Music. Ray-B and I were on the phone for an hour concerning the truly weird music scene of south Florida. One thing we both have tackled is how every musician wants to be his own star. Where is this coming from? Indie? Internet? Shredding guitarists, screaming singers, ballistic drummers, slapping bassists. What is behind this idiocy? A world full of single artists? Most of the examples we’ve met can play a few super-numbers, but none of them could play a four hour gig.Ourselves, we’ve also taken the bait for solo acts, although admittedly we aren’t really going anywhere too fast. We get roughly the same gigs for roughly the same pay year after year. Individually we’ve made good progress but that is not translating into better pay or venues. Sooner or later, we will have to face our Grendel and drop the pretenses of being individuals, that is, admit the world needs another Simon and Garfunkel, another Hall & Oates. Our selling point will be some of the strongest rhythm sections possible in a guitar-bass duo without resorting to jazz progressions.
Monetary theory. It’s not for the masses and it is indeed complicated. None of the individual danger signals are any big deal, thus quite ignorable. For instance, the rate of savings, the real measure of national prosperity, went negative in the US in something like 1999. This type of thing can happen when people borrow to buy a savings bond, as happened in both world wars. People are naive enough to believe they are helping out when they are in fact doing the opposite.
[Author’s note: for clarity, the “average personal savings rate” is not a dollar figure. The easy way to think of it is the percentage of each paycheck that is saved as an investment. It isn’t quite so easy since the measurement omits important issues. The point is, when it is calculated out, the average American family has less than zero net worth. When you add up what they owe against their condo, SUV, and Tim McGraw front row tickets, they are in the hole. One thing that has not changed is the average American is broke at age 65.]
There is only one method to avoid the paper money credit trap, and it is as old as money itself. Invest only in items that have real value, like gold and silver. Mankind learned to count some 35,000 years ago and some people still can’t do it right. When prices are five times what they were twenty years ago and you aren’t making five times as much money, you lose.
Let me calculate, what was I making in 1991. Ah, here it is. $42,600 per year. So I’d have to make $214,000 today. I still have my union website password, let’s look up what top pay is today. Engineer, first class is $104,700 per year. So, top pay is half what was needed to break even if you were an engineer. I was a technician, the type who mopped up after the type of engineers the company hired. Looks like I cleared out just in time. Funny how I am more self-sufficient now that when I was making the big bucks.
Tummy troubles? Not me. I’ve eaten the hottest of the hot around the world, eaten in Japan, Thailand and Barbados without ever a case of indigestion, certainly never heartburn. But the doc says I am in a profile for ulcers and for the next 90 days I have to take a pill ten minutes before eating. What a hassle. I tell you after my family, I am immune to ulcers. So, I follow the regimen. I admit to a taste for hot sauces from living in the tropics, but I don’t overdo it.
At what point does a black American become the N-word? When we video him looking under the tarp at my bicycle at 3:30 AM this morning. We caught him well before he could try anything so we let him go to tell his gang this is the wrong neighborhood. He was probably under 18 so calling the cops would have been a waste of time. He had a set of mini-bolt cutters in his back pocket. This type of crime is very rare in this district, but in Florida you are never really too far a bad area. Even if you live in a gated community, you still have to leave it to go shopping.
What’s this? Hollywood, Florida, is claiming that Veronica Lake is from here? No way, she spent a short time here in the 1960s after her career tanked, her kids deserted, her marriages collapsed and she was a total alcoholic. However, she was a blazing success considering that almost 100% of the available females over 40 in this town have since followed her example. Not many people know she was only 4 foot 11.
Still no word on the scooter.
