................................. To leave Commie, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html ................................. yeah I got the Ramones playing now... http://www.salon.com/ent/letters/2001/04/18/joey_ramone/index2.html About five or six years ago New York had its worst blizzard in years. It was something like 22 inches of snow. After the storm there were giant mounds of snow everywhere. Three days later, on Christmas Eve, I am helping a friend do his last-minute shopping, when out of the record store walks Joey Ramone with a bunch of friends. He was about half a block away from us. "There's Joey Ramone!" I say. I start having that debate within myself about do I say something, do I just let him go? I turn to my friend and figure it's up to him. He was from Queens, after all. I could see him visibly struggling about what to do. By this point Joey's getting away. He's already in the middle of the next street. Finally my friend screams, "Hey, Joey!" and raises his arms over his head and shouts "Merry Christmas!" Joey Ramone turns around and walks the block and a half back to us, climbing over a mountain of snow at the curb that had to be 8 feet high. He shakes our hands and says, "Hey, man, Merry Christmas." It felt like we had met Santa Claus. Now we tell people that that snowy Christmas Eve was when we realized that Joey Ramone was the spirit of Christmas. I love that guy.
