\nMy latest<\/em> Cleveland <\/em>Plain Dealer <\/a>essay . . .<\/em><\/p>\n
A LONG MOVIE, ONE LESS TENANT AND A GUITAR<\/p>\n
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS,<\/strong> <\/span>Ohio — The new Bob Dylan movie, \u201cA Complete Unknown,\u201d is too long and a bit too \u201cunknown\u201d — too much about Dylan-from-nowhere. And it\u2019s two hours and 20 minutes, with 40 songs. I like biopics from somewhere — and shorter. How about Dylan\u2019s year at the Sammy fraternity house at the University of Minnesota, followed by his odyssey to New York\u2019s Greenwich Village? That would have been better.<\/p>\n Maybe I\u2019m not enough of a Dylan aficionado. I\u2019m a fan, but not a fanatic. Irwin Weinberger — who used to play in my klezmer band — is a super-fan. Irwin has been to Duluth and eaten at Zimmy\u2019s Deli in Hibbing, Minnesota. Irwin loved every bit of the movie. When Irwin and the klezmer band played weddings and bar mitzvahs, Irwin would often — by request from listeners — veer from the klezmer music into Dylan, singing \u201cSubterranean Homesick Blues\u201d and \u201cTangled Up in the Blue\u201d without a cheat sheet. The trick was getting Irwin to stop after two verses.<\/p>\n A tenant left his guitar behind. (My day job is managing apartment buildings in Lakewood.) The tenant said he was going home to Kentucky, taking only what could fit in his car. He said he wasn\u2019t renting a U-Haul because he didn\u2019t have a valid driver\u2019s license. The manager at the building told me the suite was dead-bolted from the inside. I said, \u201cWell, if the place starts to smell, let me know.\u201d Every so often a tenant dies in a suite.<\/p>\n I tried<\/strong> <\/span>to open the door with the regular key. That, surprisingly, worked. Locks can be finicky, particularly in old Lakewood buildings; you\u2019re never sure you\u2019re getting in until you\u2019re actually in. The suite was above an Indian restaurant and a butcher shop on Detroit Avenue. I found a wooden chair, the guitar, some heavy-metal CDs, a book of Shakespeare plays and Charles Bukowski\u2019s \u201cNotes of a Dirty Old Man.\u201d The guitar was a Chinese Martin knock-off with a solid-body case. The case, alone, was worth something. I\u2019ll give the guitar back to the tenant if he returns, but I doubt he will. I also got some postage stamps from the apartment. Nobody wants stamps except me, apparently. I pay a lot of my bills by mail. I\u2019m 74.<\/p>\n When I was 26 . . .<\/em><\/p>\n Years ago, I learned a few guitar chords, and now I want to try again. How about, \u201cDear Landlord\u201d? \u2026 \u201cDear landlord, please don\u2019t put a price on my soul.\u201d Life is complicated. I hunched over the guitar, pressed my fingers to the steel strings, and strummed hard. An acoustic guitar is probably the least ergonomically friendly instrument around. I\u2019m not a 20-year-old made out of rubber.<\/p>\n Dylan mostly plays piano these days. I can see why. He\u2019s 83.<\/p>\n Maybe a tenant will leave me a piano. But please, not a rotted-out 400-pound upright with worn-out strings, dampers and hammers. I \u201cinherited\u201d that piano from a tenant in September. It cost me $500 to junk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My latest Cleveland Plain Dealer essay . . . A LONG MOVIE, ONE LESS TENANT AND A GUITAR CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — The new Bob Dylan movie, \u201cA Complete Unknown,\u201d is too long and a bit too \u201cunknown\u201d — too much about Dylan-from-nowhere. And it\u2019s two hours and 20 minutes, with 40 songs. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlord-biz","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32746","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=32746"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32752,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32746\/revisions\/32752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/blues-harp-brochure-1977-hts-adult-ed-300x220.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n