02-IX-2024.
Around this time sGradlj.com clocked over one million page views for the year. The exact percentage of human vs machine hits among that count depends on the decision somewhere between Schrödinger and Heisenberg - the log analyzer on the server got swapped two months ago, and they classified them differently. Also, there was a huge dump of machine hits yesterday, some 20000, so the time of the milestone is... who knows when exactly.
And then we hosted another frendz parti. Good excuse to sweep the cobwebs... We let the spiders multiply largely, they don't bite and what flies and mosquitos sneak in when we're coming in and out, they somehow manage to exterminate, little is left for the flyswatter. Though I can't see what do so many spiders live on when their food is so scarce. and they grow big.
I just scrubbed the lavabo and poured the rakija - the last of quince, there's just two deci in the cask - she, as usual, did all the rest. I mostly wrote Byo all day, because outside it was the fortysecond day without rain. True, some fell when we were coming from the garden on thursday, just enough that I didn't have to turn on the wipers even once.
For the food she prepared the classic - a shoulder butt and some barbecue sausage, potatoes around, cornbread (muffin shaped, this time with minced bacon in the dough, adds a lot to taste), and for snacks everything from Mere and Svetofor, including dry neck. Dry neck was on the „I love it and fondly remember it“, because what they're selling under that now is all injected water or renamed into smoked neck, which has even more water. This time someone had the guts to do it right, and to prevent the weight loss on the shelf, it was shrink wrapped. Finally one that's just right, when I thought I'll never see it again.
Evening as any other, good fun, no big dispute, everyone mostly had their say. The quince flowed nicely, it even started to catch up with me sooner than I expected, a bit more than half a liter went. The prank I prepared for the evening, the big ashtray called lavor [foot basin] (v. may 1976.), around which many games of remi and canasta were played fiftysome years ago, was parked in front of Dragana, but she didn't quite recognize it... and then got a bit soft eyed when we explained that it's the one and the same, from the old house. The expected effect didn't happen.
Then we switched to some moldavian roze wine. Since a few months ago we decided to not buy wine but rather serve whatever they bring - which is two bottles per sitting, so that... when you're visiting, better buy something you mean to drink at same later sitting. This moldavian wasn't bad, roze as roze goes, too bad the bottles were three quarter, we don't pour rakija at less than a liter. We were already quite merry when someone's fireworks were heard around midnight. We stopped paying attention to the sound long ago, it can be heard almost once a week, whenever some within earshot has a slava or there's red letter in the calendar, or a child is born or it's simply a party, celebrating new wednesday on tuesday midnight, whatever. This time someone blurted „happy new year“, which was widely accepted on the spot, there must be some calendar in which it is today, so we at least kissed :).
This time we didn't make plans to travel to Tikveš or some such place, just to the theatre, there'll be some show in Dom. Borče confessed that his trick to pass through the nineties and stay sane was exactly that, visiting theatre regularly, and that kept him. Dragana recounted again how a friend of her organized trips to theatre shows in Belgrade and Novi, transportation included, which suited her really well because the van would have a stop in her area, hundred steps from the door to the vehicle.
We split at standard time, around half two. We two stayed to cleanup and then had another shot and a half, the atmosphere was soo good I didn't feel like sleeping yet.
I slept through the third somehow, with waking up unusually early, spent the morning at the keyboard, adding to the Atlanta 2003 episode. And then fainted after lunch so deeply that I think I slept more than two hours, which happens rarely these years.
Dragana said that Bajlo screwed up the invitation process, like skipping the whole IV4... so I called him (he tried to call me the evening before), and that got me confused even worse, becuas he said he called them, spoke with Žuca... Called her too, just in case, and she said she had informed hers. And when will they [hold theirs], is an even larger unknown, because Gavra needs to undergo a surgery, taking out a kidney was hinted at, but he said he'll come to our party, the surgery is later. I asked for Ildika's phone number, to call her separately, but she said she'll be hard to talk into coming, but she'll send me her number. Day passed, and she didn't.
Linda tried to call via Telegram, but the Mac spent the night off the charger. The battery may be new, but it's known that the replacement batteries always hold half less than factory [ones], so I had to boot it from zero. It does remember its state, whatever was open was still open, but it asked for permission for Telegram to use the microphone. I allowed it but lost the connection. Then it asked about the camera. Then I tried to call, but nope, she didn't answer. Then I remember to send an audio message, to which she replied with a video message - sad that mom wasn't there. By the clock she was supposed to come within ten minutes... and then we didn't hear from her anymore, crisis was over.
