The Trash And The Shell Casings

 Pathetic

I saw this living statue guy when I first looked through the webcam and he was the only thing in the street. He was holding perfectly still; for nobody.

I was hoping that he isn't a desperate addict who needs to do the living statue thing on a 56 degree Monday night, just so he won't have the shakes in the morning from lack of alcohol. Terrible thing for a living statue; the shakes...that could make him work unsteady, for sure.

Then, I saw this group of 4 people walking towards the corner. I saw them look the way of the living statue; and not give him even a dollar.

I typically give the living statues at least a dollar, if I make at least 34 dollars, myself (35 minus a dollar for the statue). They usually say "thank you" without even moving their mouths...

Then, in the time it took me to load up for another screen shot, the above was the scene. The poor living statue had been moved by indifference to pick up his bucket and make that lonely walk home; where he hopefully lives alone and not with some roommate who might be in the habit of skeezing cigarettes off the guy, who is going to belittle him, and maybe try to shame him into finding a new profession.

And I hope a fight doesn't break out after the living statue tells the roommate: "I don't see you going out there and standing perfectly still for 3 hours; but you can sit for 3 hours on the couch, watching TV and running up the electric bill! And, where's the rest of that pizza I left in the fridge?!" type of thing...

Tourists know enough to stay away from New Orleans during the Grambling vs. Southern University football weekend. So, after those students leave, there are never any other tourists in town; Just a few crews, sweeping up the trash and the shell casings, getting the place ready to go back to normal next week...

...Not Even A Mouse

 

Did I just not see my favorite mule; on the webcam?

It is still kind of early. I went and got batteries for my amp and I would play just for the fun of it; but; wearing down the batteries just to regale my mule?? I don't know..,

It's about eight in the evening and I'm trying to get a guitar sound out of a combination of amps that I pulled out of the closet wherein there is actually a lot of electronic stuff that was given to me; a lot of it by Bobby, and then there i the amp that Jacob brought over that's speaker doesn't sound but that has sound coming out of the headphone jack, which can be run to another amp, like my portable Yamaha that has its own effects, in line with the effects from the first amp.

What I am getting at is an Adrian Belew type of setup, as that guy is famous for rigging up odd combinations of electronics in order to get sounds like elephants from the guitar.

Elephants that are afraid of mice.

College Kids Of Color Come Calling

I guess that explains why there were police at every street corner all along the trolley tracks that I rode into the Quarter, and then at every corner all along Royal Street.

A stop at the Unique Grocery, to spend a couple of the 3 dollars that I was down to, after having messed up and drank that (Satur)day was the occasion of a young black kid standing in front and yelling at the security guy inside to take off his badge and his gun and to come outside and fight the guy, who had been caught trying to shoplift or something; maybe he thought it to be peaceful looting.

Whatever it was, the security guard was being accused of being "prejudiced" and the kid maintaining that the only reason the guard was exerting force over him, i.e. kicking him out of the store, was that he had a gun on him. Had he been unarmed, the kid would have stayed in the store and stolen whatever he wanted, I guess was his point. Darned gun...

This is what tipped me off and reminded me that it was indeed the time of the annual football game between the two "black" colleges, Grambling and Southern University. There has been at least one shooting every one of the 12 years that I have been here and have either played of not played during that weekend.

Two years ago (last time because of missing a year because of the ooga booga) I just took the night off. "I don't blame you," said Tim the security guy up front.

But, I could also remember a year when I made something like 85 bucks because I was doing white boy music and kids respected the fact that I wasn't trying to pander like other buskers who were breaking out their lame versions of Motown stuff, which just seemed to get a lot of head shakes; and no tips. Then, of course they started to hate "all these f*** n***s" and of course it was down hill from there. But there has been an annual shooting, usually in the vicinity of where fried chicken is sold, or by the Krystals...

 This is the way that those scholars typically act each year. It seems that alcohol has a more debilitating effect upon African Americans. Probably because their mothers drank and did drugs while pregnant with them, unable to go nine hours, never mind nine months without getting some kind of buzz to cope with the stress of being pregnant.

The new phone arrives; will it have better sound recording capabilities?

