I went out to play last (Thursday) night, just so I could have any amount of money at all.
I didn't get to the Lilly Pad until after midnight.
Canal and Royal Streets had a closed-down look to them along my way.
I knew it would have to be one of those nights when one tourist comes along out of nowhere and throws me a 20, maybe after seeing how dead it was and knowing that his tip was going to be what I would live off of. I was hoping to just make 5 dollars. I wound up making 4.
The Uxi Duxi's new hours, extended to 10 PM, have been both a blessing and a curse.
The hour of 8 PM still rushes at me, no matter when I get there. I think if I was ever sentenced to a year in prison, but was allowed to spend it at the Uxi Duxi, using their wi-fi, they would probably have to nudge me at the end of a year: "Time's up!!"
"That was a a whole year? No way! Can I just finish this paragraph and then save it, I'll be out of your way shortly..."
Upon waking up at an average time of 1:30 PM, I typically think that I have a good chance to get a jump on my day -today is going to be different- and ultimately arrive at the Lilly Pad, by the time the piano guy inside the bar starts playing at 9:30 PM.
I would have fresh batteries for the spotlight, new strings and harmonica and, most importantly, will be there wanting to play, and would have been doing so anyways, sitting in my apartment, and so the tip money (which is usually inversely proportional to how much I care about it) would just be a bonus.
Today, it was waking up with NPR radio on, and being drawn into listening to an entire piece about the stupid illegal immigrants and their stupid children that they are being separated from, that wasted a good hour of my time. They are using them like human shields, yet, Trump is the bad guy?!?
The shamelessly biased report had audio clips of President Trump, talking about how immigrants should be taken in based upon "merit," interleaved with clips of babies crying -could have been any babies, for their purpose. Being NPR, though, they did present the other side -opinions by people whose loved ones had been murdered by undocumented aliens.
Still, I would rather see a bunch of hard working Latinos trying to make it in this country, rather than the ones typified by the Albanians that my friend Larry used to work for, who would whistle for him, as if he was a dog, whenever someone puked on the dance floor or they needed him for some other menial operation.
They would sit at the bar, where Larry was not allowed to, dressed like rich mobsters, wearing diamond cuff-links, and it was easy to imagine that they had taken advantage of some loophole, had gotten loans, probably from our government, to start their fancy business, and this loophole had made it so they would never have to break a sweat, Larry would.
He was a U.S. citizen, born here like his white father before him, and thus, entitled to nothing -no government grant designed to attract foreign business to this country (Wouldn't a nice Albanian restaurant/bar be nice right here?) for him, nor I, and so he mopped up the puke while his bosses gabbed away in a foreign tongue, hired their Albanian friends to tend bar and be chefs and make the real money, and to laugh a lot; probably over how great this country was, for them.
It was common to be sitting at the Starbucks in Jacksonville, (speaking of my days with Karrie) which was a like a one story Tower of Babel, hearing Albanian, Bosnian, Arabic and Russian being bandied about by well dressed people whose expensive cars, all foreign made, sat in the parking lot. I couldn't get a job at that Starbucks, I recall. The manager was Bosnian, as were all his employees. Even though Starbucks isn't supposed to be like that.
I looked at the 2 dollars and change on my table, remembering the 4 dollar night that I had had, and had to tell Harold the cat: "That's all there is!," in response to his meowing by his food dish, which was laden with the dry food that he likes, but none of the wet food that he loves. I had spent 75 cents out of the 4 dollars that I had made the night before on him, and had gotten a new lighter, as mine had picked the time when everything else seemed to be running out, to die.
There hadn't been a lot of people around to hear me play. I had been reminiscing about Karrie, and thinking about her as I played. I shouldn't have expected to make x amount of money doing that, or it would have sullied the reverence of it all. I just made up my mind to be there much earlier tonight (Friday). It is 8:30 now.
As if a microcosm of the whole night, as I was packing up, a guy who was probably in his late 20 's arrived and said: "You're really good," to which I said: "Thanks."
