One year ago today: June 28, 2016, Win 10 sucks.
Five years ago today: June 28, 2012, fluid dynamics.
Nine years ago today: June 28, 2008, the house in Colorado.
Random years ago today: June 28, 2007, is that an echo?
To give you an idea of how slow the pace has become, the top story is my battery charger. The short on the scooter had me leave the charger unit overnight underneath the awning. The moisture still got at it and now I’m out a $50 customized recharger. Don’t laugh, that was the club unit. It had been modified with an off-on switch, cleats to coil both the power and battery cable, a heavy duty carry handle, and a timer to prevent overcharging. Pretty much all but a waterproof casing.
Because, do you have any idea how boring life can be when one has led what one thinks is a full and rewarding life only to retire and discover one has been, all along, nothing more than another conventional old-fart-in-the-making? It’s a rhetorical question since I, of course, would have no idea about this. But I hear, mostly from the direction of cruise ship offices and the border states, that there is one hell of a lot of it going around.
Nor was there anything moving faster in Miami. I’m referring to the same situation as my own wild parties at college. The situation in Miami is different. There is nothing to do in Miami that doesn’t cost more money than you are likely to have on you. I should go back to college to meet women, because except for the lesser faculties (phys-ed, arts, education) there are fewer males who always want more sex than they can get for free so I'd have no competition for the best women on campus. That’s the only time or situtaion in your life that everything is yours for the asking. If you miss out on that [college], it is all downhill for you. Nothing more useless than some untalented and scruffy twenty-something millennial with a high school diploma and a top-knot. Except a liberal. (Often they co-exist.)
[Author's note 2022: I'm not making that last point clear. I've always done well with the pretty ladies on college campuses. These days, not only are there fewer real men in the "hard faculties" and the wimps are all in Arts and such, and they don't appear to have learned the right way to approach the matter of dating the really pretty women. I've never had any hesitancy on that, but I'm joking these days. My prowling phase is over--but beware, it isn't extinct.]
Now, staying in college is no ticket to success with the ladies. Even if you don’t miss out, the no-good-parties-anymore effect is delayed by about 20 years--but it will get you, too. I’m well past that, but I have two primary advantages over most men. I have no fear of rejection and when you put me on stage, I don’t knuckle-pick my nose quite as deeply as the Coors Lite crowd. My advice to all young men remains the same as I said forty years ago: Get what you can while you can, you have no idea how tough things get later on.
Do I have any advice for women? You bet. Rule number one, don’t date men who are prettier than you are. Beyond that, accept that your usefulness is based on very few and ancient parameters, that if you can’t meet those, quit blaming the world and go support yourself. There’s no room in marriage for women with attitude. Next, be careful who you even get seen with, watch your weight at all costs, and grow a consciousness that your personality reflects every man you’ve slept with—it’s what makes you an old lady. That last one won’t make much difference until you meet somebody like me. But as I said decades ago, you can’t shack up with a truck driver and not expect it to hang around your neck like an albatross.
Planet of the Apes.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
The 28th and I’m already $205.62 over budget. Not that I’m complaining loudly, since that beats the days up to a year ago living in Broward. Back then, it was not uncommon to run $1,100 over for consecutive months. By now, most people know that over-budget around here does not produce the same disastrous consequences as in the working-but-not-thinking class. It’s the ant and the grasshopper situation in spades. You know, I never realized how much that fable phased most people until I read that 26 million of them will be losing their medical coverage. Funny how that works, innit?
Speaking of chickens, I bought one too big for my roaster. I’ll tell you what, would you like to make yourself useful these days? Be the one brave enough to tell JZ he can’t cook chicken all that great. Kind of distract him a bit by getting him to talk about cold beer and hot women, then remind him that the spices in his cabinet are, on average, older than most of his nephews and nieces. Spices are not something anyone on a diet needs to use in moderation. No need to skimp and that old myth that they are better if you add them after is bunk. And even if it were true, I happen to like the aroma of spiced cooking.
“The streets are safe in Philadelphia .
It’s only the people who make them unsafe.”
~ Frank Rizzo, mayor.
Did I mention the latest millennial dork-brain concept? It’s to put the programming buttons for your dash display on the spokes of the steering wheel. See the millennial think? It goes that all you have to do is grip the steering wheel they way they think you should. Screw your forty years of driving experience. Note this is the same crowd that needs driverless cars so they can get totally fucked up completely round the clock. The problem is, same like a MicroSoft style 101 keyboard, accidentally touching a key causes a mess. Sure, you could read their manual (on-line) but the hitch there is that most old people have better things to do. The bigger the manual, the poorer the product.
