I Resort To The Needle To Kill The Pain

My abscessed tooth, which I felt I had gotten under control by having done yoga stretches,

acupressure, visualizations, deep breathing and even strenuous exercise lifting the 65 pound weight that I have, came roaring back in its intensity later that evening, after I had stayed in from busking, due to concerns over trying to play the harmonica with one side of my jaw swollen up like my cheek was full of chewing tobacco.

 Until you can get to the dentist, one of the best things you can do is swish warm, salty water around in your mouth. A good mix is 1/2 teaspoon table salt to 8 ounces of water. Spit it out, don’t swallow it. -From webmd.com

I made macaroni and cheese, the 89 cent a box kind, which I ate and then, I think my kidneys were overwhelmed by multitasking between keeping my blood clean from the infection and from whatever that shit is that makes that stuff orange. Orange milk?

So, early this (Wednesday) morning, I was in about as excruciating a pain as I have ever been. The side of my face where the tooth was was throbbing in time with my pulse and I was trying to time my perception of it to fall in between the throbs, thinking I could throw it out of rhythm.

I went to the bathroom mirror where I was able to see the situation better and I reasoned that the pain was probably coming from pressure built up by, well, by the damned abscessed tooth.

What Was My Point?

I remember having picked up a syringe on Decatur Street about 2 years ago that some heroin addict had probably dropped. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but teasing heroin addicts cruelly by having it "accidentally" fall out of my pocket in front of them, just to watch them grovel and beg of me that, if I had any heroin at all, to "please, please, please, dude..." And then going on to tell me how sick they are.

I think I have a morbid and probably hostile fascination with that dark side of human nature...look at yourself, on your knees on the sidewalk of Decatur Street, like you're praying to me, as one junkie to another, (man...).

"No, I just found this laying on the sidewalk, I was just messing with you..."

I went and got the needle out of the drawer where I keep it handy for teasing junkies, and found that, compared to the pain from the abscess, a needle piercing my gum was like a drop in a bucket. 

I was only able to draw a bit of blood, maybe puss is too thick to traverse a needle hole, but it seemed to have a had a positive effect. Maybe I chanced upon the correct acupuncture points with my needle stabs.

I was actually waiting for the pain to subside some this morning, after having swallowed 4 Ibuprofen, because I didn't feel like cycling to the emergency room in such pain. Cycling is supposed to be pleasurable. It is enough of a pain to have to ride past all the skeezers on the way there, without the side of my face throbbing at the same time.

But, the pain subsided by mid day, and the swelling went down and I have put the emergency room on the back burner, once again.

Just Put Everything Through A Blender...

It seems clear that I need to make an appointment to have, I guess the remainder of my teeth, pulled.

Some of them are teeth which have broken in half, which have some wiggle room in the socket. How much chewing action am I getting out of them?

Teeth have been an enigma to me my whole life.

My sister, Mary had, I think one or two cavities all the way through high school.

I was already setting metal detectors off at airports by then.

This, despite having had such an otherwise healthy diet that had sucrose cut out of it from the age of 19 all the way up to just a few months ago*, and featured fruits and vegetables, fish for protein, and for a while everything coming out of the GNC in a bottle containing 40 grams of protein, 110 grams of carbohydrates, and all the vitamins and minerals, right down to magnesium, zinc, copper, plus testosterone boosters, you name it.

But, apparently not even shark cartilage, co-enzyme Q, ginseng, glucosomine, white willow bark nor chitin could retard the progressive decay of my teeth. It is as if they have ironically been my "soft spot."

So, that is where I stand today. Just as the tuning machines on my guitar could go any day now, I am perhaps postponing the inevitable by leaving my teeth in my mouth.

Of course, I am postponing in case I strike it rich and suddenly have, oh, at least $10,000 to throw at the problem, at which point I would be glad that kept my teeth, because now they can be "saved."
I have said before that teeth are a status symbol, from the ghetto, where just having them is cause for holding your head above the rest, to Hollywood, where people learn how to smile in such a way that you can see all 32 of them...

Howard Gets Me A Bike

Howard Westra, over the river in Gretna, had been talking about getting me a bike for some time. He and Berta, the lady of the house, had told me that they were going to get me one for Christmas. They spoiled the surprise so that I wouldn't spend my hard earned money on one in the meantime.

After I bought the Specialized brand bike that I now ride off of Ester the Israeli lady who works at the coffee and cigar store in the Quarter for 40 dollars; I guess I might have called Howard to tell him to call off the search for a bike for me.

I couldn't, in light of all the time and patience he had put in in locating one, tell him that I had already bought one when he called last week to tell me that he had gotten a bike for me and that I could go over there any time "to see what we've got."

He described the bike as being "a low one." I'm thinking it's a Beach Cruiser, and Howard just doesn't know that "beach cruiser" is what those "low bikes" are called.

Rose (of Rose and Ed) has recently said that she is in the market for a bike.

I could sell the thing to her, along with the stipulation that I be allowed to borrow it whenever I go to see Howard.

Or, I could show up at Howard's on the Specialized bike and tell him that, someone had shown up wanting only 20 dollars for that 100 dollar bike and, though I loved the beach cruiser for sentimental reasons, I couldn't pass up an investment like that.

Or maybe tell him that I had already given a lady a down payment on the Specialized bike at the time that he called to tell me about the beach cruiser; and that the lady had reneged upon returning me the down payment, so I had to buy it or forfeit that money.

Or, I could tell him the truth that, after he had worked so diligently in obtaining a bike for me, I didn't have the heart to disappoint him, thinking that he might blame himself for having taken 3 months to procure one after having told me: "Berta and I are gonna get you a bike..."

Specialized Rockhopper like mine

"Yeah, we dragged our heels for so long; I don't blame you. I'm sorry for having led you on all that time..." type of thing.

Or, he could say: "Alright...well, now I can give it to that poor little boy at the church where I go who prayed out loud to God for a bike last Sunday."

Or I could tell him the truer truth that I really want the 25 bucks or so that Rose will give me for the thing...

Then Rose will be able to ride to the store and be back in a jiffy, in front of her TV, without Ed having to catch her up on the plot of the whole first half of a Simpsons episode.

It is almost 9 PM on this Wednesday night. I think the swelling of my jaw has gone down enough so that I can play the harmonica. Lord knows the balance on my debit card has done likewise.



*I am in danger of becoming addicted to sugar. I bought the first bag of it in my life about 3 months ago, when I was in my baking phase. Soon, I was putting some in my coffee. Then, under the guise of being too tired to cook and wanting to eat in a hurry; the whole box of Frosted Shredded Wheat entered my life...It starts with a little bit in baked goods and some in your coffee and before you know it, you're going down the road that leads to a pint of Haagen Daas Heathbar Crunch before bedtime each night.

Maybe I'll wind up having to eat the words that I wrote about Louise Helton, the "over eater" who crashed at my place a couple years ago. "Oh, you're one to talk about me, Mr. Pint o' Heathbar Crunch Every Night!"

Chicory Not For Me

It's an axiom or a saw or a saying, "You learn something new every day."

Zen, the zen alchemist, at Uxi Duxi

I was in the supermarket, and there, on sale was a brick of "chicory coffee."
I had never bought chicory coffee before.
I knew it was a Louisiana kind of thing because, the first time I went to jail in this state (where the highest per capita amount of its citizens are incarcerated in the nation) there was something funny about the coffee.
That was the time I was arrested as part of a "sweep," when the Baton Rouge police were given the freedom to indiscriminately remove any and all people from the street who appeared homeless as part of the buildup to the LSU homecoming game. I was charged with "disturbing the peace."
The East Baton Rouge Parish Prison was populated by a lot of racist black inmates and the blood of white inmates splattered the walls and floors. I had the good fortune of having been taken under the wing of the biggest (by at least 20 pounds) and baddest (by 2 murders) inmate in our block, who had seen me, while the other few new arrivals were walking the block, scrambling to find one of the empty beds so they wouldn't have to sleep on a mat on the floor. I had been so absorbed by the book that I was reading, that I sat at a table, not wanting to put it down, even to find one of the cells that had only one inmate and an empty bed so I wouldn't have to sleep on the floor on a mat.
"Oh, you like to read; you can move in with me," Dominique Smith had said. But that is a story that has been blogged already (August 2011).
The chicory coffee "woke me up," when it was delivered at 6 AM along with breakfast in bed. I would have traded food items off of the previous days trays for "your coffee in the morning," and would wind up drinking at least a half dozen cups of it.