He continued to stand there, but threw not a dollar in my basket.
He almost looked familiar to me as one of the local skeezers, but I wasn't sure. I also wasn't sure if he was making a game out of telling me that I was really good but then not putting anything in the tip basket. That was when I discovered that my lighter was dead.
"I'm sorry, I don't have a lighter. I wish I did; I would give you a light," said the guy. He was probably sincere, and it was probably just a night when the stars were not aligned for me to make any money. I had a good mind to think that, had I arrived 2 hours earlier, I might have had 30 bucks in my basket.
I wish I could figure out why having a 4 dollar night can cause me to be pissed off at the world, yet, after a 75 dollar night, I can still wake up with an undefined depressed feeling.
It might be because I feel like I am stagnating. Like I hypnotize myself each night, to put myself in a trance wherein I average 18 bucks an hour, but I don't get much better; I just follow the ruts that I have worn in the guitar neck, as a path of least resistance. Feeling like a one-trick pony, I play "Imagine," by John Lennon, again.
My food stamp card is down to 33 cents, with 12 days left in the month, no surprise there.
I had fried up a bunch of potatoes in grape seed oil, and then actually eaten them on top of white rice. That might seem like a redundancy of starches, but the salty potato and garlic and black pepper infused oil that I poured over the rice as I emptied the pan of the potatoes, turned it into a pretty good meal.
I had nothing sweet, having run out of honey and having decided not to get any sugar. The choice had been between sugar, and the half shot of kratom that I am sipping right now.
I could have tried to stay up Thursday morning so that I could have gone to the food bank and gotten the couple boxes of food that I am allowed once per month, based upon my income, but had drifted off to sleep and didn't want to drag myself there. Partly because I wasn't in the mood to be witness to the black guys leaving the food bank with 2 ham roasts in their boxes, under the cereal, while my white skinned self would have a bag of frozen blueberries, in place of the ham roast that was given to a the black guy who would have been asking me for a cigarette every time I lit one up.
So, I guess us white people need to unite, maybe get the right guy in The White House, and say "enough is enough!" You want to speak Albanian and whistle for a white man like he's a dog; well, there is a perfect place in the world for you to do that. It's over there by Greece, near Macedonia. And, they might even have a Starbucks there.
We erred when we didn't ship the slaves back to Africa, after we freed them. Won't history confirm that this would have been better for all parties concerned? How were they supposed to be assimilated by the gods with the thunder sticks, when their minds are moving at the speed of a blow dart? We kind of just took the fence around the zoo down and proclaimed: There will be no more zoos here!"
I guess we need to get the right guy in the White House, and maybe it's not too late.
Yeah, I wish I could figure out why having a 4 dollar night can make me pissed off at the world. And why having a 75 dollar one can still have me waking up with a vague, undefined depressed feeling...
Out of Everything
I took too many nights off this week; Monday, to jam with Jacob, Tuesday because I had stayed at the Uxi Duxi until almost midnight. Wednesday, because my dead laptop had come back to life, mysteriously, and I'd decided to get something done on it while I had the chance.
I'm thinking that the problem might be related to the thermal sensor in the thing. It was the night that I had left it running and had not put the air conditioner on, that I had woken up sweating and unable to turn the thing on.
I'm trying not to dread too much having to go out to play tonight, whether I feel like it or not, type of thing. I might have just enough bud to get a hit off my "one-hitter" as I tune up tonight.
Or, just as likely, I will run into David the water jug player on one of the rare occasions when he is offering to smoke me up, rather than greeting me with the "Hey, Daniel! PLEESE tell me you have some weed!" that I get from him most of the time.
In the meantime, no progress has been made towards my joining the "writer's den" group, which could have me earning money in short order, so that I could save busking for when I felt like doing it.
The laptop dying might be seen as a warning to me to get started on that, and Karrie dying might be seen as a warning to get started on my trip to New England, before some of my friends up there start passing away.
It's 9:50 PM now.
Canal and Royal Streets had a closed-down look to them along my way.
