghetto place and I ask someone the time or directions. David wouldn't do that, coz he's nervous African Americans are dangerous.
Must I fear what others fear? What nonsense!
Other people are contented, enjoying the sacrificial feast of the ox.
In spring some go to the park, and climb the terrace,
But I alone am drifting not knowing where I am.
Like a new-born babe before it learns to smile,
I am alone, without a place to go.
What a great philosopher, I wish I knew him back then. I'm very happy to be alone without a woman. My old friend Colleen the new Yorker that I got to first base with in Spain when we were 16 is lurking around town, we meet up occasionally, one of her acquaintances even asks outright at an AA meeting why I don't marry her. She was certainly always an attractive woman, captain of her high school cheerleading squad, a thespian, we spent more time together in Spain when we were 20. We love each other. Too busy for Ben, too American, too much. We're good friends though, always have been. These new Yorkers are busy crowded people, how overbearing, all those people. Much nicer to live in a little town like Richmond. I'm at work at Lever House restaurant in Manhattan. Our mission is to feed the Uber wealthy expense account financiers that manage people's 401ks and the like. I pick a receipt off the floor: $25 for a chocolate mousse. We have a $7000 bottle of wine. Despite the lowly position of dishwasher I am eating such expensive leftovers I have never eaten such high quality food before, somehow I doubt David and Colleen or my buddy from Richmond could eat such high quality food day after day. We're in our locker room. We all wear work supplied uniforms: checked pants that fit comfortably and a clean white top. The chefs are surgical in their work. The head chef calls the orders, noone sits in the cramped kitchen. I catch up with David for more yelling perhaps, I'm kneeing leftover scraps of wood we need broken down, 'i like your style,' a rare complement from David. I'm not spending much time with him coz of the job at Lever House. What is time? What's an eternity? Is time even real? What's the difference between two weeks and two years in a dream? We're all getting older and stuck in our states. I still haven't been left abandoned in the Arizona desert after some kids steal my car. My friend Dorothy will visit me in that distant eternity in the desert in Sedona. But it's an unknown unknown as Rumsfeld would say, in those New York days. It turns out she's married to Nick nolte the movie star but she never tells me to my face. Maybe their marriage is open. Maybe all Hollywood marriages are open. Dorothy and I go out dancing, it's Manhattan, the place is gigantic, Manhattan. Everyone is learning how to beebop dance. The teacher is friendly. New Yorkers are kind. In the poorer areas with higher crime a strategy is used at the subway station and similar like public concourses... Blaring propaganda like public announcements over and over. My oasis in all this is agreeable, 67-76 Dartmouth Rd Queens Forest Hills. Some houses are luxurious with thick velvety green grass. Happy people to have such pretty homes. One day my roommate who owns the house gives me a ride over what I guess is the Brooklyn bridge into Manhattan on his motorcycle. It's a little scary riding behind him. Back in the locker room I get dressed at Lever House. Mallory the Virginian uses this room too or it's not unisex? I can't remember. She's very pretty. White girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, a Virginian, very likeable. I pretend to be Nick from Family Ties (the TV show) and holler Mallory at her like on the tv show. She laughs and says she wants to go to Australia. How long am I there? A month or two? Eric the assistant manager walks into my area. Erico! I yell with obnoxious Australian bombast. 'Erica's a girl's name!' he snarls back at me angrily. Mental note: do not act with obnoxious Australian bombast. How long am I there one or two months? What a great world. What a great place to be. If you like talking Spanish, plenty of hispano-parlantes too.
50 cent is a bad influence and he knows it
https://youtu.be/SRcnnId15BA
My plane flies over somewhere? Is it Minnesota. The busy American economy is booming below as evinced by the cars zooming beneath, ant-like on the busy roads. At the airport in NYC, is it La Guardia? A spotter for Homeland Security is the last line of defense from immersing freely into the great American society. She's young like 25 and handsome, or comely, if you will. 'where are you coming from?' she asks me. 'china,' I tell her. 'what were you doing there?' she asks me, this is her job. 'teaching English language', I tell her. I'm not expecting her to ask me to a movie or a dance so barely stop to entertain her.