Another former cellmate who might need a couch to crash on...

Maybe this was the department of corrections way of acclimating people to the place, making them feel at home; and at the same time deterring out of state-ers from breaking the law and risking jail, because the coffee there sucked so much.
Mystery Solved; Case Closed
I got this current batch of chicory coffee the night that I had started to develop a toothache.

At one point, I had doused my hands in sanitizing liquid before putting my fingers in my mouth to explore for where exactly the pain was coming from and, as the pain worsened, hoping to find a loose tooth that I might pull out, out of desperation.

Then, as the evening went on, I began to feel an unease in my stomach. My spine, especially around where the nerves to the stomach were attached tightened up, as if my body was trying to brace itself against something.

I thought that I had perhaps not let the sanitizing liquid dry completely and had swallowed some and it had gone into my stomach and killed all of the "good" bacteria so that I was not digesting the rice and beans that I had eaten and that my body was trying to pass it, undigested, through me. That's what it felt like.

I also considered that maybe one shouldn't mix Ibuprofen with chicory coffee, or with hand sanitizing liquid or with both.

I was so bound up and suffering that I called Rose on the 3rd floor, who gave me 8 "stool softeners" in (a groovy purple and white swirl patterned colored) pill form.

"Take all eight," suggested Rose.

She said that using laxatives would be a much harder row to hoe, as they would bring about "cramps" as they worked. The whole analogy of a woman in labor trying to pass a baby came to mind.

Well, the pills kind of worked, and I kind of had returned to normal by this afternoon when I woke up and had a large cup of steaming chicory coffee.

This time I didn't swallow down any sanitizing liquid with it.

My spine in the middle of my back soon had tightened up, as if bracing itself against something, and, at the age of 55, I had discovered that chicory doesn't agree with me. This is good knowledge to have and sheds a whole new light upon why I had to meditate so much when in that jail, just to try to relax the knot in the middle of my back, that I wasn't sure what to attribute to.

But I feel like I have a wad of undigested chicory that I will have to pass through the 20,000 miles of intestinal tract, or whatever it is, that I have, and have learned a lesson. I'm glad I only drank one cup and I'll get some real coffee on my way home after leaving here (The Uxi Duxi).


The abscessed tooth is receding (as seen in top photo) and I feel like I am gaining the upper hand over it.

I did get a bike light, though...

I almost went to the emergency room last night, where they would have most likely prescribed me antibiotics that I might have been able to get for a "co-pay" amount of a couple bucks.

The 160 bucks of Mardi Gras money that I deposited is down to something like 48 bucks, with no large, significant purchase to show for it.

I thought I was going to have to use the balance of it for some kind of laptop when this one went down. Or, at least a replacement power supply.

Two of the tuning machines on the Takamine guitar are screwed up and I have to turn them in the opposite of their intended direction to bring the strings up to tension.

This is a temporary solution, as I have learned in the past -average life span of about 2 months before the things become inoperable in either direction.

But, since I can tune the thing up tonight (and every night is "tonight," right?) I have been procrastinating upon making the trip to Webbs Bywater Music to see Paul the technician, who has a large guitar junkyard in a room above his store, out of which he has in the past been able to harvest tuning machines which he sold to me for like 5 bucks each. Of course they didn't match the other ones on the guitar, but this never bothered me and made me feel like I had a customized instrument. The small gold head tuned the D string, the mother of pearl tipped one, the G string, type of thing...

I have enough money for a brand new Suzuki Harpmaster harmonica, and that is where I should store my treasure. Nothing makes me feel confident that I can go out and busk up a good amount of money like having a pristine harmonica, factory tuned by Japanese people using lasers. "Spend all of your money on a new harmonica, and money for everything else will take care of itself" I say.
It's similar to teaching a man to fish, except it's not quite "for life" -the harp eventually wears out...

Uxi Duxi has 5 ounce bags of kratom for sale, at $40 each, and wouldn't you know, the very first one that I looked at after they had been first displayed in their glass case, alongside a couple others, was the "Green Borneo," which is the strain that I usually get.
I envisioned myself doing a 3 to 5 day intensive music recording session, fueled by kratom.
The way it works out, I pay 3 bucks for a 5 gram shot almost every day, it's a habit like the morning cup of coffee habit.

Numerology, And Why You Shouldn't Borrow From A Witch

I have blogged in the past about how, in the cosmic world that I inhabit, this amount of 3 dollars recurred in the "all day bus pass" that I had been relegated to spending after my bike was stolen about 9 month ago.

The bike had been stolen on a night when the barista at the Uxi Duxi (where witchcraft is facilitated through books and rocks and mushrooms) had given me a shot of kratom on credit.

I had no problem making the 3 dollars (I think it had been a 28 dollar night) but the bike had gotten stolen while I was doing it because I didn't lock it correctly; I went around the pole but not through the frame.

This, I had seen as being kratom related, because I was feeling so industrious and ready to get right to playing, after a shot of green Borneo, that I had hastily locked it.

It seemed like, after borrowing a 3 dollar shot of kratom, I was going to wind up paying 3 dollars every day for the bus pass until I got a new bike. 9 months of bus passes later, it is like that shot of kratom cost me about 800 dollars (but saved me a lot of pedaling, to look on the bright side).

The Smoke Clears Around The Ben Lambie Situation

After reading a couple comments left on recent posts by none other than Ben Lambie, I was made aware of at least a couple things:

First of all, I was wrong in thinking that he doesn't give enough of a shit about me and my life to ever even check out this blog, and so I can talk "all kinds of shit" about him here.

Second, it was the cigarette smoking, and my failure to have remained off them, after I had succeeded in going a couple weeks without, that was what caused him to leave my place and get an Airbnb for the rest of his vacation.

I remember thinking that, by the time he arrived, I would have been about one month without a cigarette and would be starting to reap the benefits of that healthier lifestyle and it was one extra incentive to stay the course, be strong, disciplined, not a slave to a weed that grows in Virginia, etc.

It is still a mystery to me why, though, he didn't say something like: "Hey, didn't we discuss this already?" as soon as I lit up the first one, whereupon I would have gone outside to smoke during the rest of his stay.

What I wound up doing was opening the door and kind of blowing my smoke out into the hallway, being too lazy to go outside every time.

But, rather than mention it, I guess he chose the passive-aggressive approach of just going away, to punish me for not abiding by his request.

Add that to the list of consequences of smoking, along with complicated pregnancies, I guess.
I guess you would have to go through 15 years of having your roommates chosen for you and having to smell their farts, to understand Ben's attitude.

It was a blessing that he wasn't allergic to cats. I would have been going outside to smoke and to pet Harold at the same time.

Like I said, though, I closed the door to the back bedroom like we had been doing, and found that the air became mighty stuffy, even to someone who has lived under a wharf with a black caped night heron, within a couple hours.

I'm thinking of drilling a hole through the wooden frame around the painted shut windows of the place, and installing something like an aquarium pump to draw fresh air into the place -so maybe something good can come out of the Ben Lambie fiasco...

