Are you tired of hearing about my medical yet? This time it is good news. No pacemaker. I wore a monitor which revealed my ticker did not miss a beat in 336 hours. Along with a half dozen other indicators, I passed my annual with better marks than a year ago, with a 12% gain in function over five years ago. The price is easy to calculate: ride a bicycle 4-1/2 miles per day, every day, for 5 years. No skipping a day and trying to catch up. My blood pressure averages 120/70, same as Olympic athletes. But make no mistake about it, after the first event, you never get back to where you were. (Normally a heart replaces 1% of its own cells annually (Reuters, Apr. 2, 2009) but I'd have to live another 138 years at that rate.)On the way home, I walked from the library. A guy had locked himself out of his van with the motor running right outside Alfredo’s. He had asked in at G’ Place for a coathanger, and 28 locals sat there doing nothing. So I walked to the VFW, the Lippman Center, and checked every dumpster in the area, finally knocking on the upholstery shop. The kid was working late and we salvaged a wire. We had to pry the door outward due to a security flange and were just about to hook the plunger when suddenly half the bar flies were outside to help us. After all the hard work was done, they came in for the glory. It was a very English experience.
Then I get a call from the police firing range. Their computer system was down. I arrived to find all their battery packs appear to have failed at the same time. That means all their servers, backup servers, firewalls and switches were out, basically everything they needed to make sure this kind of crash never happened. Worse, both BellSouth and their maintenance tech could not be out until morning. I asked what they needed to get by until then, they said one Internet computer.
In an hour, I rigged up two for them. I bypassed the hub, ran two Ethernet cables directly into the Netopia and set both computers to random IP addresses. They damn near fainted when I said my fee was only $40, but they know that. They asked if there was anything they could do for me. I mentioned I am about to make a slight domestic adjustment I would like to go smoothly, they said get outta here. I did.
Are you tired of hearing about music yet? Then buy me that scooter and give me something else to do. As it was, I was caught home all morning by that convoluted medical requirement that I must get a referral from one doctor to see another who shares the same office. I’m still waiting for the call at noon although I have to leave about now to get there just in time. The bureaucracy wins this round.
So, I’ll strain the wait for some good news. How about that tricky drum sequence in “Cocaine Blues”? It took three hours, but I can do it. You wait for the beat and cut in just before you hear it. Again, I thank my piano teachers (Enida Frobb and Mrs. Crandle) for any ability to syncopate like that. Without classical training, such beats are unnatural—although quite catchy to listen to.
Then, I got inspired to program a novel track to “Party Till The Money Runs Out”, complete with a tom-tom beat of some novelty, as few drummers could put a fill after a bo-diddley without diminishing the intended effect. I cut and pasted a conga cadence that would require a third hand to accomplish in real life. And it works even better when sped up another twenty beats per minute into dancing range. Ah, I hear you asking, can I do the same with Pat-B’s “Volcano” song? Already on it.
This places me into where I can do a gig alone, that is, without a guitarist. I don’t want to, but nor do I feel like being left with no choice another time. The presentation is quite impressive, and that downgrades a guitarist from a necessity to an option. What I do not know is how big a room I could carry with such an act, and there is only one way to find out: keep trying bigger rooms until I experience failure. Let’s just hope both nights don’t coincide.
I thought I saw my brother today. There were three benches at the bus stop. He chose the one where people were reading books and started practicing his spastic drum rolls. When we looked up, he put on that bewildered face that only a true a-hole can manage. Well, them a few people around here. When the bus arrived, he got on first and stood at the front so everyone behind had to ask him to let them past. Even then, he’d only half move out of the way so most of them tripped over his foot. He openly sneezed on several people. He darn near had me fooled because only my brother is that much of an a-hole. But then I remembered that my brother is a white guy.
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