One year ago today: November 4, 2021, caught the last one!
Five years ago today: November 4, 2017, on the crime book.
Nine years ago today: November 4, 2013, Winnemucca.
Random years ago today: November 4, 2014, Maker Faire, Miami.
Friday and perfect motorcycle weather and I’m gone to Miami. I left before noon timed to avoid the Broward Country traffic. That was semi-successful but I forgot the mentality of the drivers. It’s a regular mistake. Never go to Miami on a Friday or guaranteed, you will still be there on Monday. I was. On the trip, I noted two items. First was a quick detour in Lake Placid (Florida) to check on the family restaruant. It is gone, the windows are still taped shut. I stopped and bought a veggie tray as a snack, which ultimately lasted JZ and I for two days.
Sure enough, when I got to my medical clinic, the one I sort of had shoved on me when the new administration took over, they wanted to see a document one does not normally carry around. That might have a lot to do with Medicare documents that state “do not carry in wallet”, and “keep in a safe place”. Not wanting to mix it up with these people, I decided to go see my original doc on Monday and drove over to Agt. M’s place. Ha, there was one vehicle with the hood up in the parking lot, so he was easy to find. He’s plenty chipper and now has perfect teeth. He had them done overseas and only cost him $3,000.
His little boy is now three or so and has discovered talking. Once more the gifts I brought may have to wait until he’s a bit older. He’s also about to become a father all over again, he’s been awful busy in that department. There will be no time this trip to visit again or work on my van. I was out of there before afternoon rush hour and surprisingly made it to south Miami in less than an hour. It’s 33 miles.
Rope bridge, Peru.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Biden can kiss my grits. The minimum balance in my holding account for all of this year to day is $2,059.38 and my interest has been a whopping $1.34 before taxes. This country needs a bank that is not interconnected. One that keeps information local and private, a bank that makes money in ways that people understand. I estimate the overall impact of inflation so far this year is 15% and in the case of consumers such as myself, closer to 22%. And the bad guys have not yet begun to pay back their election favors.
A Budweiser is $9 over there, a glass of draft is $7. Yet the place was packed with university students who had the same idea as we did. See and be seen. While we were easily the oldest guys in the place, we were the only ones who had anything even approaching personalities. While most women where university types, there was an unusually large contingent of 30-ish husband hunters. I guess that makes sense. Here’s a product with an oddball blurb. Sea salt plugging that it was harvested on a bird sanctuary, see photo. It’s iodized. I hope they didn’t use salt from directly under the flight path.
Back to the club. A few of the women were checking out JZ, myself and the rest of the guys were fixated on this 5-foot-9 babe who for sure was some kind of model. In pumps, she was taller than every guy in the place. I sympathize with such beauties because there are precious few places they can go and be let alone. I was contemplating asking her if she wanted some peace and quiet, she could join us, but noticed she had no intention of sitting down. What a living doll.
I was buying, so at $20 a round, I was hardly thinking of staying. Other than the model there were only really three other lookers in the place, but JZ was in paradise. The ones eying him had a very, um, “Mediterranean” look about them. You know, love at second sight. Because the first time they looked they didn’t know he was rich. Most of today’s entry is out of chrono order, so you can fill in the blanks yourself. It was a 22 hour day.
There’s a Trump rally tomorrow, we voted not to go. The media is going nutso trying to “negativize” the event, it will be full, they say, of “election deniers” and many of them will be “wearing red hats”. NPR radio is round the clock twisting every issue. Example, if they want to expand mail-in voting, it is to accommodate this enormous pool (they say) of voters who can’t otherwise make it. But if Republicans want mail-in it is so they can intimidate Democrat voters by taking their pictures if they drop more than one ballot each. Oh my gosh, that someone should take a picture of them committing a crime. They must feel so violated. Or something.
ADDENDUM
For music, I’m in rough shape. If you see this, good, I’m in Miami and no computer. I’ve taken a full size guitar over to the old clubhouse by now. No pick, no case, no tuning pipes, all of which I know I have around here aplenty. But if it isn’t for my bass, I lose track. The guitar may be too large but I also tend to remember kids as being smaller and younger than they are. I have not seen the kidlet in over a year. Agt. M, fully aware he missed a golden opportunity, now practically begs me to teach lessons. That is impossible, but this is a real head start for the youngster.
I say head start in comparison to my beginnings. There are sides to my story I never much expressed because there was no basis for said comparison. You know how we got a piano and my older sister was forced to take lesson. I’ll tell you how naïve I was. I had no heroes, not even a basic clue how bands or music was structured. My strongest recollection of my decision had nothing to do with forming a band, but only a sense that by age ten I was already “falling behind”. I never saw a live band until I was 12 and four months later I was starting one. By the time I got on stage, it was the third time in my life I’d heard live music.
That’s why piano was so influential to me, although I never learned to play it right. It was the only instrument that had lessons and I was so clueless I thought that you had to study music and go to school. Once you graduated, they would “let” you perform. I cooked this all in my own head and there was certainly nothing in my existence to say otherwise. Odd as it sounds, although I had passed the eighth grade exams with all A’s, I was held back and required to repeat the year, but that is another tale from the trailer court. This gave me more than enough free time and I set to work figuring out basic patterns on the piano. The lessons I took were classical, all that was available. Hence, I developed the crackpot idea that you had to “finish” classical lessons first.
This about the time a band moved into town and asked me to “play organ”. All I could do was hold down the chords. I had no ear at all, but I did figure out the I-IV-V relationship although not the blues. I never really learned the blues progressions until I was something like 27. By then I had shown several people the basics on bass. I did not play it much myself, but from piano I realized I had something others either did not know or bother with. I understood the notes that made up the chords and patterns. That means by the time I undertook bass seriously, I sliced right through blues and rock and landed on country. I am a deadly blues bass player and my rock versions have had standing ovations. The conversion to country had plenty to do with the Reb but also a technical detail I’ll now describe.
I found two parallel paths with country bass. The too simple and the too difficult. Like blues, I found the simple too repetitious and found the other extreme was guitarists who switched to bass. There was an open gap in the center where neither of these types could capture an audience. One extreme made them snort and the other was like listening to FM. Both lacked that “bass touch” I had always thought important. It matters when you play piano and I know from experience it is very much lacking in most bass players.
And to this day, that is how I play. If you look at the notes, nothing stands out. But focus where there is a difference and it is how the strings are touched, both left and right (with a pick). It’s not what is played but how it is played, and I have the videos and live recordings to back that up. Funny thing, other musicians don’t hear it. But they sure as hell know something has happened when they get up on stage.
I looked up the history of that band, they are still together today. However, that could largely be because you can’t really fire your brothers. They’ve gone the distance, releasing albums of non-descript originals via underground radio, but I doubt they made any money. Tell you what, I’ll fire off an e-mail to the head guy, he’ll remember me. He owes me ten bucks. Anyway, their band blurb describes them as one of the most enduring groups. Duh, okay.
No link, but I toured their website. They tried every shtick, the leather vests, the rock album, armbands, big haircuts. They’ve wisely posted only select live videos as their live performance can never come close to a slick studio production. These guys are a bar band with a bar band sound and their harmony vocals sound like mine. Even wiser, all those videos are at least 25 years ago.
