My 16 GB iPod

I bought this second iPod in October 2010. I listen to it from 10 pm until 2:30 every night. Sometimes I set it to shuffle Jimi Hendrix only after 2 am. I don't know how much longer I am going to be able to do that but it makes me feel great to be alive. I set it on full blast, Hendrix's guitar sounds amazing.

Allman Brothers Band - At Fillmore East

The Beatles - Rubber Soul, "I've Just Seen a Face"

Bob Dylan - Another Side of Bob Dylan, Avignon, "Goin' to Acapulco", Back in the Trap, Before the Flood, Biograph, Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks (New York unreleased version), Bob Dylan, Greatest Hits Volume 2 (the newly recorded side with Happy Traum), Tell Tale Signs, The Bootleg Series 1-3, Bringing it all Back Home, "Thief on the Cross" (from A Child's Balloon), Christmas in the Heart, Desire, Down in the Groove, Dylan/Cash sessions, Empire Burlesque, Freewheelin', The Gaslight Tapes, Good as I Been to You, Hard Rain, Infidels, John Wesley Harding, Knocked Out Loaded, The Rolling Thunder Revue, Love and Theft, "Love Sick" (single), Masked and Anonymous, Modern Times, MTV Unplugged, Nashville Skyline, New Morning, Oh Mercy, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Peco's Blues, Planet Waves, Real Live, Rock Solid, "Angel Flying too Close to the Ground", Royal Albert Hall Concert, Saved, Self-Portrait, Seville Spain 91, Shot of Love, Slow Train Coming, Solid Rock, Street Legal, Supper Club, Thin Wild Mercury Music, "Things Have Changed" (single), Time Out of Mind, The Times They Are a-Changing, Together Through Life, Under the Red Sky, the unreleased versions of "Hurricane" and "Carribean Wind", the outtakes from MTV Unplugged (called Unplugged/Half Cut), World Gone Wrong, Dylan and the Dead

Bob Marley - Exodus

Chet Baker - Albert's House, Baby Breeze, Baker's Holiday, the Best of Chet Baker Sings, Blues for a Reason, Carnegie Hall Concert, Chet, CB in Milan, CB in Tokyo, Chet's Choice, Deep in a Dream, Diane, Embraceable You, In Paris - Barclay Sessions, The Incredible Chet Baker Plays and Sings, The Italian Sessions, The James Dean Story, "Blue Jean Blues" (from Jazz in the Movies), The Last Great Concert, Live at Ronnie Scott's, Live in Bologna 1985, The Most Important Jazz Album of 1964/65, No Problem, Peace, Playboys, Plays the Best of Lerner and Lowe, The Route, Sentimental Walk in Paris, She Was too Good to Me, Silent Nights, Someday My Prince Will Come, Stairway to the Stars, the Stockholm Concerts, Strollin', The Touch of Your Lips, Why Shouldn't You Cry

Chicago - The Chicago Transit Authority

Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Suzie Q", "I Put a Spell On You", "Green River", "Commotion", "Tombstone Shadow", "Cross-Tie Walker"

Dave Brubeck - Dave Digs Disney

David Bowie - "Sweet Thing", "Stay", Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture

Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms - downloaded from iTunes

Elton John - "Gray Seal", "Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)"

Eric Clapton - Layla & Assorted Love Songs, "Please Be With Me", There's One in Every Crowd

Frank Zappa - Just Another Band From L.A., "We're Turning Again", You Can't Do That Onstage Anymore Volume 3, "Mom and Dad"

George Harrison - "All Those Years Ago"

Grateful Dead - Dicks Picks Vol. 22 (Lake Tahoe), Dozin' at the Knick, The Grateful Dead Movie, Ladies and Gentleman the Grateful Dead Fillmore East April 1971, Road Trips Vol. 2 No. 3 The Wall of Sound, Road Trips Vol. 3 No. 3 Fillmore East May 1970, "Let it Rock"

Husker Du - Flip Your Wig, Warehouse: Songs and Stories

Ian Anderson - Divinities: Twelve Dances with God, The Secret Language of Birds

Jefferson Airplane - The Woodstock Experience

Jerry Garcia, After Midnight - Keen College, Don't Let Go, Legion of Mary

Jethro Tull - A, Aqualung, Broadsword and the Beast, Bursting Out, Crest of a Knave, The Jethro Tull Christmas Album, Living in the Past, Minstrel in the Gallery, Rock Island, Songs from the Wood, Stormwatch, Too Old to Rock and Roll too Young to Die, Warchild, "Dharma For One" (This Was)