'when did you fly in?' my friend's father asks me. He was a lawyer for the u.s. army and kind of scary looking as I last remembered him during the fiery days immediately after September 11 (2001). 'march fourteen,' I tell him simply (referring to the day at La Guardia if it wasn't JFK). It's my son's birthday but he won't be born for another eight years. It's destiny. He's conceived on July 4th the year before but it's so crazy coz so is his sister and she's not born until February almost two years later. That's technology that we don't even know about in 2005, least I don't. I sit on the porch of 1005 Grove Ave by VCU after some weeks in NYC after finding my home in Forest Hills. A pretty 19 year old looking girl comes along. I'm 28 so she doesn't look too young for me, just attractive. 'what are you doing sitting there?' she asks me. 'well I used to live in this building four years ago so now I'm revisiting my old home,' I tell her. She likes that. We bring the bicycle I brought with me into her apartment. Her apartment is downstairs but my home in September/October/November 2001 was upstairs and immediately above the porch this Minnesotan girl just invited me off. There are only two levels with maybe ten rooms on each level. Upstairs in 2001 it was a beautiful home, I would even say a majestic paradise. I was basically married for the three months there to a beautiful woman. Certainly an exotic woman, a Korean American. I start shivering, downstairs in the Minnesotan 19 year old looking girl's room we are listening to music and talking. I ask her if she wants to make out. 'i like to get to know people more before I do that,' she says. I'll get a little peck on the lips goodbye and won't see her again, I can stop shivering. It's almost summer and my buddy the army lawyer's son says to go to his brother's graduation. Four and a half years earlier upstairs the same buddy is drunk one day visiting me and my three month wife and drops ajar of mayonnaise on the floor, it stains the floor. Another day upstairs I'm 25 and smelling of bleach from cleaning houses in Richmond Virginia. My three month wife Katherine isn't home. I take my soaked Adidas shoes off and leave them on the window sill to dry. My clothes smell of bleach. I grab a ginger beer can from the fridge and turn on the TV. Everything is 9/11 terrorist attack. The first non 9/11 story on primetime free to air after the attacks is about my boss' uncle that dies scuba diving in Belize. Billy even turns up to work in his suit with Carol his wife to check on me and George, on their way to the funeral. Katherine walks in in a mini skirt and black stockings at 1005 Grove Ave. I'm watching 9/11 TV and pretend not to notice but I notice. Maybe not the funeral day I can't remember.
A few days before the attacks I'm waiting tables at Picolas Italian eatery walking distance from 1005 Grove. Some autistic kids pile in with at least one carer. I look at them and see they are heavily autistic. I go to grab them plates in my Adidas shoes pre-bleaching and realize they will notice differences in colors of the plates. I can choose all the same colored plates but too tedious. I lay the plates down and one extremely autistic looking 17 year old looking kid immediately comments on the plates not all being the same color. What a surprise.
More great music!
https://youtu.be/w2Ov5jzm3j8
https://youtu.be/2GA3a15xF0c
Bam! A little dog running full pelt slams full steam into my head as I lie on the grass in central park near an organized but somewhat informal baseball or softball game. Bird watchers carry binoculars. The people love the park. It's a day off work at Lever House. Bam! I slam my head dangerously hard accidentally against a protruding corner as I pull the flooring mats back for cleaning. A horny bump will quickly build up lasting days on my forehead. The dedicated coffee barista, is that his role? At Lever House says he's from Seattle. He's a little younger than me at around 24 years old and the look in his eyes seems to agree with his statement of being from a frequently rainy place, like a Londoner. Boom I get head butted in the face by my brother, sock a punch in the eye, another headbutt, a punch. Each attack is normally just one punch at a time or just one headbutt, the headbutts often accompanied with an angry bout of screaming. It goes on for years and years, like ten. What is this guy so angry about? I hear stories about physical abuse against him from my father but I never see any physical violence much against my brother. I'll only ever stand up to retaliate against him one time. I'm so angry I'm like 16 and listening to Rage Against the Machine. He comes home from swimming with our sister Raquel from the local pools nearby my mom's house my kids and I were swimming at last year. Just keep away from Ben when he's in a bad mood like that she tells our brother but he's always been a hostile bully thug utterly shameless about bullying me and this advice seems ludicrous to him. I've said something he perceives as disrespectful and now he's coming back to shamelessly bully me like a total coward. I've just finished reading a Bryce Courtney book about boxing no doubt and apply all kinds of knowledge in a skilful three punch combo that knocks my brother's tooth out. He's going to be angry. I depart and start moving out to barricade myself into a room. He swiftly knocks it down and starts punching me in the scalp as I block more punches which I have been an expert at, keeping my face clear of his invasive fist over the years. That will be the last beating. He shells out a couple of thousand for a brand new tooth and we never talk about it again. He never wants to hit me again after that.
