Trying To Pull The Wool Over Their Eyes

It is Sunday.

I had set my alarm to wake me up in time to be at the Superdome about an hour before the start of the Saint's game.

That was 10:30 AM, and at that point, I had slept for about 4 hours, having woken up a few times during the night, in order to drink more juice and/or go to the bathroom.

Being on a juice fast, one can get hungry. If one drinks too much juice, though, it can become a juice feast.

I finally got up and started to listen to the game on the radio, telling myself that I would leave the apartment during halftime, as I had already missed the inflow of people into the stadium, and there was no use getting there just to sit at my spot by my lonesome, listening to the broadcast through my headphones -not when I could sit home drinking coffee and listening to it on my speakers.
I left at halftime, guitar and backpack on, and started to pedal, as it started to rain.

A woman resident warned me of "the storm" that she had apparently had caught wind of, and had told me to be careful.

I got as far as Whole Foods, where I ducked under an awning, talked to the security officer for a while, informing him of a seeing a certain skeezer "late 40's, white guy with close cropped brown hair on a bike; usually wears button up shirts? Yeah, I've run him off before..." that he has had to run off before.

I don't like skeezers, I told the security guy, whom I have spoken to before about water fasting on at least one occasion. I contrasted humanity with a beehive, saying that, unlike its case, there are no humans born with the genetic programming to be drones, and to have the worker bees do all the work, yet still drink the queen's nectar.

The security guy like the analogy.

The rain let up and I returned to the apartment. It is almost time to go to the casino to try to watch the Patriots game.
I'm wearing my best fabrics, trying to pull the wool over the eyes of their security guys.

Comments

To address a comment on yesterday's post:

Damn don't strings cost about a dollar each? All that work to come out a dollar behind.

Bike messenger is looking pretty good. Hell the $35 a day my "day job" pays me is looking awfully good esp. considering that probably half the population out here in "silicon valley" makes less.

But, what about your plans to make CDs? What about your plans to get discovered?

September 11, 2016 at 5:20 AM

Strings actually cost about 43 cents each if one buys them online through the "Musician's Friend" website at $2.50 per pack. 

I now have an American Express prepaid card, which I can reload for free, and have strings sent right to my mailbox.

And interesting thing is that, I went out there with the old rusty strings as a way to punish the tourists for having been so cheap lately; giving them what they paid for. I know this is fallacious thinking, and perhaps yet another sign that I am burned out on busking.

To go along with the sign that, after playing from 8 PM until 10:30 PM, and having made only 4 dollars for the second straight night, and looking down Bourbon Street to see that the swarms of tourists were just starting to encroach upon the block, having spread down the street like heat through a baked potato; I still knocked off for the night.

I that much didn't feel like playing any more.

I can't smoke weed, as I had, before playing, I have concluded, because after the buzz wears off from that first toke, it is either smoke more or feel like you have just woken up from a dream that you can't remember; like a good dream that you wish you could go back to but, you can't recreate the feeling.

The bike messenger, or any other job, would be good from July 1st, through October 1st, every year. Following the leads of Tanya and Dorise, and Doreen's Jazz Band, and Yes, Ma'am (the band) etc.

The simple economics are that, in order to make busking a viable alternative to working a "regular" job, it really does entail competing (wheeling and dealing) for a spot on Royal Street, becoming "second string" to performers like T&D and playing the spots when they aren't there.

The 18 dollar per hour average that I had been making at the Lilly Pad, I had started to calculate last fall, after the (this) slow season had passed.

The CD will be the ultimate winner in the situation.

The songs that I have been repeatedly singing and playing and which are my originals, I should be able to render good versions of at such a time that I get off my ass and contact the Musician's Union, that is a strong presence here, and ask them about their connections to a recording studio where a member can have access to "Garage Band," and "Pro Tools" studio software and all the other "bells and whistles" equipment needed to produce a CD, all for a membership fee of about $15 per month. The union is well aware that a CD is a good thing for a local musician to have, and have made provisions. The "Local" section of Louisiana Music Factory's CD rack is evidence that everybody and his brother have already done so. There are definitely over 1,000 titles from "local musicians" in that section. "Bands come here just so they can be from here," explained the guy there....

I had heard about the place, but had thought that recording at home would be preferable.

Now, I think about going in there, grabbing a bass player and drummer who might be lounging around and knocking out some track that I can always overdub onto later with whatever...

Now I head for the Harrah's Casino to try to watch the Patriots game which kicks off 26 minutes from the time on this computer.....