Back home last evening, I ran through my song set. The fact is, I’m still weak on a good third of my selections. Others, like that tune Willie Nelson apparently wrote to show these “new country” people how far off the wagon they’ve fallen, I can play like I’ve known it forever. “It’s All Goin’ To Pot”. In my haste, I chose a few new songs that were easy to sing sitting down with no distractions, but they need to be force fed into my brain or dumped. The question remains the same as the day I turned 12 and realized I’d better get off my tush. Do I wait until the last button is sewn on the last uniform, or do I commence now, before it’s too late?
This time the question is whether I should go play at the Legion. I’ve heard they’ve hired acoustic acts with no PA system, reinforcing the rumor is they will consider anybody or anything, just to get something in there. I’ll tell you what. Compromise. If you can’t put on a full four-hour show, do a June Carter. Tell jokes or anecdotes. I’m not limited to guitar music nor should I confine myself to that one-pony show. Let me go into the shed and dig out that matching set of Karaoke microphones, the ones that let my crowd sing-a-long.
I’ve never yet met a guitarist with the confidence to do that as a routine. I’m not talking “Happy Birthday” here, but the situation where everything in the hall repeatedly comes to an unintended halt because even the barmaids are singing. (Try that with your dusty old renderings of “Simple Man”. It is not without irony so many aging guitarists do that number that it should be considered their theme song.)
Myself, I’ve got over five anchor-solid years of bingo experience with backing tracks. Did I mention, I was invited to do the South Miami show again this fall? I reluctantly had to decline, the commute is too much. But all these years later I’m flattered how they remember my backing tracks and sound effects. I wonder if I even still have that laptop? I know a lot about getting the audience singing along, and a lot of those same time-proven crowd-pleasers are on my current list.
Should I do it? I have never played a guitar solo act before in my life. It is not my instrument. The most I’ve done is maybe four consecutive tunes at a coffee house. What, you ask? Oh, that’s easy, all the other times, I was playing bass. Not guitar. Sometime I had a guitar players, other times I played solo bass. Don’t suppose I have not considered this. The hold-up is that I’m hesitant to book myself with a Colorado-style bass set in case it doesn’t fly. Then I’d be stuck with not enough material.
I had to ditch several of my top songs just because the tune was primarily bass. Think, I had to take “These Boots Are Made For Walking” off my list for that very reason—yet that song is one of my best tip-boosters. I can’t play it worth crap on the six-banger. But if I would only grow a pair and use both the bass and the guitar in my show, I could be out there this weekend. I’m also aware that there will normally be some guitarist in the audience who can sing and strum tunes that I know. Caution, that is another factor I am wary of relying on.
ADDENDUM
By the same token, I’m not the sort who sits around because a decision can’t be reached. I cleared out a corner and set up the gear as if on stage, noting differences to a bass setup. Unlike bass where most of the expression is finger work, on the guitar you have to be able to reach the amplifier knobs. I’ll also need a better strap peg. The one built-in doesn’t grip the leather strap end and allowed by expensive Fender to crash onto my hardwood floor. Way to go Fender, a cheap peg on an over-priced guitar. Who do you think you are, Peavey?
Beginning at the top, I systematically took my weaker numbers apart, note for note on the electric piano, then reconstructing them to sound right. This is painstaking labor made worse by my lingering childhood attitude that people with talent didn’t have to undergo this. True, I’ve long since learned this is rarely the case, but it doesn’t make the task any lighter. The upside is that I always come back with a riff that most guitar players overlook. Or is ‘overlook’ the correct word?
What I mean is I don’t just strive to make each strum unique. I resolutely play a custom pattern to every tune on my list. I never did like guitarists who comp. That includes guitarists who start off with a distinctive strum but revert to comping for the balance of the tune. That’s how amateurs cheat. And they wonder why nobody really listens to the body of their songs, where I pride in keeping my audience glued in place.
In three hours, I made inroads with just two songs, but they are winners. My strums are further characterized by a notable “sound” that I suspect guitar players are instructed to either avoid or feel it’s too much like piano chording. Not me, if it makes the song sound “more like the original”, I insist on it. I follow my own advice and play the guitar part to complement the bass line, just like I expect a good rhythmist to accompany the bass arrangement.
[Author’s note: often the longest stretch for me learning a new song is to avoid comping. I force myself to keep up the rhythm for the entire piece. For the record, this is where roughly a half of the guitarists I auditioned this season wound up total failures. What, they think they can comp and fool me? What planet are they on?]
PS: are you following the article of Dali's corpse being dug up to determine the claims of some tarot card reader who says she is his daughter? Question: if she is lying, will she be fined to pay the costs and damages? And why are the newspapers not reporting her age, religion, and the things they would if she was not a woman?
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 1em; margin-left: 1em;
