So, it doesn’t get any better than sitting and listening to Bach after having made 71 bucks in an hour and a half of busking.
Except that my new smartphone now has no service and so, I guess I shouldn’t be pissed off that I have to spend half of what I made last night on the phone; I should be glad that I have the opportunity to pay off the phone and still put 35 bucks in my pocket.
I might try to get a cheap TV antennae for the TV that I have now, the medium sized one.
I threw away the big huge one that Jacob and I scooped off the side of the road in the city of Kenner, where he lives, after we saw it sitting there with a “Free. It works” sign on it.
I thought the joke on us was that the thing "worked," as in it came on, but it wouldn’t grab any stations. Maybe someone had found a very clever way of ridding themselves of an old, 100 pound TV without having to haul it to the dump (themselves).
But, then after hooking the antenna up to yet another TV that I came by and still no luck picking up any stations, a closer look at the antenna revealed that the cable had been sliced through with a razor blade, or something.
It was cut right where it goes into the jack, so repairing it would probably be easiest by just cutting the jack off, soldering the wires together and then using a piece of that rubber crimping tubing that shrinks when you blast it with a high heat source.
Trouble is, I don’t have a heat gun or a soldering iron, or solder, or wire strippers for that matter. A five dollar Goodwill Store antenna would be a nice find.
Also, the antenna was working when I first got it. It almost looks like it was sabotaged.
Could Travis Blaine, who stayed with me for almost twice the amount of days allotted to guests, ostensibly in exchange for 20 dollars a day, but who turned into a cheapskate who tried to "barter down" his rent by showering me with things like a 3 pound bag of cat food that his cat also ate off of, a pocketful of McDonald’s sugar packets -that was classic Travis Blaine, there: “I figured you’d probably like some sugar for your coffee...” he had said.
How can you ask 20 dollars a day of someone who is so considerate and doing so much to help out in other ways?
Plus, I got some things that he no longer had a use for, like his cleaning supplies, because the place he was moving into was going to have a cleaning lady come by every week.
When my TV went on the blink, Travis was almost smug when he said something like “I know a few tricks when it comes to electronics. I’ll take a look at it. I’m sure I can fix it.”
He flashed a smile that exuded confidence; or was it a smirk?
I quickly surmised though, that since the guy didn't ask me if I had any tools at all, or a volt-o-meter or oscilloscope, his “tricks” must have been of the low tech variety, like pressing the reset button on the back of the thing, or maybe taking the batteries out of the remote then putting them back in, type of stuff.
Tricks in the bag of the likes of Travis Blaine, the self styled "genius with a photographic memory," who was reading a Wallace Stegner
Yes, Wallace Stegner, whose novels -at least the one I read- were illustrative of the beauty of the human spirit and the better side of human nature, the power of love and the triumph of good over evil, type of thing.
Blaine must have been recording the words in his memory so he could add the book to the list of what he is “well read” in.
So, to cut to the chase, I think Blaine might have made the almost invisible incision in my TV antenna so that he could “fix” the TV, then use it as an implicit bartering chip when it came time to chintz out on what he had promised up front.
He’s a genius with a photographic memory who graduated at the top of a small class at some exclusive academy in New York, who now sits behind a laptop smoking pot and doing piece work for Amazon, averaging about 8 bucks an hour.
Enough about Travis Blaine.
Bobby in building C suggested that I see a psychiatrist after I told him about those suspicions.
He had done the same thing after I suggested that someone at Sacred Heart Apartments was shutting the hot water off every other Friday or so, and since the thing can never be “looked at untill Monday,” perhaps cutting the monthly energy bill down and perhaps pocketing the difference.
Bobby came around on that issue after a couple more cold water weekends occurred.
Yes, Bobby could benefit from being just a little more paranoid.
71 Dollar Friday
With old strings, which are hanging on by a thread, the last of the batteries for the spotlight, and zero dollars to start out with, I managed to make the above amount in less than 2 hours of busking Friday night.
Lafitt’s Blacksmith Shop Tavern (shown in the photo now inserted over the title of the blog at the top) has been blasting loud hip-hop music out of speakers aimed at the street the past few nights, and they will likely be doing so all the way through Fat Tuesday, turning the gold that Lilly Pad during Mardi Gras might produce into straw, and forcing me to move down one block to near the Quartermaster.
It is only by the grace of knowing the people that work at that store, and having seen and waved to and chatted with the residents of the block at one time or other during the past 8 years that I am able to set up and play on the corner, which is across the street from the house of a lady who came out shortly after midnight when I was playing there about 4 years ago and said “Come on, it’s after midnight!” and ran me off.
She appeared at her door shortly after midnight, looked out and me and then retreated back inside. I guess she gave me a break. It was then that I made about 45 of the 71 dollars for the night.
Tanya Huang seems to be playing marathon sets. She was still at her spot at about 2:30 AM when I rode past. She starts at 11:30 AM.
She will grab 5 hours of sleep and then be back out for another 15 hour day.
Jacob said he saw somewhere that Tanya lives in some kind of artistic community, like a rooming house for local musicians or something.
Has losing her partnership with Dorise Blackmon meant that she sold her house?
Something that Alex in California, blog reader said makes more sense now, that Tanya might be supporting a lot of people, maybe back in China. Maybe putting relatives children through college, because they would do the same for her if she was the one stuck in a rice paddy and they were lucky enough to be able to busk in New Orleans.
The phone, I will probably hook up, provided they can reduce my charge from 52 to 30 bucks a month, and provided that I haven’t been hit with any kind of late charge for having let the phone get cut off yesterday.
I suppose I’ll find out if I go down there before sleeping, which I’m about to do.
