Decent Enough Monday.
So today was my day off, and I figured I’d shoot up to Scranton to meet my cousin Tommy and kick, kick, kick it. Of course, I brought my camera. Nothing really new to photograph downtown, I took a bunch of pictures out of the bus window on the way up-mostly of the sky and horizon but I won’t bore you with those.
Got to Scranton, had a magnificent Pastrami sangwich at my favorite downtown eatery, Mother’s Table, then wandered for a few and made my way to Northern Light cafe. Where, I was quite pleasantly shocked and amazed to discover a few copies of a free ‘zine(!!!) on the little newstand there. Of course, I scooped one up-which will be reviewed in a future post. So I was fucking stoked just on that. And it was a cool little ‘zine put out by the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writer’s Collective. Some pretty cool stuff, but like I said I’ll review it in the future.
Anyway, my cousin came and picked me up and we went to his place in Dunmore. He showed me his new camera, and though it’s a Canon DSLR like mine it’s set up differently and doesn’t have video capabilities and some other bells and whistles. He bought it used and didn’t get the manual with it so I thought maybe mine would apply thus I’d brought it along. But though there were some similarities the manual didn’t much apply. I told him I wanted to shoot some video of him doing some songs-he’s been a professional musician for like thirty years, and is a fucking amazing guitarist. He was like “sure”, reached over, picked up his guitar, plugged in and changed the tuning real quick then went from a dead stop into “Bronyaur” by Zep. First take, starting out cold he nailed it dead on except for one barely flubbed sixteenth note. I filmed it, then he said “Wait, let me try another one”, tuned up and busted straight into Lindsey Buckingham’s “Stephanie” which he did note perfect in one take.
My fucking cousin plays guitar like a.boss.
So then I upped the Zeppelin number to the tubez from his computer (He’s all stoked on his new Minimac, though I tease him incessantly about being a wanna be trendy for using Apple products and extoll the virtues of Linux), and I showed him my guitar vids. We laughed because I make mental illness faces when I play in this one clip. He seemed surprised since the last he really heard me play was back in the 90′s when my entire repertoire consisted of thrashy power chorded punk shit.The second video I tinkered with using Open Shot at home and upped it from there, he seemed pretty chuffed with how it turned out so I was happy about that
His roomate Jason was there, and we were stoked to see each other again. I did time with Jay upstate, and we walked the big yard a lot. He even did the back cover for issue #4 of my prison ‘zine, Usual Suspect. We talked a little bit the last time I was up at Tommy’s there, but this time he had me come check out his tattoo studio upstairs. He was slinging ink in the joint, apprenticed under the master tattooist at our particular facility, this guy Slice. Slice is dead now, overdosed on smack a week after he was released. But Jay was doing tats back then under his tutelage and he got pretty fucking good at it with just a jailhouse gun. He’s even better at it now, and has much better equipment. I’m going to get some ink layed soon enough, I just have to figure exactly what I want. I was going to get a typewriter tattoo, but it seems everybody has those now. While I was there I was going to call my wife and tell her I got her name tattooed in three inch letters across my stomach, but I couldn’t get a hold of her. I want to get something that reminds me of her, but I refuse to curse our marriage by getting her name tattooed on me. Guaranteed way to make sure you’ll divorce or split up with someone: get their name tattooed on you. It’s the same thing with shoes. Never buy shoes for someone you love, cause they’ll walk away from you.
At any rate, yeah I hung out with Tommy and Jay for awhile and had a great time. Really the best day off I’ve had in awhile. There’s nothing like family and old friends. Seriously.
Taken from the bus on the way up to Scranton
My favorite restaurant in Scranton. Ate there for the first time back in ’95 and grab a bite there every time I’m in town. Great food, great prices and the best pastrami sangwiches west of NYC.
Random shot of downtown Scranton. Wyoming and Spruce I believe. Check out the building on the left, towards the top. I think that’s marbling. Gorgeous. There’s a lot of great buildings in Scranton, but I already posted a bunch of photos of some last year.
Jay at the table in his tat studio.
Jay again. I used to see him like this a lot in his cell back in the early aughts, always drawing more cool stuff. Wouldn’t think of getting tats from anyone else, for serious.
Cousin Tom, with a 1/2 inch tape recording of a show him and some other local musicians played at a bar out here in nineteen fucking eighty three. Tonight after he drove me back here to Old Forge he was taking a bunch of these vintage tapes to get tranferred to digital medium. This guy opened up for both Todd Rundgren and Cheap Trick when they played here in Old Forge back in the early eighties. He’s been making his living with music longer than the goddam Melvins for fucks sake. And like the Melvins have been doing it since, like ever. My cousin is way cooler though, even if he is a soft rocker.
A good day with friends is damn hard to beat.
True, that. Had a great time. I forgot to mention that my cousin made us sushi for dinner. Even if I wind up with some exotic parasite from eating raw salmon it will have been worth it.
Add good food and that is a perfect day in my book. Parasite chances are slim, and non existent if the fish was frozen for a few days first, most store bought is safe.
Just an FYI, your cousin might be able to find the user manual to his camera on Canon’s website.
Oh, yeah, I told him that the other day when he got the camera and he downloaded the manual. Then he proceeded to try to print it out and he was having printer issues. He’s kind of funny with things like that, I mean he just totally prefers being able to hold something and look it over instead of reading it off of a screen. He has this previously owned piece of elaborate music production software, it’s the Apple take on Protools pretty much-and he got the manual for it downloaded, and it’s like 1300 pages. So he decides to print it out. I think he got 250 pages and three ink cartriges into the endeavor when he realized it would cost him a couple of hundred dollars in ink to do it.
Good thing it wasn’t written on clay tablets.