I've got my man now, I got Porgy

Slight feeling of doom in the air; don't know why. Maybe it's because it's my dad's birthday today and I'm afraid he's planning on using the occasion to implement his plan of world domination. Or maybe it's because it's early yet and I may be associating in an unconscious way with unpleasant dreams I can't recall. Nah, probably has to do with my dad. What a jerk!

I'm a little sore from yesterday's yoga, which I'm not upset about. Shows that I need to loosen up some. I hope to do some running tonight, but I hear it's supposed to start raining right about the time I get out of work. Fuck it-- I'll run in the rain. I ain't a scaredy cat.

Well, the Red Sox once again staged a dramatic comeback and are now in the World Series. I've been watching the games here and there, but even with all the excitement, I still have trouble handing over three to four hours of my time every other night. Kreg and Rich are able to log in the hours, but then again, they're Red Sox fanatics and I'm not.

So I started watching The Shining last night, but was in an ambivalent mindset and ended up shutting it off fifteen minutes into it in favor of something else and then going back to it later on, only to move on to another activity shortly after. Eventually, I gave up trying to entertain myself and went to sleep.

Rich's friend Murph, who Rich and I do endless impressions of, almost gave me a stroke yesterday. I was in the kitchen and went over to the back door to make sure it was locked before I headed upstairs. When I got there, all of a sudden I see Murph's head come into view directly outside the door. Oddly enough, he didn't see me. He was affixing a note to a chair he was ostensibly leaving for Rich. It all happened so fast, by the time I thought to open the door and invite him in, or at least say hi, he had gotten in his car and left.

I like Murph, but I was kind of glad he didn't spot me. He a talkative guy and I may have ended up entangled in a discussion I didn't want to be in if we made contact. I was all wrapped up in my head and was glad I was able to remain that way. However, if I did end up in a conversation with him, I wouldn't have minded so much.

I met Murph the day Rich moved in. He was helping him bring boxes into the house and I thought he was Rich's father. Murph must be in his mid-fifties and Rich is in his late thirties; it's not often I see people with a sizable gap between their ages hanging out as friends. I found it refreshing. Anyway, I quickly learned a lot about Murph through Rich's impression of him. I'm a a big fan of impressions and Rich's Murph is damn funny. Murph likes to share a lot of unsolicited, impertinent, and arbitrary information, especially about music, and more especially about Judy Collins. Here's a sample:

(for full effect, imagine the following in a thick New England accent)

"Now, not many people know this, but Judy Collins worked at a candy shop in Brussels when she was there as a foreign exchange student in '63. And it was there she met Ron Wood's brother, Lenny Wood, who brought her back to Ginger Baker's house for some Earl Gray tea with a little bit of honey, which she later learned she was slightly allergic to. At the house she met Stephen Stills, who was on a solo tour in Europe at the time, and they got along famously. In fact they got along so well that when Ron Wood came by the house with Keith Richards, who plays guitar for the Rolling Stones---and for that matter so does Ron Wood, though he played with Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart before that--Judy didn't even know, or care, that they were there. See, she was working on a song with Stephen Stills that later became Suite Judy Blue Eyes, which was about her and became one of Crosby, Stills, and Nash's biggest hits. "

Murph would bring up Judy Collins so much that whenever he could, Rich would insert random tidbits about her into their conversations just to make me laugh.

"Speaking of Tony Randall, did you know that he once went skydiving with Judy Collins?"

"Really?", Murph would ask with genuine interest. "I never heard that."

"Yeah, he was friends with her mother's interior decorator and through her it became known that Tony and Judy had a mutual interest in jumping out of planes. So one day Tony got on the phone with Judy and soon after they went skydiving."

"Fascinating! I never heard that.", Murph would reply. You'd always get the sense that he was both pleased and disappointed at such news: pleased because he was now armed with a new factoid, albeit an erroneous one, about Judy Collins, and disapointed because someone had learned about it before he had.

Ah, Murph--what a guy.