Well hello again.
Yesterday's questionnaire went well and the guy I was talking to wants to hire me; now they're going to do some other checks on my background and driving records, so hopefully that will be OK.
Yesterday I wasn't feeling super hot about it though, but that's just because my workday will start at 530 am which means getting up no later than 430 to get up there. That pretty much sucks but what are you gonna do. There's not too many ways to completely avoid suckitude.
Snowing here today so hopefully I'll be able to find some good snowy landscape pics tomorrow.
I"m feeling calmer today though.
Last night at the open mic I wasn't getting the feeling that I was capturing the audience's attention that much, but really the thing is not to give a shit. It's just a bunch of randoms playing to a bunch of randoms. Certainly I was no worse than at least a couple other people who played. I'm still not really used to being the center of attention and I kind of have to get warmed up and steel myself for it, but I still have cold sweaty hands and incipient panic symptoms when I'm sitting there with a mic in front of me. Not as bad as last time.
I remember an intervew, or maybe it was in Walk this Way, the autobiography of Aerosmith, where Steven Tyler talks about the first time he discovered Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton, it might have specifically in reference to their cover of the song Rattlesnake Shake, but anyway he said that they had a really badass loose groove, they were terrible and couldn't tune their instruments, but it didn't matter because they had that groove. Fantasia also gave some advice to the contestants when she made a guest appearance on Idol the season after she won, she told them to be bad, to let it all hang out. To loosen up.
I actually try to do that when I play. Most of the people there tend to play a little faster than me and it throws me off. The cute girl really likes to play the song Pink, but she's really hyper and runs at higher rpms than I do, even though she isn't at all anxious, and I had to stop her and tell her to slow down. I laid down the groove for her but she still pushed it a bit fast.
Some days I think about playing bass. I found some Modern Electric Bass lessons on youtube where Jaco Pastorius put in a guest appearance and if anything would ever want to make play bass that would, until you go into a guitar shop and pick up a bass and the thing is enormous, with strings like electrical wires and frets tremedously far apart. Jaco had years of experience and tremendous talent and big hands. He also had an exremely aggressive mindset that got him killed a couple years after he made those videos. I guess I'm at the unhealthy other end of the aggression scale. It makes me an unbeleivably bad chess player even though I'm fantastic at scrabble. And it makes me incapable of approaching women.
and now something somewhat different
Few years ago I when I moved to springfield and I was looking for jobs I applied at Rent a Center before I understood just what they were. What they do is that they provide merchandise at high cost to people who are poor, and you can see from how RAC does business poor people are that way at least some of the time because they have poor impulse control. At least it seems that way to me. If you go into one, they have giant stereo speakers, and it seems to me that those things at least, that can be had for no money down, just renting to own and paying twice as much as you would pay, paying all in one shot, are things that target people who have poor impulse control, by overwhelming their senses.
I'm real susceptible to that, I have a problem with wanting to buy cameras or musical instruments. Used to be with guns but less so with them nowadays. Day or two ago I head the song "every rose has its thorn" on the radio and investigating found it to be quite playable and I did it at the open mic last night. But i came across a "chipmunk" version of every rose on youtube and I thought it was hysterical. Things like that are very funny if you only listen to them infrequently. Grandma got run over by a reindeer was funny the first time but was about like fingernails on chalkboard by the hundredth time. But anyway, the in chipmunk version of every rose the guitar part sounds a little like mandolin, so I idly went on ebay to look up mandolas and I came across one with incredible inlay work from an ebay store in taiwan. Looking into that store I found all kinds of incredible looking intruments, really cheap, even counting a hundred bucks to ship them overoceans. And the store has five thousand feedbacks 99.8% positive. Some of the feedbacks indicate things you might expect, a guitar would have a high action and need a setup. Well if you could get solid spruce and indian rosewood for six hundred bucks it not too unreasonable to knock out the nut and bridge and rasp them down a bit on an emery board. Anyway, this is just me being dazzled by fancy engraving and the possibility of getting a great bargain. I don't seem to have an off switch with respect to these particular cognitive processes. Or rather I did develop one, but I haven't been using it for a while. I worked out this mental exercise where if I wanted to buy a gun I didn't need I would imagine myself out on a vast lake in a boat, and I would lower the gun into the water and watch it disappear into the depths, repeat until the desire was let go of as well. I guess I should just be doing this with these guitars and basses that dazzle me. But in a way I rather like the feeling of desire, and the excitement of shopping for things and finding things and maybe getting them. It might not be a bad way to go, by way of getting a bass or a 12 string guitar.
