Web Log, November 28th thru December 11th
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Studies have shown that every inmate on Death Row in these United States has, sometime during his or her life, heard someone utter the "f-word". Mindful of this fact, Trevin Skeens of Brownsville, Texas, was determined to do everything right when it came to be his turn to shape a young life. OK...perhaps Trevin and his wife Melanie relaxed their grip a bit when, for her 13th birthday, they let their daughter, Melissa, buy the new CD from Evanescence ("Anywhere But Home") but they could not have been prepared for what happened next...on the ride home that day from Wal-Mart in the family's Ford Excursion.
Friday, December 10, 2004
Even a genius has his price (is the moral). This morning, while
searching for a ripe pear, I had to endure a recording by Ray Charles of
"Santa Claus Is
Coming To Town". But then, I suppose it isn't any worse than the The
Carpenters records (like "Only
Yesterday"...eeww!) that the stores
play during the "normal" season. [BTW...check out that
next-to-the-last hyperlink if you're in the mood for a simply ghastly picture of
Karen! It truly DOES look like it was snapped (for a tabloid) at the
mortuary...so maybe it's just as well that she's not around to see it. :-=(( ]
Remember Earthquake? Ya know,
that Hollywood turkey from 1974 with "Sensurround"?
[Mad Magazine dissed
the flick, at the time of its release, by remarking that it featured "senseless
rounds" of inane
dialogue!] Well, an article on the front page of our local paintsplattercatcher
reminded me of the early minutes of that movie...before "The Big One"
hit. Ya know, people started noticing weird this's and that's...and cats and
dogs were spooked for no apparent reason! Do you suppose?
Thursday, December 9, 2004
I have discovered a near bullet-proof cure for insomnia: math books...especially those with "analysis" in the title! From my college days, I have a book entitled "Principles of Mathematical Analysis", by Walter Rudin. I promise you...it's an Olympic-class yawner! Watching TV or listening to the radio are risky activities if what you want is to wind down. I mean, like, as often as not there's a gory story about somebody being mean to an animal or there's a loud-mouth Bush-loving weirdo to get me all cranked up! Hey, I've even been kept awake by a good tennis match...especially a women's singles competition featuring one of those nubile Russians (like Daniela Hantuchova...a bit old for me, perhaps, but yum!). Reading a novel or a magazine or a newspaper is also fraught with the danger that it will set my thoughts in a non-sleepy direction. But when ole Professor Rudin lights it up with his elegant proof that the square root of 2 is NOT a rational number...ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! Every time. Every night.
Wednesday, December 8, 2004
Maggie's play opens tonight. Dear sister Carol is...ah, older
than I am and this is her birthday!
This is also the Feast of the Immaculate
Conception. Incidentally, if you are a Catholic born anytime after 1854,
then you are required to believe
in the Immaculate Conception of Jesus in Mary! And ya better really
believe it 'cuz God will know if yer faking and then you'll be SOL when you die!
Even Joseph's faith was sorely
tested at the time (uh, that was 0, AD)...but he went along to get along.
In a field crowded with competitors, Sir Paul McCartney has emerged the winner,
IMO, for the single most reprehensible
piece of Christmas music ever visited upon a defenseless population...like the
shoppers at Safeway! Again, it's a tough call but there HAD to BE a winner, and
that winner is..."Wonderful
Christmas". If there is a lamer tune in any genre,
then PLEASE...don't sing it to me!
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Now...where were YOU sixty-three years ago? I sure know where
I'm gonna be (but especially where I'm NOT gonna be) sixty-three years
from now! 'Twas all the way to 51 on the reader this morning at 7:00! The
neighbors have asked me, no matter how warm these mornings get, to please
make sure I'm wearing something before I fetch the fishwrap from (under one of
the NRV's in) the driveway. But I gotta tell ya, demented
or not, I'm sure happy to still be alive!
Have you seen those Jack LaLanne
juicer commercials on the boob tube? What see? Ninety now? I'm sure I won't
get to be THAT old and, matter-a-fact, I don't wanna! So this must mean that I'm
at least two-thirds done with this brief interruption of my eternal rest..
