I bought lunch for the office. Tips were that good last night, and the toothpicks made the newspapers again. Some local monthly called the Hollywood Gazette, and some people have already been in to see the display. Fred is dismayed because, although he got top billing, they listed his age as 66. Ouch. The newspaper has Fred standing beside the toothpicks wearing his biker Jagermeister T-shirt.
That’s lunch [I bought instead of breakfast] because I had to get the PA gear out of the Taurus to make room for Steve’s clothes and the aroma of mothballs. He is at a motel up on Taft, but wait, there is more. It took me an hour to get underway. In that interval, he went to Kahn’s market to make a phone call. Having only $50 bills, he asked some passersby for change.The store manager asks him inside and thinking he may get a handout, Steve enters. The manager locks the door behind him and proceeds to punch Steve six or seven times. Steve, who is indeed sixty pounds heavier, most of it paunch, cannot defend himself, because he is on probation. It seems one of the people he asked for change, a 4F, went inside and told the manager that Steve had given her the finger. What? Oh, that means Fat, Forty, Female, Flatulent. (I don't doubt Steve did give her the finger--he's nasty to people who don't give him money.)
Of course like the average Florida male who is desperate for any kind of sex, the manager “believes” the woman and wails on Steve. However, I know Steve and he would not flip the bird. Steve was going to go back and get the guy, but I showed him how to fix the situation calmly, legally and permanently. You get the manager, the store and his family, but in a way he can’t retaliate because he can never be positive who screwed him around. Doing this is almost too easy with Florida jerks, who all seem to have very guilty consciences besides being social write-offs.
Everyone forgot it was the July 4th weekend, even though that date is the middle of next week. So, the pub “Showoffs” called to cancel my gig. Pamela, the manageress called to say there were just four people in the place, so driving all the way out there was not worth it. We’ll shoot for next Saturday.
While real estate is collapsing, there are still tons of plugs and ploys to get people into the recently-notorious preconstruction sales scam. Here is a photo of the kind of monstrosities all along the Atlantic shore. These buildings are fifty feet apart all up and down the entire beaches of some towns, and are built right up to the property lines on streets that are no wider than before when there were mere dozens of houses in the area.[Author's note 2015-06-30: the units depicted here fell from a pre-construction price of $900,000 to $70,000 in 2012]
Later. I went through my music files and I do have more than enough suitable material. What I don’t have is time to learn it all right now. While people with a guitar mentality might question my choice, tunes like “Judy In Disguise” and “Him Or Me” [Paul Revere & the Raiders] won out over the helaciously over-played Johnny B. Goode. The song that had ‘em dancing in the aisles last night was “Jackson”, by Cash and Carter
It was a relaxing afternoon learning this music, and I have what may be some sad news for country purists. A lot, if not most of it [new country music], seems to be studio assembled. When thrown up on the analyzer, you can see the things I’ve been talking about. Spectrum after spectrum shows engineering tricks and assembly errors that I earlier suspected were anomalies. Among the more heavily used recording tricks is the injected lead solo. The solo is recorded separately and cut into the rest of the track at strategic points. In some cases I can see the dropout on one of the stereo channels. Often a different guitar is used.
Another secret is the half-measure patch. Whenever the guitarist plays those twangy Dwight Yoakum style riffs, it comes out of the break a half-measure short. This has to be made up for to keep the music danceable and so as not to clash with the vocals. I can see both people sticking to their guns, so another half-measure is stuck in somewhere to keep them happy, and the result is this current type of music. Classic examples are “Chatahoochie” and “What’s A Guy Gotta Do”.
[Author's note 2016-07-01: the second tune mentioned above did become one of my standards. But not until nine years later, and I was playing guitar, not bass.]
As far as going out tonight, I decided no. Last Saturday was different as I had not played any of my sets the night before. I am very conscious of repeating too much material, particularly as my show works best when I surprise the crowd. There was a classic Florida summer thunderstorm and I’m not energetic. Strangely, the thunder seems to get the cat going, she likes the sound.
Okay, I’ve made a decision on tonight. I’m intentionally doing nothing now so I can go out and spend an extra $50 tomorrow. For those who don’t yet know it, I am “practicing retirement” to see how I can fare under the table. I get a laugh out of the number of high-paid people who discover how little they are worth when they try to find work after they retire or try to start their own business. Or the ones who think they can still work like a horse when they are sixty. What I did not expect is that it would take two years to get things set up, so I have not had $50 to play with in a while. Even on my worst stretches, I made enough money to bank something, and there have been several episodes where I went out and could not find a single thing I wanted to buy.
What could I buy tomorrow? I’ve got a lifetime of unread books already. I prefer my own cooking (a result of learning to cook via an Xmas present given to me some fifteen years ago by a co-worker, Sharon B.). It’s true, before that [time] I couldn’t cook anything much, really. So if I don't buy food, what should I spend money on? Help me out here. Shoes? Clothes? Gadgets? Probably not, since I’ve got a part-time job at a Thrift Store. I even go to movies free. The most expensive thing this year was the $20 airboat ride, and Wallace paid for that. (Hey, thanks buddy!)
Well, I’ll find something to spend money on, maybe wake JZ up since he knows a lot about spending. He also knows about budgeting, but in ways only a rich kid would. He won’t even leave town unless he has “at least $135 on him”. I once flew to Venezuela with less than that. I used to go to really fancy places for coffee but there are no fancy places in Florida worth the effort. Maybe that will change when I get a job. People with jobs lose the ability to have any fun at all without spending money, even if they spend it on crap that promises to enable them to have fun without money.
Ka-ching!
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