The following is the Last Post on the Rittenhouse Review. July 4, 2007.
SO LONG, FAREWELL
Auf Wiedersehen, Good-bye
The sun has gone/ to bed and so must I/ So long/ Farewell/ Auf wiedersehen/ Goodbye/ Goodbye/ Goodbye/ Goodbye!
- From "The Sound of Music," Rodgers & Hammerstein
Jim died last night, and I'm lost. Who do you talk to about losing your best friend when the person you lost is your best friend? I only hope he's right about this heaven thing, and that angels were there to greet him at the door.
His friend Susie told me something I didn't know about him: He loved "The Sound of Music" and, much to the horror of the onlookers, once sang the entire score with her sitting outside Tangier, the bar where they met each week for Drinking Liberally.
I kind of like the image of Jim singing and dancing until he's just out of view, going somewhere else to sleep. Sweet dreams, Jim. I miss you so much already.
- Lynn Haddock
Today marks the one year anniversary of the passing of Rittenhouse Riview blogger Jim Capozzola.
::more::
I never met Jim. We struck up an email friendship, and we talked on the phone a few times – he thought of moving to Key West – and he was determined to convince me to start a blog for my bar! I acquiesced and it’s been up and running ever since. Who knew!?
I often wonder what it would have been like to have Jim for a neighbor, but I knew Jim wasn’t really feeling well. It would have been a lot to handle – the move to a new town, lots of new queens to meet and get to know..... Mildred, bless her little heart, may not have liked the heat and humidity.
But I know Jim would have liked Key West, and Key West would have welcomed Jim and his very special spirit. But you had to have a bankroll to get set up, and I surmised Jim didn’t have that.
I wish we would have met face to face. My little town would have been better off having Jim as a citizen. I miss my friend I never really met. And I swear, half the town could have sung harmony to his lead. What self-respecting Key Wester doesn’t know the entire score of The Sound of Music?
This is the kind of thing I just loved to read on Jim's blog:
Thursday, February 15, 2007
MISS A WEEK
Miss a Lot
You spend a week in that special hell on earth known as influenza and you miss so much. (By the way, when you hear Jean Smart and the other celebrities going on about how "It's not the common cold. It's serious.", well, they mean it.)
William Donohue, he of that fringey Catholic group in New York that nobody outside the media listens to or has even heard about, had a temper tantrum, again, though this time he at least kept his previously proudly trumpeted anti-Semitism to himself, and a couple of bloggers left the John Edwards presidential campaign.
This woman I continue for reasons unknown to call Anna Nicole Simpson, even though her name is something else, died. Pandemonium ensued.
Salon hired boy genius Glenn Greenwald as a daily blogger, and then blew that credibility by hauling Camille Paglia out of the loony bin to a collective response of, "Oh, her again?"
And Dan Rubin's Blinq went dark, as he's moving to a columnist position in the Philadelphia Inquirer's local news section. Rubin's alter-ego or whatever he is -- they swear they're not the same person -- Will Bunch of the Daily News, soldiers on at Attytood, thank God.
I'm going back to bed.
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ODD WHITE HOUSE FURNISHINGS
A Copy of TV Guide on the Nightstand?
I've begun reading The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, by Barack Obama, and so far it's quite good: Sen. Obama is obviously a very thoughtful man and he writes with a great deal of civility, which no doubt will impress the punditocracy.
I haven't encountered any revelations or much about him I didn't already know. In fact, the most surprising thing I've learned so far is that there's a widescreen television set in the Lincoln Bedroom. You know, the famous one in the White House. He says so right there on page 44. Isn't that strange? Sen. Obama thinks it's weird too.
Jim is another of my old blogfriends who’s gone missing. I miss his voice right now.
So, if you’re so inclined, please sing a little Rogers & Hammerstein as you go about your business today. You just might make the big ol’ gay ol’ Catholic boy happy in his Heaven.