The Parking Lot

            It occurred to me the other day while trying to pull into a parking lot, that perhaps it wouldn’t be all that bad to grow old and lose my short-term memory. 

            A man had pulled into the parking lot going the wrong way. He was stupidly blocking traffic. There was somebody else waiting for a spot and he too was blocking traffic. It was mayhem. My temperature rose a point or two just sitting there as a witness. If I didn’t have a short-term memory my anger would last but a minute or two and then my problems would dissipate into thin air. That sounds promising to me. I’d hardly have resentment, because I couldn’t remember my resentment. Old and in bliss, that's what I'd be. 

Jury Duty

            I talked to Bill the smog guru yesterday. He told me a story about his stint with jury duty. He was a juror on a domestic abuse case. A man came home drunk from a bar and tried to force his lady to perform oral sex, to which the lady responded by hitting the man over the head with a frying pan. The man socked the lady in the eye before he passed out on the floor.

            The lady went to work the next day with a black eye. Her workmates, upon seeing the black eye, asked how she got it. They convinced the lady to report her boyfriend to the police. The police arrested the boyfriend later that day. He was still asleep on the floor in the same position.

            Three felony counts later there was Bill deliberating with the other jurors who had unanimously voted to send the man up the river to San Quentin for the thirty odd years. 

            Fry him was the popular sentiment.

            Bill thought it a waste of taxpayer money to send the man to prison for thirty years. He said his neck twitched to the left when he realized how the jurors were leaning. Bill was the lone holdout. 
            After much deliberation the jurors convicted the man on a couple of misdemeanor charges. He did time served. 

Juan

            It turns out that the weird guy on the boardwalk that dances around with sacks of pinto beans on his head is an ex-history professor. There is an intelligent aspect to his pageantry, and now it makes perfect sense. He’s an academic. Supposedly he’s done interviews for TMZ. Even the freaks on the boardwalk are trying to be discovered. It is Los Angeles. It seems like a circuitous route to discovery, or on the other hand, it could be sheer public relations genius. I'm not sure.

            I have one more gig with the band before it’s all over, and to tell you the truth, I’m a little worried about a lack of blogging content without Venice. Venice the pearl, the slime, the ocean.

Water

            There’s a strange phenomenon transpiring in my cabin. I’ll measure two cups of water and pour it into my coffee maker, and inevitably, I’ll get four cups of coffee back. I can’t explain it, but I’m not complaining given the current state of my economic situation.

            I’m not sure a physicist could explain it. It defies all laws with regard to mass and matter. I’m beginning to think water mates, or that cloud structures have found their way into my coffee maker.

            Feel free to click on The Glen Liver icon. I posted a couple of new songs. Thanks.

No Good Answer

I was at my Venice gig when the drummer in the band came up to me and said, “Can you do me a favor? Can you watch the restroom door while I go to the bathroom?”

            He’d been having stomach problems for the last two weeks. His stomach had him running around looking for a nice safe place to crap.

            “Where are the restrooms?” he asked me.

            “I think they’re right over there,” I pointed to a building that I thought were the public restrooms near the beach.

            “Those aren’t public restrooms,” he reported back to me after checking them out.

            I had a simple job. I was to stand in line to give the appearance that I was waiting for the restroom, while “Gus,” we’ll call him Gus, did his business.

            At first it was just me in line, and every thing was easy, but then thirty seconds later another guy showed up, and fifteen seconds after that still another guy showed up to be third in line. We were all standing there waiting. We weren’t waiting long, but it seemed long, because it was the restroom and the fellows had to go. The guy third in line got impatient.

            “Hey, there’s two urinals in there!” he said to me.

            I just smiled and threw up my hands. I was thinking the guy had too much information. I had a bad feeling about him. He was a loose cannon.

            Sure enough, the guy third in line took matters into his own hands and rushed past me toward the door. There was nothing I could do to stop him, it happened so quickly. In my deviousness I was curious to see his reaction once he opened the door. 

            He flung the door open and saw “Gus” sitting on the toilet taking a crap. He made an awful face and shut the door as quickly as he could.

In my mind I had just taught the guy a valuable lesson about patience. I subsequently abandoned my post. I was sitting at the bar when Gus walked out of the restroom. He was tucking in his shirt and looking for me at the same time. 

He caught up to me.

“What happened?” he asked me in a whisper.

            “The guy stormed the door. There was nothing I could do to stop him,” I whispered back.  

            “What if we were at war, and my life depended upon you?”

            To that question I had no good answer.

Ear Splitting

I’m going into the studio today. I’ll be on cymbal detail. The plan is to turn down the cymbals on two songs. Some of the cymbals are ear-splitting. It’s a small detail, but I’m just thinking about my audience. I don’t want anybody wearing headphones to lose their hearing with the sound of crashing cymbals. Maybe some day as a practical joke I’ll release a song that appears normal on every level, until, unexpectedly, a deafening cymbal crash descends upon the listener and jolts them from the doldrums of everyday living.

            I imagine somebody walking down the street with a cool look on their face, then suddenly stopping to yank off their headphones and saying, “damn!”  

Nasty Bitch

I was talking to Bill the smog guru when his cell phone rang. He gets a lot of phone calls during the coarse of the day. People call for information regarding smog test, and ask him repair questions for their vehicles. Bill will answer the phone but on rare occasions. If someone calls and doesn’t meet his high standards, or expectations, he’ll give the caller a label on his cell phone. He’ll type in something to the effect of “El Grand Stupido,” or if it’s a lady “Nasty Bitch,” if she tries to push her weight around.

            We’ll be sitting there talking about Fairport Convention, or about the time Bill saw Jimi Hendrix at the Hollywood Bowl when Bill’s phone will start to ring. He’ll pull it out of his shirt pocket and take a quick look at the caller ID to see who’s calling. “El Stupido Maximo,” He’ll stick the phone back in his pocket, until the phone rings again. He'll look at the caller ID, “Nasty Bitch #19.”