One year ago today: October 21, 2015, Oleta Park wipeout.
Five years ago today: October 21, 2011, whatever happened to Outkube?
Nine years ago today: October 21, 2007, there’s no maximum, but . . .
Random years ago today: October 21, 2014, one busy post.
MORNING
Milo. It’s a rip-off. After reading it is a “filler” in cheaper birdseed mixes, I was reminded of the urban legends about McBurger additives. I see that most humans won’t eat it either and that other than animal feed, it is mainly used as off-year ground cover. Like clover. Upon finding photos on-line, I realize I’ve seen this plant growing like a weed many times. I resolve to keep it out of my birdfeeder from this point.
Careful now, I’ve never seen anything by CNN and would not know it if I did. But I’ve heard nothing but bad comments on their biased reporting for as long as I can remember. I’ve heard they have a slanted and pro-Liberal agenda, which is incredible because my brain automatically tunes out such material. For it to get to the realm where I recall it, the reports must be persistent over many decades.
My conclusion is that CNN must suck. Fifty million voters can’t be wrong.
Oak tree.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
This one-a-day flu symptom thing didn’t slow me down. I worked straight through it. But what got me was the stiff neck. I got things done, but they were not progressive tasks on the property. It was things like scooter repairs and temporary housing. That explains this exciting picture of me pricing out 5/8” drywall. Neck, actually shoulder, cramp is serious. I can’t even drive properly because I always shoulder check. You know I don’t trust mirrors. They always make me look far better than I actually do.
Walking bass is 4/4 timing in really old swing style. Where I regularly play bass phrases that are as long as possible, sometimes up to eight measures before a repeat, walking bass does it one measure at a time. There are three distinct styles, and they are arpeggios, scales, and chromatics. That’s music theory 101, but consider them to be loose, medium, and tight note groupings, respectively.
I co-mingle all three styles because not to gives that annoying jazz comping sound. Never consider jazz an advanced music style until you’ve taken a close look. In fact, even if you are not a musician, I’ll bet you could follow a written description of a walking bass line. Your first not is always the root (or key, same thing) of the chord. The third note is your fifth, but changed a bit if you are playing a 6th chord or a flatted 5th, use common sense. And the fourth note is a passing note a sharp or flat above the root note of the next chord.
Ah, but that leaves the second note undefined. Yep, that’s correct. I tend to use thirds, but we’ve gone over this before long ago. I play thirds because guitar players tend to shun them—which is a major reason most of them can’t play bass but think they can.
I think I can tell you why some consider jazz superior music style. It’s because they’ve been trained to think of it that way by expensive guitar teachers. While any piano player can tell you the notes of chords like A6 or Bsus4, I find that most guitar players simply memorize the pattern and move that up and down the neck. Or go dig out their capo. They only want you to think they know the notes. I’ll bet you twenty dollars they don’t.
My style is predictable. I know my octaves, so on ascending walks I move rapidly up the arpeggios to the higher frets. Then I play out the remain chords by walking scale notes down the neck, using chromatics only where the walkdown spans chords that would land me so far the fretboard that I’d have to reverse directions behind the vocalist. Most don’t like that. In fact, my biggerst variation is to follow the vocalist on rising or falling melody lines. It reminds the crowd that the singer is just another band member.
Now, band members is something I don’t have. I contacted the acoustic player from last summer. He reports that he has joined a church band, and no, I would not like to go hear that next Sunday morning. He took on so much that he doesn’t have the time for a band. I gave him the mini-lecture about not playing. I made the same mistake myself—but there was no one to explain it to me. And it is quite simple: after age 30-35, make no mistake about it. Consider the women that are still single in that demographic and make no mistake about it.
Read my lips: Either you are either on that stage, or you are not.
AFTERNOON
Below’s a picture for the sake of one. Another small chore that doesn’t increase my real estate equity, but to which I am confined until I can look towards the right again. This makes the blog because it is the top event, which is, by way of explanation, the first repair done in the new cottage on my newly set up tools. I’m happy about it. It’s that new muffler strap. The bolt hole was bigger than the perforations of the pipe strap. See my nice drill press bit.
It was a funny kind of easy going during that stretch, not playing in a band. I had the gift of gab, which glossed over a lot of situations that stalled the big tough guys. I had no trouble breaking the ice, but women change in social ways. They revert to two general groups, the ones who wait to be asked (the wallflowers) and the ones who are more aggressive (the words I won’t repeat). The funny thing I’ve seen is, most guitar players who are fine on stage never develop a lick of confidence, with the ladies I mean, once they get down off it.