The Other Cheek

I got a letter from the food stamp office, addressed to Travis Blain, "care of" myself.
What kind of care I will give the letter, I am still debating.
I could turn the other cheek and call him to inform him of the action that he must take to keep his free food coming, so he can continue to live off Ramen Noodles and use his cash for keeping himself stoned 24/7 and for a roof under which to do it, while feeding his cat the most vile food found underneath the bottom shelf of the dollar store.
Or, I can send the letter back to the department with a note stating that "I" make so much money working online for Amazon now, that I will never need food stamps again, and thanking them for all their past assistance.
Or, something between those two extremes...

Birth And Rebirth

• Laptop Dies
• Laptop Resurrected
• Laptop Dies Again
• Laptop Currently Resurrected

I found a white Styrofoam container which I was not too ashamed to go over and look in, even though I was in public and the reason that it had sat there so long was probably that everybody else "...can't have people seeing me in these nice clothes looking for food on top of a trash can..." apparently had let it be.
The food was still warm, was rice with fried ham shanks, I think, along with some other meat, a compartment of mac and cheese, and a third compartment containing cabbage, boiled in water which would eventually leak out into my backpack and put my laptop out of commission.
Yeah, I got it home and noticed that it had gotten "a little bit of cabbage juice" on it, on one of the outside corners.
I wiped it off and fired it up, whereupon it half came to life and then died.
An ensuing investigation led to the the discovery that, if I gently whacked the thing while holding it at a certain angle, cabbage juice veritably squirted out of the fan vents.
But, after leaving it open with a fan blowing on it for a whole night, it came back up.
I put it in my back pack and brought it to the Uxi Duxi, where it was dead upon arrival.
Some of the cabbage water, which had receded enough to have allowed me to fire it up the first time, had probably pooled again in the same corner en-route, due to the way it sat in the bag, causing the same symptoms.
I reasoned that, if the thing had come up and run normally, then nothing more than the power supply would be the problem, and I went to sleep thinking I would use one of the library computers to order a new power supply for the thing.
I woke up to find that it started up again. There is a bright glowing spot on the corner of the screen where the cabbage water must have penetrated to.

A Lost Post From A Week Ago

• I Philosophize Even Though I Can't Spell That
• A Bygone Saturday Recounted
• Ben Lambie Flies Away

A quitter.

Saturday night was as weird as it gets; with Bobby telling me that he has quit smoking altogether, which would include pot; after he struggled through a night when he could hardly breath.

He may have gotten the same flu that I had gotten, and that Rose had gotten a couple weeks later, and that might have been where it attacked him -his lungs.

Nevertheless, it was surprising to hear that Bobby has quit smoking weed "for health reasons." It
had been one of his substitutes for heroin, along with the methodone that he has been
"prescribed."

But, he did manage to quit smoking cigarettes a few years ago because of issues with his lungs, and is, I
guess, ready to do the same with weed.

I don't know why he wouldn't look into a vaporizer, and smoke it that way.

But, that gave me something to think about.
But not for long, because the thought became "in the past" almost instantly.
I've heard that it's easier to kick a heroin addiction than it is to give up cigarettes.
I rode into the Quarter and walked to the Lilly Pad, seeing a lot of the usual things.

I was having trouble dealing with all the emotions and thoughts that I was having and realized that I'm a very
judgemental person, now that I am focusing upon that.

I tend to make an instant assessment of a person and label him, and even "discern" his motives and what he is thinking.

"Here comes a skeezer, he's gonna ask me for something for free at my expense, I know it..He's already affecting a fake limp, like he has some affliction that is preventing him from otherwise working." type of thing.

Now that I am reading a book that has taught me that this is a manner of living that is fraught
with pain and confusion, and I am observing my thoughts, like a person sitting at the bottom
of an ocean watching bubbles rise, looking at them objectively, I am realizing that I am
condemning a lot of people at the mere sight of them. I catch myself thinking, and even saying
aloud things like "ignorant uncivilized punks!" at the sight of young black kids who might
be wearing their jeans half way down their boxers, for example.

But that is not "me" thinking that.

Those are thoughts that are produced by my brain after it factors in past experiences along with worries about the future.
The essence of my being will outlive these thoughts, due to there one day being no longer a physical brain producing them. It is that part of you, that is a silent witness to the thoughts that are produced, but that needs not to identify with them. The thoughts are reflected in the emotions felt in the body. So now, when I see the at-risk youths and their boxer shorts, I am aware of the thoughts that
spontaneously surface, but am able to say "that's an interesting thought," and then, of course,
realize that my assessment of that thought as being "interesting," is yet another interesting
thought.
But, the emotion which is reflected in my body is anger and scorn and hatred, and a person does not want to "go there," if only because it's not a productive state of mind; so you look at the kid, knowing that your first impression of him was that he was a worthless punk, but that you became aware that
you had the thought, but let it go, and then found that the emotions of anger and scorn and
hatred went along with it, and you might even be smiling warmly at the kid when you greet him,
because you are tickled over having been able to work the "The Power Of Now," program and
been in the present moment, rather than having been ruled by memories of having been shot in
the face with a paint ball by, perhaps, the same kid about 6 months ago.
The kid, in turn, becomes very much less of an ignorant uncivilized punk, and maybe even nods his head back.
But then the feeling carries over until, at the Lilly Pad, it is suddenly easier to play, as if peace has
been somehow made on some level and...it's easier to play.

That's how the kingdom of heaven is "at hand" -in the present moment.
Activities that help one focus on "the now," such as music in my case, are thus, the ones worthy of pursuing.
On The Advent Of Humanity
If you were to stretch a tape measure out for a mile and mark one end with "the formation of the
earth," and the other end: "The present moment" you could then write "the appearance of man"
about one inch from that end.
My point, of course, is that I look at the big picture.
For example, the New York Yankees have retired the numbers of players like Babe Ruth and Lou
Gehrig, the Boston Celtics have, I'm sure never let another player wear number 33 since Larry
Bird.
Are these people looking at the big picture?
Let's assume that major league baseball will go on for another 25,000 years.
Sure, why not?
I mean, according to history, we have made it from like 10,000 B.C. to the present, that's not
even counting "prehistoric" times) and so, why wouldn't baseball still be around 25,000 years
from now?
I know. We are going to screw up the planet by melting the polar ice caps with emissions from
our hairspray bottles; coastal cities will be under 24 feet of water, and the added weight of the
oceans will put stress on the earth's crust causing major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions
everywhere.
California will finally (geez, they've been talking about it for so long) break off from the continent
and slide into the ocean, maybe doing a Titanic kind of thing with the San Diego end going
straight down and the Redwood end lifting high out of the water before the state breaks in half
and it all goes under.
Then, they will cancel major league baseball, because you can't run a league without the
California Angels, The Los Angelos Dodgers and the Oakland Athletics.
But, in 25,000 years we are still probably going to have major league baseball. Yes, the players
might have some bionic parts, like the 6 million dollar man (who will seem cheap by comparison
to them) or might all be robots, programmed by the coaching staff, but, my point is that ol'
number 7 (or whatever number "the babe" wore) was retired back in the 1940's because "there
will never be another player like Babe Ruth (who hit 710 home runs and is, 75 years later,
already something like 3rd on the all time total home run list)."
Really? Not in the next 30,000 years.
Babe Ruth drank at least a 6 pack of beer before the games, I have read somewhere. Not exactly "sports nutrition," the way a Tom Brady might see it.
The Yankees are going to run out of numbers relatively soon, due to shortsightedness.
Consider that "the greatest player to ever play the game" is probably on the field somewhere.
Labron James, Tom Brady, Wayne Gretski a couple decades ago.
This would indicate that the human race is "improving" exponentially. Like yeast in a
fermentation lock. The players that have come along in the past 20 years are better than all their
predecessors. The ones on the field today are the tip of the iceberg of the players to come.
It stands to reason that, were you to go back to the original Olympics in Greece, centuries ago,
you wouldn't find anyone who could outrun that Bolt guy, who is around now.
So, what are they going to do when they are out of numbers, switch to bar codes on the
uniforms, so that, with a smart TV, you can scan it and the guy's stats, along with other
interesting information and links, will pop up on your screen?
My point is that, the one thing that remains constant throughout, though, is the present moment.
That would be the same for the guy 25,000 years from now, as it was for Jesus.
So, the Power Of Now book is both ahead of its time (because we are living in an age that's
darkness will become apparent centuries from now) and right on time, because it is always the
present moment.
I had wanted to put new strings on my guitar, but didn't want it to usurp from the time I would have
to blog in Starbucks, so I just went out with the old strings on. That was a mistake.
Starbucks was closed, due to the parade, and so, I hadn't saved any blogging time at all.
Then a string broke after I had only made 3 bucks, and before I discovered that my replacement
"set" was minus exactly the one string I had broken. I was playing across from The
Quartermaster, driven a couple blocks down by the blaring music coming out of Lafitt's
Blacksmith Shop Tavern.

