This is a rather unique shot overlooking the bow of a $50 million dollar yacht up in Ft. Liquorda…, er, I mean, Ft. Lauderdale. Taken from a tour boat on the New River, this building is on Millionaire’s Row, with a view of the world’s largest yacht club and mansions belonging to the rich and shameless. Billion-dollar divorces happen under the watchful gaze of the inhabitants of this high-rise.
It is the Broward County Jail. The paradox is that 1/3 of the houses and boats within sight of this prison are openly admitted to be the result of some brand of illegal activity. Houses built by nameless squadrons of drug smugglers and bootleggers line some 200 miles of inland waterway in this immediate area.My birthday present is an LED light machine. It is four circular arrays of 35 LEDs that can be set to pulse automatically to the music. I’m reminded of the time when I had to build my own out of parts at the hardware. Yes, that is how far back I go with music. I suppose big city bands had access to fancier stuff, but in my day it was the music, not the show, that received most of the attention. This bank has red, green, blue and yellow and produces almost no heat. Amazing. When the green and yellow are blocked, it does a reasonable facsimile of police lights for our movie.
For our home-made system when I was 13, we hooked up six ceramic sockets to three switches and wired them so that each flip turned on a different color. This was tricky, but we had a drummer named Kerschbaumer who understood the principle of the three-way switch. Our system required a human operator to time the lights to the music. For that reason alone, I did not like it.
This new Karaoke idea of mine is shaping up to be another long, hard uphill struggle all on my own. It is not as much fun as live music, why club owners can't figure that out is weird. And more work. Yet again, not one person out there appears able to help me with anything but the basics. I’ve met a few individuals like Denton over at Guitar Center who understand parts of the scenario. The difficulty is that nobody seems to know the whole process. That means another giant project that again will completely distance me from the competition. They will become the, “Oh, that’s what you meant” crowd. If all I wanted was a Karaoke setup, I’d be on eBay.
News from the north. Wallace is scheduled for that hip replacement. Finally, after years of waiting. He’s too proud to use a cane so he’s been limping for years. Another reason you don’t want socialized medicine—the long lineups. When treatment is free, you’ve never seen so many hypochondriacs.
My top customer was in today. Ten years younger than me, he just survived a heart attack. He’s due in for specialized heart work later this week. I wished him well but I still need to get paid. He used to be with the school board, probably the definition of stress. I made enough today to prompt Wallace to try for the boat trip again tomorrow. This time we get there at 9:00 A.M. This should be total fun, the weather is just cool enough. Plus now I know there is no parking at the dock.
Glass blowing is another thing I don’t get. Not the trade, rather how so many people seem to attach something mysterious to the process. Like there is a mystical quality to it, they will watch somebody at the furnace like they were an alchemist. You couldn’t pay me to watch somebody make glass. There was a marble making machine on TV (I’ve been training myself to watch TV on Saturdays) that was more interesting.
I also made a complete review of every hit song since 1980. I notice the number of hits has grown every year along with the total number of bands. At one point in 1965 or so it seems like six or eight bands produced 80% of the fifty hit records. Today hit records number in the hundreds per year with rarely any band having more than a single. By reading the titles, I doubt I have heard a single hit of the past two years. Some musician, huh? In my own defence, I don’t exactly embrace the idea that totally studio-produced synthesized sound is necessarily music and I find rap music to be oxymoronic. On the other hand, at least I recognized some of the artists’s names.
ADDENDUM
In case I didn’t say, gasoline is down to $1.85 a gallon. Why, I think I’ll tank up.
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