I knew it would have to be one of those nights when one tourist comes along out of nowhere and throws me a 20, maybe after seeing how dead it was and knowing that his tip was going to be what I would live off of. I was hoping to just make 5 dollars. I wound up making 4.
The Uxi Duxi's new hours, extended to 10 PM, have been both a blessing and a curse.
The hour of 8 PM still rushes at me, no matter when I get there. I think if I was ever sentenced to a year in prison, but was allowed to spend it at the Uxi Duxi, using their wi-fi, they would probably have to nudge me at the end of a year: "Time's up!!"
"That was a a whole year? No way! Can I just finish this paragraph and then save it, I'll be out of your way shortly..."
Upon waking up at an average time of 1:30 PM, I typically think that I have a good chance to get a jump on my day -today is going to be different- and ultimately arrive at the Lilly Pad, by the time the piano guy inside the bar starts playing at 9:30 PM.
I would have fresh batteries for the spotlight, new strings and harmonica and, most importantly, will be there wanting to play, and would have been doing so anyways, sitting in my apartment, and so the tip money (which is usually inversely proportional to how much I care about it) would just be a bonus.
Today, it was waking up with NPR radio on, and being drawn into listening to an entire piece about the stupid illegal immigrants and their stupid children that they are being separated from, that wasted a good hour of my time. They are using them like human shields, yet, Trump is the bad guy?!?
The shamelessly biased report had audio clips of President Trump, talking about how immigrants should be taken in based upon "merit," interleaved with clips of babies crying -could have been any babies, for their purpose. Being NPR, though, they did present the other side -opinions by people whose loved ones had been murdered by undocumented aliens.
Still, I would rather see a bunch of hard working Latinos trying to make it in this country, rather than the ones typified by the Albanians that my friend Larry used to work for, who would whistle for him, as if he was a dog, whenever someone puked on the dance floor or they needed him for some other menial operation.
They would sit at the bar, where Larry was not allowed to, dressed like rich mobsters, wearing diamond cuff-links, and it was easy to imagine that they had taken advantage of some loophole, had gotten loans, probably from our government, to start their fancy business, and this loophole had made it so they would never have to break a sweat, Larry would.
He was a U.S. citizen, born here like his white father before him, and thus, entitled to nothing -no government grant designed to attract foreign business to this country (Wouldn't a nice Albanian restaurant/bar be nice right here?) for him, nor I, and so he mopped up the puke while his bosses gabbed away in a foreign tongue, hired their Albanian friends to tend bar and be chefs and make the real money, and to laugh a lot; probably over how great this country was, for them.
It was common to be sitting at the Starbucks in Jacksonville, (speaking of my days with Karrie) which was a like a one story Tower of Babel, hearing Albanian, Bosnian, Arabic and Russian being bandied about by well dressed people whose expensive cars, all foreign made, sat in the parking lot. I couldn't get a job at that Starbucks, I recall. The manager was Bosnian, as were all his employees. Even though Starbucks isn't supposed to be like that.
I looked at the 2 dollars and change on my table, remembering the 4 dollar night that I had had, and had to tell Harold the cat: "That's all there is!," in response to his meowing by his food dish, which was laden with the dry food that he likes, but none of the wet food that he loves. I had spent 75 cents out of the 4 dollars that I had made the night before on him, and had gotten a new lighter, as mine had picked the time when everything else seemed to be running out, to die.
There hadn't been a lot of people around to hear me play. I had been reminiscing about Karrie, and thinking about her as I played. I shouldn't have expected to make x amount of money doing that, or it would have sullied the reverence of it all. I just made up my mind to be there much earlier tonight (Friday). It is 8:30 now.
As if a microcosm of the whole night, as I was packing up, a guy who was probably in his late 20 's arrived and said: "You're really good," to which I said: "Thanks."
He continued to stand there, but threw not a dollar in my basket.
He almost looked familiar to me as one of the local skeezers, but I wasn't sure. I also wasn't sure if he was making a game out of telling me that I was really good but then not putting anything in the tip basket. That was when I discovered that my lighter was dead.