No String Of Hit Songs Possible

I wasn't in the mood for creating music for guitar minus that string, fearing that people were
going to be requesting songs they are familiar with, and that the handicap of not having that
string could easily rear it's head.
The familiar introduction to "Stairway To Heaven" minus the top "e" string...not so familiar,
after all -missing a step.
"Smoke On The Water," without the "a" string? Make that "Nope On The Water."

Doing "Miss You," by The Rolling Stones? Might as well sing it for your "b" string, etc...

It didn't feel like a music-pulled-out-of-your-ass type of crowd, besides, I had been shaken to the
core, and had momentarily forgotten that I was reading "The Power Of Now" and living in the
present moment, when a young man dressed like a teen age girl came by.

It was just before the string broke when I was visited by that worthy, who is a trans-sexual of some kind, having the most feminine of faces on which the eyebrows have been tweez-ed and sculpted. The pallid skin on it looked like it had been rubbed raw in an unsuccessful attempt to scrub makeup off of it, as there was a reddish-blue tint to it.

He acted like a female -not just a female in general, but a prissy, stuck up, selfish and arrogant
type of female who feels entitled to the world in exchange for being pretty to look at. An extremely
disillusioned heroin skeezer he is, perhaps.


He is the guy who came by me at the Lilly Pad once, and had no tip money it turned out, but
stood annoyingly close in front of me as I played.

I tested him musically a few times to see if he was even paying attention to what I was playing,
by substituting ridiculous words here and there, looking for any kind of intelligence; he failed.
I could picture him telling his friends: "I love to just invade people's personal spaces, just to see
how they react! It's fun!"

This time, I made the mistake of not recognizing him, and seeing the danger, until after I had given the customary nod to him, or some other welcoming gesture.

A Displeasing Skeezer

He acted like he just then remembered me and gushed: "How have you been?!?" with a big smile on his coquettish face, like we were old friends.

That out of the way, he then asked me if I would do him "a huge, huge favor..."


I have heard other skeezers use this very same foray, and they had all wanted me to do them the
favor of handing them some of my money. The "favor" seekers seemed to be of the more persistent
variety that wouldn't "take 'no' for an answer," as a matter of fact.

I stopped short of saying: "As long as the favor isn't giving you money, I might could help you..."
I was giving him the benefit of the doubt; thinking he might just want me to go across the street
and buy him alcohol, as he appears to be in his early 20's and might not have had his ID with
him.

He then asked me for 2 dollars and 50 cents, so he could "get something to eat." He said he was
"starving," and held his stomach for the visual effect.

I felt anger and disgust flood over me.


Fuck him. He's lying about the starving; and he chose the amount of 2 dollars and 50 cents
because it is a plausible amount for something to eat, an amount which implies that he doesn't
want anything fancy, beggars can't be choosers, just a 2 dollar and 50 cent hamburger from
McDonald's, OK?

It is also an amount that he had sized me up for, which was insulting, having seen the 3 dollars in my basket and probably assumed that I kept that amount in there (and stashed the rest) because it's
chump change to me and if someone want's to run off with it...no great loss.

And thirdly, it's an amount that might prompt a tourist to ask: "Where can you eat for 2 dollars
and 50 cents?," which could be an inroad for him to skeeze more: "Well, I really need about 5
dollars, but I didn't want to ask you for that much; I was trying to get half of it.." type of
skeeze.

"As long as the favor isn't giving you money, I might could help you..."

I could imagine, too, that he probably sets goals for himself: A 30 dollar heroin fix sounds like a lot,
but if I can just get a dozen people to help me out at 2 dollars and 50 cents each....it sounds much more do-able.

There is also the factor that the average person on the street is unlikely to have exactly 2 single bills and 2 quarters on them, and so to "help him out," they would have to round up to some higher amount.

Everything about him said "skeezer!" as he stood there.

My partner in crime...

He was utilizing the 2 dollars and 50 cents strategy like a real pro, but I wasn't impressed. I was offended that he seemed to expect me to believe him in the first place.
"I haven't made 2 dollars and 50 cents," I said.
His neck craned towards the 3 dollars in my basket. The lying skeezer was questioning my
integrity.
"Those are my own 3 dollars that I started out with" (No need to mention the 235 bucks that I had made over 3 preceding nights).
I Become A Death Metal Composer
He didn't budge. He could see the 3 dollars, just a skeeze away; his path of least resistance.

It was as if he was contemplating snatching it and running off -painting me as someone who deserved that for not having helped a starving man out; when people just come by and give me money for nothing.

"I don't have it!," I yelled (in the present moment).

I started to play very aggressively on the guitar.

I envisioned being in a movie scene where my character strikes a few loud and aggressive chords
on a guitar and then smashes it in the face of the skeezer's character.

He must watch a lot of movies and been able to figure out what was probably going to happen in this kind of "b" movie, because he walked away; at last.

"I hate that guy's guts," I thought -a small setback with the "The Power Of Now" program, to be identifying with my emotions like that.

But, I had impressed myself with my own ability to compose "death metal" songs when needed, at least.

I decided to call it a night, as if the effeminate guy was a harbinger of worse things to come.

I saw him later, further up Bourbon Street. He was sitting where young gay men who sell their bodies for heroin money sit. They've got a little section there near St. Ann Street.
Lambie Visit A Wash

Ben Lambie was due to fly out of New Orleans at 5:38 AM this morning, according to the plans that I had taped to the wall by my kitchen; the plans upon which the times were written in Eastern Standard Time, which had made me an hour late to meet him at the airport.

He never came back to pick up the frozen pizza that had been in my refrigerator since he had placed it there 4 days prior.

I prepared to eat the thing, as a symbolic gesture, if nothing else.

I worried that he would knock on my door at 7 in the morning and say: "I missed my flight, and I'm starving, where's my pizza?!"

There was evidence that, while here, and when I had been out, Ben had vacuumed the rug in my bedroom, and cleaned the bathroom, somehow.

All of this, I had done, in anticipation of his arrival, but as a self styled "O.C.D." sufferer, I guess that was due to some of the baggage that he had brought along with him.

The little clip on toilet deodorizer, I found, not in the bowl, but sitting on a shelf nearby. The vacuum cleaner, he had left sitting out, still plugged into the wall. It was as if he wanted me to know that he had cleaned the place. Why else would he contradict himself by cluttering up a room that could never ever be clean enough for him by leaving the vacuum cleaner out? Unless his attention drifted away from it and never returned.

(left) The coffee maker that Ben bought for me looks on helplessly as I prepare to eat the pizza that he left behind.

Pizza is not in my particular diet, but, this one actually had olive oil listed as the 2nd or 3rd ingredient and not the partially hydrogenated soybean oil that might have made me change my mind about consuming it (I would have knocked upon Rose and Ed's door and offered it to them).

Ben stopped texting me after he had gotten weed from Bobby, except for the one's about his "za." Could I hop on my bike and deliver it to him 2 miles away?

So, I watched the clock, pre-heated the oven, and when I was pretty sure that Ben was 5,000 feet in the air, baked and ate it. Sure did. It was payback for any and all discomfort that his visit had engendered.-pretty delicious payback. It bore a price tag of $5.99.

