I Keep Things Simple (Dedicated to Jimi Hendrix)

Of course when you get down to it, it’s all intermission. Our lives I mean. Sure our time on this planet seems like the significant event we set the alarm clock for; but in the larger scheme of things there are only two events that matter: when we’re born and when we die. Everything in-between’s just intermission.

Why God or fate or whatever you call the powers-that-be bothered to put the whole thing in motion remains a mystery; yet for all the debate in regards to the the meaning of life the answer doesn’t strike me as particularly complex. We’re on this planet to be born and to die. Sounds simplistic, I’ll admit. I never alleged to be deep. All I know is that everything that lives--dies; so the longer you live the longer you put off the reason you were put on this planet. At least as far as the higher powers are concerned.

As for myself, I don’t bother to contemplate God or religious questions. I don’t need to. God (and particularly religion) are for the ignorant, poor, or the heartbroken. Desperate people like our primitive forebears or political assholes who need to justify their quest for glory.

We humans aren’t privileged to know what informs the universe; but science allows us to study the rules that guide it; and thru art we can ponder what drives our own behavior. In these ways we can at least get a sense of our creator and what might motivate it. We may not like what we learn, but that’s life. You don’t like it, you know what to do.

Unfortunately for me, I can’t add three simple numbers without a calculator; so science was never gonna be my path towards enlightenment. I had to take a different route. I tried a lot of things--music in particular, yet I was uniquely mediocre at that. But that’s okay, ‘cause now that I’ve discovered blogs and blogging its fair to say I’ve found my medium.

And just as Long Intermission and Stays Put are direct reflections of my soul and character; I myself am a direct reflection of my creator. So the more I work on my blogs and myself, the more connected I am to that higher power that put me here. And I like to work on my blogs, so in a simplistic way, I guess you could say I’m a very religious person.

Still, if it were up to me, I’d have been a great musician. Like Eric Burdon once sang,“You wanna find truth in life? Don’t pass music by.” No question music’s the best.

Speaking of Eric Burdon, it was his bass player (Chas Chandler) who first signed Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix couldn’t score a deal in the U.S., so he had to go to London to get discovered. That’s how stupid life is and how backward Americans can be. But in the end, truth can’t be denied. That’s why its truth.

Once Chas Chandler signed Jimi Hendrix he brought him back to the States where he played the Monterey Pop Festival. Probably the penultimate cultural achievement of America. Otis Redding; Simon and Garfunkel; Janis Joplin; Jefferson Airplane; Ravi Shankar; Hugh Masakela; Laura Nyro; The Who; The Grateful Dead, to name a few. Couple big names in there, all in their prime.

But the biggest and best was Jimi Hendrix.

You gotta wonder what music would have been like had he lived longer; but greatness achieves its goals faster than the rest of us. So rather than lament his death, lets all take a short intermission to celebrate that day where fate, or the powers-that-be; or whatever you want to call it put Jimi Hendrix on this planet for the rest of us to behold.

But for the sake of simplicity, lets just call it God.



Hendrix Live in London: Stone Free* (*look over Hendrix's right shoulder and you'll see Pete Townsend and John Entwhistle of The Who).



Jimi Hendrix (left) w/ Billy Cox (right) while in The Paratroopers (101st Airborne):

Jimi Hendrix (far right) w/ Wilson Pickett (vocals):

Jimi Hendrix (right) w/ Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones at Monterey Pop Festival (1967):



Jimi Hendrix Live in Berkley California: Voodoo Child


Jimi Hendrix was born November 27, 1942:

Even If It Is Intermission

"...like that guy from the porn movies..."

I can’t blog like I used to. I can’t drink or fuck like I used to either, but at 44 years old that’s probably no surprise to you or me.

But a man should be able to write late into his years and with today’s technology I should always have a blog. I’ve certainly grown attached to the one’s I’ve published.

When I quit my job back in July I assumed I’d blog more than ever. Take a long intermission from work and bosses and perhaps even NYC as I reinvented Lodo Grdzak one more time.

But no sooner had I packed my bags to get out of Dodge than my phone rang. I glanced at the phone’s display window.

WITHHELD.

Normally I won’t answer a blocked number, but by this time I’d already begun my intermission from routine and the cyclical patterns ingrained by my former profession.

“Hello.” I answered.

“Yeah, is this Lodo Grdzak?”

The voice sounded distantly familiar.

“..Yeah, this is Lodo. Who’s this?”

“Lodo, its Barry S______, remember me? You handled a few cases for me 3 or 4 years back. The little girl with the burn up in Connecticut?”

“Barry! Of course I remember you. What’s up?”

“Well Lodo I heard a rumor. I don’t know if its true or not so I figured, why not call the guy and ask him.”

