(This is from "What did you expect?")
Oh boy, now they plan to allow cell phone usage on the airlines. Another reason to buy a motorcycle. Damn, can you imagine being trapped five miles up with four hundred blithering idiots? Forget non-smoking, I want a seat in non-stupidity. But don’t get your hopes up. The only laws that change rapidly are the ones the government finds inconvenient. Thus we can assume the government is very interested in what people like to talk about when on the airplanes.
Why? Because cash shortages have turned America into a nation of renters. Without credit most people can’t even afford their groceries. Seriously, it is not uncommon to get stuck behind some lady trying to buy a loaf of bread who has to swipe two or three cards to find one with any room left. Pitable.
Thus, to sell something like this [manufactured home] in Florida, you acquire the unenviable task of finding someone with a large enough down payment and high enough monthly income to tempt owner financing over the short term. Now don’t get your hopes up, I’ve seen the entire blurb and this is one of the nicest places in the nicest area.
But sooner or later something along these lines is bound to plop into my lap. The newbie seller has to figure out that these days $5,000 is considered a huge down payment and only then do I wave a lot more than that under his nose. Like I said, the pattern is known. By me. I wonder if it has an ensuite?
Well, well, well, guess who that was on the phone? Billie-Bill. And he wants to play country music. In a duo. Because he got fed up with the local musician crowd and all their pissant hassle. Form a core group, he said, get a full set down pat with another professional who can sing, he said. Then the others will beg to join. Find three high paying gigs and rotate them, keep the crowd interested and focused. Gee, some of you are thinking, it took me years to reach the same conclusion he did after talking with me a month ago.
Not only that, he was quite specific about his reasons, including the futility of always dragging other musicians up to speed who then put on a half-baked performance. Billie-Bill has some places lined up in Ft. Lauderdale, but he is also brand new to country tunes, as he is still thinking Hank Williams. I don’t do any Hank except “Jambalaya” with little resemblence to the original. What’s more, very few guitarists appreciate a singing bassist because they’ve heard so many false claims (a bass player who lays down a track, then comes back later to overdub it with vocals is not doing the same job as I).
Through all he said, there was one aspect that convinced me he has finally seriously thought through the process. He wants to “arrange the songs one by one”. That’s preachin’ to the choir. It tells me he’s fed up with faking it through every tune a little differently with each new band he meets. He’s about to rally up with the past master of song arrangement. Arranged as much for the audience as the music. He isn’t the first guitar player to completely forget he had this conversation with me earlier, but nothing flies better than somebody believing an idea is their own.
It was with incredulity I also heard him mention the cost of driving from his place to here unless there was some assurance this thing would pay off. Hmmm, but no mention of the times I drove out to Weston two years ago to practice with his group. Argh. Guitar players. Not Billie-Bill, but I mean in general.
Following my own advice, I stayed inactive. My shoulder, wrist, and outlook needed a pause. This tummy flu is bad, it just arrives in stages. I biked over to the bakery slightly before dark to discover most of the gang also arrived late under similar circumstances. I’d say it was the first occasion we were all present at closing time. It nicely showed that the morning crowd is the best crowd and that we are all tired by day’s end. Um, not so much tired as weary. That is how I wound up. Home, tired, well-fed, and pondering the next few weeks.
Gawd almighty, not another Godzilla rerun. What is with these Generation X people? Raised on cable TV and play stations, between the sixty million of them they cannot come up with one original idea in forty years. Yeah, that sounds like them. The whiz kid bunch. Not a single new movie monster (except Alien). “Gee, Ethan, this creative thought part really hurts my head. What can we do to rip some money off instead of earn it? Let’s put our iPads together and see what worked so long ago you can't remember. Nobody will notice.”
It says here that 76% of college students have a credit card. That’s getting them indoctrinated for the real world. And Miami has the highest ratio of credit card debt. Yep, and they are all standing ahead of you in the checkout.