The best guitar player I know in the east, the Hippie, will boss around the guys on stage. But I’ve never seen him take a break and go chat up some babe at the bar. He’s stood right beside me when the lady’s come on to me, seen me turn them down, and then he denies that ever happened. Mind you, the last time that happened was New Year’s Eve in Little Jamaica on 163rd, like ten years ago already. (The last time he’s seen it, I mean. I turned the lady down because she was pushy Jewish, alright?)
How do I know it was the bass playing that got her? Easy, it’s a song the Hippie hates and won’t play it unless I insist he do the non-Zydeco fast version. I had her dancing in the aisle. It’s the first country song I learned on bass and I play a custom riff it took me years to develop. So there. When he plays the same song along, it is as hollow as the rest of his non-Beatles material. It’s great listenin’ but no so great for dancin’. Women dance when I play. I know about trial rhythms, son, which is not sayin’ I like ‘em.
Which is why I’m glad I kept up with my solo guitar since May. I’m not Friday grade solo, but I’m Wednesday coffee house caliber. There’s no coffee houses in this town, but I can work with that. You see, nobody in the non-AIDS, non-tattoo group gets laid on Fridays either. I’ve been in this business long enough to see only drunks and punks can score on a Friday. Well, I’ve done it many years ago without wasting a paycheck, but I mean under normal circumstances, it’s a game for single strangers. And I was one of those damn long enough.
Amusingly, I watched the DVD “American Pie” about these geeks that make a pact to get laid before prom night. While it is your average coming of age comedy, it was only really funny if you accept that all the inane delusions that teenage boys had before the era of sex education are still operating in full force—and they are still the illusions of the majority of grown men. I never had that problem, I knew from day one that teenage girls think about sex constantly. They just don’t think about it in the same terms as the boys. And I am a quick learner.
Of course, I never told the other guys, not even the guys in my own small group. This later earned the eternal jealousy and hatred of my own brothers. You know, I wasn’t even the first in my crowd to score, either. I was second. You see, at that young age, I had not figured out about playing in a band yet. The other guy who got there first, he was an award-winning artist and top actor in the school. Your all-American hero. But he got an older deaf girl who had already poinked every guy in town except me. I was the runt of the pack. Shortest, skinniest, youngest, and weakest. Since there were no role models in town, I figured the music out on my own.
I knew if I didn’t find something, I never stood a chance. So by graduation, I owned a band and had scored with all the sharpest looking natural blondes in the school from ninth grade upwards. Oh, pardon me, my first was a redhead. That’s something a farm boy like me doesn’t believe until he sees it. Un-fucking-believable. What a book I could write. But won’t. Something holds me back. Dignity, maybe? The automatic elevated status of any gal sharp enough to bed me?
NIGHT
Hmmm. Looks like I’ll be glad I held onto a couple of sweaters and winter jackets. This place might actually have winter of sorts. The aroma of muscle liniment finally got me out the door over to the club in the south end. That band with the two guitar players was there, so I stuck around. They are excellent but too loud and tend to play the music they want, and of course, there will always be applause because that’s what most people are told they should like.
I mean, these same 22 songs would not be major hits if people didn’t like them, right? Certainly, there are thousands of such songs, but lets pick the 22 that feature the guitar player so he can be a legend in his own mind. The good news is guess who the drummer is? I thought I recognized him, then he walked over and tapped me on the shoulder. What do you know? What? No, I’m not saying who it was. What part of “guess” don’t you understand?
A lady in a red dress sat next to me, but played the game wrong. Once more, she was over-familiar with all the men in the place, single or married. I got there a half-hour before the band started, so I took out my Concise birdfeeder guide and tried to find the blue bird from last day. The lady bumps into me around twenty times (this doesn’t work on me unless you are Taylor Swift) and finally informs me she is “an intellectual too”.
So I paused and waited for her to elaborate on that. It didn’t happen, so I went back to the book. Most intellectual women don’t need a smart phone for companionship.
ADDENDUM
It was down to 64.8°F overnight, so while it is still a mite warm during the days, the mornings are perfect motorbike weather. If finances permit, I may make that run into Tampa just to see. Grab a coffee, head back. If not, next weekend. (Trent may want to make the trip also, I’ll wait to hear from him.) I have never been in Tampa off the freeways and have no idea what kind of town it is. I’ve heard both rumors.
Then I get a “deposit agreement” from the bank. Twelve pages long. As I’ve said, the whole banking “agreement” (it sounds better than “contract”) is so that no matter what mistakes they make, you are the pig that gets stuck. Who has time to read and comprehend that much fine print? You can’t just deposit any more, you must do it monthly to avoid most fees.
So basically you agree to deposit your money in the bank, and the bank agrees not to steal it all at once any more. And privacy? Don’t make us laugh.
Last Laugh
(Can you tell this is Texas?)
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