Jimi Hendrix - Live at Monterey, Live at Woodstock, "Little Wing", "Bold as Love"

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III

Little Feat - Under the Radar - downloaded from iTunes

Lou Reed - Live: Take No Prisoners

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Gold and Platinum

Madonna - American Life, Confessions on a Dance Floor

Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris - Real Live Roadrunning

Mary Chapin-Carpenter - "Halley Came to Jackson"

Miles Davis - Amandla, "Pharoah's Dance" (Bitches Brew)

Neil Young - Live at the Fillmore East

Nirvana - "Breed", "Drain You", "Aneurysm" (3 from Live at Reading), "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" (MTV Unplugged)

Pat Metheny - We Live Here

Phil Lesh - "Let it Ride"

Richard Thompson - "A Man in Need", You? Me? Us? (Nude)

The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street outtakes, Get Yer Ya-Yas Out, "Undercover (of the night)"

Santana - Milagro, Santana III, Spirits Dancing in the Flesh, Buddy Miles Live!

Tom Waits - Blue Valentine

Van Morrison - A Sense of Wonder, No Guru No Method No Teacher, Into the Music

The Who - "Water", "Naked Eye", "Relay", "Join Together", Live at Leeds

My 4 GB iPod

I got my 4 GB iPod for Christmas in 2008. I first had a lot of classical music on it and Charlie Parker, but I gradually changed it radically. It went through many stages, at one time it had a lot of Joni Mitchell, too. I still use it every day, from the time Mike Francesa's radio show goes off (6:30 pm) to about 10:00 pm. That's when I start listening to my new 16 GB iPod. So, anyhow, I won't be changing my 4 GB iPod around anymore, as I have deleted the playlist. I like it the way it is now; this is how it stands:

A.J. Weberman - Telephone conversation with Bob Dylan - just a 30 second clip, I found it on the internet. Ivar downloaded the whole conversation for me and put it on a disc.

Al Green - "Jesus is Waiting"

The Beatles - I included every song from the Hey Jude album, which I still have on LP, featuring the Beatles dressed up in stylish clothes.

Billy Preston - "That's the Way God Planned It"

Bob Dylan - At Budokan, Million Faces at My Feet, Woodstock 94

Bob Marley - Natty Dread

Boz Scaggs - "Thanks to You"

Chet Baker - On a Misty Night, Lonely Star, CB Sings It Could Happen to You

Chicago - Chicago III - downloaded from iTunes

The Cure - "In Between Days"

David Bowie - "Life on Mars?" - a live version from the deluxe Aladdin Sane double-CD set.

Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms

Elton John - "If there's a God in heaven (What's he waiting for)"

Eric Clapton - Pilgrim

Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood - Live at Madison Square Garden

George Harrison - All Things Must Pass

George Harrison & Bob Dylan - The Concert for Bangladesh

Gillian Welch - "Look at Miss Ohio"

Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy" - my mother loves this song, too.

Grateful Dead - Europe 72, Skull and Roses, Digital Downloads Vol. 1 (Live at the Palladium), plus various songs, including "Standing on the Moon", two versions of "Easy Wind", "Candyman" and "Friend of the Devil" from Dead Set, etc.

Jethro Tull - Aqualung, Roots to Branches, Catfish Rising

Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced?

Jimmy Buffett - A1A, "Bama Breeze", "Brahma Fear"

John Lennon - the songs from Shaved Fish, plus a few other songs, including live versions of "Come Together" and "Yer Blues" as well as "Well (Baby Please Don't Go)" from the Lennon 4 CD box I bought shortly after my head injury.

