April 18, 2017

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 18, 2016, $14 a foot.
Five years ago today: April 18, 2012, sink the Belgrano.
Nine years ago today: April 18, 2008, throwing grandma in jail . . .
Random years ago today: April 18, 2009, . . . and I was listening.

           I can finally cook French toast consistently well. Before you laugh, keep in mind I normally date women who can’t, because they don’t have to. Translation: I date prettier women than you do. Unless you can see me dating a fat one that can’t cook, I’m just sayin’. I’m grumpy because I spent the morning making that bedroom ready for drywall. Yes, about 2/5ths of the total is done, but the cabin heritage of the building is showing.

           The floors are level and square, but now the walls aren’t. I’m dismayed that this mornings effort took me twice the time. All my pals assure me this is natural, slow down they say. I’ll remember them when their turn comes. The good news is that the place is better than it was before and will handily outlast me. I remind the reader that I bought a fixer upper for cash. It was to be just a base of operations, then flipped. But like the pretty women I date, there is always that off chance where I fall in love. I love my cabin and my cabin loves me.

           See, now I need some gal to spoil. To my dying day, I will be the opposite of other men who are only nice until they get what they want. I can be a real stick in the mud while meeting women, but why don’t you talk to one who saw through that and stayed with me? Having said that, this is a generic photo that caught my eye. Because I don’t put icing sugar on my French toast, I use nutmeg rather than cinnamon, and with maple syrup, this is the whole meal. No bacon or condiments. And I mix the nutmeg in the dip.
           Served with all the tea you want. Coffee has too strong a flavor for the way I like this recipe. Did you know that maple syrup has gotten so expensive, it has a separate category on my budget list?

           Before I forget, the new guitar player sent me a list. An extensive list, and around half of the songs are guitar tunes I call “defectives”. Music that appeals to guitar players more than it appeals to audiences. Also, he sent his drum machine codes. What I’ll do is insist we don’t use the machine on my songs because I don’t need it and it confunds me, see? Plus, I’ll pick the ones I’m familiar with and play them back to back.
           You see, I know that there is no such thing as a stage-friendly drum machine. Read my blog, I’ve thoroughly investigated the matter. The manufacturers conspire to not make such a device. It takes time to set drum machines on stage, you have to start punching keys to bring up codes. I often play tunes right back to back. And remember, I can play all of my tunes as solos.

Picture of the day.
Ingushetia.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           So there we are, Agt. R and myself throwing up the drywall. We heard something drop on the floor, but hanging drywall right is a two man operation. As I stepped to the counter to get more #6-1-5/8” bugle-headed fasteners, we heard that expensive scrunching noise. Yep, I just stepped on his $150 Costa sunglasses. The ones his son got him for Xmas. Of course, I will replace, but I’ll keep them a few weeks so nobody local figures out I’ve got the bucks. I’ve made that mistake before—but not as often as JZ.

           Here’s a nice picture of a drywall job, but before you admire it, read the text. This was a prime example of the poisonous “Chinese drywall” that was imported before it was known they contained leeching compounds. Great job there, customs agents. Just you try to deny now that your job is about as useless as ejection seats on a helicopter. This photo was one of the items purportedly used to sue the seller for removal and damages. Still, it seems like a good job, maybe something Wallace would be proud of.

           Just so you know, those special drill bits that are supposed to properly sink a drywall screw into its own little dimple—don’t buy the ones from Harbor Freight.

One-Liner of the Day:
“This fish swims into a wall and says, DAMN.”
           Eveningwise, I took the scooter to Karaoke. Except I forgot it was Karaoke night and was about to leave when the DJ said I was up first. I had been writing and not paying attention. When I grabbed the mic, I see this must be ladies night. You know, middle-aged, overweight, missing 3.7 teeth night. They represented over 70% or the room, so I launched into chick music mode. Keep reminded, these are not my type of women. But darn rights I notice how easy it is to peel their attention off the gorf they showed up with. And I have no aversion to singing “chick songs”, this has an impact I won’t even try to describe in words.

           You bet, I had them eating out of my hand. Go figure, a man who is confident enough to sing chick songs and really get into it. I did Sinatra, Yearwood, Loveless, and Cline. It is so obvious I don’t give a twit what the men think, but most of them came around, too. Music is competitive to me and you I leaned into it when I spotted the club owner along the back wall. It was a slow evening, so I did the a cappella tune again.
           The relevance of this photo is that I will never make this kind of face on stage. No sir, not me.

           Ka-boom, this brought down the house. The blonde that cried last week wasn’t there, but all her older sisters were. This tune, “Tell Me Momma” is a total winner for my act, and to think I found it on NPR years ago in the trailer court. Did I say, the New York guitar player called back and we are on for later this week? We are both fans of technique. You’re more likely to hear if we mesh some styles than get me to name individual tunes. If we continue at this pace, we’ll be gigging in a few weeks.
           I underscore again and again, this act is designed to clobber the solo guitar market. My show is geared to trounce any guitarist no matter how good they are. We all know what it is like to be an expert and have some amateur come along and grab something from under us. Well, get over it, because that is precisely what I do to get the gig.

           One guiding aspect of music, when I play it, is the law of supply and demand. I may not be the top musician in my field, but I know precisely what is required to quash my competition for a given stage. My first gig in a new place is minimum what they’d pay a solo guitar act, but if the first gig is at the joint I was in tonight, I may have to rethink that. You see, I had forgotten that it was Karaoke night (changed from Wednesday) and I had earlier been half-joking with the staff about how their guitar acts were so boring that I didn’t really come in on Fridays anymore unless they had a chick band.
           One of the items that I pointed out was how the audience did not pay attention to the guitarist for his entire song. Folks, then he is not entertaining them. He’s not doing his job. When the crowd in a pub (Hippie, I said “in a pub”) turn back to their beers, that's a fail. These are not a crowd of academics mulling over their daily enterprises. They are the local couples who want distraction and entertainment. They don't need to go out and spend $30 an hour drinking if they just want to hear more of each other. Warmed-over copycat guitar playing doesn’t cut it any more.

           During my songs, the audience was frozen in place, watching. Yes, the lady boss was in and again, saw the whole thing.

ADDENDUM
           Have some fun. These are from Honest Slogans

           Hallmark: “When you care enough to give a card mass-produced by a corporation.”
           Ritz crackers: “Tiny, edible plates.”
           CliffsNotes: “They’re still going to know you didn’t read the book.”
           Gillette: “We’re just going to keep adding blades.”
           ChapStick: “You’ll misplace it before the tube’s empty.”
           Hot Pockets: “Every bite is a different temperature.”

           [Author’s note: I hope you don’t actually like or eat Hot Pockets. Because they are remanufactured food. This blog has looked at this before. When other packages at the supermart are past their “best before” date, this does not mean they throw this food out. Nope. It has lost flavor, it is not gone bad.
           A lot of it is put into the big old grinder and laced with so many spices, you can’t tell. That is your filling for Hot Pockets, and there are dozens of other such products on the market. If it is dried, spiced meat, that is automatically suspect.]


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