"I'm sorry, I don't have a lighter. I wish I did; I would give you a light," said the guy. He was probably sincere, and it was probably just a night when the stars were not aligned for me to make any money. I had a good mind to think that, had I arrived 2 hours earlier, I might have had 30 bucks in my basket.
I wish I could figure out why having a 4 dollar night can cause me to be pissed off at the world, yet, after a 75 dollar night, I can still wake up with an undefined depressed feeling.
It might be because I feel like I am stagnating. Like I hypnotize myself each night, to put myself in a trance wherein I average 18 bucks an hour, but I don't get much better; I just follow the ruts that I have worn in the guitar neck, as a path of least resistance. Feeling like a one-trick pony, I play "Imagine," by John Lennon, again.
My food stamp card is down to 33 cents, with 12 days left in the month, no surprise there.
I had fried up a bunch of potatoes in grape seed oil, and then actually eaten them on top of white rice. That might seem like a redundancy of starches, but the salty potato and garlic and black pepper infused oil that I poured over the rice as I emptied the pan of the potatoes, turned it into a pretty good meal.
I had nothing sweet, having run out of honey and having decided not to get any sugar. The choice had been between sugar, and the half shot of kratom that I am sipping right now.
I could have tried to stay up Thursday morning so that I could have gone to the food bank and gotten the couple boxes of food that I am allowed once per month, based upon my income, but had drifted off to sleep and didn't want to drag myself there. Partly because I wasn't in the mood to be witness to the black guys leaving the food bank with 2 ham roasts in their boxes, under the cereal, while my white skinned self would have a bag of frozen blueberries, in place of the ham roast that was given to a the black guy who would have been asking me for a cigarette every time I lit one up.
So, I guess us white people need to unite, maybe get the right guy in The White House, and say "enough is enough!" You want to speak Albanian and whistle for a white man like he's a dog; well, there is a perfect place in the world for you to do that. It's over there by Greece, near Macedonia. And, they might even have a Starbucks there.
We erred when we didn't ship the slaves back to Africa, after we freed them. Won't history confirm that this would have been better for all parties concerned? How were they supposed to be assimilated by the gods with the thunder sticks, when their minds are moving at the speed of a blow dart? We kind of just took the fence around the zoo down and proclaimed: There will be no more zoos here!"
I guess we need to get the right guy in the White House, and maybe it's not too late.
Yeah, I wish I could figure out why having a 4 dollar night can make me pissed off at the world. And why having a 75 dollar one can still have me waking up with a vague, undefined depressed feeling...
Out of Everything
I took too many nights off this week; Monday, to jam with Jacob, Tuesday because I had stayed at the Uxi Duxi until almost midnight. Wednesday, because my dead laptop had come back to life, mysteriously, and I'd decided to get something done on it while I had the chance.
I'm thinking that the problem might be related to the thermal sensor in the thing. It was the night that I had left it running and had not put the air conditioner on, that I had woken up sweating and unable to turn the thing on.
I'm trying not to dread too much having to go out to play tonight, whether I feel like it or not, type of thing. I might have just enough bud to get a hit off my "one-hitter" as I tune up tonight.
Or, just as likely, I will run into David the water jug player on one of the rare occasions when he is offering to smoke me up, rather than greeting me with the "Hey, Daniel! PLEESE tell me you have some weed!" that I get from him most of the time.
In the meantime, no progress has been made towards my joining the "writer's den" group, which could have me earning money in short order, so that I could save busking for when I felt like doing it.
The laptop dying might be seen as a warning to me to get started on that, and Karrie dying might be seen as a warning to get started on my trip to New England, before some of my friends up there start passing away.
It's 9:50 PM now.
I'm surprised you don't use your food stamps, sure, but before you spend beyond them, go back into dumpster diving. You can go for the cream of the crop, after spending food stamps for things like eggs, cabbage, canned beans and veggies and things like sardines and tuna and corned beef and corned beef hash, so you always have the basics for a good meal, then you can pick the "cream" from the dumpsters.
