Hmm, it is already after 9:00 AM and no JZ. I believe my exact words were, “Okay, buddy, but I’ve got no stove so I’m really counting on you this time.” So I’m playing bass guitar and drinking coffee. Maybe he got lost again? The picture is the view along the waterfront in Hollywood. Notice that although it is a working day, nary a worker to be seen. This work is dragging along at an unimaginably slow crawl.
Some of Brian’s music is old country, thus it is highly danceable. I’m still running bass lines over “Momma Tried” to get the right feel since Merle Haggard’s original bassist was definitely a lead guitar wannabee, by which I mean he played it like a guitar instead of like a bass. No, I can’t make you a musician, but I can sure as hell teach you how to play in a band.Okay, everyone remembers Paulina, the gal from the beach y’day. Yes, she called this morning and was going to come over. That was okay by me because in the end JP never showed. However, I can already see that we are incompatible. She lives by the clock and yet can’t tell you what time it is. She wound up calling and postponing four different times. Then, late in the day [she] wants me to call her if I go out. Um, I don’t call anyone, I just leave. The original deal was early this morning, Paulina, not for me to wait until it fit into your schedule. Well, like I said, I need somebody to rent this place for two or three months next year, so I’ll keep her on hold.
I spent the day with the Alesis. Did I mention Barry at HWB is interested? Either way, Brian and I need the stage time, so I offered to play for tips. This makes it easier on everyone and gives me a chance to sell the band. Too many clubs around here go for that tired, stale Jimmy Buffet material. We sound nothing like that. (Aside: the problem is NOT that so many club owners, other bands and locals “think” that Buffet is popular, but that the market is flooded. You won’t get meaningful gigs.)
Enter Paulina. She drove up around 5:00 PM. We won’t get along and I’m glad we found that out early. She is one of those people with a huge surface knowledge of all popular subjects, but no in-depth education or experience. I don’t mean very little, I mean no knowledge. I quit putting up with such baloney by the time I was ten. Such people don’t realize that in acquiring shallow knowledge, they also get fed all the old-wives tales, misconceptions and a stupid stubbornness that if you “know” it long enough it may have become true. Like all people who are addicted to television or heroine, she thinks there is something wrong with normal people but is not quite sure what.
It was obvious within moments that she has this huge psychological addiction to the media. Another quirk is that her perspectives on everything were almost totally those of a person who has lived their life in debt. She acted astonished that there was such a mental condition and that it was both noticeable and definable. Such people are rarely stable in other areas. She was unreceptive of new concepts, even those referred to in idle chatting. I mean, to the point of intolerance, as in a neurosis about it.For example, the topic of Social Security came up. She stated she was very knowledgeable on the subject. I asked the same question I’ve been pursuing for three years – what is the minimum amount a person with forty points collects at normal retirement age? The answer has proven so elusive that I now often ask it as a test, such as in this case. Well, she launches into this big quotation of the rules and people she knows and how much they get. On and on about the stuff we already know, demonstrating that surface knowledge. I kept redirecting her back to the question asked, it dawned her after ten minutes I could not be distracted and this seemed to annoy her.
This is where our incompatibility showed through. I was seeking a single number and when she could not answer that, she indirectly made the assumption that anyone who wants that number must be in some kind of desperate position. That, folks, was too far over the line for me. She did not actually say it and did not have to. The fact is she could not fathom any other reason for asking. (I’m trying to decide if it is worth it for me to go back to work for over two years, no trivial matter, but she had trouble grasping that.) I know the situation because that is the exact runaround I got from the Social Security department when I phoned them twice a few years ago.
She also has a street person’s limited knowledge of the law. Not bad in itself, but she has developed a defense mechanism whereby not the tiniest facet of her standpoint can be questioned without blowing it up into a bigger or different issue. She acts as if she has a right to connect any idea that pops into her head to what you were talking about. When you can’t be bothered, she assumes she has won and you have lost. These types are experts at jumping back and forth between the big picture and small picture, so you can’t catch them on nothing but they think they catch you on everything.
She also has some misplaced faith in her ability to get you to do something you don’t want to do. It took five minutes to get it through to her that I was not going to tell her what time I was leaving for work tomorrow because I had not yet decided. She latched onto the “not going to tell her” part and got deaf to the rest. String this [two party conversation] together and see if you can guess who is speaking:
• You must have some idea.
• I told you, between 8 and 1.
• Can you narrow it down?
• I told you, no.
• Why not?
• I told you, I have not decided.
• When will you decide?
• I told you, tomorrow.
On and friggin’ on, but I couldn’t really tell her where to stick it.
Well, that is not going to work out, but maybe we’ll find her a place to rent in this area. It is nice and quiet, and also possible to drive past it for months without knowing it is a great place to live. Double that because the area just across Federal Highway looks much nicer that it really is. Its white owned and Cuban operated. See the two laborers applying parking lines to the pavement last Sunday. That’s something I’ve never seen, it is a white tape, not paint.
I finally called the G over that Donovan tune, “Mellow Yellow”. He does not know the phrase being uttered in the chorus either, although he assures me it is Paul McCartney’S voice. The vocal chant sounds like “Quite rightly” but it has four syllables. I think it is “Quite rightfully” but mispronounced. If you know, post it on Miami Craigslist. This drum box music commanded most of my day. Not only have I forgotten things about drumming through disuse, there are also a ton of techniques not in the Alesis manual that must be learned through trial and error. Mellow Yellow presented such a challenge, that part where the high hat is played open and then cancels its own decay on the next beat, the “Ka-shump” sound.
This is an instance where my “read the instructions” rule didn’t work. I went through the chapter four times. It wasn’t there. But if you finally just grab the box and press the pads in the sequence you want, it works by itself! Still, my guess is that any time lost is more than replaced by things that are covered in the book. What I miss most is that the box does not have necessary sounds, like finger-snapping, tambourine or toe-taps. But it has lots of those strange Latino sounds that belong on a different drum box sold for that purpose.
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