Old Friends

So my Mom has now reminded me that it has been a month since my last blog.....sounds a bit Catholic doesn't it?

Well, a month is not entirely true. My last one was actually in the running section of the blog site and concerned itself with the marathon, but no I haven't done one since. So first off, the marathon. It was....long. Between mile 21 and 25 was about the hardest moment in my life. It rained like crazy and I got soaked pretty good. About 20 minutes into it, my calf injury reared its ugly face. It was painful but it wasn't enough to stop me from running this race. I stamped it as my pain threshold and decided that if it didn't get any worse, I could run the entire marathon with it. Thankfully it didn't get any worse and I managed to finish 4:03. I probably could have shaved 15 or 20 minutes off in peak condition, but this was my first marathon, I was injured, and I didn't want to push myself too hard. I really did enjoy myself though. I thought about how fun it is to run and what an amazing feat it is to run this far; I felt grateful.

Recently I seem to be reconnecting with old friends here and there. I literally ran into my old friends from high school Jeff and Dale in the marathon. It was great to see them and after I get through the next couple weeks with the musical Godspell and all, I hope to hook up with them again. Dale still keeps in touch with another old friend of mine Steve, and I guess he mentioned that he had seen me at the marathon and so Steve got in touch with me through the webite (I'm sure all of this is fascinating, but it is gonna get interesting trust me!!!). My point is that I haven't seen or heard from these guys who I used to spend all my waking hours with in years and now everybody's saying hello all at once!

But it didn't stop there. I then got an email from my friend Dave from Berklee. Dave suffered an accident when he was a kid that limited his ability to turn his neck and when he needed to talk to you it would mean that he'd have to shift his entire torso hence our nickname for him, No-Neck Dave. Dave had always sort of been the secretary of the "5th Floor Posse" (werd) and kept track of the goings ons of the crew. Most everyone had a nickname, some of whom we didn't even know their REAL name: Shutza, Dirty Whore, Fuzzy, Lingle, Shaegan, the Monarch, Possum, Milton, JB Suckafoot, Old Man Jim, Paddy, Angry Phil, and me - the Canadian Nightmare. Everybody seems to be doing really well. Turns out JB Suckafoot now plays drums with Prince. Old Man Jim is playing in Edie Brickell's band and teaching Paul Simon's son. But the greatest one is Possum - just this crazy, funny dude we used to hang with who insisted to me that he was part Canadian because he lived in Toronto for a while.

http://www.jonathanrotem.com/main.htm

Hmmmm.....maybe I should've stayed at Berklee????

No....I'm really happy with things so far and as far as I'm concerned, I get to play with some of the best musicians on the planet everyday.

Right now, I'm just killing some time between soundcheck and the show at the Commodore with Famous Players. The band's theme tonight is pirates. I'm not as excited about this theme as I have been of our past themes. Star Wars was indeed a favorite, but the 80's hair rock band was good and of course the scary movie theme where I played the most diabolical of all villians; none other than Bruce, the antagonist of the greatest movie of all time, Jaws. I still have my photo in Bruce's head the next day at Starbucks getting a coffee in the pics section of the website, a picture that I often get asked about. Me as Bruce apparently can be seen in a film called Masters of the Sea. I won't go into details until I see it myself but it's pretty funny as I understand it.

At any rate, it should be a fun show as always at the Commodore and the new tunes are pretty fun. It is a little bittersweet though as once again I'm missing out on another Bar None Halloween with my boys and girls in Soulstream. Ah well, bring on another old friend, the Commodore.