Kenny Chesney - a few songs I downloaded from iTunes, including "Beer in Mexico", "Guitars and Tiki Bars" and "When the Sun Goes Down"

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III - I used to listen to this on LP with Michael McGovern

Little Feat - Waiting for Columbus

Lou Reed - Rock and Roll Animal - downloaded from iTunes

Lucinda Williams - "King of Hearts" - also downloaded by Kim Antonick as a way of remembering our relationship.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Simple Man"

Marshall Tucker - "Heard it in a love song"

Neil Young - "Yonder Stands the Sinner"

Pete Townshend - "Let's See Action", "Pure and Easy" and "Sheraton Gibson", all from his first solo album, Who Came First

The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street

Santana - Multi-Dimensional Warrior

The Traveling Wilburys - "Tweeter and the Monkey Man"

Van Morrison - Days Like This - my parents gave this to me as a gift in 1995 or 1996.

Note about Judy F.

One time Judy Frank, who had just lost her dog, a mix of German Shepard/Rotweiler breeds, named Rex or something, asked me if we get our pets back in the afterlife. "You've been to the other side," she said, looking at me. "You know," she said, staring directly at me. I told her it was so, that we did get our pets back in the afterlife. This appeared to comfort her. That gives you a good impression of how sweet she really was.

Waldenbooks

My mother used to take me to the Nanuet Mall, where she would go shopping and frequently I would spend time at a little bookstore called Waldenbooks. There I discovered many writers, the most significant of which was Friedrich Nietzsche. There I purchased The Birth of Tragedy, the Gay Science (which was very important to me), Beyond Good and Evil and The Will to Power. Seeing that last book I named, WTP, was like witnessing a comet to me. I mean to say it stunned me and I felt privileged to be able to buy it. I still have it, it's in a bag in my living room right now. Like Henry Miller says, these books were alive and they spoke to me. I guess this requires more writing about the libraries I used to frequent when I was growing up, and about how I discovered Dostoeyvsky at the Finkelstein library in Suffern NY. I first read his story The Eternal Husband based on Miller's recommendation and then purchased Notes from Underground which I read at 16 and changed my life. I used to discuss it with Brian Smith. Anyhow, back to Nietzsche, one book I never liked was Thus Spake Zarathustra, perhaps I was afraid of it. It's a little too shocking philosophically and a little too difficult to accept.

The Man Who Saw Tomorrow

Well, I've been educated to be a writer so I might as well start writing...

My mother and I used to go to the movies a lot. I'm talking about from the age of 7 and into my teens. We saw all the Disney films when they were re-released. Films like Pinocchio, Dumbo, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the Aristocats and other animated pictures. Sometimes we saw films that scared me a lot and I sat there with my eyes closed for much of the time. Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind were two pictures I sat through that way for much of the time. We used to go to this little movie theater in a shopping center next to the Grand Union supermarket on 9W. One day we went to see a film about the Old Testament that scared me a lot. It was showing a scene about the idol made of gold and there was a voice over saying, "Thou shalt not have any false idols" and things like that. I got very scared and we left the theater.

Another time we went to see a movie about Nostradamus. It showed how there was going to be a great war in the future and New York was going to be destroyed. It depicted a man in the middle east launching rockets against the United States. It showed the Statue of Liberty breaking into pieces and gave an analysis of Nostradamus' lines which went something like "War will come when the two twin brothers fall." And this may have been not part of the movie but I could swear from the longest time that it said the President of the United States at the time of the war was a man named "Gore". I don't know whether I dreamed this up or if a movie like this actually existed. I remember Orson Wells was in the movie.

I thought to myself at the time, and we are talking about the early 1980s that it was extremely unlikely that this country would ever elect a person with such a bloody, warlike name, the name "Gore" to me signified carnage and horror. Much to my surprise a woman named Tipper Gore came out with the PMRC in the mid-80s and had some things to say about rock and roll music. She wasn't attacking the kind of music I liked so it didn't bother me. I wasn't aware that she had a husband who was a politician at the time it seemed very doubtful that we would have a President Gore.

Anyhow, this gives a general picture of the state of my mind at the time. I thought there was going to be a great war that would tear this country asunder. I also had seen footage of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II and thought we were very close to living in a post-apocalyptic age. I was a Catholic and went to St. Gregory's church in Stony Point. There was a bald priest there who used to excoriate the parishioners there. Maybe that got to be too much for my mother so we started going to the church at the Don Bosco Marion Shrine behind my house, very simply pews and an altar. No showiness, it was a poor church. This entire complex was behind my house where I grew up, it was acres and acres of peaceful secluded land. It was a retreat and I spent countless hours there for many years walking the path and observing the statues of the Joyful Mysteries and Sorrowful Mysteries of Jesus Christ. Eventually we stopped going to mass there and started going to church at a place called Letchworth Village while also was a residential complex for the mentally ill and developmentally challenged.

