One year ago today: August 22, 2017, the Four Stages of Bass Playing.
(A classic, $12 please.)
Five years ago today: August 22, 2013, reading too much.
Nine years ago today: August 22, 2009, the great Bingo Raid.
Random years ago today: August 22, 2007, redneck garden.
Happy Barbarossa Day. This is unlikely to be a momentous 24 hours, but I can report that morale is at an all-time high. It has not quite been a year since I arrived on the scene, and I went through the entire phases where my methods were questioned. To say the least. It is now obvious we are, what’s the phrase, “attacking over prepared ground”. I know the competition, the other food cart, has not shown up four of the last five events, and the one they did I believe I mentioned how they left early. The city flyer contains a quip that refreshments are sold and they are hardly going to chuck out thousands in advertising because they can’t find a properly licensed operator. I have half a mind to tell Agt. R to demand $400 from them for even setting up. But I’m after bigger fish.
Just you look what I found for fifty cents. Sony High Bias blank cassettes. Still in the package. The label says made in Japan and assembled in Mexico, and there is a tag inside the sealed package saying this was a store sample. So I may have some hand-picked top quality. The sticker date is June 16, 1993 meaning the tapes were likely manufactured back in the era when Sony was last producing superior products.
I recall when these tapes were $6, which puts them close to $20 today. Each. These were sold during Sony’s prime, when they were marketing $250 Walkmans. Nobody understood the tape ratings, but the lowest grade was HF. These tapes are mid-grade UX and overkill for the Walkmans, which were optimized to play factory produced tapes. But if you recorded your own, UX was the way to go. With the right equipment, they made flawless first-generation recordings.
[Author’s note: UX tapes were designed to make copies from the then-newly introduced CD disks. If you look close, you can see a sticker to that effect on the cases. Back then, recorders were sold that had special inputs to make these copies. The CD players were fantastically expensive; me and the boys from work ordered a single CD from Mexico in 1983 just to say we had one. It was later that Sony got into the recording end of things and started sticking their noses into copyright issues. Yes, lads, it was all downhill from there.
FYI in 1993, Sony marketed 8 different grades of tape in 30, 60, and 90 minute lengths. Oops, pardon me. The metal oxide tapes came only in 90 minutes. See below. Inside the package, shown here, was a merchandise voucher for Beatles posters ($15), Hendrix T-shirts ($15), and an MTV wristwatch ($39). Also temporary tattoos that washed off easily, $8.85 each. My kingdom for a nice girl with no tattoos, but that creature proved as mythical as the unicorn.]
Just last week, I got that Pioneer which has a setting for this particular tape. The highest quality tape available, the metal oxide brands, were not my favorite. They were meant for one-time recordings like concerts and such. This made them too expensive to use for anything except masters, which defeated much of the purpose because each copy was made on a lesser quality substrate. The primary advantage of such expensive cassettes was reusability. Metal oxide was unfit because you never could completely erase the previous material. During musical rests and between songs, it was easy to faintly hear whatever was on the tape before.
Ha, and I guessed right about the violin solo to Baba O’Riley. It makes an eye-catching bass demo as the slides (glissandos) I worked extra to include are best accomplished by a distinctly awkward hand position. If you listen closely, the violinist tends to repeat each motif four times, ideal for catching audience attention toward the bass. This is why I’ve never had to play loud to get attention, and by attention I often enough mean upstaging some sawed-off guitar jockey who thinks he’s runnin g the show.
Two ladies on top.
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This afternoon was a necessary rough time for the new company. Enough of this everybody standing around waiting for me to make the next move. Everybody thinks buying these burners is easy, just go on-line and order them. So I dragged Agt. R along on his day off so he could experience the Internet first hand. I call the Mulberry store and he listens in while I ask for the burner, do they have it in stock. Yes. We drive out there and they don’t have it in stock. Can they order it? No, store employees are not allowed to order. You have to do it on-line. I inform the customer service people that if they had told me that in the first place, I would not have driven ten miles through the city. They are offended.
I don’t care. I explained to them that I had already looked on-line, so I would like to know why I was told they had it in stock at the store. They all start tapping on their computers. I dispatch Agt. R to go physically check the shelves in the garden center, camping goods, and sports sections. Ten minutes later he is back, asking what I’m doing. I said, “Watch this.”
