1/04/01 Hey Andy, Fortunately, I went into my record cabinet looking for the Revolutionaires "Outlaw Dub" LP to accompany some hardy new year partying when there sat the scrolls of your Glimpses I thought I'd left in LA. So with double pronged motive here I am: 1)to send you this Rufus Harley CD I penned the liners for; as a jazzbo, I hope you'll dig it; 2)to gurge-tate the things your Glimpses script touched off in me. Like how the image of a bank of payphones reminded me of my father telling me that he goes for excercise walks in DC National Airport (recently renamed Reagan Airport; my dad refuses to call it that) then goes inside and roams around until he finds an abandoned luggage cart which he then returns for he 25 cent refund. Your mention of a $1.28 soda (Coke) from Taco Bell reminds me of a recent conversation I had with my 33 year-old sister, Becky (whom is head lobbyist for McDonalds), about how the hell McD's could charge 29¢ for a hamburger and $1.29 for a soda. Her answer: "Cheap meat. Their entire profit margin comes from soda." Awheck. At a recent homeless shelter dinner a tooth-less UFO-fanatic woman told me she met Ed Koch when he was mayor and that he had "eyebrows like whisk brooms." This image of your I also treasure: cholita consolidates catsup containers. The image of hula dancers on the hood of your car, good again. Reminds me of the first phone convo I ever had with Chuck Dean where Chuck insisted on singing me his songs, including one that went: "There were blind girls on my suitcase / there were blind girls on my car." Sense memory means I can hear Chuck singing these words. Is the participial form of the verbs "singe" and "sing" both "Singing??" Hence music is burned into the brain. Andy, if I'm losing it, I'm enjoying it; another year of living alone and having self-conversations to begin the days. Like: "SO, how did you sleep last night?" "Oh, pretty well for a pterodactyle." One who longs for the lip of the La Brea tar pit at times. Maybe Lew mentioned, I'm currently working a full-time short-term (7 weeks) office job creating a "magalog" for Air Jordan as they expand their line of products beyonf sneakers to include jiggy leather suits for the young playa, etc. Again I am getting paid to write about sports and hip-hop, paid hansomely. At the same time all the aspects of office life that grate me come flooding back into my life: working under flourescent lighting (make that flagrantly flourescent lighting), having clever ideas rejected due to humorless superiors, deflecting the unwanted personal lines of questioning from over-friendly coworkers. Not being able to sleep til noon. I've had a favorite serial dream revitalized recently. Some years ago, Eli B. hooked me up with a gig being personal assistant to a young hollywood actress while she was making a vampire flick. We got along very well, but never anything physical, but since then, every time I see a new movie's come out starring her, I have a "near sex experience" type dream where I am fooling around with said actress in her current on-screen guise (transient with Tourette's, astronaut). Well, she is in a new Nordic mountainclimbing film and last night in dreamland I came to realize how tough it is to fool around with someone while trying to [navigate] her heavy climbing gear. I'm going nowhere with this. Pterodactyl molests pretty young mountain climber. New York is cold. Big (20") snow dump one newyearseve eve was great; I went up to the roof in the snow in the sun and watched young Bangladeshi reprobates wage a snowball war on sidewalk shovelers five stories below. I put the theme from 2001 on my answering machine and someone left a message: "Don't you know that Arthur C. Clarke is a pedophile?" Is that true? ? ? Met a homeless guy in the park named Megabox who does an excellent beatbox routine. Says he does harmonica/beatbox routine where he morphs into... Harmonabox. When I went back with a harmonica, he said he was too frozen to do it. Went to McD's instead and bought him cheap meat and an overpriced soda. The world may never get the new grips it needs; so I'm trying to toughen up my hands. May this new year be fruiful for you. Choice regards, —Pete Relic