Pulp is in my car stereo earlier tonight, and now it's stuck in my head. "And this they saw as love, love." No real way to show how JC croons that second love, so I'll just show the word. I went to Five Points, a part of Birmingham full of bars and, well, bars. I had gone to see a friend of mine's sketch comedy group Happy Nowhere at Workplay, but now I'm a little bit drunk from bar hopping around 5Pts. I'm walking back to my car, and attached to a phone booth by the Pancake House is a sign.
Signs on phone booths aren't really that uncommon. But I've never been invited to a funeral in a public park before.
You are cordially invited to a memorial service in honor of Justin ______ Samsa. There was a date, and a time, and a middle name that I can't remember and don't want to get wrong, and a pop art rendition of a photograph of the guy.
Then there's a side note that says "You knew him as Justin." But really, I didn't know him, as Justin or as anyone else. The service is being held in Brother Bryan Park, where Justin probably slept at night if he was one of the Fountain Punks.
I've met a lot of the homeless from Brother Bryan over the years. I used to smoke handrolled cigarettes with the Dance Machine while he rambled on in a version of English I could barely understand, about things that didn't make any sense.
The thing that bugs me most about Justin is that he probably was someone I'd met. Probably I'd shook his hand one night on my way to midnight sushi. Proably I'd leaned against the Fountain next to him while watching people break-dance. But his picture was changed to green, blue, yellow, orange, and I couldn't tell if it was a familiar face or not.
I guess one more quick Pulp quote, to get that song out of my head. "Those memories of love, love. So sad to see they suffocate at night."
I wrote this in my scratch pad before I even came to the daylog page. Went to add my softlinks, and noticed a little irony in the song quotes I put in, as relates to the first write-up. Well, Ifni is a capricious goddess.
- Robert Goddam