This morning I’m going in early to get that Limewire connection working. How do I just know that Regina (say re-JEE-nah) Wigs is going to call for help? I thought she was going to kidnap me until I taught her how to computerize the shop. That’s consulting, not teaching. For my geek contingent, I have some info. Do you know how the reserved ranges on IP addresses work? Such as 192.168.0.0. I do. The Internet nodes are tweaked to not forward those addresses. I went to CoffeeTime for the breakfast bagel and to read Sci-Am.
There are certain things I can do in my spare time (such as the books for a wig shop) but you see, I have no spare time. Anyway, I have this plan to respond to the Nigerian Scam. I have all the information they require to send me one of these bogus checks from Amoudu D. Frey. The idea is then to publish a copy of this check in Cahoots, and make my money off the newspaper. If I have any spare time.
That Maria at the office is getting on my nerves. She’s been looking for a [clerical] job for six years running. She wants some place she can waddle around at half a mile an hour and collect a paycheck. While it is a fact she is stupid and uneducated to a truly astonishing degree, that is not what gets me. She lacks the brains to judge merit, and tries to disguise this by always siding with the underdog even when that person is in the wrong. It is like talking to a born-again, every conversation winds up her saying what you could have done to be nicer, what more you could have done to make the other person happy. Even if that person was stealing your car.
A computer office full of men trying to make a living is hardly the place for this stunt. I grew up around stupid people, so of course I understand her true selfish motive is to appear kind and nurturing. She thinks people only see the being nice part, not her self-centered obsession with pretending to be so. Such people live in oblivion. She is literally the divorced woman who suddenly is an expert on love.
While I’m ragging, I still hate Sony. Now I kick myself for always giving them one more chance. Today it was burning a DVD. You are supposed to be able to hook any camera to the inputs and it will record direct to DVD. Lies. The damn thing only works when you are standing there watching it and under ideal conditions. The minute you go answer the phone, it stops and wrecks your disk. Further, this event deactivates all the buttons. You have to unplug the thing. If you put the disk into a DVD player to check if you got anything at all, it locks up your computer as well. It only seems to work with home made tapes that are recorded in one long two-hour session. Turn your camcorder off even momentarily to change angles, and Sony will screw things up.
It is now evening and I guess we can conclude today is not my day. I wheeled over to Young Circle to drop off a CD of tunes known to be sharp presentations for guitar and bass duos. Such as Heatherley’s version of “Counting Flowers on the Wall”. For about the fifth time, after I’ve invested time and effort, I discover that the guitar player has a “project”. This means he has a four piece group already together and everything said about forming a duo was bloviation. Don’t you hate it when they do that? The G used to tell people he wasn’t feeling well and then go play at Alligator Alley.
It is like the woman who conveniently forgets to mention she has children until after the first date – if you dump her for dishonesty, at least she got that out of you. It is sad that playing music has become a “Trust but Verify” situation. The G did the same thing to so many people with his Helix band, although I was on to him the first time he tried it on me. They’ve [Helix] played maybe two or three paying gigs in something like nine years. If I learned to beat on a garbage can I could do better than these people. Guitarists and keyboardists are the only part of such groups that can play solo gigs between bookings, so it never dawns on them that overall it is a losing game.
I mean, have you ever tried to find bookings for a five-piece orchestra. Let me tell you, I know about operating bands, it was the second business I started in my life. Back when I was 12. Not only is the entire group unwieldy, but moving equipment becomes a logistics migraine. How many times have we had to send somebody back across town to get a forgotten cable or cord the band could not do without?
It also severely restricts the number of tunes you can play, exactly the opposite of what the less experienced would conclude. The simpler, catchy hits tend to get vastly overplayed. The keyboard player always wants to add a riff even where one does not exist and then you get volume creep. Or worse, he wants to play another instrument [like a flute or something], which they are never any good at. Plus, learning a new tune becomes a major undertaking even after the agony of getting five people to agree on it.
There is also the question of money. That is why the big bands died out – the individual members weren’t getting paid enough. Well, the 1960’s five and six piece groups are also dead. I doubt they represent 1% of working musicians today. It was a discussion with Johnny D that brought his conveniently unmentioned band to light. I can book us for $600 each on New Years, but I cannot get that each for five people. Again, guitar players tend to be really bad at band management because of those solo gigs they can do between shows.
I am back to looking for a guitar player. The picture? It is nothing but an apartment over on 14th Avenue. Ah, but a very unusual Florida apartment. Not only are the lights all working, they are a matching set. All replaced at the same time. This means it lacks that “Third World” Miami charm but it was rare enough to rate a picture. Yes, I see the one missing bulb, but again, right extraordinary for around here.