But, this is the pot calling the kettle black perhaps, as I was in the store to get my own can of what turned out to be Old Milwaukee beer, a brew that I haven't had since 1989. I remember that time; I had gotten a 24 pack of the stuff and was carrying it to my apartment in a complex which was half U Mass college students, and the rest, low income and welfare people. It made for a unique environment, where most of the college kids had no idea that their neighbors were trading food stamps for hard drugs and living off welfare, having kids out of wedlock who wound up becoming currency in the sex trade as soon as they reached their teen age years...

The college kids went to the bus stop, carrying their books, and every couple days, one of the apartments in the place would have its windows open with loud music coming out, and the place full of dancing kids, wherein there would be a few kegs of beer.

The skeezer element would try to befriend these kids, and it created a kind of symbiotic relationship between everyone. Crime was relatively low because the welfare people knew a golden goose when they saw one, and there wouldn't be any violence directed at the college kids, even though it might be happening in the next apartment over from them..

So, I was carrying my 24 pack and this certain white guy whom I had seen around and knew only through smoking weed approached.

I sold weed to a guy who knew him. That is usually the only bridge between the college kids and the other society. If the college kid wanted to smoke wee, then the twain would meet.

That changed all the rules and skewed the crime statistics as, with the familiarity that came between the weed dealer in the college kid also came a certain license that the drug culture felt they had; and that kid's bike might wind up being stolen, or he might be jumped for the money in his pocket. Relationships based upon drugs are funny that way. It might be that the skeezers are emboldened by having the dirt on the college kid that the kid smoked weed, and that might cause him to hesitate in reporting his bike stolen to the police; the police might smell weed when coming to fill out the report and the kid didn't want to risk that. Weed can spawn that kind of paranoia in the mind.

So, up approached this guy, who did some kind of work when he did that had him covered in black roofing tar or something, which never totally washed out of his clothes and so he looked kind of dirty all the time.

"Hey, man, can I have one of your old millwaters?"

He was insulting the beer that I thought was not bad at all, even though it is kind of cheap. Funny how people will assume some things are inferior just because they are cheap. They might complain about someone serving them Ramen noodles and think they should have served them something better, when in fact there isn't anything wrong with the noodles, they are just really cheap, and thus, the worst food you could eat, in some people's minds..

"If you think they taste like mill water, why do you want one?" I said, and initially refused to give him one. I guessed his point was to make me feel like: why not give a few away, since they are just a cheap and nasty beer made from mill water. Is "mill water' that nasty? Isn't it the stream that turns the huge water wheel thing that turns the thing that grinds the grain in the mill? That might be some of the purest water there is...I thought.

"Just because it doesn't cost as much as Heineken, doesn't mean that it sucks, I don't drink this to save money..." I went on.

I think I eventually gave him one, but not before getting him to begrudgingly admit that Old Milwaukee "isn't that bad."

So, I was amused to see that the Unique Store carried that brew, and that the label had been changed to a plain white can with small red writing; no more picture of a mill, or whatever used to be on it.. And, it was, of course, cheap. And it wasn't bad.

By the time I reached Tanya Huang, who was playing on the corner of St. Louis and Royal Streets, the same guy who had been yelling at the security guard was now standing on the side of Tanya, seeming like he was trying to get attention. Tanya had said something to another tourist about another subject and the kid was saying: "Was that for me, are you talking about...?" and then referred to some thing, maybe his manner of dress that he was, in the manner of a schizophrenic, taking to mean that Tanya was insulting him, over her microphone for the benefit of all 15 or so people whom she might have been directing her comments to.

The kid dropped a dollar in her bucket and then said something like: "See, I'm paying you.." as if that meant that she owed him attention or something.

I had stopped and gotten off my bike and I pushed it up onto the sidewalk, intending to say I didn't know what to Tanya, maybe something about how that same guy had just been making a fool of himself at the Unique Store, when the kid, upon seeing me, turned and walked across the street. Maybe he had made some kind of schizophrenic connection between seeing me at Unique's and then there and it had caused him to run off.

I just nodded my head at Tanya, and looked in the direction of the retreating nuisance as if to say "That's all I was trying to do; I didn't really have anything I wanted to say to you.."

The streets were packed with cops and black college kids and I was impressed by how insecure those black kids are; talking extra loud as if trying to run everything by other people in order to get their approval or not. "You heard me? You heard me? You heard me?" echoes down the streets. There was transparent false bravado and I got icy stares everywhere I went.