Using the phone for a hotspot is worth the 30 bucks a month because, as Alex also pointed out, I was probably spending 80 bucks a month on kratom so I could sit at Uxi Duxi and use their wi-fi (and so I could reap the benefits of kratom).
It’s possible for me to buy kratom online at probably what Uxi Duxi pays wholesale, because it is approximately half the price of what they sell ounces for.
I think, as a guideline, businesses usually sell merchandise at double what their cost was.
A car dealer friend of mine once told me that “any” used car lot could sell you a car for half of what is frosted onto the window “and they would still make a little money.”
It is Saturday, we are in the midst of Mardi Gras.
If ever I was going to try to busk for something like 8 hours, now would be the time to do it. There are people everywhere in the Quarter around the clock now.
I’m really thinking about getting a bottle of tequila and going out to play on no sleep at all over the past 24 hours.
What am I saying, I need to get new strings somehow..and I quit drinking 1,129 days ago.
But, I bet that would have me out at the Lilly Pad jamming away.
And..
8 Dollar Sunday
The temperature dropped from the 60 degrees of late afternoon to a very chilly and windy condition which two tee shirts with a button up shirt over them was not proof against, as Jacob and I, along with his friend Patrick, stopped at a park in Metarie and smoked a blunt.
We had planned upon playing a certain marimba which is set up there kind of like a playground toy, but I had to return to the car to be out of the wind.
Jacob banged out a couple notes on the thing, which I could hear from the car. He said it is tuned to some “weird chord.” It might make an interesting insert into a music video, a cameo for a playground instrument...
I had no idea that the wind chill factor accounted for so much of the discomfort out there, probably making 55 feel like 38 when the gusts hit you.
I found out that the reason that it didn’t feel so bad at all as I rode towards the Lilly Pad was that I was riding in the same direction of about a 25 mile per hour breeze.
On the way home, as I inched forward into it, all I wanted to do was to get inside the warm apartment. With 6 of the 8 dollars that I made in about an hour of busking still on me.
From The Sacred Heart Cookbook
I bought a thing of string cheese which I melted into some farina, which I then added tomatoes and herbs to, aiming for a pizza-like flavor experience.
Pizza is just another food that utilizes the big three of wheat, tomato and cheese.
Lasagna, of course being basically a rearranged version as spaghetti with tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese over the top.
The difference maker is the way the wheat is prepared, since the tomato and cheese are pretty much stable.
When the wheat is made into bread is when the pizza emerges.
I think there is such a gravity towards those three ingredients that it makes people do things like putting ketchup on a cheeseburger, so they will have a pizza with a meat topping in disguise.
I used to like to dip grilled cheese sandwiches into my tomato soup. There you go again, minus the meat topping, unless it's a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, it's the same basic meal.
Since my dad was Irish, when I was growing up we would see the potato represented in about 6 suppers a week.
Boiled potatoes with ham and cabbage a lot of times.
Scalloped potatoes, baked potatoes, mashed or fried potatoes, and potatoes in shepherd’s pie, and in beef stew. It was like having something different for supper every night, though.
Wednesday or Thursday was spaghetti night. I think I recall that it was not Wednesday becauase we weren’t Italian and didn’t feel a need to adhere to their tradition.
Friday night, to give my mom a break from cooking at the end of the week, dad brought home two large pizzas. Two large pepperoni pizzas. Always from the same place, Thunderbird Pizza on River Street in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and always flat and heavy in the box and greasy.
I grew up thinking that pizza was just OK, nothing to throw a party over -the pizza from the cafeteria at school doing nothing to change this perception- not realizing that it was only the oily, spicy pepperoni that I thought was just OK.
My first slice of pizza that had just cheese, ground beef and onions was an epiphany. Plus, it was from a place that made their dough rise a bit more than Thunderbird's did.
But, upon getting home from making 8 bucks in the cold, I mixed farina with cheese, tomatoes, basil and oregano and had a near-pizza experience for under 3 bucks...
The next two days, to include fat Tuesday will be pivotal as far as my short-term finances are concerned.
A lot of tourists will be tipping “on the way out” on fat Tuesday, if the trend continues.
Exactly four years ago I posted the uncanny "71 dollars in less than 2 hours" which is an exact quotation from yesterday's post.
When I was in Gilroy, I left a valve not completely closed in the garden and then went off on an adventure that involved going and rescuing the land owner's car (or getting it stranded I forget) and came in late at night - also I was dealing with a horrible, horrible cold that had me barely able to talk - and remembered that one of our neighbors had left a sign about a water leak going onto their driveway, and it was almost midnight. I was like, Oh shit, I'd better take are of this. So I grabbed the big Mag-Lite from the owner's house and went out to have a look, Yep, it was a big leak all right. So these other neighbors, probably still being called "The New People" now, wondered what I was doing out looking around with a flashlight, and I said, "It's a leak, and I'm pretty sure it's my fault" and then the neighbor started going on about "hybervigilence" and how I should see a counselor at some program at Stanford etc. I said, "It's not a mental syndrome, it's a leak" and got a bit pissed so instead of just letting it wait until morning I went into the garden and checked things and sure enough, a valve wasn't tightened so I tightened it and the next day the puddle was gone.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty annoying when people dismiss you for being nuts when something is really going on. But what's more annoying is, I think the reason they thought I was nuts was, the owner of the place creating drama by telling the new neighbors I had PTSD or some damn thing. I wasn't living there much longer after this.
So you're one of them; one of the guys with the flashlights out there in the middle of the night; everyone thinks I'm imagining them, but what do they know?
ReplyDeleteYou see, maybe I'm not crazy!
Usually someone going around with a flashlight at night is scrounging scrap metal, looking for a lost pet, looking for some dropped keys, etc. So, I mean, it happens.
ReplyDelete