Other times I remind myself that the only resources that matter are body, mind, and time.
But another thing comes to mind, recalling my investigation of work at Rent a Center is that the guy who was the manager was just like the bail bondsman in Jackie Brown, a quentin tarantino film, lesser known but one that I love, just because I love listening to the characters talk. Anyway, the JB bail bondsman and the RAC manager were basically the same guy, which you could describe as some kind of People Person in rather a weird way, in that they are actively engaged with making money off of and dealing with desperate people at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid. The guy at RAC tried to tell me that they do not "exploit" the poor but he got me thinking about it and I think that that is exactly what they do. I think that if you were to make a visit to a large city, you might for example map out the rent a centers and go to the areas where RACs are not found.
I'm wondering just now about how maybe I don't really love art in the sense of doing, maybe just being dazzled by it i desire it, but I'm not so enthused when confronted but the demands of doing it. Like seeing a pastorius jazz bass lesson and then picking up a real bass yourself. But on the other hand I did so much pottery that I don't know what to do with all the stuff I have, and even though I don't need five guitars and play just one of them 99% of the time, I do in fact put in time and effort to develop my abilities in that area. So for me consumerism and art are maybe blended. Don't know if it's healthful or unhealthful. To be a great guitarist with just one guitar, or just to have pencil and paper and do real art with that, is something like clear spring water, where being just a fair guitarist and a decent photographer with way too many cameras is maybe like root beer or a milkshake, it's sort of flavorful and warm and friendly, but not as clear and penetrating.
Well I guess you could call this a "record of thought processes blog".
smooch smooch
Lizardo
Yesterday's questionnaire went well and the guy I was talking to wants to hire me; now they're going to do some other checks on my background and driving records, so hopefully that will be OK.
Yesterday I wasn't feeling super hot about it though, but that's just because my workday will start at 530 am which means getting up no later than 430 to get up there. That pretty much sucks but what are you gonna do. There's not too many ways to completely avoid suckitude.
Snowing here today so hopefully I'll be able to find some good snowy landscape pics tomorrow.
I"m feeling calmer today though.
Last night at the open mic I wasn't getting the feeling that I was capturing the audience's attention that much, but really the thing is not to give a shit. It's just a bunch of randoms playing to a bunch of randoms. Certainly I was no worse than at least a couple other people who played. I'm still not really used to being the center of attention and I kind of have to get warmed up and steel myself for it, but I still have cold sweaty hands and incipient panic symptoms when I'm sitting there with a mic in front of me. Not as bad as last time.
I remember an intervew, or maybe it was in Walk this Way, the autobiography of Aerosmith, where Steven Tyler talks about the first time he discovered Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton, it might have specifically in reference to their cover of the song Rattlesnake Shake, but anyway he said that they had a really badass loose groove, they were terrible and couldn't tune their instruments, but it didn't matter because they had that groove. Fantasia also gave some advice to the contestants when she made a guest appearance on Idol the season after she won, she told them to be bad, to let it all hang out. To loosen up.
I actually try to do that when I play. Most of the people there tend to play a little faster than me and it throws me off. The cute girl really likes to play the song Pink, but she's really hyper and runs at higher rpms than I do, even though she isn't at all anxious, and I had to stop her and tell her to slow down. I laid down the groove for her but she still pushed it a bit fast.