I never lost my generally good mood and my acceptance of the fact that they probably wouldn't tip any more than the 7 bucks that I made, playing for about an hour until the amp batteries died. I had accepted it and was happy and grateful and I realize that this -playing for blacks who are trying to show off for each other- is just a stepping stone from the time before, to a better time afterwards...

Maintaining my feeling of happiness and gratitude will, in hindsight, have set me up for a much better night tonight.

The Patriots just won handily and I am going out to get batteries for another 3 and a half hours of busking. It is a pleasant 57 degrees out. I couldn't be happier or more grateful...

I am tempted to get a beer or two though I know that has proven to not be a good idea that last two times. It's just hard to imagine right now how it could screw up my whole night; it takes about 5 beers to do that....

A Somewhat Deflating 15 Dollar Friday

The night of the Saint's game came. 

It was the piss poor excuse for why I hadn't gone out and played the night before, when it had been an unseasonably warm 63 degrees and the webcam was showing several bewildered looking people clad in Buffalo Bills shirts. If those shirts didn't give them away as being tourists, that status was driven home by the amount of interest they were showing in things that have long ago merged with, and melted into the background, to anyone who has lived here for any length of time.

Just as many residents of the Quarter walk past me night after night, without really seeing or hearing me, as if I might just be a street light; green if I'm playing "Imagine," red if "People Are Strange," or yellow if one of my Grateful Dead songs, but going unnoticed by someone on foot, whom the light isn't meant for; there are other things visible in the webcam shot that when seen being gawked at by someone in a Buffalo Bills shirt, immediately paints that person as a tourist, merely because their attention was drawn to it. Standing bemusedly a few feet from the human statue who poses on the corner of Dumaine and Bourbon Streets watching it do nothing for more than a few seconds, during which the now obvious tourists become so transfixed that they too become frozen in time; as if they have never seen anything like it in their lives, is a good example.

A little girl holds the hand of a murderer

 

The reason I hadn't gone out the night before was so I would be well rested and ready to show up at the Girod Street spot under the stairwell where I had played dozens of times before, for fans on their way into the dome and then, later, on their way out.

But, that was back in the drinking days; when it was a ritual of mine to take whatever I made off the people on the way in and take it to the Rouses Market right down the street from the stadium -the big one that has a large variety of beer. 

While the game was going on and everyone was glued to their seats, I would watch it on one of Rouses TVs, while drinking a Paulaner bock beer, usually. That is one of the cool things about New Orleans, being able to drink in public. I always feared that if some other cities passed similar laws, then New Orleans would lose its uniqueness in that regard. Kind of like when Atlantic City allowed casinos so that people no longer had to fly to Vegas to gamble.

It still is an interesting racket, the gambling in Vegas, and how they almost have a monopoly on it. Now it is split between Atlantic City, Biloxi Mississipi and Vegas.

So, when I wound up not making it to the game in time to play, it might have been a good thing, depending upon how strong the muscle memory would have been for me to run to Rouses for a high quality beer during the game.

Plus, the home team lost something like 30 to zero, and that meant that people would have been leaving early; and not really in a tipping mood.

But, the Buffalo people seemed to be.

Jacob and I played for what probably amounted to 2 and a half hours, and there was somehow 63 bucks in a combination of the basket and my back pocket, where I immediately stuff bills larger than ones.

But, even as I sit here it is Saturday evening. I got a flat tire on the bike, but it hadn't deflated until it was home. I found the little piece of wire and pulled it out and patched it; and now I go to push the bike to the Shell to pump up the tire, using one of the 15 bucks that I made last night, playing for almost 2 hours, for a somewhat sparse crowd. What worked against me the most, though was that the bar had its outdoor speakers playing some pretty crappy music that I wasn't even up to trying to play along with.

I drank a couple beers and, once again, they contributed to me wanting to knock off earlier than I had to. Plus, the temperature had dipped into the mid 40's and, instead of putting my sweatshirt on and continuing, I just left. The batteries on my amp were getting low, I think. Even though I tested it a while ago and it played OK for about 10 minutes. I guess I will pick up another set of 8 of them from the Dollar Store, or maybe go to the Family Dollar to see if their "alkaline" batteries are comparable in price and last at least the same 3 hours that I've been getting out of the Dollar General brand ones....

P(l)aying The Bills

Why Didn't I Just Go?!