I understand why everyone wants to be young and beautiful: "All would live long but none would be old." [Hey...check it out! Just to make the point, I guess, not one person signed up to BE old for this dude's forums! Shouldn't that be "fora"...like the plural of stadium is stadia?] But I'm (still) here to tell you that being old and ugly is not without its advantages...especially if you were never good at saying "no". :-)
Monday, December 6, 2004
Charlie is 57 today. Chucky, wherever he is, is 58.
News of Boogaloo: while his sense of humor may be as healthy as ever, I am sad to report that his heart is not. To this day, I continue to shamelessly plagiarize his lines!
The Oakland Tribune
is sponsoring a Bozo
The Clown 
look-alike contest! Not only have I entered...I expect to
win!
"Suicide prevention...can you hold, please?" How I envy people whose lives are so well-appointed that they can give a rat's glute about baseball players on steroids! Geez!
Sunday, December 5, 2004
This quote from Euripides:
"Whom the
Gods would destroy, they will first make mad." Is this "mad"
as in "angry"?
Or "mad"
as in "crazy"?
IMWTK!
I had three years of Latin in high school and I even knew a little Greek once (but he
died).
This afternoon I made my first recording with Pro Tools. I expect it will be some weeks, at least, before I'll have a "feel" for it. It's quite an impressive piece of software.
Talk about weird! Phillip Morris USA, banned for decades from
advertising their products on TV...is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack
on TV!
Saturday, December 4, 2004
Who was it who wrote, "The problem with each day is that it starts with the first fifteen minutes!"? Thirty seven degrees on the thermocouple reader at 7:00. Undershirt, shirt, sweater, 'nother sweater, pullover jogging jacket...and I'm still in bed! Seems the older I get, the better I was. Such a balmy morning as this in ole Jersey surely woulda found me doin' jumping jacks in the snow...wearing only a jock strap (whoops, not PC! Make that an athletic supporter). ;=-)
Installed Pro Tools. Slogging through the basics but in good company. Timely article from our local supplier of bird-cage-liners.
"A true friend is one who overlooks your
failures and tolerates your successes." Anonymous
Friday, December 3, 2004
OK. Color me old (and in the way)…but I can still remember when it was possible to go into a BIG Food Store and buy something without having to be a "member" of some dumb "club". Today, when I share this cherished reminiscence with the rare young (anyone under forty) person who is not run off by my garlic-and-onion breath (from sliced-up-then-fried baked potatoes…every morning!), I get the same "g’wahn!" expression I otherwise see only when I attempt to describe, to one of these same hang-loose young persons, what life was like before the invention of absorbent paper towels.
I mean, it’s certainly gotten to wear (where?) I am resigned to the card-club-membership paradigm (gag) at Safeway and Albertson’s. I mean, continuing to gripe about that would be like continuing to answer my home phone for telemarketers: it would be about all I'd ever have time to do! Ya know what, though? I think Radio Shack was the first chain business to go with this "get your customer's profile" bit. Then, after the grocery chains noticed how annoying and inconvenient it was for those of us who didn't wanna havta schmooze with some half-wit just to buy a coupla AAA batteries for our GD TV remote, they decided to implement similar programs of their own.
Anyway…
This morning I needed some food for Arlene. She
doesn’t do well on just regular-old Friskies
and Petco sells this Nutro
brand product for "Seniors" (any cat over eight, I’m told). It’s a
"formulation" that she does seem able to keep down. [Or else
she pukes it up where I don’t find it.] The perspicacious
lady checker informed me that, without my becoming a member of P.A.L.S.
and being issued a card, I would have to pay full price (that’s almost $16)
for an 8 lb. bag. [Let’s see, that’s ‘Petco Animal Lovers
Save’...and nowhere to be found on the Petco Web site.] Now, with
the P.A.L.S. card, that same bag is only $13! Never too proud to save a buck, I acquiesced
to the initiation and, at its conclusion, proudly waved a brand new bar-coded
"savings card" stapled to my "It’s
great to be P.A.L.S." pamphlet. 
