Take the difference between a hardware store with a half-million of inventory and a night club that is little more than a bar and a sign in the window. I say one is more solid, more permanent, than the other. Which one will pack up and leave the instant there is a bad season? Hence, “shallow”. We know shopping malls have a concept of anchor stores. Those tend to be on-going concerns.There remain just a few boutiques and specialty shops downtown; even the science store is long gone. Replacing them, and creeping westward along the boulevards, are food joints and night clubs. I’ve never been in most of them, they smack of high prices. Now I don’t mind price if the quality is there, but there is nothing you can to do an empanada in Hollywood, Florida, to make it worth $4 to me.
Also, call it development if you want, but the clubs are all following a pattern that I can easily see. They have similar décor, hours of operation, even similar non-Anglo staff and (it seems) identical settings on their air conditioning. That’s what I’m getting at—the area isn’t attracting new tenants so much as it is attracting only a single type of tenant. And as you walk past, their stereos are all playing that “shigga-shigga” music.
This was a fast-moving day and the high point was again the guitar class. This lesson is soon to be on CD and we have enough material to put on a small show. It will certainly shock anyone who thinks 15 hours can’t make a difference, or that group lessons can’t produce results.
The class has voted to continue with my lessons although I can’t really teach them much more by way of guitar. (They’ve all graduated, they are ready to go.) We are slated for a show on November 7. It is inspiring to see the group, since none of them realize yet that they are already in a band. Five acoustic guitars, one bass and a drum machine. No singer, but with a group that big, who cares?
It looks like I won’t lack things to do in my old age, not the way I’ve taken to bingo calling. The most popular item is still my choice of background music. Well that, and the fact that tonight there was a small crowd meaning somebody won the powerball. I found an extra twenty in the tip jar, so I dropped by Capt. J’s to see Rhonda’s show. I’ve somehow become associated with that tune “The Perfect Country and Western Song”, Karaoke version. A year ago I would never have dreamed I could sing something like that.
Advice you’ve heard before: forget albums and get-togethers. If you have any photos worth sharing, get them on the Internet. Just make sure they are innocuous. You don't know what will change in the future, so that family photo of you hugging your sister might come back to bite you by 2020. Now that I’ve scanned a few hundred, I regret waiting so long. There are pictures of bands I played with in Los Angeles and women I dated in Colonia Tovar that I can’t remember.
Do not use the Stratford Labs IS-505 slide and negative scanner. It is not suitable for any serious work, in fact, it is a piece of junk to be avoided. Except for the fact that it can be made to function, every possible thing imaginable is wrong with it. Even the software (from the otherwise reputable Arcsoft) will wipe out earlier applications without permission by installing itself in the same directory.
*[Author's note 2015-10-21: this particular location, as I found out later, seems to change hands every few months. It is a block south of the main drag with only two or three parking spots. They've tried everything there from coffee shops to Jamaican food. It is one of those places that seems like a good location, but isn't. I've jammed there on open mics.]
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