I've had a thing for it for years and years, ever since it appeared on the cover of a piano magazine called Keyboard Classics. It is a portrait of Felix Mendelssohn playing the piano with his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn, sitting with him.

Too bad I can't remember the painter's name. If you know who the painter is, please tell me?

So it's not Jackson Pollock... Who the hell cares? (Love Pollock, by the way. All that nasty dancing.) It doesn't have to be good for it to be meaningful.

I somehow scratched the hell out of my face this morning. There is a bright red, or rather pink streak across my right cheek.

At the deli this morning the cashier smiled and said "You have lipstick on your cheek."

I laughed, muttering "Yeah, I wish! It's a scratch." And I made a sort of a scratching gesture over my face.

But she didn't seem to hear me. I mumbled pretty incomprehensibly. She looked willfully detached, as if she knew I said something to her, but she could not hear what I said and did not think it important enough to ask that it be repeated.

 
 Anyway... Looks like I might be leaving for Atlanta as early as this Friday. A lot of things to do before then, but sooner or later you just have to go. Move on. Force the accomplishment of those things that need to get done. This could also be the last thing I post to this website from New York (until I come back, of course).

A friend wrote yesterday, regarding what I said last time about how strangers in this city call each other Cocksucker with alarming frequency (I've done it myself, for chrissake), and how I wonder if it will be this way in Atlanta.

The person who wrote (it was Paul, by the way) suggested that if they do not do that in Atlanta, I should be the one to start the trend.

"Welcome to Atlanta, Mark."

"Thanks, Cocksucker! Where's da beer? Where'a da chicken? Where're the goddam cocksuckers?"

 
 So now I'm down to packing the things that are lying around on the floor, under the desk, under the bed, on the floor of the closet. Found about $45 in loose change and bills. Have to go to work tomorrow. Not sure why I should bother, come to think of it, except to turn in my ID and American Express cards and the crummy, virtually useless laptop that was cutting-edge sometime around 1994.

 
 Finally located my video of Richard Nixon playing piano on the Jack Paar show in 1960. I had originally thought that he appeared on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. An understandable mistake, I guess.

Thought sure I'd lost it, and frankly was starting to think I'd been dreaming that such a video existed, or that such a performance of Nixon playing Nixon on live television ever occurred.

But sure enough, there is a video of Nixon playing music of his own composition on the Paar show, and I am fortunate to have a friend who discovered this video and who, knowing of my somewhat morose interest in Richard Nixon, went to the trouble of making me a copy of it.

I'm going to try and turn it into a streaming video file of some sort or another. Should be a strange curiosity.

 
 So far, I think I've watched Leaving Las Vegas about 6 times. I like it, even for all the sophomoric weaknesses in its plot and storyline. Maybe I should read the book. Hate to say it, but I see a lot of myself in Ben (with an N) (played by Nicholas Cage). And not simply because I can hold a lot of booze.

Anything but a martini, that is.

I can see myself someday doing what he did. Live a decent life, then get hurt by someone or something, decide that there is nothing left to life because of it, burn my past and then find somebody who will sit and watch as I do myself in.

• April 20, 1997 - Panty Waste
• April 18, 1997 - Killing Time
• April 4, 1997 - Going South