That gives you a good picture of the three churches that were most important to me while growing up: St. Gregory's, Don Bosco and Letchworth. My father never attended mass with my mother and I. I don't remember my sister going either, I may be mis-remembering but I only recall going with my mother, especially to Don Bosco. I even took Annie Armstrong there in 2004 on Easter. We went to the outdoor mass where there was a great big statue of Mary. It was bigger than life, about two stories tall. It was very inspiring. I felt good going with Annie Armstrong, she was very receptive to going to mass with me but it hurt me when she did not go up to receive communion. That told me something about her religious nature. I guess she was Protestant, she came from South Carolina and maybe she was Baptist or Protestant? I really didn't know at the time and still don't know.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I used to take Michelle Quinn up to the big outdoor church at Don Bosco and one time I asked God to marry us in his eyes. I was writing a lot about Michelle Quinn at the time, that was before my head injury. I think these women meant too much to me, I took there affection for me too seriously. I wish I could have treated them lightly and casually but I guess I wasn't built to handle things that way. So I guess the point I'm making is that there was this retreat I used to go to with my mother and I used to find other women and take them up there too. That sounds right to me.

Anyhow I used to be a great artist. Like my ambitious was to be Picassso or Chagall or something. I didn't paint, I would draw and later do charcoals and watercolors. My mother used to take me to New Jersey to this place called Pearl Paint all the time to buy art supplies. Visual paintings used to come into my head all the time, it was like I was a young Vincent Van Gogh. I also remember that when I was in the Gifted and Talented Program at Thiells Elementary and at Farley Middle School I used to spend most of my time drawing for the other students and trying to entertain and amuse them. This continued into high school. In chemistry class taught my Mr. Piropato I used to create this magazine called chemistry magazine which has little cartoons about the students in the class and some dialogue that I made up. These little cartoon magazines or comic books would get passed around the classroom during class. It was mostly to entertain Jacob Goldfarb, to show him what I could do and trying to impress him and Ruth Richardson. I didn't like chemistry but I had proven I could be the top science student in Mrs. Lenzinger's biology class the year before. I like the way she taught, I didn't like the way Mr. Piropato taught at all. I wonder if my schizophrenia was responsible for the way I behaved. I was also very active in art class and debating whether to be a writer or an artist. I was paranoid too at the time, in the sense that I felt I had a finite amount of time to make my mark. This may be observed by the fact that I used to make drawings of the girl's faces in the yearbook instead of actually talking to them. I was very quiet and rarely spoke. People noted that I was "stoic".

My mother put it into my head that I was in danger of being taken away by a stranger. She had told me a story of when she was almost abducted when she was a young girl growing up in New York City. She had to open a big, heavy door to get away from a man who was a sexual pervert. My mother had a hard time growing up. Her father was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty when she was very young and from there her life went downhill. She and my father met at age 10 and they decided to marry each other from a very early age. They got married at age 19 in January 1962. The Beatles hadn't yet arrived in America, I think.

So this gives a little picture of me growing up, worried about a nuclear holocaust happening in the 1980s and worried that I was going to be drafted and taken away from my mother. My vague appreciation of history had taught me that we go to war every 20 years or so and I worried that the 1980s was going to be that start of the next war. I was scheduled to turn 18 in 1990 and I was worried that I would be drafted into the army. As it turns out the war started in 2002 and I was assigned to an infantry base in Jackson, South Caroline for a couple of weeks until I quit or they most likely made me quit. At one time my ambition was to go to West Point and marry Regina Pappalardo. My dreams never involved work, or the idea of going to work. I hardly know what work is, to be honest. At one time I wanted to be a journalist, that much I know. Then I decided to be a writer. My hero and guru has always been Henry Miller, the metaphysical-slash-surrealistic writer. I also wanted to be like Alan Watts, I once told Dr. Alan Hornstein, the psychiatrist I was seeing when I was having problems with my father after my car accident.

So anyhow I

I Corinthians 1 [17-31]

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."
Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;
But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.
But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.
But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.
And the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are.
That no flesh should glory in His presence.
But of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God--and righteousness and sanctification and redemption--
That, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord."