One year ago today: April 20, 2013, Huckapoo's, Tybee Island.
Five years ago today: April 20, 2009, amazing predictions.
I’m going out this morning to specially find a picture for today’s blog. That’s how slow things have been. I don’t even have anything in the archives that’s suitable. However, even a five-mile early morning bike ride didn’t produce any novelty. So today’s blog is mostly contrived. Except this photo of a mini-mystery. This is my red scooter parked on Saturday night downtown. The question is Worldstar, the business sign to the left. I thought that was the name of a packaging company. Then you notice it isn’t an “A”, but a star. Smells off to me.
It turns out the four corners marker is not where it should be, which is 1,800 feet more to the east. This is attributed to a surveying error. So the government did what was expected. They declared the spot to be the legal corner as opposed to the actual corner. And then put a fence around it and charged admission. You turn off NM 160 onto the second shortest highway in the State, NM 597. It is a half-mile long, but just enough for the toll booth. I mean, why-the-hell-not, New Mexico? Political tourism at its finest.
The combo that isn’t, that’s what you get at Drunkin’ Donuts. I ordered thinking it included a drink and some tater-tots, like their web page says. Nope, it’s just the sandwich. The sign is clearly labeled “DD Combos” but there is not enough time to discuss the lack of business ethics in Florida. Price-wise, they are as expensive as Panera, which gives free refills. And donut shop clientele confirms the new studies that show the largest increase in divorce rates is in the 50 to 60 gang. That’s one hell of an age to be back on the circuit.
Newly divorced women had best invest in a lot of cats. And the men spend the first two years of “freedom” trying to convince themselves they were not wrong about what they imagined they were missing out on. You know what I’m talking about. And to the Drunkin’ Donuts manager who said I was the first person to ever complain about the non-combo, that is because most people don’t complain until the second time they come in.
Here is a site that gives the prices at all large-chain fast food joints. For the record, I have never eaten at any of the following. Arby’s, Captain D’s, Chipotle, Culvers, In-N-Out, Jimmy John’s, Krispy Kreme, Panda Express, Qdoba, Rally’s, Sonic, Steak-N-Shake, and Whataburger. Nope, not even when I’m on the road. Except for Church’s Chicken, the average price for a junk-food meal and drink is now over $6.00.
A little more delving reveals the upcoming club gig to be more to my liking than ever. It is much closer to a lounge than any place I’ve played in Florida before. And yes, that does make a difference. If I had to describe it, I’d say the lounge crowd is better discriminating and more the type of person I would know on a first name basis. While I’m still not “the necessary 1,000% committed” to this band. That could change in a flash if we hit the lounge circuit. Such as it, that circuit, exists any more. Let me qualify that.
It is entirely possible that inland, say more than five miles from the ocean, there very well might be a whole industry of lounges that I have never seen or been in the entire stretch I’ve been in Florida. If there is nothing going in the front line, you don’t see me combing the rear. Central Florida lacks charm, it is the land of the Citgo self-serve and the foosball tourney. Settlers, the latecomers who didn’t know people or have money. The sort who’ll go out on a Friday to eat dinner and watch cable TV. But they sometimes, when trained, make good audiences.
Later and fresh from band practice, let me extend a little advice. If anyone tells you playing in a band is a shortcut to a few easy bucks, tell them to come back when they grow up. Rehearsal today naturally zeroed in on what went wrong last time. The major thing that went wrong was the club management’s terrible brainwork. They expected the band to bring a houseful of new customers with them. All I can say to bar bosses with that attitude is that you’ve already chased your regulars away by years of cheap-ass Karaoke and DJ crap. No band is going to undo that damage for the $250 you are willing to pay.
Keep your fingers crossed on this one. I repeat this is by far the best band I’ve met in this part of Florida and we deserve a break. Here is a photo of a club I walked past this weekend. Too much disco-rap shiggy-boop music. Two reasons downtown Hollywood will never be the big night spot the city wants are no convenient parking and high prices. Seen there through a side-street window is the third club in a year to try making it in this location. If you look close, the only people there are the staff. This town needs a good country bar but I don’t have the money nor the inclination.
ADDENDUM
I watched a video on the Munich Olympic massacre and the follow up assassinations by the Mossad. They worked through a list, reputedly supplied by Golda Mier, and terrorists started showing up dead all over Europe, each with eleven bullets in the carcass. One for each Israeli athlete. Even one Arab in Sweden who was misidentified and killed. (To be sure, that misidentification was one step more than the Arabs afford their targets.) What got me was the media portrayal of European and American “terrorist” groups, as an attempt to lump them all as one big bunch of baddies. Editors, you'll have to whistle a different tune around me on that point.
The US group, which grew out of the Viet Nam war protest movement, was called the Weathermen, after a pop song lyric. Like the Oklahoma bomber, the media continually portrays these people as “crazies”, but offer no substantiation. From what I can see, these people are pretty much right about what they were protesting. I disagree with their methods but they are by no means the uneducated rabble the media likes to present. Get this, while the media says on one hand they are desperadoes, on the other hand the kids were all upper-mids and therefore their opposition to the military-industrial complex must be a sign of ingratitude. Um, you newspaper types can't have it both ways.
This press treatment means I’d like to read a little more. I was a kid when all this “terrorism” was going on, but I correctly anticipated the government had learned a lesson and would never again permit anonymity to exist like it did during those early protest demonstrations. The media invariably ended their documentaries saying all the terrorists would be remembered more for the damage and grief and less for their cause. The big media, as part of the establishment the rebels were attacking, would make certain of that.
Rebels, did I say? Yes, they were fighting for a country they believed in. Had they succeeded, we might not be in so bad off. America would certainly have got out of Indo-China and kept out of world-wide politics. Any history major can tell you governments always get what they deserve and that real change is never achieved by peaceful means. Strange how the airwaves are swamped with photos of bomb damage but only carefully selected interviews with the “urban guerillas” are available. That is, only the interviews that make them seem mad. But hold on, small groups of people do not go identically insane at a precise time and place. Possible exception: Katy Perry fans.
It makes you wonder if the movement has merely gone underground to await the moment. This is not something to be dismissed. Look what happened in Russia. The 1917 insurrection was NOT a socialist revolution. It was just an ordinary revolution, but when it succeeded, the only organization ready to seize power were the communists. They had stumbled into a vacuum. And we know how well that worked out for any peasant who owned two cows.
