I spent the day in the shop, amidst the usual jokes on how busy it gets while I’m there. I assure you it is totally co-incidence. I go there so randomly there is no other explanation. Still, it seems to happen. I have decided to get the PA head (amplifier) without the speakers.
It was a nice outfit, that PA 150 [[of his], but this would mean he got himself (just) two and a half year’s service before blowing a speaker. Even I won’t try to replace (repair) Fender components if you gave them to me free. The new head says engineered and designed in the UK but “produced to perfection in the People’s Republic of China”. Obviously we capitalists don’t mind others paying the same dues all over again, I mean, aren’t all Communists necessarily union members? Am I a jerk?
Deanne, no matter how I have spelled it before, is worried about CD burning. Like many, she does not understand that many different formats can be burned. While I like Nero, and Nero Express, I’ve been tempted to write to that company and explain how so few people understand exactly what the hell their “Benchmark CD-DVD Speed” feature actually does. It is undoubtedly important, but nobody knows what it means, what it does, or why it is important enough that any of us would bother.
The Holiday Bowling Lanes just explained themselves out of probably the only thing that could possibly bring back, in the short run, the crowd they lost. It was bureaucratic, sure, but regardless of what the local manager said, the decision of the so-called professional group said:
No “French” music
Play until 1:00 AM
No Guarantee
There was also a minor exchange with the management (a meaningless title) that says they basically want somebody to play for free until business picks up. Worse, business is re-defined as the total business the bar does including the bowling and restaurant next door, duh. I just picked the wrong lounge, that’s all, I must need a little more experience how to tell a saloon from a bowling alley. How could I have been so stupid for so long?
Interestingly, I talked to the manager’s bartender-daughter, hoping to get an inside angle. Not when she is too stupid to string two coherent sentences together. I pointed out the bar was “dead” based on the fact that I have personally looked in every night of the previous two weeks. Last Saturday, there was one drunk in there, and he tried [unsuccessfully] to sponge twenty bucks off me. Yet the daughter called me a liar, saying the bar was busy all night. Based not on extra bar sales, but the overall income from other sales. Slap my forehead, I thought they wanted a band in the bar.
Also, I had proposed the French band play there for three weeks. The premise was that if they worked out, we had something in reserve for the Fall, if not, they would be gone in no time. I must report that this simple concept was vastly too complicated for the Holiday Bowling Center, or any of the family members employed therein. You might as well have been talking to a troop of chimpanzees. Way, way, way, way out of their brain league.
So, I told the G he might be interested. If so, it would not be the first time two such parties have connected in South Florida. Do tell how they agree on the money part, because it is such pure coincidence that the G always wants exactly the amount they can’t muster up: $50 per night. Either way, they know what they can do with their surplus bowling pins. It would be malicious to call them inbred hayseeds, so I won’t.
It is not lost to me, I say, that a few days back when there was a sense of urgency to this, the G still insisted on doing solos and originals rather than work as a team. I must remember to return that favor. He still thinks the “musician” part is better than the “get work” part, a sure sign he is still getting free money from somewhere. He is a solid member of that Florida club that thinks they can rope you in and then redefine the parameters as things go along.
Jay-Jay called. This man is a mystery. He knows every homeless shelter in most of the lower 48, but yet he plainly knows a thing or two about selling radio advertising. In one of those dumb decisions in life, I’ve decided to simply front him $40 cash. Not a loan, just hand over the bucks. He has a big mouth, and that might be handy in this economy. Especially since I found out that a top-notch piano teacher gets $65 an hour.
I stopped by to see Johnny, a guitarist with not too many teeth. He is bartending, or helping out at the bar called “The Wiley Street Pub”. I was wearing sunglasses when I arrived, so the waitress immediately grabbed them an put them on. Oh, she says, they are smudged. So she puts them through the beer glass cleaner. Wow, they came out like brand new. She says it is a sanitizer. That is great, I like women to sanitize things before I use them, at least momentarily before I get there.
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