'Just watch what I'm doing Ben, watch me,' Billy says. It's like a week after 9/11, a shaky looking fighter jets buzzes overhead one day but there's no change in town with more police or national guard around. I do as Billy says and watch the pressure washing wand he's skilfully wielding methodically blast built up moss from the wooden tiles commonly found on roofs in Virginia they call cedar shake. I tried doing it myself one day on Billy's say so but the pressure of the wand and the slippery roof and difficulty of standing let alone walking on a slopey roof with uncomfortable spikey cleats makes it an impossible option. 'okay just stop', Billy says after I try one time, I'm about to fall off the roof and break my neck if he doesn't tell me to stop, what else is there to do?
'just take him home,' Billy tells my girlfriend or three month wife Katherine. There's a huge party at Billy's, he must be a popular guy, he's got a great dad and family. He and Carol haven't tied the knot having kids but they're a comfortable looking couple. I'm so drunk at the party and stoned I can't talk to anyone. There's no way I can avoid smoking pot and getting drunk at this point even just based on how incredibly shitty people my father and brother were. I'd even say we're all rotten bastards in my family but I'd easily rate my sister Raquel and I as the best there.
It's 1999 and my sister Raquel has just suicided like two months earlier. I can't believe it. I have so much build up of marijuana in my body and it's not from self medicating due to shock but just a bad habit. I've been smoking for months like a few grams a week when I get a voicemail on May 23rd like a week after my 23rd birthday. I've never heard him sounding so panicky. He's saying my sister's very ill, that's ridiculous. I could immediately tell she must have suicided but the news is very jarring to say the least. Thank God there's insanity for cases of trauma and shock. I'll get to indulge in a truckload of it in Melbourne as I move around homeless and penniless with no income.
https://youtu.be/-N4jf6rtyuw
ZiWei looks out of her dark eyes and says something in her husky sounding seven year old voice. Does she always have a sore throat? Her voice always seems to have a husky quality. She grabs a marker and starts drawing. In a month or so I'll fly away and land in la Guardia or JFK and meet the Homeland Security lady with the pretty face and slim body and professional looking American Homeland Security jacket with the badge. It's been over a year in China already and I feel very comfortable and at peace. I watch an episode of David Letterman and some MTV and go back downstairs for more classes with the ten or so kids my Canadian buddy in Asia jokingly refers to as my disciples. Well I can't fault these Chinese people for hospitality and who knew in those days, like January 2005, in the mild Guangzhou winter, that they'd shortly end up having more cars than there are Americans. I think China's great, they'll end up pulling Africa out of poverty. If only they could stop ripping people's organs out of their bodies and torturing political prisoners. Why do they have to lie about that stuff all the time?
Another seven year old Jenny and I go walk to the nearby shop to buy bananas for the kids, including ZiWei. It's a regular ritual.
'oh it's like that?' the ICE Agent Guerrero ,(Spanish for warrior) starts yelling at me in the Homeland Security penns in LA after I get a little sassy with him. It's 2010 and my definitive last time in America. I'll be shuffled off to Alvarez for processing. How I know the friendly ICE agent's name is Alvarez is he says, 'i must have a lot of of family in Australia,' and when I respond with a quizzical stare he opens his jacket a little to show his Homeland Security nametag: Alvarez. Thank God the airline and Homeland Security turn out to be so helpful I'm able to reroute my three week holiday to Auckland where I catch up with an old friend and become acquainted with her husband and two kids. Although I had a strong case to sue Homeland Security for practically inviting me to America with a misleading electronic pre flight security check affirming I was free to travel to America, plus Guerrero intimidating me, I wouldn't bother. They had their own case to make and legal action is always time consuming.