It
was then that the checker, perhaps sensing that my heart had been softened by
induction (if not by inclusion) points to the photograph of a dog
(likes she thinks I can see it!)…and asks if I won't please donate one
of those saved dollars so that tonight, the Humane
Society won’t have to gas the poor mutt.
__________________
This Windows
XP recovery feature...what's it called? "Last known good
configuration"? "Last known good boot"? Our minds work like that
too, no? When we feel that we have crashed, we dream back to a time (usually the last
time) that we didn't feel crashed. Problem is, we're tons
more complicated than an XP or NT operating system and, often, our "last
known good configuration" is no longer achievable...or maybe it's
"inadvisable" because we can see that it only leads to another crash.
Of course we want more of what's worked before, but suppose what worked before is
something like booze (or another person) that (or who) is no longer sustainable
(or available). Then what? And what about some of us who have, maybe, never had
a "good configuration"?
What was I writing, the other day, about political correctness? Check out THIS stupid story!
Thursday, December 2, 2004
After a short run in the morning cold, I threw together a recording of a song
that I've known for over forty years. It's called "The
Last Letter" and was written by Rex
Griffin in 1937. It's among the (at least) hundreds of songs that seem to be
permanently stored between my ears. Tonight, I might put a harmonica...and maybe
even a third harmony to it.
The first bar (as in 'tavern') gig I ever had was in 1963 at a place called
"Groh's" on Route 35 in Eatontown,
New Jersey. It was advertised as a "Bluegrass Bar". (At the time I
played some five-string banjo...in addition to a round-hole jumbo guitar.) Not
until 1967 was I of legal age to drink in New Jersey and, by that time, I was
long gone to California. My nights at Groh's, unlike the songs I sang
there, are a bit of a blur. I mean, it was one thing to be there at all...even
on some school nights...drinking free booze at age seventeen, but I also
happened to be doing the drinking on stage in full view of the many
erudite patrons! ;-=)) And...it wasn't like the
biker-type owner didn't know I was big-time underage! Couldn't he have
been busted for that? But the drunks musta liked me enough and Mr. Groh musta
had a "relationship", as they say, with the police. Like I say, I
don't have a working memory of the details...but I did already have a
driver's license and I would always drive myself there (sober) and back (drunk).
I guess this was in the days before MADD
and its rival organization, DAMM.
In search of metaphors...
Most sheep are sheep…not wolves.
But who most wishes to appear to be a sheep?
Most frogs are frogs…not handsome princes.
But why ever might an ugly man pose as a frog?
Most men tell the truth.
But who most desires this reputation?
Most men of God are not devils.
But who most, if not devils, must seem like men of God?
Wednesday, December 1, 2004
"Bleak December" has begun.
Linda & Charlie have turned their long, happy marriage into a business. Their new book is called "101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married". While listening to them yesterday I was reminded of one Mr. J. I. Rodale. J. I. was in the vanguard of the "modern health food movement". Among his last words, spoken on the set of the Dick Cavett show, were, "I expect to live to be a hundred and ten...if I don't get run over by some sugar-crazed taxi driver!".
How much more can be in a name?
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
This house was built in 1954, at a time when "sex was dirty and air was clean". I won't argue with the first assertion, but as for the latter...well, I DO know that, compared to now, energy was cheap. Nobody cared much about fuel-efficient cars when gasoline was 25 cents a gallon ("Full Serve"). And nobody cared much about energy-efficient houses when it might only mean a savings of $5 per month (and then only for a few months out of the year)! So, the house I live in is as hard to heat in the winter as it is to cool in the summer.
God solved the winter problem
for me (at least during the day) by creating non-running-vehicles-in-the-driveway
and, because I'm special, He makes sure I always have at least two! 
[This time last month I
even had three! That's when I cobbled some brain cells together and donated the most-far-gone of
the trio to the "Make A Wish Foundation". That's an organization that will tow your wreck away and then give it to some poor kid who only has a few more weeks to live. It's a very nice thing!]
Anyway. My hands were too cold yesterday morning to play the piano. This is partly due to the fact that,
in 1954, I was a greedy eight-year old who just couldn't HAVE enough customers on his paper route! I'm sure I screwed up my young hands by exposing them repeatedly to the indiscriminate wet cold of the New Jersey winters. But that's another long, sad story.