Now
Now, it is after 10 PM on this Friday night, the 23rd of February.

Then, there's the mug that Travis Blain left behind...

A good busking night money-wise would be timely. I still have about 90 bucks left from Mardi Gras and have been procrastinating upon ordering a new harmonica and strings.
The Uxi Duxi now has for sale 5 ounce bags of kratom for $40. That is about half the price of what I pay for it by the shot, and I would be saving myself money in the long run if I buy it; provided that it comes with a measuring spoon so that I can mete out the shot and a half that I usually do, so I don't go through the half-priced bag twice as fast...

Margot And The Nuclear So And So's (revised slightly)

• Zero Dollar Monday
• Zero Dollar Tuesday
• 10 Dollar Wednesday
• Ben Lambie bashing, Travis Blain bashing, Colin Mitchell bashing

A guy who wound up giving me my best tip of the night ($6) told me that I should check out this particular band, because I reminded him of them.
He had placed a wad of bills in my tip basket, reminiscent of the tip of 135 bucks that I had gotten during Mardi Gras; except, this one unfolded to reveal 6 one dollar bills, not a hundred, a twenty, a five and five ones.

Margot, and The Nuclear So And Sos

He had originally put a dollar in my basket, and it was whatever I played next which he said reminded him of the band: Margot And The Nuclear So And Sos as he was putting 6 more dollars in.
He repeated the band's name several times, adamant about my remembering it, Googleing them and checking them out, because I should enjoy their music.
The (only) reason I did remember was because I had asked him how Margot was spelled -was it "Margeaux?"
"No, they aren't from around here (where French spellings abound)."
I Googled "Margot and the band" and got to them.
"E.T.A. on weed delivery, please?"
Ben Lambie continued to astound me with his apparent self-centeredness, when, after texting me: "I need bud!!," and "Find me some weed, my nigger," and a couple others, while I slept, and after I had woken up and texted something back like: "Hey, I just woke up and saw you texts; haven't been ignoring you..." he delivered of himself the above message.
He seemed to be assuming an awful lot; that I had the time to run to Bobby's and the money to buy weed, and then to "deliver" it to him.
Did he even plan upon paying me back whatever I might have spent on it?
I met him at Starbucks, where I answered his immediate question of "Where do we need to go?" with: "I don't have time to run up there with you, I can direct you there, and you should see the dudes standing around the parking lot, hanging out, and apparently doing nothing but."

I conjured up the heart to offer to smoke a bone with him out of some bud that Bobby had sold me on the cheap because he had boiled it, in an attempt to make pot tea. I think the active ingredient in pot is a "lipid," and not water soluble (I AM reading "On Chemistry," by Issac Asimov) and so Bobby's tea didn't get him stoned, but he had taken the smell and the flavor out of the bud.
I told Ben that it was "Katrina weed," explaining that, during the hurricane, hundreds of pounds of weed had gotten wet, making it nasty and stale and redolent of Mississippi River water, and I had bought some once and put it somewhere and forgotten about it; until that afternoon.
This was a lie to cover up the fact that I had already lied about not having any weed, and to explain why the boiled bud looked like it could have once been flooded.
We decided to go into Starbucks and get coffee. I would roll a joint in the bathroom, and then we would sip the coffee while we walked around a bit and I showed him that area -my final attempt to communicate with him as a fellow human being.
"Yeah, I get my coffee here because I've got this gift card that someone sent me for Christmas...I think I still have about 30 bucks on it"
"Oh, are you buying?" without missing a beat, asked the guy whom I was about to smoke up at my expense -even though it had been discount boiled bud.
How could a guy who just tore through about a thousand bucks in 4 days consider 30 bucks on my Starbucks gift card and think: "Wow, he's loaded; I guess he's buying, right?"
A guy who has spent 15 years in prison and has come out a skeezer, perhaps?

"No, I jealously guard my coffee money, this will last me another month at $2.16 a cup," I said, and he seemed to understand that.
It was just the quickness with which he jumped upon the casual comment that I had made, trying to turn it to his advantage that made me feel like I was hanging out with a skeezer.
I even went on to explain that I used the card as an emergency cash fund, sometimes approaching people in the store to ask: "Can I pay for your coffee with my gift card, in exchange for cash of a lesser amount?"
Apparently Ben only heard the "can I pay for your coffee" part of what I was saying, for he snapped: "Sure, I'll have a..." and then named one of the higher priced brews, some mocha chai skim latte whatever, as he returned his wallet to his pocket.
"No, Ben I was..."
I just went ahead and said: "Sure," and told the barista: "I'll get both of them..." thinking that the financial blow to myself would cement my opinion of him, for good.
The Blain Effect
Just like with Travis Blaine, I feel like I have carte blanche here on this blog to say whatever I please about him and not sugar coat it, because the guy will never look at this blog.
Contact me after all these years like a long lost friend, accept my offer of lodging him with no mention of money, sure. But read some of my blog because he is interested in my life; never.
Just like Travis Blain whom I thought might at least come here if for no other reason than to see if his favorite topic (himself) had been mentioned.
And, just like Travis, Ben could seem to care less about his old friend's music.
I picked up the guitar on evening when he was still at my place, because I had gotten a humorous idea. I started strumming chords and making up what I thought would be an amusing spoof upon one of the guy's we both knew when we were locked up together.
I wasn't even finished with the second line when Ben had gone into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
"That good, eh?"
The door opened "What?"
"I guess my song was so entertaining you went into the next room and closed the door behind you..."
"I'm dead tired, I need some sleep," he said.
He wasn't trying to be rude. He had genuinely not noticed, I guess, that I was trying to sing him a song. He may have paid attention for 6 or 7 seconds, then his mind flipped to thoughts of sleep, and it became: What old friend trying to entertain me with a song; Was there?"
So, this is a valid medical condition which is not Ben's fault. Somehow he manages to work full time delivering pizza. He must have to punch the address he is going to into his smartphone and let the GPS guide him, lest he forget where he's going and why, as soon as he reaches the end of the block.
Travis Blain used to writhe, as if in great agony, as soon as I began to play the guitar.

"George Harrison...eh..."

He would develop an instant need to know "what" I was playing; like he needed to put a label on it, categorize it; and then give a lecture upon whatever it was, as if trying to block out the sound with his own voice. "Yeah, George Harrison, eh.....I've never really liked any of the post Beatles stuff that they did. To me....etc., etc."
It was probably uncomfortable for Travis to encounter anything new and original, which he didn't already have categorized, know everything about, and be prepared to editorialize upon, from his own totally informed personal perspective, of course. This may be because, as a "special snowflake," he was kept sheltered from anything of an unpredictable nature..."No, you can't go outside the house; you never know what might happen; what anyone might do that you won't be prepared to deal with...here's your i-phone, you don't need to be going out in public!" type of thing.
Travis could sit and listen to 102.3 FM, one of the folk-ier stations on the dial, and they could even play one of my recordings, and Travis would probably say something like: "I like this station, they play some real home-grown sounding stuff; not all processed and over-produced like a lot of commercial stuff..."
But if I were to have picked up the guitar and played the same thing, he would twist and contort and instantly start the whole process with: "What is this?"
Blog readers might remember that Travis had asked me: "Can you take me to the store?" his first night staying at my place.
I wound up riding my bike at a snail's pace alongside him, negating the time saving feature that contraption, and listening to him talk non-stop about himself.
Colin Mitchell: Case Study #3
And now there is a third one, Colin Mitchell, whom I am discovering to be another self-important bag of wind.
Like the others, I feel I can write about him here without constraint, because he is another "one way street," in the sense that he seems to feel that everyone should be interested in him and his life, but not the other way around.
He has the habit of buffeting anything I might start to say on whatever subject he is on, which is almost always a story about himself, with a quick repetition of: "Yeah, yeah, yeah (wait a minute, I'm still talking here). Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you, but let me speak on, don't interrupt me yet.
To highlight one of my other peeves, I'm usually trying to interrupt him to tell him that he has already told me that particular story, at least one time already.
He was sitting to my left at a table in Starbucks. I was typing on my laptop. There was a guy sitting across from us, whose ear Colin had.
The poor guy kept looking back to the book he was reading, and then politely looking back up because Colin wasn't finished.
I just started to ignore him and type away.
Colin started to talk to me, punctuated by annoying staccato taps on my shoulder. When I didn't respond, he pivoted his head and started aiming his talk at the other guy. Him being too polite to ignore him, he lifted his eyes once again off the page of the book he was reading. This was when I was able to make brief eye contact with him, trying to give him a look that said: "Poor you; you never should have looked up from your book."

