It must be this type of stupid wall that the detractors say won't work. The Trump wall will. The Liberals say it won't stop all the illegals. But if it stops 10%, I'll still support it.]
Since there are no shortcuts to Bal Harbor from here, I must have included other mileage on my earlier bike ride out there. It was only 9.7 miles, and took me two hours there and back to drop off the SVCD. Ruth, who was in a panic to get the [dog wig] videos, was not there. Fred mentioned her new clerk had called him up in a flap, saying she couldn’t get on the Internet and it was his fault. You can imagine how that went over with Fred.
It was Yom Kipper and everybody was walking services in their best clothes all around the area. Since I made it to town in less than an hour, I took a tour of Bal Harbor Shops, a swank shopping plaza. With the goldfish and turtle pond and lots of fountains. Some of the fish were all piled up in one corner of the ponds. Maybe they were from California?
Autumn is on the way, the wind has been blowing steadily for nearly four days now. Riding into it can be exhausting. Even so, I made it 36 miles already, all around including over to Petsmart to get some plastic fishbowls. Ouch, three bucks apiece. I’ve been listening to the downloaded music while working here. I’m picking tunes that can be learned fast with minimum chord changes. Unless I find another guitar player this week, and I won’t be anywhere I can look, the plan is to go visit Cort’s on Saturday and talk to Brian. The guy who drops measures. Any band is better than no band.
Just north of the bridge into Bal Harbor, there is a little kite store. The picture didn’t turn out but that wins the unusual spot for today. The two models I liked were both around 15 feet long. One was a rotating tube, the other was a figure of a scuba diver. It was designed to look exactly like viewing a scuba diver from underwater against the blue sky, with realistic flipper movements. A totally missed opportunity thanks to the Gemini camera., which, of all the things a camera could do wrong, does the worst and wipes out its own memory when kept in your pocket. (Yes, all the Argus photos turned out fine.)
The roadway between Bal Harbor and Hollywood has a one mile section with no sidewalks on either side, just north of the Sunny Isles nude beach. More brilliant city planning, because there is no room to put one without clipping off the millionaire’s driveways. It is common to see people walking to the beach right down the traffic lanes. Somewhat less common is seeing a fifty year old man on a bicycle delivering high tech video to wigmakers who personally knew Elvis Presley, but I’m given to know this has, on occasion, actually happened. See the great wig picture? It is not a collage. The internal reflections in the morning sunlight caused the photo to turn out this way.
I dropped in to check at the shop, but continued west on Hollywood Blvd to the Target plaza near Park Road, then north to Stirling. He found it remarkable I had already been out of town and back on the bike. I mentioned to him that I had also stopped for a one hour coffee break at noon. It is odd to take the side roads to avoid the truly ignorant drivers in this town, only to find them there also. If I mention them often, it is because they are a constant. I even doubled back down one street to see if the goof who was riding my ass would follow. He did. Another jerk actually pulled his van across an empty parking lot to swing right up onto a curb in an unused fire lane to block my path, so I had to slam on my brakes and drive around him.
Back home before late afternoon, I’ve made iced coffee with orange flavoring and re-listened to some tunes on the computer stereo. I can easily pick out things I play wrongly which I like to add in once I have the bass riffs in a playable form. Late night or not, I’m going to finally sit down and learn “These Boots Were Made for Walking”. See if I can spice it up enough to make it presentable with even bad guitar playing.
It is important to chose all the tunes in advance to have bass lines that complement rather than just accompany the guitarist. The two “disjointed” parts have great audience appeal because they know both instruments are needed for a particular presentation. Those of you who knew me back in my “Not Half Bad” days [of the late 80s] will remember my pioneering work in this area.
I admit the real motive was to discourage the guitar player from going back and playing the same set solo in front of the same crowd. This is where I discovered that you can play the audience’s mind as an extra instrument. If the bass line is done right, they “hear” the missing parts. It also helps immensely to know the bass is not a guitar and should not be played like one.
Here is sculpture of business people, or rather what business people look like in airline magazines and auto showrooms. The figures are around eight inches high. This is a permanent exterior piece in the Neimann Marcus mall area of Bal Harbor. I’m not sure what the message is, but the figures are definitely simian and they are all barefoot.
Upon refining my idea of collecting business cards in the fish bowls, I’ve decided to try the prestige angle first. That is, see if most people won’t drop in a business card simply because they have one. The old “Drop Card Here” sign. Cards collected this way would have an opportunity cost of $1.04 each so it is worth a try. It is precisely this kind of “inefficiency” that once made America great. By that, I mean some joker expert could easily design a cheaper distribution method called Bizcard-R-Us or something – but that would hardly be an improvement. While the individual card would be cheaper, you would have to drive across town and the cards would come in packages of 50, know what I mean?
Here is an Internet book I criticized almost ten years ago, I bring it up again to prove I have at least a certain presence of mind on these things. My report complained that, while technically accurate, these books do not do what they purport – teach you about the Internet. Part one states, “You can dial into a large computer connected to the Internet via an online service or a dial-in Internet service provider, or you can use another kind of Internet service, such as a cable modem. In Ethernet networks, the data goes from a server to a computer on the network.”
That is 100% correct, but you are crazy to think that it will help a newcomer learn anything. I mean, a server is who brings you tea. The passage makes you think you can get on the Internet by picking up your telephone and dialing a “large computer”, it does not even mention that modems are required. Or how about cable being “another kind” of Internet service? Great, now there is more than one kind Internet and we haven’t learned what the first one is yet. Is it you or the large computer that must be connected “via an online service”? The only people who could understand such instruction are those who already know. My point is the same then as now; this business is fraught with jackasses.
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