One year ago today: April 27, 2015, Himmarshee tour.
Five years ago today: April 27, 2011, CD/DVD eject button won’t work?
Nine years ago today: April 27, 2007, at the post office.
Random years ago today: April 27, 2006, those little red plastic bricks.
MORNING
Biscuits for breakfast, that’s the mark of good livin’. You can’t much make ‘em if you gotta get to the office by nine. Unless you resort to chemical puffs from Pilsbury. But play your cards right, like I did, and once in a while breakfast is biscuits. The whole breakfast, nothing else required except two mugs of expertly brewed Maxwell House dark. Suddenly, life it good again.
Here’s good advice on my biscuits. You might want to wait for the desirable second batch. I often wondered why they are better. The wait, maybe? Possibly the reason is more mundane, that the dough has been kneaded a second time after an interval. Or it rises slightly more over time, maybe because the oven is already hot. It could even be that I use cold milk for the dough and it has now reached room temp. I avoid any additives that might, you know, clobber the taste of my biscuits. Can’t have that.
Further, I don’t use a common base recipe for all my baked goods. I know that is tempting, especially using Bisquick, but I don’t do it. My biscuits, bannock, and fry bread are separate, distinct procedures. They are posted on my fridge, not in this blog. If you want any one of them, I’m putting $250 on your credit card.
Thanks for being patient while I catch up on things today. For those who noticed my rolling pin is a bean can, that’s only a problem for people who have never gone really camping. Hint, roughing it does not involve a propane grill and plastic Wal*mart tent pegs. I’ll repeat this tale from the trailer court for many good reasons, not the least of which the new SEO’s now prioritize blogs that mention the topic line in the body, but not too often. Another is that the cook is spared a lot of the grungier aspects of camp life.
One of the tricks of staying the best cook was to scrounge what the other troops were not using. Modern human nature says the easiest commodities go first, such as mixes. I mean hot cocoa mix, pancake mix, soup mix. Consequently, I could get all the flour and potatoes I wanted, as the troops could not get more “easy” stuff if they still had a bags of those. So, I was not the head cook, more like the helper, but I could take as long as I pleased to peel the spuds and bake anything.
Don’t go thinking this was a major formative part of my youth, I was only at scout camp three times and I did not learn to cook anything there. To this day I still microwave my eggs and prefer non-boiled coffee. I was, for reasons still unexplained, the only one at camp who could make perfect boiled white rice first time every time. But c’mon, look at those golden biscuits in the bottom panel and tell me you don’t recognize the master’s touch.
Still-working 1672 windmill.
NOON
Everybody’s a critic and it’s my turn. Tonight is the Dania Beach Grill, this afternoon is for learning a couple new tunes. This music “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz is your typical guitar-centric piece of crap, almost put me to sleep. The root-note bass pattern does not even come in until the second verse. Extremely weak melody, shallow theme, not one original riff throughout, over-compressed, and solidly Millennial-grade. The type of tune a guitarist would think makes his set list “contemporary”. Or something.
If I was going to audition with the expressed purpose of demonstrating to the club owner that I was “versatile”, those are two tunes I would bury in the back yard behind the dog-shit pile. There’s another tune I would not even give that dignity, and it’s by that tired old clone band Radiohead. First off, I don’t like slow music (unless it is symphony). Next, I don’t like coconut heads, see photo. The worst song they do, “Creep” is a moaner-droner-groaner, and guess what a guitar player will choose for his theme song?
These tunes are difficult to play on bass due to their monotonous simplicity. But, a guitarist cannot hear that. It is actually harder to play brain-dead bass lines because you lose track of the song. There, that’s my piece. Except the guy that gave the invite is hopeless on his own. He tells me the club owner spells out to him what he does not want the band to play, and he turns right around and plays it. Green Day, Nirvana, Radiohead is exactly the wrong thing. And that is why I will soon have a house gig and he won’t. Guitaritis is a recurring malady. Just when you think it’s eradicated, it breaks out somewhere else.
This is why he can’t have nice things.
NIGHT
Here’s the southern lights, aurora australis, as seen from outer space. Maker Magazine predicts that fifty years from now, man will still not be on the moon. Leave NASA numbskulls in charge and that’s pretty much a guaranty. Put a man on the moon? What, and lose their jobs? In the same issue is another prediction that surprised me, I say, really got me to thinking. They also predicted that robots, although they would be on Mars, were not to be as big a part of the future as all that.
This dovetails with my writings on electronics, my “nothing new in forty years” standpoint. I say all new “breakthroughs” are, in reality, retro-fits of a chip into some otherwise antiquated contraption. Like shopping at Sharper Image. Not another shower radio!
ADDENDUM
Okay, submerged way at the end is my non-report of the evening at the beach. There were two individual disappointments. The first one being that there was a four-piece house band with guest singers who have been at the same tunes for years. Tight, but the usual personality-lacking house-husband types. This is the wrong way to host an open mic.
It was more like let the house band take a break while a single or duo gets up for half an hour. Then, cut them off, kick them off stage, and drub with your wall of sound. I didn’t appreciate that, nor bands that marry their groupies and then stock the audience with them and their girlfriends. Trained to dance and cheer only to their own band.
This evening was enough of a fiasco that I am going to do a rare sidestep and not publish the details. However, I will give you enough of the circumstances that my longer-term patrons will be able to fill in the blanks. Who do we know that won’t stick to a set list agreed upon in advance? Who do we know that tries to stage-side coach the bass player into faking an unrehearsed song. “Oh, it’s easy, it’s only E and G minor, the a C# . . .”
Right. His attitude sucks, that “bass is easy” shows he remains a brain-dead moron. No, no, you clueless bastard, guitar is easy and that’s why so many of you losers can play the same damn songs. Furthermore, this is not fifteen years ago when I lived down in Miami and didn’t know anybody in this area. I’ve resolved to never allow him on my stage again—which could be a conflict in his ossified mind because being a guitar player, he presumes it is his stage. Tonight was his last chance. He was so stoned, drunk, or both that he botched the guitar and forgot the lyrics to his own “theme song”.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
