MORNING
Here’s something else new to me. These LCD displays on big-ticket items. They display pricing information. Is it that I don’t get out much, or that I don’t spend a lot of time strolling the aisles? (As a matter of fact I happen to like window shopping.) Incidentally, this (photo) is the (top of the) $625 washer mentioned last day. I’m for any technology that replaces a grinning salesman and the LCD has a better personality than most of them. Same with delivery drivers and anybody else who parks just wherever they bloody well please. Automate the whole damn lot, especially those UPS drivers who wear shorts.
I am specifically not mentioning Ottawa, Julie. I am against any politically-driven agendas because they always result in over-reach. I think health care insurance is better administered at a hospital level than at a government level. As I’ve said before, the most wonderful thing about living in America is when I help my neighbor, it is my decision—not my neighbors. I’d like to keep things that way.
Whenever you have compulsory medical, everybody instantly wants the best health care that others can afford. Left to the government, they will take it as a tax so that the workers wind up paying for the non-workers where there is no moral duty to do so. As it was in the USA, minorities (I did not say ethnic minorities) were using hospital emergency rooms for primary care. Overall, I’d say I’m for health insurance but against leaving it up to the government. No, I have no alternative solution.
But mark my words, the government system is going to be nothing but trouble. Financially, Obamacare flattens out the cost by forcing those who refuse insurance to pay part of the cost. It at least makes them aware that their late-night check-ins at the ER don’t come free. Part of my taxes went to cover that situation and I’ve never liked such programs. I am very much a “make the user pay” person.
Like I said, I’ve lived places where participation was mandatory. And it is one ugly situation. All the single mothers and free riders scream humanitarianism, as if forcing the others to pay their personal bills is a show of compassion. The line as to be drawn somewhere and those used to a free meal will stop at nothing to get your dollar. All socialized medicine schemes eventually peter out through corruption. In Canada, those who do the right song and dance can get free sex-change operations.
I’m saying the line has to be drawn somewhere and you can expect the loudest outcry from the far left of the room. Where all the penguins live. That’s my solution to the McDonald’s head office who say paying $15 per hour will bankrupt them. The answer is penguin-burgers. Just think, they breed by the millions in a far off land. It’s ripe for the plucking. As for the penguins, they had it coming.
NOON
“Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.” -Samuel Goldwyn
This is the local Blues Brothers revue band and they are looking for a bass player. But they are a couple years too late for me. I’ve never seen their show but I’ve walked past it. I’m okay with these theme bands and this one seems to have more steady work than most. Still, it is around a nine-piece orchestra and I can hardly imagine the drama keeping that together. They also play a fixed song list. That can be both good and bad for the bass player.
But those few songs are fondly remembered. “Polk Salad Annie”, from the deep south, “and when I say deep south I mean north of here.” Two new items on the menu. First, this new movie called “Kinsgman” looks like a super-Bond edition. I like Brit spy movies, since those guys literally wrote the book on how to spy on your neighbors and get other countries to fight wars for me. That’s no figure of speech, they actually wrote the book. Or Ian Fleming did. And if that ain’t English you can kiss my lass.
Second, there is a two bedroom with everything except a second bathroom for sale out in Davie. The guy wants only $33,000 but if I recall correctly, it is in that windswept treeless spot south of Alligator Alley. The occupancy fees are $450 per month less than this place—and that’s a lot of milk and cookies for me. It’s kind of a weird subdivision, but like all the better places in Florida, has restrictions that keep the riff-raff at bay. It’s got a double carport and a work shed. I’ll go take a look, but I can afford much better.
AFTERNOON
OMG, look what I found. It is an old picture of the Legion Hall where I first played when I was twelve years old. I had to piece it together from a video somebody posted about driving down main street. Alas, it was accompanied by an article that said the hall was torn down in 2006. Fond memories. It was the largest hall in the county and rented for $15 back then. I also played many a piano recital and starred in my first acting class. My role was as an old country tailor but I remember little else but the times my band played there.
I don’t mind telling you the staff from this place gave us kids one hell of a lot more help and support than my own parents. I do not think my family ever once came to see me perform, but since I played this hall maybe twenty or thirty times, they might have poked in without me noticing. But I doubt it. Besides every conversation about music in my family ended the same, "You jest trine to be goddammm heepee."
The most the band ever made in one night was $41 between us, so split that four ways. The hall would let us pay out of the gate, so we never had to come up with the actual $15, which could not have been done. Ten bucks each back then was twice the average monthly allowance of all but the richest kids in town. Then, when I was 17, the state lowered the drinking age and completely wiped my business out. Before that, the only distraction for all teens in that little town was to go to a weekend dance. Behind the hall on the left was the church basement where we played for the “Youth Movement” for ten bucks a show.
The town was so small, when the band was forced to break up the winter I turned 17, there was no body to sell our PA system to and it was left behind. Two years later, I sorely missed that equipment, but had no vehicle to go back and get it. Remember, I walked until I was 21. Yes, I walked two miles to school every day. But it was okay, really, since by then we lived in town and I would buy things for the farm kids at a commission. I charged 5 cents to buy them candy and bubblegum because farm kids were not allowed to leave the school grounds.