ReplyDeleteI'm realizing myself that I've been far too spendy. Firstly, going through a "handle" or more of booze a week? Yeah, even at $15-$25 a "handle" that's too much. Spending that $6 at the Chinese place to pig out is OK but my home cooked breakfast of choice, scrambled eggs with chopped basil in them with Farmer John sausages and a cup of chicory coffee, is 'way cheaper.
I know, I have a $300 paycheck coming in each week (that I have to pay 20% tax on, right off the top, so white trash like you who are the biggest danger to this country can freeload) but I should be saving a ton of it.
Apparently just flipping two switches: No alcohol and (almost) no meals I didn't cook myself, is enough to make some savings pile in.
In your case, you're on a much slimmer margin, so why piss so much money away on cigs, weed, energy drinks, and kratom? For cigs you can gather snipes, but for the rest, you've gotta be spending $10 a day on that junk. That's $300 a month that could go for a nicer guitar, amp, a Shure SM58 microphone etc.
I mean, you know keys and stuff and how to read written music well, you could be working as a sort of half-assed "session" musician there. Think of all the kids who come down there to spend a good part of their trust fund to "live the dream" of being buskers. You could be running "busking tours" where you take people around on tours (Here's where Satchmo's house was, here's where Danny Barker lived, the Funky Butt dance hall used to be here...) and then as part of the tour, along the route, you and the group would stop here and stop there, busk here and busk there... You could easily charge $50 a head for this.
ReplyDeleteThere's all kinds of stuff you could do there. The high crime rate kind of scares me off, likewise the hot/humid weather and the chance that there's always another flood around the corner, but if I can get things working right for me I can sure afford to at least visit. I'll be the guy with the loud-ass drums who sets up across from the Lily Pad...
Good comment, balanced and un-biased, you report, I decide...lol
ReplyDeleteSadly, all the places where I used to dive for things like A1 steak sauce to turn any ol' hunk of "today's special" meat into a delicious meal, have all been removed...
It boggled the mind to walk through Whole Foods right before they are about to close and see all the food that wasn't sold being whisked to the compactor to be destroyed.
If they set it out for the homeless people they would have to pay someone to clean up their mess every morning, and then deal with the ones that would set up their camps in the bushes along the side of the building, so they could keep a lookout for the guy pushing the cart full of recently expired food out and bum rush him, and clean up their shit and vomit and empty pint bottles...
The taxpayers would come out of the store and might make the observation: "I just saw the homeless people pulling lobsters like we just paid thirty bucks for out of the dumpster, and it looked like they had a fifty dollar leg of lamb on the top of their pile..."
Then, there were the ones's who would arrive in a van that was outfitted with racks, designed for the very purpose of holding meats and vegetables and whatever else they could grab; they would then troll the projects, where the cry of "The meat and vegetable guy is here!" sounding. And the biggest dangers to this country would dine on leg of lamb that night.
I used to love going bodily into the dumpster behind the Winn-Dixie in Jacksonville. It was like shopping inside the store, just with no cash register; or kind of like opening Christmas presents....ooo, yogurt, and it's still cold! type of thing...
Whatever I didn't find in there, I would go into the store for, to use my food stamps, maybe a bottle of Grey Poupon, or salt and pepper shakers...
And, I belive it's the Shure SM57 which is the industry standard...
I remember when I drank, thinking that, if I bought a handle of rum for 23 bucks, it would save me from buying 7 half pint bottles daily at 5 bucks each, and should theoretically last for a week at that rate...
But, it would be too easy for the thing to last only 3 days, and I wound up actually spending more than the five bucks per day when all said and done...
Plus, there would be the skeezers who might see the big bottle and think that, to have a bottle that size and not pass it around was a sin, and would see you as a greedy motherfucker rather than a frugal man...
Lilly allows a huge Portuguese man, perhaps a relative, to live almost across the street from her in one room in a house of that is divided into about 8 apartments. He is Marco, "the maintenance guy," lives rent free, and has never had to be called yet for a loud ass drummer across the street. Usually a word or two from Lilly suffices. But you might make enough for a handle before she arrives, LOL! I know I have it made there, can't help boasting, I guess..