“Okay.”

“So yeah,..listen, are you on the market right now?”

“What?--you mean for work?”

“Of course for work, what am I here? For work. For work!”

“Yeah, okay. For work, I get you. Uh,...sure. I guess there’s no harm in talking anyway. And it’d be fun to get together.”

So the guy took me out to dinner. A fancy dinner out in Queens. As I mentioned, he already knew me since I’d worked some cases for him years ago; and we’d had fun with a pair of gals one night in the city. So its not like I wowed him so much at this dinner. He was already familiar with my work product and my capabilities as an investigator. Still, I was on my game, and the guy made me a job offer that night. I didn’t even have to give him a resume.

Ah--sweet vindication! Here I’d impetuously quit my job in the midst of the worst economy in modern history and--BAM!, two weeks later I was hired. With an easier boss. And more independence. And the chance to make a lot more money. You like to think after 15 years in a profession that you’ve become something. That you have something to offer. Yet when you look around at these massive layoffs it'll really make you wonder.

So yeah, that job offer was more than nice and there was no way I was going to turn it down. Helped my poor mother kick the Zoloft when she heard the news.

Of course like all businessmen, my boss had an ulterior motive when he hired me so fast. The first day I went to the office I found about 40 files stacked on his desk for my review with a rubber band wrapped ‘round the top dozen and a yellow sticky-note:

Review these top one’s first--they’re late on diary.

Uh, okay. So that fast it was back to work. Harder than I’ve worked in a long while. Twelve hour days and RUSH assignments, with lots of fires to put out and anxious clients to placate. And on top of it all I re-herniated a disc in my back this summer when I took my niece on the God damn Cyclone.

So my assumed intermission from work turned into a long intermission from writing and from my blog. Nothing but photos to post as I tried to steal ten or fifteen creative minutes; only to find it too painful to sit in front of the computer. At one point I decided to quit the blog all together. Some might call me a sell-out for that, but like William Carlos Williams I’ve always been an investigator who writes and a writer who’s an investigator. The two work symbiotically, so more cases mean more stories. Eventually I’ll find time to write them.

As for now I walk thru my days with them pent-up in my mind like the tension held by my muscles from the inflamed nerves in my back. Eventually I’ll have time to let ‘em go, and when those stories pop-off it’ll be like that guy from the porn movies who always blows a gallon of jizz. Big time release.

But as things stand I've got to bide my time. Get my back strong again. Can't get sour or I might not stay motivated to work hard; and this job's important to me. So now’s not the time to get lazy. Even if it is intermission.

* NOTE: I'm quite certain that the syndicated comic MUTTS posted above is subject to all kinds of copyrights.

Lodo Grdzak's Long Intermission:

My Old Boss's Office:



My Old Boss looked like Former NBA Legend Darryl "Chocolate Thunder" Dawkins:

Somewhere off either Wheeler or Elder Avenue in Bronx, NY* (*Double-click on Image for Full-View):


I don’t know where you live reader, but this past summer in NYC was as hot and wet as a high-school slut’s panties. One day I almost blacked-out and fell from the subway platform at Union Square, and one night I became so dehydrated that I actually stopped sweating. At some point near the end of July; half-crazed from the heat and stung by a humiliation perpetrated by my boss, I quit my job.

Course the reality was somewhat deeper than that, but those were the immediate reasons that came to mind at the time. Which is not to say that they weren’t valid or true. Just incomplete as an explanation.

The day I quit my job was the fourth straight day of the week over 95 degrees. We had a unit meeting that afternoon, but I’d been up in the Bronx all morning. On the 5th floor of a shit-hole tenement on Elder Avenue with no A/C.

I spent close to two hours in that apartment with a toothless Dominican woman who didn’t even find it necessary to turn the small window fan to HIGH. Within minutes I’d unbuttoned my shirt and even stripped down to my white T-shirt with the yellow sweat-stains under the arms. “What’s the matter?” she asked me, “You warm?”

Just a bit.

There was some bad mojo in that apartment. I left with soaked socks that blistered my feet and an odd, drained sense of soullessness that never left me.

But I was on time for that unit meeting, everyone agrees on that.

As it happened, I was the last to literally enter my boss’s office; but somebody has to be last lest you have the old gag where the two idiots get jammed in the doorway.

So yeah, I was the last to enter--on time; and when I did I realized that there were five of us in my unit and only four chairs (the configuration of my boss’s office can be seen at the top of this post). Sure, its a bit crude; but note how there are four chairs that face my boss; whereas he’d sit behind his desk and address the unit.

But by July there were five of us in my unit, and now only four chairs.

