The Trotsky's

         
            Beware of the Green Dragon. I ate some chicken with black bean sauce that didn't agree with me. My stomach is usually pretty strong, but it rebelled in this instance. I got the Hershey squirts, the trots, or the Trotsky's, the runs, or whatever you want to call it. 
            This event wasn't as bad as that time I ate fish soup in Mexico, but it was still uncomfortable. 
            I'm not sure why I'm sharing this information. It think it has something to do with publishing a blog once a week. It's the new year and that has been my goal for sometime. Sorry about that, but I have production quotas I have to keep, and sometimes in the haste to make quotas, quality slips a bit. 
            
             
             

Sex War

         
            The couple who lived across the street from me moved out. I found out later that the husband was cheating on his wife and they broke up. That would explain why it felt like she hated men whenever I saw her.
            I'd wave hello to her and she'd either pretend not to see me, or give me a cold, insincere wave back. I was thinking that she was just a bitch. I really started to hate her after a while, but it all makes sense now.
            Had I known what she was going through I would have handled things differently. I would've said, hey wait a minute, I'm just the neighbor! I'm not him! 
            Supposedly, it's a common occurrence for women, and I guess men, to hate the opposite sex after a bad breakup. I certainly can understand it, but I'm not sure I ever felt that way.
            Wait, on second thought, hell yeah I've felt that way. 

Sunny

            
            I was at my Tuesday gig. It was a slow night. The drunkards had chased all the women from the room. I broke into Sunny. 
            I played the first verse flawlessly. My voice was coming across strong and I was feeling pretty good about myself. In the past when I played Sunny I wasn't sure what I was going to get. My fingers found ways to hit the chords wrong and I worried that I was going to forget the words. 
            The second verse was just as good. I looked about the room to see if anybody was listening. Maybe one depressed looking guy sitting at the bar. No bother, I was falling in love with myself. I could do no wrong. Look at me go. I was so happy with my playing I started to think of how far I'd come as a guitar player, and how the chords were falling into place like butter.
             The third verse came along and I wasn't prepared for it with all my thinking. I stumbled into the first line, but tried to recover. I botched a chord and tried to recover. I forgot the words and tried to recover, at a certain point I realized there was no recovering. I finally said into the microphone, "fuck it! Who gives a hell?" and ended it. The drunkards didn't even flinch.

The Racist Cure

         
            I think I figured out a cure for racism. Well, maybe a partial cure. It won't work in all circumstances. 
            I'm of the opinion that if we held racists to their own convictions and demanded they stay true to their beliefs of superiority and ate only foods from their own culture, they'd quickly abandon racism as a practice. It's hypocritical to be a racist and sneak in a taco or order Chinese food to be delivered. Or to eat spaghetti. Or enjoy any food from a culture other than your own. If it's your contention that your culture is superior, then in theory, you wouldn't need the culinary achievements of others.
            And to be true to the historical record, I'm going to have to take away the potato. It was developed and grown by the Inca's. They had two-thousand different varieties. Bye-bye French fry. 
            

Angel Dust

            
            I heard that kids today are drinking whiskey made with propylene glycol, or anti-freeze. Anti-freeze?
            One of the dumbest things I ever did when I was young was to smoke angel dust. I didn't know it was angel dust. I was at a party in the hood, and someone passed me what looked like a joint. I took a hit, and luckily for me it wasn't a good hit.
            Back then, people used to smoke dust and turn catatonic, or just plum freak out and take off all their clothes and run naked in the streets. When the cops tried to arrest them, inevitably, the "duster," would become agitated and turn violent, with super angel dust strength. It took five or six cops to restrain them. The police had to hog tie them by their wrist and ankles, then toss them head first, stomach down, into into the backseat of their squad car.
           I was at a park once when I was a kid, and there was a man sitting in the bleachers. His face was ghost-white, and he was staring into space. I knew enough to stay away from him. Somebody called the police on him. When the cops arrived they tried to ask the man questions, but he didn't respond. He just stared into space. When they moved in to arrest the man he went ballistic. His super angel dust strength kicked in. He fought the cops off pretty good, but eventually they surrounded him and took him to the ground. The man was wiggling and yelling like a maniac. The police hog tied him like an animal and threw him head first into the squad car and whisked him away.
            That was my lesson about angel dust. That's why a few years later I freaked out when I found out I had just smoked it.
         
           

Cooperation

         
           I've been meaning to write a blog on the beauty of cooperation. Although in the aftermath of our recent presidential election, where we elected an admitted racist, it seems silly to talk about cooperation. I'm not sure how much cooperation there will be. So, I'll discuss the topic on the micro level, and not the macro, for people are far too agitated right now. 
           What I mean by cooperation is the giving of yourself, doing what you need to do to make life easier for somebody else. The opposite of cooperation is resistance. It takes more energy to resist. Of course resistance is necessary, especially now, but a cooperative resistance is stronger and more fulfilling than going at it alone. You can cooperate with yourself, but it's not as fun as cooperating with others.                    
            We need to get in the groove of cooperation. In other words, don't be a dick, or try not to be. It's hard I know, I have trouble with it myself. I want to resist at every twist and turn. When people talk about love, they're really talking about a form of cooperation. 
             So don't be a dick, be nice, give of yourself, cooperate. The rewards are greater than the demands.
         

         

           

           

Bill The Piano Man

         
            I used to sing jazz at bars, Tin Pan Alley, the American song book. I didn't know much about singing then. I didn't even know what keys to sing my songs in.
            A friend of mine recommended a piano man named Bill to help me find my keys. Bill was a crotchety old man, but he could play any song in any key, and that's what I needed.
            I met Bill at his house on a Saturday morning. He sat at the piano and we started to work. I hadn't even sung three notes when he abruptly stopped playing and said, "I know a good singing teacher."
            I was offended by his comment. We hadn't even found the right key yet.
            I'd pay Bill twenty bucks and leave his house with the information I needed and a cassette tape to practice to. Sometimes Bill and I would butt heads while working. We'd argue about the key to sing in.
            "You can't sing it in that key! It's too low for you!"
            Or too high. I'd always defer to Bill in the end. He was a better musician than I was, and I trusted his old-man judgment.            
            I'd pop the tape in to practice when I got home, but it was always the same. It was a strain to hit the notes. No matter how hard I tried, I never got any better. I finally got discouraged and gave up singing standards and began writing my own songs again.
            Recently, I learned some of the songs that I'd sung in bars on my guitar. I played them in the same key that Bill taught me, but I still couldn't sing them. They were either too high or too low for my voice. I tried playing them in different keys to see if that helped. Bingo. I'd been singing the songs in the wrong key all along. Thanks Bill. I thought about the nights I sang in bars and how horrible it sounded. No wonder.
            How many other singers did Bill mess up? Probably a lot. He was pretty busy.