The high crime rate is mostly the gang bangers assaulting each other, trying to keep the murder rate respectable here, so they can hold their heads high in the company of members from Miami, or Chicago; that's the way it was explained to me when I was in jail.
Tourists are the golden geese and are safer in the Quarter than anywhere else in the nation, ironically.
"You would never see two young and pretty girls walking alone like that in Chicago, or San Francisco or Atlanta" said Colin Mitchell on the subject...
I just got back from a post office run and checking the usual dumpsters around here for packing materials like bubble wrap; I didn't find much. But I agree, skeezers are always crapping up everyplace they are tolerated. The idea of leaving the area neater than you found it is foreign to them, so I guess it's no wonder Whole Foods has to be that careful. The one I go to has the dumpsters locked up tight, and security there always, often an off-duty San Jose cop.
ReplyDeleteSo if your ex-"shopping" spots are closed, you have to thank your fellow skeezers.
Those with social skills can probably "social engineer" some of this tossed-away food but ... that requires social skills. It takes not flaunting your homelessness and body odor and trashed clothes and rats' nest hair. You have to look like you're trying and be ... "personable".
It sounds (haha) like you know about as much about industry standard mics as you do about singing or guitar playing. The SM57 is indeed the industry standard; for recording instruments. The shape of the windscreen allows it to be put extra close. The SM58 is the standard for voice, and has the stereotypical round windscreen that does a good job of filtering out pops from, say, the letter "P", called plosives. If I had a choice between the two I'd choose the SM58 because it can be used to mic an instrument, while the SM57 would not work as well at all to sing into.
If you were getting through a handle in 3 days you've got me beat. I found it scary that a handle was tending to last me 5 days instead of a full week. You've got a point about how buying a mere pint an evening could work out cheaper, since long ago I used to do that; buy a pint of Guinness in the evening and that was enough to make not not feel motivated to walk across the street to the drug store and buy a 6-pack.
Marco would probably love the shit out of my drumming and while I don't plan to be a loud-ass drummer, really, because those can be damn loud. But he might prick his ears up and notice, and think, "Thank Mother Mary, a real musician here, and come out and snap his fingers, and say, "Hey, can you bring up the volume up just a bit? I'm trying to discourage this guy who bangs on a guitar and thinks he's Declan Crumpet or some unknown British better-forgotten guy..."
The Quarter is probably safe enough, just like the right areas of anywhere are. There are areas of Atlanta, Chicago, SF, etc that are perfectly safe. The trouble with New Orleans is it vies with a few other shithole areas in the US for the title of the US's murder capital.
To give an idea of good areas and bad areas ... back in good old Waikiki, Kalakaua Avenue is the main drag along the ocean and is as safe as anywhere because it's where the tourists go. Kuhio, however, is one SHORT block running parallel and is notoriously bad.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I thought I had my math wrong, now that I think of it, I was calculating that a handle, or 1.75 liters, would yield just shy of 9 of the 200 ml bottles that are erroneously called "half pints" and which were $3.50 each.
ReplyDeleteAssuming I drank one a night; every nine nights I would have spent $31.50 on brandy, a "half pint" at a time. rather than the $24 for the handle.
Another way to look at it(and, believe me, I've looked at it from every angle) is, the handle gives you 9 nights of drinking for the price of 7.
If the handle lasts 7 nights, then you haven't saved any money, but have gotten to drink 28% more brandy each night.
If it lasts only 6 nights, then you drank 50% more than usual each night, but paid only 15% more than you usually do, for it. Still the way to go, for the guy for whom a half-pint doesn't quite do.
I seem to recall now, that the handle was indeed lasting me like 5 and a half nights, negating the savings and putting 60% more in my stomach each night. This, because the brandy comes out of those big bottles so fast, I guess...lol
So, buy a handle and make it last 8 days, my good man!