Friday, December 23, 2016

No Sign Of Amp Man

Guy With Amp Not At Lilly Pad

I left for the Lilly Pad early enough so that, if I were to encounter amplifier guy, I would be able to phone Lilly early enough so that she would have an easier time (wouldn't have to get any thugs out of bed?) doing whatever it is that she does to make people seemingly magically disappear.

It is quite possible that money is worshiped so devoutly here that a property owner of the magnitude of Lilly and her ex-husband wields a lot of power.
Exercising this power falls in line with Lilly's aptitudes, and gives her an opportunity to come out in her regalia and put her empire in order, so to speak.

Amp man was nowhere in sight, as I pulled up at the almost late hour of a little before eleven.

I was so late because, by the time I got off this computer after yesterday's post, it was almost 10 PM. The room having not had the 8 PM closing time enforced upon it by the particular security guard at large, I blissfully typed away, after having told Lilly that I planned to start playing before nine-thirty, until at least that time had arrived.

Then, I really wanted to get a Monster Energy drink, off of my food stamp card, virtually spending it down to nothing, on December 22nd, with 13 days to "starve" until the next apportionment of the taxes that I paid into the system when I worked full time all the way up until about the age of 45, would be added to its balance.

There was kind of a feeling of closure in just spending the last of the food money on an energy drink. The whole feeling that I had when thinking that an energy drink was a frivolous waste of money that could otherwise go towards two whole boxes of macaroni and cheese, and that they were going to be the extravagance that would be my undoing; that feeling just went away for lack of a better thing to do, after I looked at my balance and mumbled, 23 cents...until January 5th...oh, well...and then cracked open the energy drink. It would make me play uptempo and snappy and help me think of witty lines on the fly and would pay for itself several times over, perhaps, I thought.

I sipped the drink on the sidewalk on Canal, within view of where David the Water Jug Player often lurks. He is easy to pick out from among his ilk for his habit of rocking from side to side a bit when he stands. That might be because he has one "bad" leg and (actually) uses a cane (for something other than a skeezing prop). He might be trying to distribute his weight equally between his two legs rather than favor the stronger one, as a means of bringing the bad one up to speed.

I had one little nugget of the bud that I had gotten the night before, when the time that I took to get it allowed the amplified guy to come along and plop himself down at the Lilly Pad.

That definitely means that if I didn't smoke weed, I would have had one less problem. That could be God talking.  How well I played later, after smoking, might have been more what He was trying to say....

I had offered amplifier guy a toke and he had accepted. He seems like a fallout from the 60's. He might think that it is the equipment that makes the busker; that being the first thing out of his mouth to me: "I'm testing out some new gear!"

Time to go out on this Friday night, two days before Christmas...

3 comments:

  1. "keeps Lilly's aptitudes in full regalia...." what?

    See, it's OK to not go to college. It's OK to not have gone to college. What's skeezy is saying you went to college when if you did, it was not for long and you certainly did not graduate.

    Frankly, you're a bum with a guitar. No one expects you to have gone to college. If anything, saying you went to college only makes you seem bummier, than a bum who never got a shot at college or simply didn't care about "edumacation", and is trying his best out there on the street with his 8th grade education.

    What is "aptitudes in full regalia" supposed to mean anyway? I've been around enough skeezy flea markets, bus stops, homeless halfway houses, etc to know where I hear that kind of thing; out of the mouths of crackheads who are trying to sound "edumacated". Just write plainly and understandably.

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  2. If Amplifier Guy were a dropout, or washout, from the 1960s, he'd have to be at least 70 now. Is he that old?

    It kind of reminds me of the "Viet Nam vets" I used to run into who would have been in elementary school - like I was - when the Viet Nam war was going on. That particular shebang ended with a whimper in 1975, thank you Nixon. And these guys were at least a good decade younger than me.

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  3. Yeah, I painted myself in a corner with the word "aptitude."
    Aptitudes can't really be on display; I meant to say it gives Lilly something to do which is in line with her aptitudes; or a chance to come out onto the block in her regalia

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