The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 580
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 255: JLHS Part Two 28
Sun., Oct. 14, 2007, 6:24 a.m.
… So then came Friday. Ron said early that he was up for hanging out. Then Ben showed up in B50 during 8th period and I suggested the same to him. So there I was at the end of the day - giving a piano lesson to Luis [name]. He virtually learned Romeo & Juliet. He’d seen me play it once and asked me to teach it to him. He learned the verse quickly even adding in the chords with the left hand. He started out playing almost nothing about a month ago and has made great progress. I got a couple of beginner piano books from Rose [name], who also wants lessons but is only able to do it 4th period when I’ve got meetings scheduled. I’ll try to get a day a week for a lesson for her. She works after school. Tanni [name] has also expressed interest in learning and a 9th grader named Felix showed up on Thursday when I was playing and talked about it and about how he was already playing the guitar.
Michael, too, was hanging around trying to fix my Yahoo e-mail. I had made the mistake of upgrading the day before but then had aborted in the middle and since then had not been able to get in at all. So he had downloaded some new version of something but that didn’t work so he was going to try to fix it at home. I gave him the password to it so he could go in and work on it. There is nothing in there that I would have any problem with anyone seeing. There are still a few messages to and from Yael which Luz could see if she went in there and maybe she has for all I know. I don’t know how much Luz has been checking that or the telephone, which I don’t pay much attention to. I just don’t care. I’ve not had much contact anyway. There have been just a few text messages to Yael over the past weeks and two e-mails. I meant to write her a letter last weekend but got so depressed over how Luz treated me that I didn’t feel like doing anything. That lasted all week and is still going on. I’ve been very cold to her because of what she did to me last weekend. I’m not going to let that happen again. Of course, I’ve said that before and I end up being warm to her, only to be shot down and abused. I’m really tired of that.
Anyway, Ben and Ron showed up at the door to Room 145 with Keely and Lisa Ray. Lisa Ray had earlier given me a CD of Modest Mouse, which I put into the computer yesterday and listened some. Some of it sounded like real garage music but I guess she had mentioned it the night at Havana Central when we were talking about music. I didn’t even remember that part of the discussion but she did and she brought two CDs full of the stuff, which I’ll give back to her tomorrow. She, of course, is the real beauty among the new teachers, in my opinion - and all of them are very attractive. Keely is beautiful and tranquil with a “melodious” voice, as Kate described it later in Ben’s car and that’s true. Kate is cute, curvy yet slim and incredibly vivacious. There is a very sexy new guidance counselor whom I’ve only seen and not really talked to yet and there is a new social studies teacher named Julia who is very slim and attractive. I’ve hardly talked to her. There is a Muslim woman named Susan Omar who keeps herself covered and the boys have been bothering her. There are a few boys in any classroom who will not hesitate to speak frankly to their female teachers about how they look. For Keely and Kate, this is nothing they can’t handle and might even enjoy on some level but for a Muslim woman, it is the sexual abuse that it ought to be in any situation so I heard that she has had some trouble with it. I don’t really know what she looks like because I haven’t been around her much and you can’t see her anyway.
But Lisa Ray is the real beauty. She is very slim and has the face of a model. Best of all is the smile, which is glamorous even though I wouldn’t call her glamorous over all. There is a small town charm about her and a girl next door vibe, which has always been appealing to me. She likes to smile and laugh and has an infectious laugh but is demur at the same time. In any case, she didn’t go with us on Friday, opting to “be good”, she said. She had not gone to see Arcade Fire the previous Friday, by the way. Keely had backed out, saying that she was too beat from whatever she’d done the night before and with that, Lisa also decided not to go. Evidently Lisa and Keely are close friends already.
We were all standing there in the hallway moving in the direction of the back door when Kate bounded around the corner. She joined the group as Lisa withdrew and that was when Michael told me that I had to fax in some application for some on line contest. I’d told him that I’d do that so as they were moving out toward Ben’s car, I took Michael to the teacher’s room to download the application form. I filled it out for him because he said his handwriting was illegible and then we went next door where Ryan [name] helped me send the fax.
Tues., Oct. 16, 2007
Yes, I said it’s Tuesday, friend, and it’s six o’clock in the morning. I got a call for jury duty over a month ago and forgot about it. Strangely enough, I was clearing off the dining room table where bills and mail pile up and found it on Sunday. Since I’ve never done jury duty and have not missed a day of school yet this year, I figured now’s the time. I think they are a little more serious about getting people to do this stuff nowadays. You used to be able to just ignore these things and I think I did that at least once in New York. I got called in Ohio just as we were moving back here but otherwise my name has not come up much. I don’t think I’m registered to vote right now. I don’t plan to vote next year. I’d vote for Dennis Kucinich if I did. But the process is so corrupt that there is no point. So they must be getting names from some other list, maybe driver’s licenses.
