The Best Products

I was looking at kitchen faucets at a hardware store when an older fellow came up to me and said that the younger generation was killing him, that they wanted the best products but they didn't want to pay for them. I figured he was a handyman of some sort, and was talking from experience. I smiled at him but didn't say anything back.

Then the man said, “we blame the Jews,” and walked away. I didn't know what to say to that. I stood there dumbfounded. I sent my Jewish friend an email and told her what had happened at the hardware store. 
She emailed me back, “He had it half right, I do like the best products.” 

Corporations Aren't People

I had to cash a check. I was asked by the drawer to cash it at his bank for some unknown reason. I obliged. I entered the bank and everything was copacetic. The teller I approached was nice and fairly attractive. I was familiar with the bank. I had an account there for years before they changed their checking policies. I thought their new policies discriminated against poor people so I changed banks. I’m poor. It affected me. I’m happy with my new bank. It’s classy and there are no lines.

            Everything was going to plan. The transaction was being processed. Then, the teller started to play with her computer a little bit more then I wanted her to. She asked if I had an account with her bank. I told her that I had closed the account. She fiddled with her computer some more and finally said it would cost six bucks to cash the check. I thought to myself this is a multi-billion dollar bank and they're trying to chisel six bucks from me. Fat chance. If corporations are people, then they work for me.   

Last Gig In Venice

I did my last gig with the Venice band. Tree Man stopped by, but he seemed to be in a bad mood. It looked like he was overwhelmed by the attention he was getting. He was an unhappy tree, dead wood. He didn’t even bother to sing a song. He walked in and walked out.

            The General sang a song instead. The General is a Jamaican guy who thinks he’s Bob Marley. He isn’t. Once The General gets on stage it hard to get him off. He insisted that we play another song with him. We didn’t. The General is a good nickname for the guy. He does start to give orders.  He has a real high opinion of himself. He’s downright conceited. I’ve always thought of him as a Rasta poser. He’s probably not even from Jamaica. He could very well be from Venice Beach. 

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.