Plate Piled High

It is Monday evening and it was raining this afternoon, but now there are very still puddles pooled in the low spots; mirror-like and reflective of the calm after the storm.

Sunday night was a goose egg as far as busking. I didn’t get to the Lilly Pad until about quarter past midnight.

I was told by one of the regular skeezers of that block that “it was crowded earlier.”

This crowd would have been comprised of the same tourists who are in town for something other than tipping buskers, apparently.

They seem to be pale-skinned, undernourished, twitchy, almost totally covered in tattoos and piercings, wearing very form fitting clothing like leg tights, tie-dyed when not in all black, and pretty f***ing weird, from my perspective.
The way the generation before me looked at "us" hippies in the late 60's is probably the way I look at these people. I need to see what the big attraction in town was to try to pin down who and where they came from. They acted similar to the homosexuals that invade the city during Southern Decadence every August, in that they seemed to be birds of the same feather in their speech and mannerisms, etc.
It seemed like throwing me a tip never crossed their minds. Maybe I need to write a tipping "app" that would put the fun into tipping for them and their ilk. "I like that song, so I just tipped the guy five bucks," one of them might say with a "how cool is that?" deportment, as he returns his phone to his pocket...
A To Z
A: Apartment:
I have extended an offer to Geo and Mindy Lee to crash at my apartment for what might amount to about 10 bucks per day, times ten days.

Geo and Mindy Lee are from Cincinnati, Ohio and I met them about a year ago.

They were the ones who came to town laden with LSD in blotter form, and who wanted me to play “They Loved Each Other,” by the Grateful Dead at their wedding, which was to take place in Jackson Square.

I took this request with a grain of salt as, they were tripping on acid and I was playing a Grateful Dead song, and it was one that they had, just prior to coming upon me at the Lilly Pad, determined among themselves to be the song that they wanted to be the “first dance” song at the ceremony.

“We were just talking about what should be our first dance song and had just agreed on “They Loved Each Other;” then we were walking down Bourbon and started to hear your harmonica and then when we got closer, we were like: Is that “They Loved Each Other?”

And it was. And it is one of the more practiced-up songs that I do, and so I was nailing it.

It is no far stretch of the imagination to believe that, in that state of mind of being dosed on acid, this coincidence was magnified to biblical proportions and, hence, the offer was made to pay me “the going rate” for first dance wedding songs, which a quick skimming of “The Tipper’s Guide” revealed to be somewhere between $250 and $300 “per song.”

Perhaps a long one like "Stairway to Heaven" would fetch the latter, while “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” by Neil Young, in all its 2 minute and 28 seconds of glory, the former.

But, I was laying my chips upon them somehow messing up while running around the quarter dosed on, and selling, acid and only gave the wedding about a 25% chance of ever taking place.

There was the commensurate recklessness about their exploits that led me to think that them pulling it all together and organizing the event would be beyond them.

The wedding was indeed postponed after certain key relatives, like the mother of the groom, informed them that they wouldn’t be able to make the trek to New Orleans to witness the union of Geo and Mindy Lee, which was unfortunate and kind of sad (I would have liked to have the $300).

I got the feeling that the relatives had become accustomed to the capriciousness of their kin and that dropping everything and heading to New Orleans to get married in Jackson Square was probably just the flavor of the week for the couple and before booking reservations in the city, the relatives would wait to see if the next dose of acid might bring a change of mind; perhaps after they come upon a busker singing a different song.

But now they are back and Mindy Lee is pregnant with twins. They have rented some place until the end of March, but after that, I might let them stay at my place for at least the 10 days that I’m allowed to have “overnight” guests per month.

Depending upon how well the arrangement works out, I could even allow them to stay longer, based upon what has regularly been inefficient record keeping by the front desk security officers.

It’s their job to keep track of the number of days a guest has accrued.
It’s also their job to stay awake and to be vigilant of bike thieves, for that matter.

B: Bike- The bike that was stolen two stolen bikes ago and which is now in the rack with a flat back tire and no lock on it; I am thinking of grabbing and pulling into my apartment; doing whatever repairs to, and then listing for sale on Craigslist New Orleans.

I bought the bike off of Ester, my Israelite friend for 40 bucks -a good deal because it is a $100 bike when in good working order- and so I feel like I own it.

The person who might see it disappear from the rack might never have to know that I took it. If I could depart on it from Sacred Heart, without being observed, and then meet with the person who wants to buy it through Craigslist, and sell it to her, then the thing would have disappeared without a trace from the thief, the same way it had for me.

One of the leading suspects in the theft of it was a guy named "White Cloud" who is reportedly in the hospital with fading health, and returning the bike might be the type of thing a dying man does to make peace with his maker, type of thing...

C through Z: will get to later, I guess...