Fourth. The one news we expected all week - Bora čorba threw the spoon. The playlist for the evening is defined. On burundi Nektivni Ugnelj said „The big undertaker became a gypsy. Greaterserb ended as a Slovenian, Flea Market, and that's it“. [undertakers and gypsies are the fans of Partizan and Crvena Zvezda; Bora spent his last years in Slovenia. Flea Market is one of the early albums of Riblja Čorba. I typed 'flee' twice before writing it right.]
Thus I replied:
To avoid psychologing, it is hard to separate the opus from the autor's persona, but from him I never expected to have principles of any great constancy nor that he'd stick to them from puberty to being taken under. And even if he had them, I wasn't looking for them in him, it's his street poetry and music that suits me (depite my fondness for complex music).
Just a couple of days ago the player brought „Ne veruj ženi koja puši Drinu bez filtera“ (don't trust a woman who smokes Drina without filter)... eh, how full of such advices he was, the better that he didn't apply them to himself, he'd be starving. Half of his songs were based on how he trusted a girl and came up screwed up, and did that for decades.
A separate monument to him may be that, as far as me missus and me are concerned, he made his best song in this century. To differ from a smallish batallion of rocker who fired up everything they had to say somewhere around their third albums, and henceforths worked for retirement.
Vasa: „What I want to say, don't even know myself, but just like any other necrolog, this bit of text is a tale of me and not of Bora, because the deceased is always a bit superfluous in a postmortem text, just like the sarcophag in Taj Mahal in Welles's story „Pearl of love“. Bora was always to me like an obscure uncle who used to bring super toys once, becoming meanwhile the old guy who's doing gaffe after gaffe on a slava, talks stupid stuff, but you dig him for basically social reasons, or rather anthropological - because for a long time he was a part of your life and community and you developed a conditional reflex to not find him quite repulsive. Okay now, it's finished, he didn't steal, cheat nor kill, and for the rest may he see with the upper management. RIP“
Erős Pista: „Anyways, I reminisced wit a friend from hig [scool] and we concluded tat te RC was te only concert to wic te almost wole clas went, al of us myetalics and rockers and normals and oters. Unimaginable on any oter gig at te time, and nowadays I tink tere's no suc ting in existence.“
Me: I was just lucky with him. I kept tabs on him ever since Suncokreti [sunflowers, his band from the first half of the seventies], was scratching my head when he was stuck for those three months with Balašević, may be for the better than they did nothing together, I even had one political lecture because of him [link to 22-V-1982. here]... and then merrily skipped anything he did from eyeballingly the mid eighties and further on. Because then I kept tabs on almost nothing, house work work house. Only after the advent of Napster I started hamstering music again, all the things which weren't available or affordable before, so his period of going nuts all over the place passed somehow beyond horizon for me. I'd read a bit here and there that Bora would bark, there's even that good moment when there were some demonstrations at the Skupština [parliament, then federal], guess it was The Walk, when he grabbed the microphone and yelled „Jović! Come blow me!“, and then a minute later „No no not you, I meant Spomenka!“ [Bora Jović was the president of presidency, i.e. acting federal president; Spomenka Jović was a news anchor on Studio Be]
Of course, during that gig of eighteen were three times when I raised the middle finger to him and yelled at him to eat shit, whenever he mentioned some Petrovgrad. Which doesn't diminish the rest of it any way, they worked that gig honestly, as if at height of their powers. He didn't spare his voice.
Just in case there's anyone who doesn't know, „riblja čorba“ is menstruation, i.e. „fish [ie. chick] has a čorba“, and the color actually matches.
Tonight I'm shortening the playlist to those hundred fifty songs. Don't keep the loza, will do something better.
In the morning, around 12:30, I see on the scrobbler that we played some 160 of Čorba's songs, because it kept on playing when we went to sleep, around four. I was useless all day, we overdid it a bit, and even the day after I was still a bit woozy. We agreed to rarefy the drinking, our capacity is increasing and the enjoyment is the same or thinner.
Mentions: may 1976., by pics, 22-V-1982., burundi, Byo (Byo), čorba, Dom omladine, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), frendz parti, Gavrilo Taroški (Gavra), Ildika , IV4, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), loza, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Novi Sad, rakija, Riblja čorba, sGradlj.com, slava, Živana Armatović (Žuca), in serbian
4-IX-2024 - 25-III-2026