'ha, ha, ha, ha, ha' my father giggles like a girl as he plays his internet card games with his buddies in the broad Spanish speaking world including Mexico. God I hate him. A phone call comes in saying grandma has just died (of old age). I'd just seen her a few brief months beforehand in her favorite town Madrid. I loved her. She was a hard working middle class lady and my father would waste little time squandering the 90 thousand euro inheritance she left her daughter foolishly. He'd never think about giving any of it to his children who he despised and even magic beans would be better. It seems three quarters or more of the smelly sweat exuding from his giggling pores are product of hell. On TV like a year after 9/11 George Bush is clamoring to rid the world of sadistic Saddam Hu(not)sein. Good for him (George Bush). Tyrants suck.
'So do you have any regrets about any of the people you shot dead?' I ask my fellow check out 'chick' in picturesque Sedona Arizona in summer 2006. He'd just spent at least one tour in Iraq and looked like a hero. I'm about eight years his senior having just turned thirty. A similar age difference my brother and I shared. 'No, screw that, bitches, I was happy to gun them down, teenagers with AK47s, to hell with them.' We ride over to the U.S. army recruitment office with his gun in a pouch on the dashboard as per Arizona's open carry in vehicle laws for firearms. After a long wait in the car with my hero buddy's gun which it never occurs to me to to even touch and which I don't even think about, or maybe he takes it with him I can't remember, my buddy returns crestfallen. He says the u.s. army has rejected his petition for a third or fourth tour in Iraq on psychological health grounds. It's hard for me to believe a recruiter for the army could say no to this guy on those grounds. More likely someone in the chain of command wants the guy to enjoy his health seemed more believable. 'I don't care who you are as long as you can make this country go forward.' what a hero, I salute that guy.
Some months after saying goodbye to my hero checkout chick buddy....
'Ben's a liability!' my Californian buddy from Bulgaria vociferously whines on the drive back to LA after a shocking Saturday night where I get so drunk and stoned in San Francisco I end up being herded around zombie like wasted. 'You looked like an animal,' Billy complains. Friday night the day before i was the 'master' according to Billy now I'm a liability that looked like an animal that he 'never wants to see again'. How the mighty have fallen. In just one day.
'Checkout time,' the nigger John D predictably proclaims after another movie death on the big screen back 'home' after the trip to San Francisco with Billy and his six or seven buddies. Home being a homeless shelter with 100 or so niggers, many lifelong ex-cons that are accustomed to group living from jail and, like me, find the homeless shelter comfortable (although smelly).
'Good job Ben, dad just suicided,' my brother emails me less than eighteen months after John D grimly calls 'checkout time', at the shelter after another movie death. My brother is saying it like it's my fault.
'yeah yeah mister.... Sweet,' I say to Californian Billy's father who is a policeman around LA. He laughs hearing me say his surname like that, talking to him from my cave in Sedona where I sleep nights with a big stump or faggot next to me at nights to fight any dangerous coyotes (not people smugglers but the actual animal). I have to confirm some Californian point of law with Billy's dad (since conveniently who better to ask than a policeman).
'pack your bags you're moving out,' the serious African American says at the house in Wilton street Hollywood. I've broken a house rule in the charity house I'm staying at in Hollywood by breaking curfew. There's no arguing with the man and I grab my bag and leave.
In conclusion: Sasha Baron Cohen is an accomplished comedian. Some would say hit and miss, others genius, still others obnoxious and dopey. Whatever your position, we might consider Bruno his greatest movie ever and this scene from Bruno the best ever. Yes I was on my school debating team and yes I would have made a great trial lawyer. End of post.
Bruno:
https://youtu.be/_FE7V_8CgmQ