A look at the webcam on Bourbon Street last night revealed a sight to behold indeed...but I can't look back..I can't think of what might have been...

I saw Buffalo Bills shirts on almost everyone on my screen.

It wasn't really crowded, as far as Wednesday nights go; but the Bills shirts meant that the town had been taken over by people who had come down here for tonight's game.

I could have made so much money off them; I packed my gear up at about 9 p.m. and thought about how I could be there playing before 9:30 and then could go until after midnight. The temperature was in the 60's -a rare occurrence on a November 24th. Maybe a sign of climate change for the worst; maybe it would melt the polar ice caps and New Orleans would be under 12 feet of water in a few days; but, I could have a good night tip-wise before that happened.

But, then I thought about tonight's game, and how the Caeser's Dome will be full of football fans, there to watch a nationally televised game, and how half of them would be Bills fans, from Buffalo, New York, and how I would relate to them.

They would be the people that I am used to, the ones I grew up with; I would be able to get them to throw money in my basket, just by saying the right things and playing the right songs. And, they would be able to look at me and see that; despite my having grown my hair out and lived in the redneck south for almost half my life; I was still one of them.

Even the snobbery that is the hallmark of the elite, who can afford to fly to New Orleans from Buffalo for a vacation and to watch a football game, would become a non factor. 

It wouldn't be like one of their own had eschewed a college degree and the corporate ladder, and chosen to sit on the sidewalk with a tip jar and play music -those types they would punish if they saw them in Buffalo. 

"To those that have, more will be given, but to those who have not, even what little they have will be taken" would be the philosophy of these Buffalo Bill jersey wearing tourists, had they encountered me in Buffalo.

But, take me out of that environment and place me on Bourbon Street and I become like an exotic animal in a zoo, one they will want to feed, just to see how it eats. The fact that I have been transplanted here from where they come from will only awaken in them some sense that I could be them, had they had the courage to turn away from the status quo and had refused to become a cog in the corporate wheel, but pursued a different dream instead.

"I could never do what you do, I'd be afraid of not making anything. I guess I need the security of a steady job with a paycheck I can count on every week," they often say, as they are putting a large tip in my basket.

But, so much for not looking back..

People Really Live On This Kind Of Stuff?

I had picked up the large box that I had won in the Sacred Heart Apartments annual turkey raffle and unpacked it.

Just as I had done last year, after winning one of the things -they raffle off 30 of them to among the 120 or so residents; but in previous years, you had to sign up and not everyone wound up doing so, so the chances were about 50% that you would win one. 

This year, they automatically entered every resident. This was probably done as a way to push social justice because some of the residents here are probably too mentally ill to sign up for the turkey giveaways, and so had probably never stood a chance of winning. Being entered automatically means that some people who might not have even known there was an annual Turkey Giveaway might get one.

Now we will have to see if they are too mentally ill to bake the thing without setting the fire alarms off, or without taking the bird out of the plastic wrapper, type of thing.

$244/Hr.

But, I thought about how I planned to play outside the Caesers Dome and how I wanted to be well rested and ready to do so. That was always something that I marked on my calendar for all 10 of their home games and it was usually a guaranteed 35 dollars, with up to 88 bucks being made one game.

It's a different kind of busking, though, which is kind of a break from having to meticulously perform songs so that people nearby can make out the lyrics and pay attention to details such as harmonica solos.

When the swarm of people are going past it is more a matter of being heard, or at least seen by them, whereupon maybe those 30 people out of 2,500 will throw something in the basket. It is over relatively quickly with the bulk of the crowd rushing past in a noisy herd, and then 20 minutes later maybe one or two stragglers on an otherwise empty street.

So, about making 88 bucks in 20 minutes, if I was into skewing statistics, I suppose I could brag about making up to $244/hr. busking,

That's what I was thinking about when I decided to go into the turkey raffle box and make French toast using the wheat rolls and the eggs that came with it.

Everything else in the box made me shake my head over "How can people live off stuff like this?"

The turkey itself is something that I can get away with eating, if I make sure I am doing some physical activity, to burn it off.

But, there was a 3 pound bag of white flour, another one of white sugar, a package of margarine (made of hydrogenated oils) and a gallon of cow's milk.

