The job in Sacramento must have been real, it was filled before I got in this morning. I’ll wait, for no doubt they will get their share of shiftless applicants. Meanwhile, I applied for another that pays “two cents per word”, but just wants thousands of “non-fiction” words cranked out on just about any subject. With my long term average of 1,679 words per hour, I’m considering it a very serious application.Rose, the Fleetwood Mac broad, is out of the picture. It was getting weird to talk to her because she has that annoying attitude that all men are brought along by her charms at the same speed. I guess she felt I must be at the near desperate stage or something. Instead, I kind of reminded her that despite what she thought I said, I did not invite her to sing in my band. Only that she could come and hear me along with her friends “or mother for that matter”.
Nor is Jimbo’s an audition. I don’t do unrehearsed jams with strangers at my regular gig. She would ignore that and ask if I had a microphone she could use. No. She also mentioned that she had turned over a new leaf after twenty years and had not smoked “any weed for two whole days”. When she asked to use the computer, I reminded her that she had not kept her promise to pay me the last time. She lectured me about how friends didn’t charge each other.
When that didn’t work, she stomped out, calling me a “faggot” and threatening how she was going to put my band out of business by publishing what a “faggot” I was in her newspaper column, I believe she said. I guess anybody who can resist her feminine charms must be queer? I’m half-scared to death and the guys at the shop nearly died laughing. Rose thinks she’s still got it. She was also asking too many questions about Jean, like is she young and is she pretty. Yes. It is good she revealed her true character before anything was committed.
As a result, I have been trying for just over an hour to remember when was the last time I asked a friend for anything for free. It just isn’t done, which could explain why I am still friends with some people over 25 years. I plan how to use what I’ve got, but I admit to knowing people who immediately start thinking of who they can sponge off over any project. (Ken Sanchuk, my brothers.) (Ken is the guy who owns eight socket sets all with the 7/16th bit missing yet can’t understand why you won’t lend him yours.)
More bad news. The gig at Jimbo’s bombed. I know it is unwise to classify things that way, but there was only $1 in the tip jar and the regulars know my song list off by heart (all 90 songs). There was a crowd of extremely noisy Latinos at the pool table and they were playing some really bad rock music on the jukebox. They did not mingle and were swearing up a storm in Spanish.
I did notice the music they played was 1990s rock, an era when real rock was already so past it’s prime that expensive videos could not revive it. The performers had “forgotten nothing”. The music sounded like old Doors riffs and expressionless Kinks lyrics strung together. Every tune seemed to have a 15-second scream break ending in a paradiddle and the rapid-fire techno-lead breaks never matched the music context. Yet, the pool players all knew the words and riffs.
Superstition is a strange motivator, and I’ve been reading about the exploits of the sea Captains just before the time of Columbus. It was very well “known” during that period that Herodotus had sailed around Africa (showing it did not join Asia and isolate the Indian Ocean) and the Romans said that if you sailed west (for 2,500 miles), you would reach the Orient. Superstition held that the world could be round without being spherical.
What amazed me is that the Captains were themselves no bunch of chicken-shits and were often disappointed at having to return to Portugal empty-handed. It was the crews that were more of a problem as the route around Africa was explored. Many encounters with the black natives were hostile because of centuries-old Arab slave raids and not, as sometimes implied, due to any new cruelty begun by Europeans. True, the Euros were no Saints, but the problem was already there when they arrived so yes, the savages attacked them with poison arrows. Just like you would if the enemy had muskets and you did not.
