{"id":14833,"date":"2013-08-14T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=14833"},"modified":"2015-01-31T08:49:22","modified_gmt":"2015-01-31T13:49:22","slug":"bad-gig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/14\/bad-gig\/","title":{"rendered":"BAD GIG"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I didn’t <\/strong>feel like playing the<\/span><\/span> old Jewish standards, such as \u201cBay Mir Bistu Sheyn\u201d and \u201cTumbalalaika.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Instead I read neo-beatnik prose from my blog.<\/p>\n

Bad move.<\/p>\n

I was performing at a nursing home. A resident in the front row said, “Play something we know!” and walked out.<\/p>\n

My accompanist — keyboardist Alan Douglass — told me to change my act.\u00a0 He said, \u201cThe Who went to their greatest hits whenever they faltered.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stuck<\/strong><\/span> with the blog stuff.\u00a0 I wanted to be like Dylan at Newport — my own man.<\/p>\n

Again, bad move.<\/p>\n

Afterward, I\u00a0 told my wife,\u00a0 \u2018I feel like I just played Sowinski Playground.\u201d\u00a0 (Sowinski was a city playground where vicious rapes occurred in the 1960s.)<\/p>\n

I’ve learned my lesson: My Ferlinghetti schtick\u00a0 isn’t going to cut it at Myers Apartments independent living.\u00a0 Next time I’ll play \u201cBay Mir Bistu Sheyn\u201d and “Tumbalalaika.”<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

SIDE B<\/big><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

ROBERT WOODWARD<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/p>\n

Robert Woodward<\/strong><\/span>, who died in June, was a newspaperman, but not the<\/em> Bob Woodward of Watergate fame.<\/p>\n

Robert Woodward worked as a clerk at the Cleveland Plain Dealer<\/em>. He was a tenant of mine.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Bob Woodward<\/p><\/div>\n

He signed his lease renewals in green ink. I always made it a point to countersign in green. Sometimes I had to go out of my way to find a green pen. This went on for decades!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not<\/strong><\/span> sure what Bob did at the PD<\/em>. I occasionally saw him at the movies. He was a film buff. Once we coincidentally flew on the same flight to New York. He was going to see movies.<\/p>\n

Woodward was a tenant for 37 years. He died at 65. He had been dead in his suite for about four days. A sister called. The cops went in.<\/p>\n

Bob never bugged me, except for appliances. He never wanted people fixing stuff in his apartment.<\/p>\n

—
\nThis is\u00a0not Bob’s life story!\u00a0 For instance, not covered here:\u00a0 Bob wrote op-eds about gay rights for the <\/small><\/em>Plain Dealer and <\/em>Wall Street Journal .<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t feel like playing the old Jewish standards, such as \u201cBay Mir Bistu Sheyn\u201d and \u201cTumbalalaika.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Instead I read neo-beatnik prose from my blog. Bad move. I was performing at a nursing home. A resident in the front row said, “Play something we know!” and walked out. My accompanist — keyboardist Alan Douglass — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer","category-landlord-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14833"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22612,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14833\/revisions\/22612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}