Black And White Go Together Just Right On My Zebra Cake

 It just rained pretty hard outside, with a lot of wind and it was probably a very small tropical depression that came through.

I managed to read about a quarter of "Oyster," by John Biguenet, so that is one book that will soon be transferred to the "finished" pile.

My goal is to clear the bed of reading materials by finishing them and then donating them to the multi-purpose room library.

Such high hopes the management once had for the multi-purpose room.

Foosball tournaments, ping-pong championships, a chess club, visiting volunteer instructors coming in to teach creative writing; another coming in to direct the Sacred Heart Chorale in a program of Christmas music, with the public invited. All pipe dreams.

There is a case full of puzzles and games. There is actually comfortable furniture that sits in a sun room that is all glass on the side that faces east.

When some group was shooting a movie here, or a made for TV show or something called "Black Box," they would use that room to have pizza and other stuff delivered there; it was kind of a cast and crew room; and whenever I looked in there, all of the twenty-somethings had their eyes glued to their phones; I guess they were homesick, or home screen sick, at least.

There was to be a gym and a computer room, with the latter just barely clinging to existence in the form of 2 out of 4 desktop computers that actually work, with the other two being frozen between porn sites.

I don't think I am using my time quite efficiently enough.

While I did read for a couple hours, and made progress on "Oyster," I still haven't been online except to check to see if this week's unemployment check was put into my account; and discovering an email from The Lidgley's.

I had opened my gmail and was about to send a message to them the very night before, after a gap of about 8 months in our communication. But, I decided to run to the store for beer and tobacco first, and then got sidetracked into upgrading my Linux system, and I totally forgot to send the email and was soon tired enough to lay down among the books on the bed and get a decent night's sleep.

Had I sent that email, it would have been in Alyne's inbox when she went to send me her message and it would have been quite a coincidence; the both of us contacting one another after 8 months of no contact...

There is a Christmas parcel on the way from London, was the gist of the message.

Bernie Sanders was on my TV at the same time; insisting that there will be another $1,200 stimulus check issued in time for Christmas, and so everything looks promising. I am being paid to not busk right now. Nothing spreads a virus like a harmonica, I imagine. The viruses must just shoot out of the thing and infect everyone within 12 feet.

I really make out like a bandit with those stimulus checks because all my bills are paid and I even get food stamps. The $1,200 is just spending money, like when I was a teenager living at home with my parents and could spend my whole paycheck from bagging groceries on CD's and clothing from The Gap.

It wasn't until I went out on my own that I understood that my parents had been trying to provide me with an education that would ensure that I could maintain at least that same standard of living.

A One Beer Night

Just one beer tonight, it was for me. I watched football for a couple hours; then was sure to snap the TV off before anything came on to draw me into watching longer. Some of the antenna stations run "marathons" of certain shows, and it is quite conceivable for someone shut in to watch every episode of The Partridge Family in one 36 hour sitting; as that was just run on the Decades station, I think it was.

Now they are airing every episode of M.A.S.H. 

I am sure I have probably seen about half of them, from when I was a high school aged kid and it was our routine to come home after school at about 3:15 pm, change out of our school uniforms and then run around outside, riding bikes around the neighborhood or whatever, until being "called" for supper.

I think M.A.S.H. came on at 4 pm. It was definitely after Speed Racer and Kimba the White Lion...

During the winter it was not so interesting outside in a barren snow covered world. Certainly not worth having to put on ski pants and a parka and boots along with gloves and a scarf just to walk around on crusty snow and ice. It got boring.

So, we would be inside, with the heat and the TV on.

And, now for something completely different: From "The Wood Database," I give you paulownia or "princess wood."

The other Balsa. Paulownia is used in applications where a lightweight (yet proportionately strong) wood is needed. It’s widely used in Japan for construction of the koto (a stringed musical instrument), as well as other household items, where the wood is referred to as Kiri. Paulownia is one of the fastest growing trees in the world, capable of growth rates of well over seven feet per year as a seedling! But while it’s highly appreciated and cultivated in Asia, Paulownia has come to be considered an invasive species in the United States.

Paulownia was named after Queen Anna Pavlovna of Russia (1795-1865), and is sometimes called Royal Paulownia or Princess Tree.

 

Every night before supper would come on shows like The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Three Stooges, and then we would be eating while Good Times played for nobody in the living room. I guess it was better than just the sound of us all chewing.

