I thought I’d walk through Wal-Mart and price out a few things, including fishing gear. No, I’m not considering it as a hobby, but we get these things donated at the thrift and I’m curious [what they sell for]. I kind of view fishing being similar to golf, a stereotyped activity marketed mainly to stereotyped people. They say business deals are made on golf courses, and the way this economy is going, I believe it. Back to fishing. What are the odds that I would, once in my life, try to check out a rod and reel prices, only to find that is the one thing in the entire sports section that had no prices that day?
Well, here is proof. Hundreds of fishing poles, but not one with a price tag. The tags you see are not for the rods. See the empty metal plates? That is where the prices should be. How did Wal-Mart know I chose this one day in eternity to shop for those prices? If these sort of uncanny coincidences bother you, do not move to Florida. From there I went to the Argentina coffee place and ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. It is a breaded chicken sandwich with tomatoes and a cheese sauce. It was ten bucks, but you get practically the whole chicken.
I rode my bicycle and I can tell the leg cramp is from not riding my usual amount. That bicycle is proof that unless you are athletic to begin with, sporadic exercise is not an option when you get past a certain age. So I rode around all morning and took it easy. I went on a shopping spree. I didn’t find any good shoes, but my new security cameras are now all motion-activated, my computer supply shelf is full and I narrowly decided against new bike tires. Why? The ones I wanted were $94 each, more than I paid for the bicycle. More than the tires on my car.
I picked up extra guitar cables, fuses, batteries so I’m slowly putting together duplicates of my stage gear, a wise move I learned five centuries ago. Having the time, I took a look through the home entertainment pages over coffee at the Panera. (They finally clued in about the long line-ups and have a self-pay coffee station. You pop a dollar-fifty into the can and serve yourself.) I admit to not understanding what all the hype is with digital TV but I read the ads and specs anyway. I do not believe the average person who buys a TV understands all those ratios. Spend all you want, the programs are still boring.
I ran through all the channels I could find, 68 of them. I found four or five with movies in English. Old, stale movies, with a lot of commercials. Channels 42, 43, 44, 45, 47 and there was a war movie on the History channel. The majority of other channels were infomercials, cooking, sports, cartoons and sports. There were a few ethnic sitcoms and talk shows, one cop show and a ballroom dance competition obviously restricted to tall skinny white people. I don’t know about you, but I can’t see paying $2,000 to watch that [kind of programming] in high definition.
I worked the Sudoku puzzle, the Jumble and the Washington Post crossword. The place was full of people pretending to be hard at work on their laptops. There was one gal in a total 1960’s outfit, we are talking granny-gown, with her eye on me. Not my type, but I smiled and nodded anyway. She did the same and we both turned back to what we were doing. Sorry lady, you’ll have to be [at least somewhat] more aggressive than that to get my interest. I do not take fortresses by storm. Nor am I the only guy that thinks women over a certain age use granny-gowns to hide a variety of neglects.
Later. The motion-activated camera reveals that Pudding, the cat, does not eat when I am in the room unless I am watching her. She stops eating and grooms if I turn away, then begins munching again when I turn back. Explain that one, Ace. Peculiar pet habits brought to you by Wal-Mart. In the end, I walked through the entire store except for clothing. It is crammed with the paraphernalia of middle-class existence. A special electric pot to make chili, so authentic it was even made in Mexico, ahem. Talking picture frames. Plastic basketballs. Colored cell phone skins. All kinds of things we can’t live without.
Howard called at noon, I must make plans to get my passport, at least see about getting things underway by the end of this month. I need a low airfare and transportation, that I can set up from here. My best buddy, Marion, lives 70 miles from where I have to be. Howard told be about some book he’s written for the Chinese market, I would leap at the opportunity to spend time in China. He emailed me the details but I had to close shop before I had time to check it. Either way, I need a plane to Seattle pronto.
I’ll give myself three months to learn Mandarin, and all afternoon today to create some original bass lines to the new music I’m learning. For example, I’ve got a dynamite riff to Jambalaya using more rolling tenths, which I reversed one of the octaves. What a sound, I have never heard such a bass riff used ever, probably because it is hard to play.
You see, it is a piano lick and I’ve been playing bass long enough that I had to unlearn moves that have become natural. It took two hours to re-teach my left hand to play that tenth, but I do believe I’ve got something new, at least in the type of music I play. Is it original? I don’t know, but I know I’ve never heard anything like it. Four notes that your ear tells you can’t be the right beat, but they are.
Charlie Daniels band, that “Drinking My Baby Goodbye” song. A close listen made it a disappointment for me. Like Nichols and Jackson music, the lead solos are injected. In this case, the mix-down tech did a terrible job of it. One can actually hear the compression difference when the guitarist starts and stops, plus a sound I swear is part of a click track. All the lead parts were recorded at a different times and places. I’ll edit the thing properly and get rid of the noises.
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