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...