One year ago today: April 22, 2017, speed: 2 verses per hour.
Five years ago today: April 22, 2013, oops, she heard us . . .
Nine years ago today: April 22, 2009, easily mistaken for 20.
Random years ago today: April 22, 2015, a great morning.
Never a believer in breakfast food, here was my Sunday fare. The chili-lime noodle thing. Except as you see, I have real chili and real lime. Real chicken, too, but it sinks to the bottom. This was early enough today that I had time to bake a chicken and peach casserole. The one with nutmeg and vanilla. You can have all the spices and flavorings you want. It’s been mainly chicken now for, let me go check the diet calendar. One hundred forty-three days. My weight? I don’t know. I had to move the scale to get in the attic and it goes haywire for a day or so after it’s shifted or stood on end.
Remember the few months I attended the writing club in Hollywood? I was thinking about that as I read another chapter of the sob story “The Coffee Merchant”. It isn’t really about the early Dutch stock market. It’s another poor-me about how much harder it is to be Jewish than any other religion. All I can say is when everybody else hates you, maybe it is time to stop blaming everybody else? The style reminded me of the club, which I dropped out of because, well, how can you politely say this? Maybe published authors are an elegant, possibly refined breed. But not the wannabes. That’s for sure.
The adage saying, “Write what you know”, makes the assumption that the writer knows something. There were one or two older black ladies there, but they were not so old as to remember slavery. Yet that is what they wrote about. All the time. Anyway, far from the atmosphere being one of quiet accomplishment, it was more about mediocre people seeking a way to shortcut into fame and fortune. There was not a single published author in the group of twenty. Well, except maybe for the millions upon millions of words in this blog. But they said that didn’t count.
I say it’s because I’m well-known as the guy who shows up, doesn’t bother anybody, and does all three crosswords, the jumble, the Sudoku, and the cryptogram in one hour. In ink. That’s got to be it, I’m far too old to be popular. Let’s see if that one gets you thinking.
Here is your second mystery object for the day. Yes, it is a box, but can you see the wire screens over the side holes and the bottom? What’s that all about? Click to enlarge (until MicroSoft changes that command, too) and you’ll see there is another screen forming an interior shelf. I was raised in the countryside and I’d never seen anything like this before. Hint, in Florida the screens would have to be replaced with fine mesh, like on a screen door. Answer below.
You know how the government is trying to shut down non-smart phones? They can’t outright ban them because it is too well known the real issue is that they cannot track the older models. But what they can to is make the service terrible. It is not uncommon to find someone who has called me every day and said I didn’t answer. While I was in the coffee shop with the phone on the table in front of me. Then on the weekend I get a text message of six missed calls. I would not mind, except it is mainly calls from Agt. R that don’t get through. This week he found two boxes full of electrical switches and receptacles and could not contact me.
New Zealand earthquake damage.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Another lone gunman at a Waffle House. I got ten bucks say another Millennial. While there will always be mass killers, the current bunch operate with a difference. I have a theory. There was a suicide bomber in Kabul this morning, for example. The difference is other killers have a cause. Often they become heroes to their group and martyrs over time. These Millennials do it for self-gratification.
That’s my theory. It’s always loser males and although I shun TV, I am very aware of the effect is has on others. I’ve met people who are dumber than sacks of potatoes full of clever retorts and met morons with advanced points of view they could never have worked out on their own.
Going one step further, it produces Millennials. We’ve always had loser-followers and for that matter, they have been a majority. But until recently in history, they had little else in common. There was not sense of entitlement, no sense of connection with the other losers of the world. Then along comes cable channels and websites. This doesn’t really unite them, but gives them a collective consciousness of their situation. From their point of view, all the easy inventions and paths to wealth are taken. It’s not true, but the impression is created. They become aware they belong to a large peer group of equally hopeless cases.
My theory continues that within each such mass, there are those who will lash out at the world. It’s society’s fault for making them useless losers. So grab a gun and get yourself on TV. I follow the logic that senseless violence is pretty much the only way anybody would ever take note of these zeroes. These characters figure out their best chance of becoming anything is by pulling a trigger. They’re chicken-shits and target schools and restaurants. They would shit their pants if anybody shot back.
Trader Vic’s Gingermints. Kudos if you guessed it. They have a tendency toward blandness and don’t do much for bad breath, except the hint of ginger. Want some? If’s too flavorless to pass as candy. And the box full of wire mesh is a potato and onion keeper. The mesh keeps out the mice and rats, but in Florida, you would require a fine screen to keep out the roaches. When I have room, this will go in here somewhere. Think of it as a breadbox for potatoes. You saw it here first.
Oh, did I mention. Somebody donated a dress making mannequin. Agt. R found a hat pin stuck in one of the body panels. Silver plated around five inches long with a pearl on the handle. Sold it in twenty minutes on eBay for $35.
ADDENDUM
The gig went okay, as the stage experience begins to pay off. I haven’t had time to review the videos yet but I’d say it was another good show. It was a dead night all over the county. For me, this is still the best way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Most of the time we had only four or five patrons, but there were about twice that number of new people came by for a short time. My concern is the show and the music, because simply put, a good show is not always good enough. Things are moving along and so are the mistakes, but stage time is an end to itself, which is good news.
We have a full three hours of material now, and a couple of the new tunes we went over the last couple of weeks proved to have exceptional audience appeal, in particular, Merle’s “Momma Tried”. We got half-way through “Stripes”, as far as we’ve practiced it. That loudmouth was in again, he has the nickname “the blue shirt loudmouth” because he wears blue shirts. Like my brothers, he won’t stay in side and make noise, because over there it would not bother as many people. Wait them out, these people have no staying power.
Toward the end, a small bunch of the dart team people showed up early. They start at 9:00PM, we knock off at 7:30PM. So we repeated the first set. Hmmm, it was notably better, let me ponder that one. Tips were half the usual, time for a dispersal [of funds]. (We don’t usually split up the tips until there’s enough in there to make it worthwhile.) And for me, it is all mad money, to spend as I please. The justification? Easy, you can’t budget tip money. Every club has it’s slow times no matter what, so it being early I peaked into every club on the way home. Nope, all were mostly empty.
The little lady in the picture? That was my little lady for a bit. I’ve moved on. Her name? Well, you’ve heard the song, “Sylvia’s Mother”? You know better than to ask a question like that.
[Author’s note: pay close attention to how this audience participation goes. It has always been part of my show, but only to the extent some bozo doesn’t try to take over. What’s happened is due to the nature of how Lady Nik has learned to play the drum beat on the strings, we make a magnificent backup band for this type of spontaneity. It just happened this evening that I had custom bass lines to the songs the lady chose. (No, I’m not wondering if she plays guitar, she has the wrong personality for such an adventure.)
I’m pointing out that we can do a better than credible accompaniment to most any tune and these spots provide the opportunity to show it off. I’m tempted to do something I’ve had in mind for decades. Learn the Joplin bass line that walks down that octave, you know the one I mean. Because who is the pro at turning these into six octaves? The bass is only a four octave instrument so, yeah, there is some sleight of hand going on. I learned how to do this with that Kinks tune, “Sunny Afternoon”. There was a dull spot I wanted to sharpen up.]
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