I have just realized that Colin suffers from Blain Syndrome.
I had noticed before that, whenever I ran into him and he started to talk -he jogged in the morning, where he jogs, why he jogs there, then he sat by the river and worked on a new song, why he's adding that song to his repertoire, what other song like it he does, what some of the large tip amounts were that he got when doing that song which prompted him to add another similar one, what he had for dinner, where he got it, what the girl behind the counter said to him and what he said back....and 'do you know what else I like to do? Let me tell you..." type of stuff- as soon as I was in the process of leaving, he would ramp up his dialogue with renewed vigor, like someone trying to keep another on the phone long enough so the call can be traced (wait, don't hang up) as if he was getting paid by the minute that he kept me there.
I used to suspect that people like him had sinister motives and were trying to "steal time" from me. I now think that it is driven by egocentric motives; on top of the assumption that I would find hearing about his life to me more interesting than anything I might be otherwise living out during the same time period. He stood around and listened to me for 3 hours, so interesting is my life...

I needed to take a cue from David the water jug player, who dispatched no less than Travis Blain with a curt gesture, and kind of waved him off before he could get too far into his monologue.
After only a couple of hours spent listening to Colin talk about himself, I figured it out.
After that, I would feign needing to use a restroom and literally run off on him, mid-sentence "gotta go!!" You gotta do that because he will otherwise never give you a break in his conversation when you might be able to gracefully walk away.
He would frown, as if to say: Here I was ready to tell him a great story about something that happened in my life, and he runs off; he doesn't know what he's missing..."
But, I figured it out.
I don't know how many times, when he came to the end of a sentence, I turned to my laptop and started to type away, only to be pecked on the shoulder, as he wasn't finished talking yet.
I am at the point of confronting him, but don't know what to say.
"Did anyone ever tell you that you seem to have an exaggerated sense of your own greatness?"
I really don't think he would ever read this blog. Although, if I told him that I've been writing about him, he might develop a sudden interest.
His life seems to revolve around: "Look at me!," and I don't think he wants to look at me, or think highly of me, witness the flash of anger and jealousy he evinced after I told him about the 135 dollar tip I got
It was a look that said: "They should have given that to me; look at me, for God's sake, I'm the real deal. I was an accountant and I made good money and raised a family, and now I'm of retirement age, but I'm not slowing down at all, look at me go, I'm a wonder to behold!!"
Well, I've been blogging about myself, my life, my thoughts and feelings, my perspective, me, me, me; for long enough this session, I guess.
It's 7:50 PM, and the Uxi Duxi will be closing shortly.
I guess I'll try to follow up the 10 dollar Wednesday night with whatever I make tonight.
Boy, would I love to stay home, put new strings on the guitar, and do other things, though. Like printing out the stuff I wrote about Blain so I can slide it under his door.
The Power Of Now book is helping me, somehow...

No Patience For Those Deficient In Attention

15 minutes before Starbucks is going to close, and I'm just writing my first sentence.
Ben Lambie had been texting me all day, I discovered when I woke up at 4:30 in the afternoon.
His texts of "I need bud!!" reminded me of Harold the cat incessantly meowing when he wants something.
He wanted me to drop whatever I might be doing and somehow deliver weed to him, who is sitting in an Airbnb in a neighborhood where weed is probably being bought and sold on his front doorstep; but he doesn't want to walk up to a stranger and inquire about it, even if he walks up on them and they are in the process of smoking.
I don't know the exact nature of Ben's mindset.
I do know that I haven't talked to him for more than about 7 seconds before finding that he is no longer listening to me. His eyes go blank, he either reaches for his phone and starts poking at it or sees something in the distance and jumps in, cutting me off in mid-sentence, with some comment about it "Oh, there's a cellphone store, I'm gonna run over there," and he's gone.
I believe that he looks out at the world and sees everything, with myself, the person he is supposedly in a conversation with, as all just being stuff that is competing equally for his attention with no one thing being any more important than any other -all of it worth about 7 seconds of his attention.
This became annoying enough to me that, the last time I saw him and was showing him the Unique Grocery store and was in the middle of saying something; saw his eyes drift away from my face and into the Unique Store, with him starting to just talk over what I was saying about whatever had just caught his eye; I just let my voice trail off and I mumbled "You're not even listening to me, fuck you..." Which he didn't hear, because he was off to look at some Mardi Gras tee shirt or other brightly colored object which had become more important to him than anything ol' Daniel might have been talking about.
Fuck him.

Playing For Love (L'oeuf)

Last night was a goose egg.
I recently learned that the term "love," which is zero in tennis parlance, has it's origin in the French word for "egg" which sounds like the word love without the L.
Ooof! -egg.

There is no exact English equivalent, but, when you say love, a Frenchman might respond: "What about the egg?"
It dawned upon me, in light of my existing in the present moment, that it was the decision to have worn the brown hat when I busked, rather than the red bandana that I initially set out to wear, which lead to me not making any money.
There were gaps in time when I played an entire song without a tourist having walked by.
This reminded me of how this used to be a hurdle that I placed in my own way, when I became angry at non existent tourists for not tipping me. That is "need to talk to a psychiatrist" territory.
Well, that is unless you believe in a cosmos where tourists will materialize out of the ether, or even less incredulously, be "drawn" to the spot by vibrations in the universe that the street musician is in sympathy with, because he's reading and practicing "The Power Of Now, and they will, in that sense at least, materialize.
So, in this particular universe, of course chickening out and wearing the brown hat can, will and probably in the case of last night, lead to a resounding answer from the universe. You are playing for l'oeuf.
I was playing for love and for practice. Practice upon being in the present moment while I play.
When I first started to be in the present moment, it was kind of scary because I noticed a lack of connection to the meanings of the songs.
By being a silent witness to thoughts that were evoked in me by my own self playing a particular song, I wasn't identifying with them, like The Power Of Now book advises me not to; but it had the side effect of making me feel rather foolish for singing something that has no meaning to "me."
That's when I would switch to the harmonica solo and just try to sound good, non verbally.
The matter can be distilled down to the fact that, I used to be in the present moment when I busked, but am struggling to do so more because I'm trying to "apply" the principles in the book that I'm reading and do so.
Ben Lambie At Low Priced Airbnb
Ben Lambie is off down Bourbon Street.
He has been in New Orleans for 4 days.
Two of those days, he spent at my apartment, before deciding to getting the Airbnb, citing air quality issues.
I learned this morning through experience that, closing the door to the room that he was sleeping in, such as we had been doing, results in that room becoming "stuffy,' as we would say in New England, in short order.
I had been ignorant. I should have flipped the fan in the bathroom on, so that poor Ben could have gotten enough oxygen to keep him conscious, ooops.
So, I can see his wanting to get the hell out of there.
Plus, there had been a small rift in our relationship after I had mentioned to him giving me some money.
The first night he was there, he had given me a 20 dollar bill to pick him up a 12 pack of beer while I was out at 2 AM on a bike ride to Banks Meat Store.
"You go out at 2 in the morning?!?"
He told me to keep the change, and his beer was $12.99, plus tax. Pretty good tip for taking a 7 minute each way ride to the store on a bike...