You remember that Readers' Digest-Paul Harvey bit about the guy who said that, when he was a teenager, his dad was stupid but then, when he got into his twenties, he noticed his dad had gotten smart? I mean, I suppose there's a point to
that parable, but I didn't have a dad and my impression was that almost every adult with whom
I grew up was dumb...before they got even dumber as the years wore on! This was
during a period before "political correctness". You see, political correctness (or
incorrectness) implies
discernment, and there weren't
mucha that in the Shrewsbury of the 1950's. People
ate and drank as much as they liked and drove big cars and beat their kids and blew cigarette smoke in each others' faces and they sure didn't worry about skin cancer from too much Sun in the summer
(at the beach) nor about some misdirected, dumbass little kid who might be freezing his
hiney off delivering fishwrap for twenty bucks a week
(in the winter snow). There weren't no colored people in the town neither. Not
one, 'cuz they had all decided long ago, after the Civil War, to live with their
own in one neighborhood in the next town over, Red Bank.
But bigotry was a stranger to Shrewsbury!
Homosexuality and drug abuse had yet to be invented, everyone was associated
with some church and we all enjoyed excellent relations with the few
people of color that we were lucky enough to encounter....like the woman who rode the bus in to spend a few hours (with lunch thrown in at a table all to herself)
scrubbin' and ironin'
for $10. "They're very happy people", my mom liked to say.
So I grabbed a notebook and headed out to my heated '81 Chevy. Now I woulda rather've sat in my '89 Ford
but Arlene had already
chickeed the warm, red roof of that one and I didn't wanna disturb her in these, her final days. The warmth inside the Malibu (OK,
greenhouse effect) did not disappoint me. The battery is still attached so I can work the power windows...and the radio! Although mindful of the possibility, now that my teeth were no longer chattering, that
a compelling broadcast might defeat my intention to cook some lyrics, I stretched out...and turned it on. "Intention is bringing will to
desire", intoned Charlie Bloom of Linda and Charlie Bloom
. Both were holding forth with Michael
Toms in Program #3050 of "New
Dimensions" on KALW, FM 91.7.
Monday, November 29, 2004...
dawned "bitter cold" by SF East Bay standards. Only 38 degrees on my thermocouple reader. The cats are looking for some sun to sit in.
Last night, my former partner and master-musician bass-player, Bing Nathan, co-hosted a radio program with Mal Sharpe ("Back On Basin Street") on KCSM, 91.1 FM, San Mateo. Bing turned 60 this year. I'm sure glad I'm not that old! :-) So Bing has now spent forty years as an "adult musician". As far as I know, he has never worked in another field. Bing won't agree, but I have always found his acoustic piano playing to be even more (for want of a better word) "commanding" than his bass playing. Likely, he still does not consider himself to be a piano player (although he has played since before he lost his deciduous teeth)! What is it my buddy Friedrich has written? "Our vanity would have it be understood that what we do best comes hardest to us!" Anyway. About an hour into the two-hour program, Bing played a thirty year-old recording of a song of mine that I had nearly forgotten. It's called "Habit of Mine". And yup, he's playing piano (and bass) on it! The only copy I have of that song (apart from the cassette I made of last night's program) is a studio mix (from eight track) about eight feet away from me as I type. It's "locked" in magnetic tape. Time to set about restoring it.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Now I'm certain.
Now that I can look around.
You built me up and now you're gonna tear me down.
I should be learning, but I don't seem to learn a thing.
I never know...
and then it's happening.
Got an email from Skip from one of them thar "Internet
Cafes" down in Brazil which he swears is six hours ahead of California.
Nah. Really? He says the exchange rate is "3 to 1" (whatever that
means). I guess that means yer money goes three times as far? He also says that
all the twenty-something ladies down there have a peculiar fetish...one largely
unknown in the States: they crave the company of old, impotent, bald white
guys!
It has now been more than five years since I've been more than five feet from a
cat box ["...from a meadow muffin.", my mom used to say]. I
think by the time I was 22, I'd done all the traveling I wanted to do. Now I
just like to sit for hours in the same spot and be boring.