But then, we would be finished eating and would switch to the little black and white TV in the kitchen to catch All In The Family while we cleared the table and wiped and put away dishes.

The weird thing to me about Good Times was how the "live studio audience's" reacted to every line by clapping rather than, or much more so than laughing.

They would applaud a good joke. 

My younger brother and I used to mock that. We would sit, straight-faced, in front of the TV and clap right along with the studio audience, after J.J. Walker yelled "Dynomite!!" or whatever. If we actually laughed at all, it would be at ourselves clapping for the jokes.

That was a precursor to the type of "humor" that is prevalent today. It's not so much a knee slapping occasion, but more of a sardonic, derisive dig at, usually Donald Trump these past 4 years; meant to be scathing and insulting.

What I wasn't worldly enough to understand was that those "colored" shows were fraught with insinuations and coded jabs at "the system" and as such, are to be applauded as highly astute observations about of the plight of the person of color.

Under the guise of humor, they would be sort of funny, but would be things that you would imagine the black people ejaculating: "Ain't that the truth!!" over each punchline, -nothing really funny about temporary layoffs and easy-credit ripoffs, now, right?

Already could be seen the liberal, progressive left in its incubation period.

Just in the fact that the same station that drew us in with The Three Stooges would follow them with Good Times, when we had never seen a black person (in person) in our lives.*

With my first exposure to that culture being J.J. Walker, is it any surprise that I see a lot of "jive turkey" in blacks, to this very day?

My best friend David's oldest sister was about 16 and us, 11, when she found Soul Train on one of the UHF stations (that required manipulation of the loop antenna to pull in) one Saturday morning when I was over.

"Let's watch the jungle bunnies dance," she said, as if to rationalize her choice of programs.

15 Years ago; not much has changed since...

So, "All In The Family" came on each weekday night, while we were washing and wiping and putting away the dishes (where do the little yellow plastic ears of corn things, used to hold corn on the cob, go, anyways? Oh, yeah, in the draw with the turkey carving knife and the potato masher). Sooner or later the "Decades" station will run a marathon of those shows, and I will probably find that I have seen at least half of them..

But, in 1977 there was already a liberal agenda at work, as I'm sure the writers for All In The Family saw themselves as agents of social change, with the burlesque that was Archie Bunker being "wrong" every episode. Ain't that the truth, though...

Meathead and Gloria were "right" and compassionate, and kind of the mouthpieces for the writers, in lieu of soapboxes. I'm pretty sure the Reiner family had their fingerprints all over the show.

Already it is half past midnight, and I have to wrap this up because there are a million other things to do...

Like go to Youtube to see who commented on my comments; same for Facebook; and then I have to listen to a 30 minute musical thing I did on Audacity, to try to distill it down to about 7 minutes of good music.

To Sound It Out

The plan is to write a few songs while just trying to sound out "Free As A Bird," by The Beatles, featuring a posthumous part by John Lennon. 

I have had success doing that in the past -grabbing the guitar trying to sound out some song; totally guessing the chords. Plenty of happy accidents have produced some of my best songs.

John Mayer said something like; a person's singing style comes from failing to sound like someone you want to sound like. What you are left with is "your" voice. It's the same idea when trying to sound a song out of thin air.

I have settled on the drum pattern, though. I will record the song to what comes out of the Casio keyboard on whatever setting it is that most suits "Free" and then will go on a parallel track and superimpose .wav files of actual drums in place of the lower fidelity drums out of the Casio.

I have been discovering a lot of the "extra" percussion instruments like the bongos and djembas (sp?) and other things from around the world that are struck in some way to produce sound. Yesterday's song: "The Zebra Cake Song" really benefited from the addition of bongos.

That one just needs more lyrics than "Last night I went to my fridge to retrieve my Zebra Cake; it was cool. Black and White go together just right on my Zebra Cake..."

I can try to foster racial harmony through my art, too, I guess.

*The first black person I saw was Almetha Ford, who came to our Catholic high school when I was a Senior and she a sophomore.

She was on the girl's track team and threw the javelin, honest to God. Somewhere near the back of the yearbook there was a photo of her doing just that, with the caption of "Another good throw for Almetha!" I remember that. That was a racist thing to put in the yearbook; but she is the one who brought the whole javelin thing upon herself. She could have done the high hurdles and flown under the radar that way. Almetha Ford...I wonder where she is today. Facebook to the rescue?