Some days I think about playing bass. I found some Modern Electric Bass lessons on youtube where Jaco Pastorius put in a guest appearance and if anything would ever want to make play bass that would, until you go into a guitar shop and pick up a bass and the thing is enormous, with strings like electrical wires and frets tremedously far apart. Jaco had years of experience and tremendous talent and big hands. He also had an exremely aggressive mindset that got him killed a couple years after he made those videos. I guess I'm at the unhealthy other end of the aggression scale. It makes me an unbeleivably bad chess player even though I'm fantastic at scrabble. And it makes me incapable of approaching women.
and now something somewhat different
Few years ago I when I moved to springfield and I was looking for jobs I applied at Rent a Center before I understood just what they were. What they do is that they provide merchandise at high cost to people who are poor, and you can see from how RAC does business poor people are that way at least some of the time because they have poor impulse control. At least it seems that way to me. If you go into one, they have giant stereo speakers, and it seems to me that those things at least, that can be had for no money down, just renting to own and paying twice as much as you would pay, paying all in one shot, are things that target people who have poor impulse control, by overwhelming their senses.
I'm real susceptible to that, I have a problem with wanting to buy cameras or musical instruments. Used to be with guns but less so with them nowadays. Day or two ago I head the song "every rose has its thorn" on the radio and investigating found it to be quite playable and I did it at the open mic last night. But i came across a "chipmunk" version of every rose on youtube and I thought it was hysterical. Things like that are very funny if you only listen to them infrequently. Grandma got run over by a reindeer was funny the first time but was about like fingernails on chalkboard by the hundredth time. But anyway, the in chipmunk version of every rose the guitar part sounds a little like mandolin, so I idly went on ebay to look up mandolas and I came across one with incredible inlay work from an ebay store in taiwan. Looking into that store I found all kinds of incredible looking intruments, really cheap, even counting a hundred bucks to ship them overoceans. And the store has five thousand feedbacks 99.8% positive. Some of the feedbacks indicate things you might expect, a guitar would have a high action and need a setup. Well if you could get solid spruce and indian rosewood for six hundred bucks it not too unreasonable to knock out the nut and bridge and rasp them down a bit on an emery board. Anyway, this is just me being dazzled by fancy engraving and the possibility of getting a great bargain. I don't seem to have an off switch with respect to these particular cognitive processes. Or rather I did develop one, but I haven't been using it for a while. I worked out this mental exercise where if I wanted to buy a gun I didn't need I would imagine myself out on a vast lake in a boat, and I would lower the gun into the water and watch it disappear into the depths, repeat until the desire was let go of as well. I guess I should just be doing this with these guitars and basses that dazzle me. But in a way I rather like the feeling of desire, and the excitement of shopping for things and finding things and maybe getting them. It might not be a bad way to go, by way of getting a bass or a 12 string guitar.
Other times I remind myself that the only resources that matter are body, mind, and time.
But another thing comes to mind, recalling my investigation of work at Rent a Center is that the guy who was the manager was just like the bail bondsman in Jackie Brown, a quentin tarantino film, lesser known but one that I love, just because I love listening to the characters talk. Anyway, the JB bail bondsman and the RAC manager were basically the same guy, which you could describe as some kind of People Person in rather a weird way, in that they are actively engaged with making money off of and dealing with desperate people at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid. The guy at RAC tried to tell me that they do not "exploit" the poor but he got me thinking about it and I think that that is exactly what they do. I think that if you were to make a visit to a large city, you might for example map out the rent a centers and go to the areas where RACs are not found.
I'm wondering just now about how maybe I don't really love art in the sense of doing, maybe just being dazzled by it i desire it, but I'm not so enthused when confronted but the demands of doing it. Like seeing a pastorius jazz bass lesson and then picking up a real bass yourself. But on the other hand I did so much pottery that I don't know what to do with all the stuff I have, and even though I don't need five guitars and play just one of them 99% of the time, I do in fact put in time and effort to develop my abilities in that area. So for me consumerism and art are maybe blended. Don't know if it's healthful or unhealthful. To be a great guitarist with just one guitar, or just to have pencil and paper and do real art with that, is something like clear spring water, where being just a fair guitarist and a decent photographer with way too many cameras is maybe like root beer or a milkshake, it's sort of flavorful and warm and friendly, but not as clear and penetrating.
Well I guess you could call this a "record of thought processes blog".
smooch smooch
Lizardo
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
It seems pretty obvious to you and me that paying 12 payments of $20 is much worse than 6 payments of $30 but that's actually something that a lot of people have never been taught to think about.