rich’s wedding.

Rich and me, sharing a shot before taking the stage. Rich is on the right.

Rich, my very best friend and the most smug, cynical, judgemental guy I knew, called me up one day in 1994 or so and told me he had met a girl at the mall.  She was selling balloons at a kiosk.  The first thing I said to him was “You’re getting married.”

I was right.

In 1997, he proposed to Lissette and she accepted, and he began planning a wedding.

Being one of the most incredible musicians I had ever met, Rich wanted to actually perform at the wedding reception.  Not for the whole thing, mind you, but one brief set.  He had, in his mind, a list of songs he’d like to play, and a group of people he’d like to play with.

spos.

My cousin is Tom Hespos, and I’ve been writing this blog for almost a year while barely acknowledging him.  Tom has done nothing his entire life but acknowledge me.  And encourage me.

Tom is a few years younger than I am.  His dad is my mother’s older brother; he was an outstanding athlete who had his choice of sports and chose the most difficult – quarterback in the Green Bay Packers organization during the Bart Starr/Vince Lombardi years.  It takes a special kind of person to sacrifice a potential career in pro sports in exchange for the learning experience of knowing Vince Lombardi for a training camp and that’s exactly what my uncle did.  As a child, every conversation with my Uncle Tom was a learning experience because he made it that way.  I’ll never forget being such a young kid and seeing him one Christmas; I walked up to him for a hug and he looked at me and said “No hugs, you’re a man.  Handshake.”

see ya.

In 1996, if you’re a product manager in the electronics industry with your name in the trade rags all the time, you become accustomed to getting phone calls from headhunters.

Most of the time I would humor them; I never wanted to burn any bridges.  But the jobs always wound up being National Sales Manager for some company based in South Korea that was “trying to break into the American market,” had no American office or employees, and wanted me to work out of my house, traveling around the country trying to sell their widgets to AT&T, making no salary and straight commission.  Not the kind of job that interested me.

winding down.

“Are you still in business?”

It was our accountant Mark, reviewing our 1996 finances with us, trying to understand what was going on with Dromedary Records.

“No,” I explained.

“So we can dissolve the company and write off the inventory, then?”

“Well, no.”

whatever.

November 15, 1996

Dear Dromdary,

Please accept my sincere apologies for the rather “scathing” letter I sent you.  To say I feel like a big “asshole” is a great understatement.  Although I have been burned a few times, there was no reason for me to lace into you.  My information about the JC/Dromedary situation was obviously erroneous.  I should have realized that there are two sides to every story.  Forgive me for jumping to conclusions.

a merry and a happy.

The company holiday party.  It was on December 14, at a high-end country club.  Fred decided to spare no expense.

At my previous company, each Christmas we received a bonus check along with a gift certificate to a department store.  On top of that, each employee was asked to pick out one item from a catalog of small appliances (one year we got a waffle iron that we still use), and the Vice President – an older, Jewish man – would dress as Santa Claus and hand out the “presents” from a giant sack.

jersey beat.

In both the local indie scene and in our house, Jim Testa was something of a legend.

As a reporter with Hudson County’s Jersey Journal, Jim was one of the first journalists we ever spoke to, and he gave Sandy and me a full-page interview/feature article in the Journal, which ran on the day we had the release party and benefit show for Nothing Smells Quite Like Elizabeth.

world series.

The Yankees won the World Series.

When I was just a kid, just learning about baseball, in the first season I ever paid attention, the Yankees got to the World Series on a huge, walkoff home run by Chris Chambliss.  They were swept by the Cincinnati Reds, but I was really too young to understand what was going on.

doctor appointments.

My day planner for October of 1996 was loaded with doctor’s appointments.

Throughout the month, there are doctor’s appointments, scattered throughout each week, every few days.  In looking at the calendar so many years later, you’d have thought I was a pretty sick dude.

jim santo’s baseball cap.

On October 5, Footstone played a show.  Somewhere (my calendar doesn’t say where).

I felt like I needed to go.  Not because I wanted to see Footstone or anything, but because I’d had absolutely no contact with any of our bands (or our “old” bands, as it were) in nearly a month.

When Jenifer Convertible came to our house to eat hot dogs and sign the contract for Wanna Drag?, Jim was wearing a baseball cap.  At some point during the evening, he took the cap off, and when he left, he left the cap at my house.