And that, I thought, kind of set a precedent for the way that finances would be work out while he stayed with me.
He would see the world that I dwell in and, through osmosis, I would either eat off the crumbs of his table, or I would be going out and getting 100 dollar tips and returning to the apartment bearing gifts for him.
But, he was like a fish in an aquarium that's pump wasn't working -OK, that had no pump- and he was slowly becoming poisoned by his own waste as well as suffering from the effects of oxygen deprivation.
I can see that as being reason enough for a guy to want to go and spend what my guess was, about $380 on an Airbnb for the remaining 5 days of his vacation; nothing personal.
Right now, he is off and running down Bourbon Street.
It was as if he hadn't known how to find that famous street.
After I had instructed him on how he could meet me at the Starbucks where we did meet (I was 45 minutes late, him about 50, so it worked out) and we had gotten coffee and smoked a joint, and I had walked him over to The Unique Grocery store, another jewel that he apparently otherwise would have never found, even though it is the seat of some of the depraved desires which he voiced to me as having, such as picking up a black prostitute and then....(edited out).
It seems like he had been hoping that I would show him the city. Probably because, otherwise, he would have only seen a few restaurants around the Sacred Heart neighborhood, and then the inside of his Airbnb (which has wireless and TV and air conditioning he said).
I pointed Bourbon Street out to him.
"That's Bourbon?"
"Yeah, on this side of Canal it's named Carondolet Street and..." I never finished the sentence, Ben had assumed an "Oh, boy, now you're talkin'" attitude and was running off in that direction before I knew it. He would call me or text me or something; I lost his voice in the din of the traffic and because his mouth was pointed away from me, towards Bourbon Street, when he spoke.
Wow. I would have thought that he would have ferreted out that singularly huge attraction, just in his comings and goings, but, he was like: "So, there it is!!"
He will enter at the end where it meets Canal Street.
He will already be standing among prostitutes, drug dealers, skeezers and others.
They are the ones that work the more risky end of the street, encountering people before they have been skeezed yet by others.
The skeezers further down the street have the advantage of having observed the tourists to see what they are generally about, quite importantly, have they bought drinks for 12 to 18 dollars, which would mean that they aren't cops on duty (court testimony would be tainted if the officer had to first testify that, yeah, he had had a few hurricanes, but he remembers it clearly) etc.
Ben will immediately be in the sex end of Bourbon Street -the end that opens upon Canal Street, like a gaping anus.
He may never make it past the Hustler Barely Legal store which will come up on his left.
He said he might make it to my busking spot at 933 Bourbon Street. Sure he will...
His is a small chance of keeping a modicum of moderation. I'm afraid -the self styled A.D.D. sufferer that he is- he will treat the first skeezer he sees as if he was the sum total of everything New Orleans; that would be the ones working the Canal Street end "Whatever you're looking for, I got it. Come take a walk with me. Ben? They call me "Low Down," come on, let's walk this way, Ben..."
This is the reason that I consider Bourbon Street to be like one long muffler in a sense, or a filter of some kind, at least.
The backfiring sound of someone like Ben running out of money at the Barely Legal store will barely be heard at the Lilly Pad, 9 and a third blocks down. People who can no longer walk after 5 blocks are likewise filtered out and run off by cabs.
By showing Ben The Unique Grocery and then pointing him to the block that it sits on, with sex on one side, cheapest beer in the Quarter on the other, I have put him upon the treadmill of his wildest dreams, I hope, and satisfied his request to "show me around..."
Fat chance that he will trickle through to the Lilly Pad.
The guy seems to be an enigma as far as his money is concerned.
He texted me, to tell me to "get some bud," because he was out.
Like, spend the 20 dollars that he left me on a bud, and then bicycle over there to smoke it with him?
He texted that he was broke.
I told him about the 5 dollar sacks of weed from Banks Street, whereupon he asked if he could meet me there.
Sure, I'm a half mile away.

"Something doesn't add up."

Then he texted me that he was going to get an Uber cab to get over there to meet me.
He ostensibly was so broke that he could only afford 5 bucks worth of weed. And, how much would that 3 mile Uber ride cost?
"Something doesn't add up," said Bobby on the matter.
So, the "destitute"Ben ran, didn't walk, towards Bourbon Street, about 2 hours ago, now...

A Fake Strumming Motion

I have like 3 minutes here at Starbucks at St. Charles and Canal Street, and I've got to walk down to the casino so I can blog some more; or go back to the apartment to use their connection.
But, I brought my guitar on this Sunday night, and, who knows, I might find myself out there busking around midnight.
There aren't a lot of tourists, but that can mean that one of them, seeing that this is so, might drop a large tip to compensate....
More from the casino....

At Harrah's Casino

I'm at the casino. I walked in with the coffee that I had gotten at the Starbucks up the street. They might have thought it was from the Starbucks inside the casino, and I walked right past security with it.
This is how you sneak an "outside drink" in the place.
I did not see Colin Mitchell at the other Starbucks. He is there a lot, as he waits for Tanya Huang to relinquish the corner of Royal and St. Louis at around 11 PM, completing a 12 hour day for her. Colin takes over and plays from then, until about 4 in the morning.
"The very late tippers are the best; the ones who are going back to their hotels at 3 in the morning, and just empty their pockets of whatever bills they have left over from the last hundred they broke..." said Colin last night.
I ran into him after having played at the Lilly Pad for about an hour and a half and gotten about 12 bucks, with there being a 5 dollar bill in there.
He had been sitting at Royal and St. Louis, and it was about 2 AM.
He was talking about leaving New Orleans to busk in Central Park in New York where "I always make at least a hundred bucks there," or to go to Las Vegas. He was using the weather forecast to inform his decision.
He had stayed here after Mardi Gras because we were forecast to get the perfect conditions that we are enjoying, whereas it was forecast to be less favorable conditions in Vegas or the 45 degree New York City.
He had been at the spot for over 2 hours and had not made a penny.
He was complaining about the tourists being "a much younger" set and about them having only plastic cards but no cash in a lot of cases.
"They know there are going to be artists on the street when they get here; who play for their living; they need to prepare by bringing cash, so they can support them!," said Colin.
This kind of raises the issue of: Is it their duty or responsibility, or religious obligation to indeed "support the artists?"
I think not.
If you aren't making enough money as a busker, then you need to find another profession, pure and simple.
It is discomforting that the "millenials," for whatever reason, are lousy tippers (at least the batch of them that are in town now) hinging upon whatever that reason is.
Colin said that Tanya Huang even found disconcerting the amount of tippage that went into her basket.
"Oh, really. At the moment I rode by her, she had about 15 people around her and they all clapped when she finished playing..."
"That's just it," rejoined Colin. "There was a lot of clapping, a lot of dancing, but no tipping; there's a difference."
So, Colin was just sitting there, having turned off his amplifier to save its batteries, due to the slowness.
Then, I took my guitar out and was playing and watching his stuff while he ran to the restroom.
This turned into us jamming on a song, which attracted the attention of a young man who stopped and listened, and then threw something in Colin's basket, before giving each of us a fist pump and walking off.
I really expected Colin to throw me a dollar or two, or more precisely, about half of what the guy put in his basket. We both had been playing, and the guy had actually stood closer to me than him, so that he could hear me over his amp.
When he gave us each a fist pump, it was like: "Nice job, fellas" as in both of us.
I changed my opinion a bit about Colin because of that.f
I'm sure he has an axiom that he goes by, like: "No, this is my stage, on my spot. All the money that goes in the basket is mine. If someone wants to stop by and jam with me, then he gets to have the experience of doing so, and the enjoyment thereof, but the money is all mine!"
And, this is generally the unwritten rule for buskers. But is is still within the discretionary powers of the busker to flip the guest jammer at least a buck, not, perhaps if he is a tourist just having fun on vacation who doesn't want any money; but a busker and a friend(?) who has just shown up and commiserated about the miserly tourists, and how he himself only made 11 dollars that night, and after the money went into the basket under the circumstances that we had, when it was pretty apparent that the guy was trying (at least) to tip both of us, yeah, I could have imagined him looking at the small stack of bills that were the first things to land in his basket all night and figuring that it was intended to be for both of us (especially if it was like 2 ten dollar bills, or 2 fives, or an even amount of one dollar bills) and at least giving me a dollar as a gesture.
But, he almost guiltily sneaked the money into a side pocket of his jacket, further leading me to believe that it was an amount too large to leave in the jar to tempt the street urchins to steal.
I started to paint him as being kind of greedy, at that point.
Then, he began to transform from the disgusted guy who was ready to leave town into a more upbeat and almost giddy one.