Music? I can remember most of the song list. “Louie Louie”, “Gimme Some Lovin”, “To Love Somebody”, “Chest Fever”, “Hey Joe”, “Good Lovin’”, and the ubiquitous “Gloria”, the “Hotel California” overplayed monstrosity of its day. It was also the era of the big, droning organ solo (that’s what I played back before my broken wrist). All the majors had a “Hammond with Leslies”, so I played a lot of Deep Purple, Three Dog Night, and Paul Revere and the Raiders. No, we had no band costumes.
Equally informative to the music historian who ever studies my influences were the songs I did not allow my band to play. Make no mistake, this was my band, I recruited and trained every musician on each instrument by myself, without any help of any kind (in fact, I had to fight my way). I did not play:
In The Year 2525 (or Age of Aquarius)
Sha Na Na Kiss Him Goodbye
Incense and Peppermints
Wild Thing
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
Those songs were not played by any band of mine, and now you know why I had to quit the five-piece band last August. Between this shitty music they were going penguin on me.
EVENING
Off to the foreign cinema, where I watched “Two Days One Night”, a chick flick. The plot is this French lady gets laid off work so the remaining employees can get their bonus. Fifteen minutes into the movie, it was plain I was getting a different message than the intended. Everybody saw a lady contacting all her fellow employees over the weekend to vote against their bonus so she can keep her job, and you are supposed to get into this.
I have a mystery for you. I give you the list of ingredients, you tell me what it is. Water, sodium laureth sulfate, coco-betaine, sodium chloride, cocomide MPIA, amodimethicone,sodium benzoate, hexylene glucol, polyquaternium-7, pyrus malus extract, apple fruit extract, PEG-55 propylene glycol oleate, salicylic acid, hydrogenated castor oil, niacinimde, hexyl cinnamal, citric acid, saccharine oficinarum, extract of sugar cane, benzyl alchohol, linalool, methyl cocoate, olive fruit oil, sodium cocoate, persea gratissima oil, avocado oil, prunus amygdalus dulcis oil, sweet almon oil, butyrospermum parkii oil, shea butter, black currant seed oil, lemon peel extract, camellia leave extract, and some colorings.
Hint, start by asking yourself if you are supposed to eat this stuff, or soak brake linings in it. Return tomorrow for the answer. I admit to leaving out one or two minor ingredients that would be a dead giveaway. You probably have a lot of this stuff around your house right now.
Back to the movie. What I saw instead was an expose on the horrible rut that the working-class get themselves into every time. How they go with the flow so often that by the time they reach adulthood, they no longer have a clue whether or not the flow is remotely in the right direction. They will “vote” for what they can be convinced will make them look the best. She also got shocked a bit by something I wouldn’t—the way these other people live. So far up to their necks in debt that they couldn’t do right if they wanted to.
I also have the standpoint that sheeple turn a blind eye on the hardships they cause others by their collective thinking. I won’t reveal the movie ending, but it’s probably what I would have done in the circumstances. In that sense, the movie meshes with my experience. A small organized minority can often win against a disorganized majority. Look how the commies took over Russia by basically stepping into a power vacuum left over from a different revolution.
Give up on Schnitzelbank? It means bench shavings. These were those curly pieces of wood from the carpenter’s bench when pieces used to be shaped with a drawknife. It is part of a children’s ditty, much like the English alphabet song. The relevance is in the movie I just saw, the music on the French car radio was probably some hit music over there. Hence, the tendency to call it schnitzelbank. The lyrics were the only French aspect. Every last other sound of the song was American rock, right down to the electric guitar and drummer on the backbeat.
This raises the question, if these foreigners like American rock so much, why don’t they just listen to the real thing? Because I told you, they only want your material possessions, they don’t want your culture. As for the Schnitzelbank read-out, I couldn't tell you what it means. It doesn't make any sense to me.
ADDENDUM
To finish what I started earlier about the Blues Brothers and the music show, the only tunes I know from them were the more obvious movie sound tracks. There were no such bands in the era depicted, it was the beginning of the blues influence in rock and roll and most bands only played a couple blues tunes per night. I never liked the blues, although there are a few catchy numbers. But remember, this was the end of a decade where nearly 900,000 teenagers signed up for university. By the time I got to campus there was nothing left but women my own age. Which was just fine by me.
I started university in the early 70s. That was something else, to be alive back then. The baby boomers of the 60s were really changing the world, although I still question what kind of historical wisdom these twenty-year-olds could have had. They are the same generation that found out they could borrow every dollar they ever needed. I caught the tail end of their more radical views—and inflating house prices. In 1974, minimum wage was $1.00 per hour, a school teacher (such as my “poor” father) made $850 per month (that’s around $5,600 in 2015 dollars—and nearly $11,200 if you use the 1961 CPI), and this is when milk was 30 cents a quart.
It was also a time when the majority plunged irretrievably into debt for life. Music did not reflect the real issues of the day any more than the newspapers can today. Instead, American culture latched onto a few “feel good” topics and before long, you had one-offs like Barbara Streisand and the Partridge Family actually getting hit records. It was a sad era for aficionados.
Last Laugh
Government Job Creation. Shovel-ready.
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