Being I was the last to enter, I spun round on my heels to fetch a chair from my cubicle when my boss suddenly snapped his huge fingers at me.

“Where are you going?” he asked with what I assumed to be a mock incredulousness.

“I’m going to get a chair so I can sit down.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said as though genuinely offended, “you’re on my time. There’s a chair right here.”

At which time he gestured towards a small, low chair immediately adjacent to his desk that faced the wall behind him. A new chair I hadn’t even noticed since it appeared to be better suited for the placement of files than for an adult to sit.

But whatever. I knew had the highest score of our unit’s performance audit, so this was all just downtime for me. Downtime in the A/C, which after my morning sounded damn good no matter where I sat.

So I reached for the chair and proceeded to pull it back from his desk when again my boss snapped his fingers at me and this time raised his baritone voice within the confines of the small office.

“What the hell are you doing Grdzak?!”

Keep in mind reader, my old boss was 6’ 6’’ tall. He wasn’t more than 2’ from me and the door behind us was closed. More to the point, I’d been completely on time for this meeting.

But I was still calm, mainly because I didn’t have any juice left. I was spent from the morning and had no reason for concern based on my performance scores. So I calmly replied.

“I’m pulling the chair back so I can look at you and sit with everybody.”

But his response was immediate and curt.

“You don’t move anything in my office. Everything stays exactly where it is. Sit down in that chair and be quiet so we can start.

Which sounds simple enough reader, I’ll admit. Only, take a look at the position of that chair next to his desk. Note how it faces the wall behind my boss. I mean to sit in that chair--in that position; I’d have been three feet from the wall, with my back to my peers, as I stared at the naked commercial drywall.

So I hesitated.

“You’re telling me you’re not going to let me move that chair?” I asked him.

“No, I’m not. Maybe next time you’ll be first one here instead of last. If you don’t lik..”

“I was totally on time for this meeting. I came with t..."

“Lodo, I suggest you sit your ass down right now.”

So I sat down. Immediately next to my boss. In the low chair that wasn’t even fit for an adult. Facing the wall with my back to my peers. All I needed was the freaking DUNCE cap and the look would be complete.

But still I didn’t lose it. Not yet. I still assumed that any moment he’d let out a laugh or comment on my audit score; or maybe even let me leave. That’s certainly what I’d have done.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes and still I was left to stare at the wall like a butt-fuck idiot. Christ people, I’m a 44 year-old man. I got the highest score of the audit. I never once handed in a late report and they’d never received one complaint about me (a very difficult accomplishment for an investigator).

So I sat and I stewed.

Then one of my co-workers made a comment. I can’t recall the issue and it doesn’t matter anyway; though you can bet it was some moronically inane topic. My boss requested a response from me. As I did so my co-worker (the kind of dumbass who’d actually make a comment at a meeting) suddenly interjected.

“What’s that Lodo? I can’t hear you?”

Of course he couldn’t hear me reader, I was talking to the wall! I’d have to be like that demon bitch from The Exorcist to address the guy from where I sat. So just on instinct I began to push the chair back from my boss’s desk; but again it resulted in a stern rebuke.

“What’d I say about moving that chair Lodo?!” he snapped.

My boss and I locked eyes for a strange amount of time.

“...How can I answer him when he’s behind me?”

“You can answer him,” my boss said with a laugh, “just speak up. Now go ahead.”

And that’s when I quit. I’ll leave it to you reader to decide if I over-reacted. Almost all the women who’ve heard the story seem to think so; though most of the men immediately understand the psychology of what went down. Course not everybody’s free to leave their jobs like me; with no wife, no house, no kids, no car payment.

But I am.

I was allowed ten minutes to leave my equipment and gather my personal items. The only thing that mattered to me was my collection of panel truck photos that hung in my cubicle. My boss had let me hang about a dozen pics on my walls until he saw how many I had. Then he'd made me stop. It was a nice collection, people would stop by my cubicle to look at them.

As I removed the push-pins and placed the pictures in my backpack, my co-worker Cindy approached.

“What’d you make of what happened in there?” I asked her. “Was I wrong to get upset?”

“..Tell you the truth,” she said hesitantly, “it was weird.”

“It was weird, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she answered, “definitely. ...But was it bad enough where I’d have quit?”

“Really? I asked with genuine surprise. You don’t think I should’ve been offended?”

“I didn’t say that Lodo,” she said again as her eyes dropped toward one of the pictures in my hand. “Its just...what’re you gonna do now?”

A question I hadn’t begun to contemplate.

“I don’t know,” I finally answered as I observed our floor’s security guy approach. I handed Cindy the pic in my hand and grabbed my scooter from off the floor.

“Guess I’m between acts now.”



With my Xootr at the Old Office: