When you see it. This was a proof of delivery photo for one of the Valentine’s gifts today. After missing last year in so many, I was again in downtown Miami by personal request. This year, Joe is doing only the large and expensive arrangements. As a family business, it is kind of tradition that I be there on Valentine’s. This meant I teamed up with Mrs. Joe and did the major downtown daytime deliveries in her SUV. She double-parked while I ran up the elevators. You see, part of it is that I never get stopped for ID, except at the courthouse.
The area north of Miami has changed considerably. There used to be tracts of slums and container storage yards. Even a cement plant. It’s still not up to par but it is a much nicer place to hang out than downtown. That house I almost bought was just eight blocks from the area now being developed. That’s the house where I had the agent talked down to $40k when the other buyer finally showed up with the cash. Downtown has become like Caracas. Heavily guarded ground floors and the rich folks living well above street level. The super rich can get onto Brickell Key, now taken over by South American millionaires, the average condo prices being in the $2 million mark. One delivery was to a penthouse where lived a 22 year old Brazilian babe, a movie star. She stood around 4 foot 8, the Latinos aren’t as fussy about tall women actresses. I’d say she was a 9.5.
But that 1800 address got mixed up again and I had to walk two miles in one stretch. That did me in. That bad address gets into the list every year and you don’t notice it until you walk down 3rd Street and the numbers come to an end. Yet there are so many deliveries in that area, the mistake repeats every year. It was my turn. That so tuckered me I had to quit by mid-afternoon and drive home.
The good news is music rehearsal went well. Trent also had a long day, so we drank coffee and worked most of the music with the drum machine. My feeling is we will need that drum machine for a while yet as our timing isn’t as tight as it should be. For all the talk about just stopping when you get off beat and come in on the next measure, in reality that can be quite difficult to pull off on stage. We are also into a phase of hard work and seem to be handling it surprisingly well.
This is more important than you think. At the early stage, you instinctively play music familiar to all the members. Once that gives out, it’s time to knuckle down. Another topic that can get confrontational is the band name. I’m generally for witty names that do not peg the band too much. Using the members names is iffy should somebody quit or you take on a horn player. Other than that, I’m flexible. I’m partial to calling us “Two Kind”. To me, band names aren’t a big deal unless you intend to advertise.
I didn’t say y’day, but I stopped at Dekka for an hour-long coffee. They have a small bookshelf and I now have a favorite spot by the north window. There was a book with high def Hubble photographs of the planets and outer space. I was studying a radar rendering of Venus without the cloud cover. After around twenty minutes I looked up to see everyone in the room had been watching me. They had never seen a man look at one picture for so long. One lady asked why I held the book sideways when looking at some of the galaxy pictures. I [explained that I] was just turning the photos right-side-up.
(Have you seen it yet? The background to this vase was the wall of a fashion district lingerie shop. I snapped the photo without checking, as I don’t care for lingerie. The fact is, ladies, lacy undies just get in my way. Fourscore and plenty of my male readers spotted the goods before I finished posting. I’ve had selective vision all my life. If I don’t find a woman naturally sexy, there seems nothing she can do to change that.)
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