Many people became accountants so they needn’t bother with those things. I personally know people who dropped out in terror during third year when my old accounting school began to require a single public speaking course. I snapped this hotel in Lake Worth because it reminded me of Texas. The little old two-story hotel with the rooms above the bar and coffee shop. Where the long-term residents have been there for over twenty years and all have favorite chairs in the lobby. How about that door set at 45 degrees to the street and behind a corner post? Totally Texas. This hotel is on a side road called Lucerne. I couldn’t get a closer shot because soon after I used the camera, fifteen people were at the window staring. Stranger in town!
Let’s have a show of hands, who likes that tune “Long Haired Country Boy”? All of you. Good, because I just spent two hours learning it. Don’t buy that guitarist’s quip that anybody can play the bass riff – because I can guarantee not one of them is doing it right. The scale running down is played differently than running back up. I kept playing it over and over knowing something was wrong, but what? Then I realized I had been following the guitar line. Guitarists have this bizarre worship thing about changing to an “open D” tuning and this song changes only the low E.
What’s more, the tune has the lead break injected by a studio engineer. I’ve long since noticed country music is bad for this. It is staggered off by a half-measure and that is why all you stomp dancers have to skip a beat to get back on your left foot for the last verse. I can’t recall how far back I first heard this song and must have thought it would be easy to pick out. Instead, I spent the evening at home with Pudding-Tat over it.
Get this. A customer whose network I installed a few weeks ago called up the shop and told them I did it wrong. That I was all talk and didn’t know anything. Right—the guy who just hooked up the most complicated piece of equipment you’ve ever owned doesn’t know anything. Once the laughing stopped, the guys said it turned out the problem was the cable company equipment. I don’t repair cable modems. Anyway, it just shows you how no-tech some people go through life. I pity automotive mechanics who deal with such bozos all the time. “It was working okay before you touched it.”
We had to kick Fred’s whiz kid (whose nickname is T.O.) out of the shop. He sometimes comes there to hang out when he is skipping school. We don’t allow that. Besides, he can be a noisy distraction. I put my resume on six major job boards. I am one of the most versatile office workers that ever existed, but some of the web sites show no match for my skills. Another Florida quirk is when you have over 15 years experience, they assume your goal is to go into management. Me? Manage a bunch of filing clerks? There ain’t enough money in the world.
Speaking of money, I won $4.50 in the lotto with the ticket received as a tip last day. I gave the ticket to cancer Steve. The agony is that I was only one or two numbers out on the remaining three (as in I had a 20 and needed a 21, etc.). I shouldn’t say agony but the guys don’t understand why I don’t whoop when I win. It is only money.
Johnny the guitarist was supposed to call, but didn’t. That is why I’m glad I made an extra visit with Will, the guy who is interested in playing rhythm. Will is certainly an individual, for example, he will not accept my offer to lend him my Fender Squire to learn on. He wants to buy one, but does not even know the basics of what to look for. He did not know that a pickup is required for stage work, or what a pickup is for that matter. Keep in mind, however, that such people make far better band members in the long run, for they are not corrupted by standardized mindsets learned via guitar lessons.
Trivia. I’m going to have to confirm this independently, but I heard that when the wagon trains of the 1850s headed west, it was customary for the pioneers to carve their names on rocks along the way. If so, that points to an extraordinarily literate group of people, and probably ahead of any other such group in the world at that time. There goes the theory that early immigrants couldn’t read. (Either that, or the ones that couldn’t read went to Florida when they heard it had no rocks.)