Ben kind of hard to find today

Ben Lambie never showed up to pick up his frozen pizza last night. He couldn't get a cab.
Cab drivers don't like to pick up in crack neighborhoods if they can avoid it.
Today, he isn't answering my texts. My fear is that he is going to have some relapse, and that he might be holed up in his airbnb that he left my place for, with a crack rock and a nappy headed whore who is going to steal his brand new i-phone, even if she seems pretty nice.

Colin cont.
Then, another 3 guys showed up and asked Colin to play something.
He told them that he was done for the night and would have to hook up all his gear again in order to play. I guess he was satisfied with the amount that he (not we) had made off the first guy -large enough to have prompted him to quit for the night, right then and there, and become giddy and start to say things like: "See, you never know...they came right out of the blue, you never know! Ha ha ha!"

"How much do we have to give you to hear a song?" asked one of the 3 guys.
"Twenty bucks," said Colin, whereupon he was handed that amount.
He set up his stuff, and then transformed into "Mr. Showbiz," I guess.
He hit the button on his phone, whereupon the "music minus one" for "Imagine," by John Lennon began to play.
He strummed along and sang.
When he sang: "us, only sky..." he pointed to the sky with his picking hand. He made another gesture to go along with another line in the song.
I had always cut Colin some slack as far as his busking act is concerned.
A lot of buskers think it's a sin to use a backing track to perform over.
One such guy, who is disparagingly referred to as "Karaoke Guy," and shunned by other buskers, comes to mind. He sings over pre-recorded music, and has a style like John Legend, or Arron Neville; high, falsetto type of "chick music," that has the potential to get the ladies weeping, the way Michael Jackson could do with the song "She's Out Of My Life."
My mixed feeling about Colin as a performer, I kept to myself.
He is very much visually oriented.
I always pictured him as being like a puppet and people putting coins in a slot to get him to "play" for a few minutes, like those pony rides that used to be in front of supermarkets that you could put your kid on for a couple minutes for a quarter.
He is almost like a performance artist, in that sense, like a guy in a busker costume with a fake guitar who isn't really singing or playing, but is mimicking a busker.
I have meant to talk to him about that; but, what would I say to him?
He reaches his extreme when he puts on a certain Stevie Wonder song that the vocals have not been removed from and then strums along with a smile on his face while the recording of Stevie singing plays.
He said that "the people" like to hear Stevie Wonder singing "...and so I don't even try to reproduce his vocals." He strums his guitar along with it, just like he does when he is in Starbucks and song comes on their house system that he knows.
I have meant to ask him also, on that head: "Has anyone ever complained about you playing in Starbucks; anyone ever said: 'Hey, man. Starbucks provides music for the entertainment of its customers; and I usually enjoy it; I didn't come here to listen to you play your guitar; nothing personl, but I happen to like this song, and you're ruining it for me by playing over the top of it..."
Colin does that, hoping that people might remark: "You sound pretty good on that guitar, where do you play at?" and then he can direct them to his spot, where they would surely tip him.
"You see, I'm a businessman," said Colin.
But, the songs where he basically puts on a commercially available CD by some artist and then strums along while it plays, have had me leaving the area as fast as possible in the past: "Well, I'd better get home..." because of how lame it is, in my opinion.
Sure, he has the cowboy hat and the outfit and the guitar, and he smiles and bounces up and down and sways a bit while he strums along; trying to sell the enjoy-ability of the music; and he points at the sky to underscore lyrics and at the paying customer when singing "YOU may say I'm a dreamer..." but that is Carlos Santana, to give one example, ripping it up on lead guitar while Colin poses as "the busker" and takes credit for Santana's work.
After he had put the twenty dollar bill in his pocket along with whatever money the first guy had intended for both of us, he was in high spirits, giggling and telling me how amazing it was to have played for a couple hours and not made anything, and then suddenly -bam, out of the blue!
And he stopped short of saying "out of the blue..." and then giving any amount ("-bam, 60 bucks, just like that!") which was conspicuous in him, because he will often give me a run down of his night, mentioning all the amounts involved. "...One of the ladies put 5 dollars in my basket, then they dance a bit, then the other one put another 5...etc" and I couldn't help thinking that he didn't want me to know how much the guy who was apparently trying to tip both of us gave him; for that very reason -in case I said; "Yeah, we were both jamming together when he did that..."
He's a businessman.
A 67 year old retired accountant who came from some foreign country, and still bears the accent, who knows the power that appearances hold over people and takes advantage of it.
But, I have changed my opinion of him.
It reminded me of when Travis Blain gushed with excitement and giddiness after he learned that the security people at Sacred Heart don't keep an accurate count of the number of days that guests have been there and was basically telling me: "I can probably stay here as long as I want; what a great thing for me, Travis Blain, I've been blessed!" I was supposed to be happy for him; when in the back of his mind he was thinking: Plus, I'm not going to give you half of what I promised, so I'll be alright there, too! Go Travis, go!
I started to see Colin in a similar himself-at-the-center-of-the-universe light after it became apparent that he thought I would enjoy sticking around hearing him relate even more stories about himself, when had materialized out of the blue. "I'm happy for you, Colin...60 bucks in 10 minutes; way to go, Colin. Let's jam out on a couple more tunes, you play rhythm and I'll play lead; maybe the two of us, working together, can get your tip basket up over 100 dollars...
I had never told him about the 169 dollar night that I had last week, but I mentioned it in the same vein with his tales.

Buskers should be seen, and not heard...

I said, "Yeah, I got a 135 dollar tip from one guy," and told the story.
"Yeah, but that was about a year ago, right?" he asked, thinking of perhaps another story I had told him about that, and realizing that it is apparently important to him, how much I make.
I'm sure he sees an implied competition between his style, and my substance. ...If Daniel would just dress the part, he might do so much better
"No, that was a week ago Friday,"
I saw some combination of jealousy and anger cross his face. It was a bit of a dark aspect and almost a "You dirty bastard!" communique -certainly the opposite of a "I'm happy for you" expression.
It was like a student telling me "I hate you," back in high school, after I had gotten a higher grade than him on a test, with his anger being based upon the fact that he had studied for hours and "You hardly ever study..."
I left him there at about 3 AM, before he started to strum along with "Layla," while Eric Clapton's recorded vocals sang.
He belongs in a museum, behind glass. "The Street Musician," could be on the placard and all the music can be piped in, to go with the sight of him...and he could smile and make a fake strumming motion, his pick obviously not even touching the strings. ...you'd be surprised how few people notice that; they just keep putting their money in the slot...
There is a reason he has no CDs for sale; you wouldn't be able to see him when you listened to it; and so there would be 'something missing."
I am not really angry, and I'll get off Colin Mitchell in a second- just miffed a bit
I do know that the busker on a particular spot has a right to any money that goes in his basket, regardless of the circumstances surrounding it; I just thought the incident revealed a selfish side to the guy.
That kind of fits with him taking out his guitar in Starbucks so that the whole place has to hear him, whether they like it or not, as he advertises himself.
He is a functional musician, slightly above intermediate level, but is not a songwriter dr artist in that regard; I would say 75% show, 25% substance.