Anyway, that’s why I’m standing here typing today. I’m supposed to be at the Court House in Elizabeth at eight a.m. I was also supposed to fill something out and send it back and I never did that but I’ll show up anyway just to see what happens. Maybe they will reject me because I didn’t send the thing back. Maybe they’ll reject me for other reasons. Maybe they just won’t like the way I look. With long hair at the moment and a goatee, I probably look more like a defendant than someone who out to be sitting on the jury. I don’t know if there are going to be lawyers there to interview people and don’t know anything about what kind of trial it might be. All I know is that the notice said that it was only going to be 1 - 2 days.
I stayed long enough last night to leave lesson plans for classes today. Michael was there again and he helped me with my e-mail. I had foolishly clicked on “upgrade” and that had somehow kept me entirely out of Yahoo. Michael took care of that and so I was able to work with a couple of kids. Afia [name] had her essays on line. Then I went upstairs to make contact with Quintana about the tutoring and that seems to be about to happen. Both he and Hoxha like the idea and I get the idea that the two of them are close. I see Quintana on our floor and in our office quite often. I ran into him there yesterday, in fact, after finding only the number 2 guy upstairs. Luis [name] was there also, practicing the Theme From “Romeo & Juliet” that I taught him and now he can play it much more fluently. A new kid named Tiki was hanging around. She’s an Amazon but good looking, athletic and obviously very smart. She’s new to the school this year and I’ve heard Keely talking about her. She’s in Keely’s 11th grade class. She was watching me play some blues piano.
The only other thing to note is that I gave Lisa Ray a CD of 15 songs. I had listened to some of the Modest Mouse she had given me last Friday and I liked it. There is a garage element in there and some interesting surf guitars. I like the guitars generally. The modern vocal approach in this sort of music seems to be some sort of amalgam of punk screeching and rap rhythms. Melody is low on the list for vocal virtues as is the tenor of the voice itself. Sounding young seems to be the main thing. These guys sound young but the songs are good. I listened to about a dozen of them and mostly liked them. But she had given me about three hours worth of music so I didn’t get through all of it. Nevertheless, it reminded me of some of the psychedelic garage music ca. 1966-67 so I made a CD for her that includes the following - and maybe I should list it here in case she likes it and wants more and I have to recall what was there: Meadow Memory (Love Exchange); Indian Summer (Doors); My Mirage (Iron Butterfly); People in Me (Music Machine); Please Come Down (Bumps); Greasy Heart (Jefferson Airplane); I’m Tempted (Quests); Hungry Freaks Daddy (Mothers of Invention); Shapes of Things (Max Frost and the ); A Question of Temperature (Balloon Farm); I Had Too Much to Dream (Electric Prunes); Are You Gonna Be There (at the Love-In (Chocolate Watchband); Sometimes I Think About (Blues Magoos); Put the Clock Back on the Wall (E-Types); From Now On (Threads); I included this last one, of course, just to see how she reacts to it. It would be great if she liked it and I think it fits into this list all right. I was trying to get trippy music mostly but some of these are pretty fast and hard. That Love Exchange song is one I just discovered recently and thought was great. It owes a lot to the Doors, to Robby’s guitar or whatever it was that gave the Doors that mystic feeling. Of course, if she wants more, I’ll be happy to give it to her ….
Note: The Love Exchange’s Meadow Memory can be found in chapter 296. The Bumps’ Please Come Down is in chapter 86. The Quests’ I’m Tempted is in chapter 84. Are You Gonna Be There (at the Love-in) by the Chocolate Watch Band is in chapter 89. Our live Bowery Poetry Club version of From Now On can be heard in chapter 566. But I still love all the songs I gave to Lisa back then. So I’ll include the Music Machine’s People in Me here. Sean Bonniwell is one of the great unsung heroes of rock. He was the guy behind the great garage band the Music Machine, which hit #15 on the charts with their initial Bonniwell-penned single, Talk Talk, in late 1966. The record featured Bonniwell’s loud, gravelly voice against hard hitting guitar / organ stop time riffs. That should have been enough but it was probably the mysterious lyric recounting gossip swirling around some sort of unseemly rumors about the narrator that put the song over the top. The group released an album of mostly Bonniwell originals, all of them excellent, but with a couple of covers called (Turn on) the Music Machine. It reached #76 on the chart, the low number probably the result of a lack of promotion from the small California label Original Sound. People in Me was the follow-up single in early 1967. It was in my opinion a great song writing advance by Bonniwell, utilizing all the strengths of the first record but putting it to a fast moving, non-stop unstoppable beat, but the record mysteriously only reached #66 even coming on the heals of a top twenty hit. The third single, Double Yellow Line, was even better, more intense in every way, but only bubbled under at #111 and that was the last we saw of Sean or the Music Machine on the Billboard charts. Sean Bonniwell released a second excellent LP in 1968 called Bonniwell Music Machine, which failed to chart altogether in spite of such good songs as I’ve Loved You and Talk Me Down. Bonniwell wrote all of the songs on the second album. Bonniwell eventually scored a record deal with big label Warner, but when the second album went nowhere, the second line-up of the band disbanded and Bonniwell mostly disappeared into eastern meditation. But he left an amazing two album (plus some singles) legacy of great American garage music. If you haven’t heard it, here’s one track but you really ought to be digging up every Bonniwell track out there.
AUDIO INSERTED: Music Machine, People in Me
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels / Promo