Steep Odds

• Tuesday Night Off
• 5 Dollars Wednesday Night
• The Costello Project

I wish we could play pairs here in LA

I actually came out ahead yesterday, after having only spent 50 cents on a "Pick 3" ticket, and gotten a can of food for Harold the Cat.

My number, 427 has not come up in something close to 2,500 days, according to the lottery's website.

About 5 days ago, the number was 437. This actually could mean that it came close to being hit. If they use the pin pong balls floating in air with numbers written upon them method of "randomly" picking the digits, then, the first and third digits became 4 and 7 against 100 to 1 odds. This had been a stroke of luck already for me. So, I can look at it as if, just 5 days ago, I had a 1 in 10 chance of winning the $250 (the payoff for a 50 cent ticket) as the last ball randomly ricocheted its way into the tube. 

But I could just as easily postulate that the 3, which was the wrong middle digit, could have been the first ball to be drawn into a tube and that, therefore, I had zero chance of winning the thing; nada; zilch; not like a 1 in 10 chance at all.

Common sense tells me to stop playing the thing and to devote myself to making money the old fashioned way. Putting the 50 cents a day in a jar instead of playing the lottery would yield a jar that would outperform the "1%" jar that I had been keeping up to date, but which right now is deplete.
The 1% jar had been growing at an average of 23 cents per day; busking 6 nights a week for at least a couple hours.

I have already sunk about $50 into trying to win the $250.

I have borrowed some more VHS movies from another resident here, David Greenwell.
Dave is a musician, who busked during the morning hours for the coffee drinking set on Royal Street. He played very simple songs on a miniature guitar and made very modest amounts of money. But, as this amount afforded him the opportunity to get drunk daily, he considered his operation a success.

The last guitar that he had was lost or stolen during an incident the story about being in constant flux but always involving crack cocaine. The guitar that he had before that one, he fell upon, destroying it; and he tells of yet another guitar which had been destroyed when he was jumped over something drug related.

I watched the movie "Pearl Harbor," last night; fast forwarding past the "love" scenes, and others, between the characters.

I get that the movie makers were trying to play up the "human interest" angle of the occurrence at Pearl Harbor; otherwise it would be nothing but bombs exploding and bullets and planes flying and ships listing then sinking. But, I thought that part of the movie was kind of lame.

First of all, I hate movies where "everybody" is getting blown away except the starlet and the leading man whom the bullets and shrapnel and fireballs just miss throughout the whole 2 hour drama.
And, it was particularly lame at one point when there are about 64 Japanese planes raining hell down from the sky lighting the tarmac up like a pinball machine with a fireworks grand finale going on overhead and one of the characters who was one of the major actors and didn't get killed until almost the end of the movie, actually rises up and starts yelling to his other fighter pilots that they must load up the 57 caliber caliber machine gun that is sitting there, surrounded by sand bags.

They are pilots and not gunners, but, sometimes in war you have to learn as you go; point it at the planes and squeeze this thing here...

"Come on, let's get these Jap suckers!" yells the major actor. Yes, let's put an end to this madness right now, with this one gun.

One machine gun against 64 fighter planes is steep odds, but the Japs were really starting to piss the young pilot off.

Of course they manage to shoot a few planes out of the sky, cheer and pump their fists in between and, of course, their gun turret was situated in the only 4 square yards shown in the frame which wasn't being riddled by bullets, string of firecrackers style, nor being blown up, nor engulfed in black smoke so thick that you wouldn't have been able to see them. The lighting was actually pretty much studio quality behind the sandbags, come to think of it...

Let's get them Jap suckers!!

The thing that was conspicuously missing from the film was period music.

It was easy to use late 60's music in the Vietnam based movies to good effect; depicting the soldiers as the not much more than teenagers that they actually were and then having "The End," by the Doors playing in the background to set the tone.

Even the movie called "The Titans," that I borrowed from Dave, which had racial themes and was set in the late 60's had a wealth of music of that era to draw upon. The Chambers Brothers "Time Has Come Today," being a good fit.

But, in the Pearl Harbor flick, it still would have been at least surrealistic to have "In The Mood," by the Glenn Miller Orchestra cranking as they showed the pilots scrambling to get in their planes after the air raid siren has sounded.    

5 Dollar Wednesday

At around 9:30 PM, my biological clock was telling me that it was time to busk.

I had 6 dollars in my pocket and had a big pot of beans that I had slow simmered for hours; I was thinking that I was going out to play for a bag of rice and perhaps something else to throw in the pot.
I really felt workman-like as I began pedaling towards the Lilly Pad. I felt like Herman Munster on his way out the door carrying his big ol' lunch pail; planting a kiss on Lilly's cheek. Just going to put in the time; with no real earth shattering message to put out; except maybe that time has come today.

There weren't many people out, but I got 3 groups of them to stop and listen and throw a buck or two in the almost 2 hours that I played.

I got back to the apartment with a can of food for Harold, a bag of rice, some green beans and tomato paste. I had gotten the idea to make a "3 bean salad," and by stirring a good amount of vinegar in with the cooked pinto beans and the green beans, I accomplished this. 30 minutes later, when the rice was done it hit the spot.

I had moved my pot plant outside, and it seems fitting to have it out of the house as I am now within a few weeks of being eligible to take the drug test as the last step of signing up for work through Express Professional Services. I am planning upon using one of the cleansing formulas that contains creatine monohydrate in it; since I am interested in the muscle building benefits of that substance, which just happens to be good also at flushing toxins out of the body's cells.

I have been using my bicycle as an exercise tool, tying the front wheel to the frame with a shoelace to keep it from flopping, and then doing bicep curls; gripping the frame at its center of gravity and then lifting it until the seat bumps against the low ceiling near my front door -Deltoids, biceps, brachioradialis, plus the carpi muscles all benefit.

It is 8:45 PM now, and time to go out on this Thursday night and busk. I'm in the same frame of mind as last night, only half enthused once more.

The Costello project is coming along a bit. I played some of "Beyond Belief," last night as well as "New Amsterdam," by Elvis last night to practice them.

This afternoon, I brushed up on "Glory Days," and "Hungry Heart," by Bruce Springsteen to have them hanging from my tool belt.