I asked all the clerks tapping the computers what they were doing. Oh, they said, we are looking for you on-line. Agt. R gets an incredulous look. Did I not just minutes ago tell them I had already looked on-line. Yes, but they are millennials and know how to look on-line and we are just a couple of old guys who don’t “know computers”. Thus, Agt. R got a first hand look at what I’ve been up against for weeks. I told the one clerk that I had specifically asked her not to look on-line, but to look into the store inventory to see if the product was even available. Nope, she was wasting my time looking on-line, often bringing up only the pictures I had already handed her on my clipboard, but not cluing in that I had already covered the ground. Useless, pin-headed “Twelfth Grade Dropouts”. And don’t hand me that “offended” crap.
So, Agt. R wants to go home, his son is in for a visit. Ut-tut, he’s known since June the importance of these burners, so I had him decide which was more urgent. Off to the big library in Bartow. We get on-line and I locate the burners on the Wal*Mart site. That’s the easy part. He thinks just click on the shopping cart and you’re away. I click on it to show him it goes to the customer product review screen, which has no ordering information. He can’t believe it. So, I sit him down and let him do the clicking, with the same lack of results. By now, two company officers have wasted four man-hours and thirty miles of expensive car travel.
His take is that what good is all my education if I can’t work the computer, but he’s getting over it. My good education is the specific reason I can’t work a computer designed by an idiot. I can’t think like the idiot does. So forty more wasted minutes, after I was certain my second was out of brilliant ideas, I said I’d demonstrate how to this type of problem at a management level. I called over that kid with the weird haircut who works the book return desk. Please stand here. What? That’s right, just stand there and watch. It’s called a third pair of eyes. I click through the menus. But this time, I’m right-clicking every hot spot. “Why? “ asks the kid.
Watch. Just stand there. Ah-ha, finally, I get a picture of a burner that has a drop menu saying open in own tab. Got it. I open it and there is a cart icon. Click again. And we’re in. Thanks, kid. Agt. R wants to go. Not so fast, we haven’t got far yet. Another five minutes to find the option to order something “without a Wal*Mart account”. Then fill out the text boxes, which have to match what the credit card company has on file, so that involved getting his passwords to his e-mail and finding out if his cards are billed to his home or post office address. He couldn’t remember. In another ten minutes, we got a confirmation number and a printout saying the burners would be delivered on this Saturday.
So I finally let him go home. Three hours and forty minutes later. At least I won’t be hearing how easy it is to shop on-line for a while. As he hastened home, I reminded him that we don’t have anything yet. The Internet is not a delivery service, and the Internet is not by far the only thing the millennials have royally fucked up.
ADDENDUM
Back to the topic of food, why don’t you go grab an extra coffee? On day 265 of my diet, I continue to lose weight despite regularly having exceeded my calorie limit since my last prescription ran out. I don’t deny that I failed to lose on my own and the prescription is renewed for two months starting tomorrow, when I’ll be in Miami again. My goal, which I won’t reach, is 160 lb by November 1, a total loss to that date of 55 lb. The last time (it’s on record) that I weighed that was in early January of 2000, and I was physically attacked by an ex-girlfriend. I still have the blue jeans I was wearing that day folded in the closet. When I can slip into those, I will declare success is in sight. The photo? It’s a totally retro desk letter-holder gadget. Saw it. Had to have it.
Myself, the food issue is more localized. Careful experimentation with the new K-cup machine reveals it may be the Columbian coffee that has gone bad over the previous years. It has become bland. Switching to Arabica solves the problem for now. The Columbian decline was gradual and as it grew less flavorful, I made it in reduced frequently and subconsciously assumed it was going stale in the can. For now, leave that species for the Starbuck’s crowd, who embrace lackluster lives and nondescript java. You know, the things they can disguise with hazelnut flavorings and sprinkles. Let them vote that it is good and make it mandatory to state that or fail the exam.
There is another change due. I’ve finally had it with my round frying pan. That the least optimal shape for most of what I do. They sell square models at the Pro Bass shop and now that business startup expenses have tapered off, I think I’ll do a shop. Everything is expensive over there. I own two real cast iron pans, but both have begun to deteriorate in some way, be it persistent surface rust or loss of color. And if you use them for baking, in a day or two they show flecks and slight blisters, which I just know must be getting into the food. I realize it is just iron, but there’s enough of that in the Florida water.
You see, that weather radio I got for a dollar works perfectly. Here’s the picture, now that it is all dusted and polished up. A lot of Radio Shack gear had this distinctive “kit” look back in the day, and I liked it. Almost perfectly, I meant. It has an alert alarm feature that is broken and cannot be turned off. Took me a while to figure out where the beep was coming from. It can only be turned off by pressing the white bar, which turns on the speaker. Still, it is such a novelty, that I may mount it in the reading room. Next to the toilet.
And that is why you like these tales from the trailer court.
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