Cows milk! I can say that I've never bought a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread in my life (Except for a brief flirtation with a couple loaves of "Dave's Bread," which I bought thinking that it might not have the hydrogenated oils or the bleached flour of typical bread, but still found that I wasn't feeling 100% after eating it, which had as much to do with the butter and jam that I loaded it up with, as with the bread itself).

And, I have never had a regular doctor in my life either. 

I went to one in 2001, when I was having heart palpitations, but that turned out to be from drinking up to 7 energy drinks during the first part of each day, and then switching to red wine at night, with cigarette smoking throughout...

And then, there was some virus I got in 2010 that apparently lived in the mucous membranes but made my skin extremely vulnerable to infections, so that every little thorn scratch turned into one. The doctor at the emergency room made it a point to tell me that anyone can get that particular virus, rich or poor, and that it had nothing to do with me living in the woods.

I will say that, since the age of about 40, I have been to an emergency room a half dozen times, for "emergency" tooth extractions. 

During those visits, I would be subjected to the scare tactic of being told that tooth infections are a systemic thing and that my heart and my other organs were being taxed by the infection, and that it could spread and infect my bones. I don't know if they still push that, or if the theory has gone the way of putting leaches on people's skin to suck the bad blood out of us...

I do know that some evil group of people are hellbent upon making tons of money selling pharmaceuticals; and that the FDA is being funded by the very businesses they are supposedly regulating, if Russell Brand's research and reporting is to be believed.

That would make some sense out of President Nottrump begging everyone to get, what is it now 4 doses? 

You can't mention natural (I-word) in a blog post, or it will get taken down, nor blog about anything in pill form that would make people's chances of dying from the uggabooga almost nil; or about the same as winning the Lotto (but without the Power Ball, Fauci might point out).

I have been having people after me, wanting me to send them friend requests on Facebook (because I apparently ignored the ones they sent me, even though they were all "beautiful women") and recently Russell Brand "himself" asked me to contact him using a special "WhatsApp" number.

The tip-off that these are bogus is that every response to a comment I made was a very terse "You are spot on!" or "100% true!" or "Excellent Point!" and then, the request for me to message them somewhere so we can "share ideas," or whatever.

"Spot on!" can be cut and pasted on to millions of people's comments on the web. Had the person (or robot) actually personalized it by referring to at least one tidbit of the comment I made, maybe I might have considered contacting them. So we can meet in person. Right..

A Trojan Bird?

But, the turkey raffle box almost came into my apartment like a ticking time bomb.

Instead of going out to make the money that I knew I could have made off the Buffalo Bills fans, I stuffed my face with French Toast slathered in date syrup and honey and a sprinkling of cinnamon and salt. Then, I soon just wanted to put the self help dialogues on and lay down..

Waking up, feeling the effects of the French Toast, and realizing that I was out of cat food and almost everything else, but that I probably could have made 50 to 80 bucks on a night that was an unusually warm 63 degrees, could have sent me into a tailspin that I might still be in.

But, instead, I used the secret of The Law of Attraction, and came up with 3 things that I was happy and grateful about.

The very next thing I did was to step outside Sacred Heart, to go look for tobacco in the ashtray at the bar up the street. I had avoided walking past Harold in the parking lot because I didn't have any food for him, and he had been out all night, since I hadn't gone to play and make plenty of money for food for him, but had filled myself with food and gone to sleep instead.

I encountered an older lady in a wheel chair, who lives here and who asked me if I would go to the store to get a pint of vodka for her (the sun was just about to come up, so I guess it was almost drinking time). She said she would give me a couple cigarettes for the trouble.

She handed me a 5 dollar bill, telling me that the vodka came to exactly 5 dollars.

That sounded to me like she was getting it from one of the mom and pop stores where they are at liberty to round things to the nearest dollar for convenience, rather than at a chain store like the Shell station where the sales tax needs to be explicitly added to the purchase price, verifiable through the receipt, and will almost never land on an exact dollar amount. It might be $4.98 or $5.03 and I was skeptical.

I thought the old lady might have been assuming that I would reach into my own pocket to cover the tax, rather than returning to Sacred Heart with her 5 dollars and telling her: "Sorry, this wasn't enough..." As if she was counting on me being a good enough person that I would hate to see her be disappointed; and would take pity upon her because she is an elderly lady in a wheel chair.

I suppose I should have taken pity on her, it dawned upon me, as the sun was about to rise on Thanksgiving morning...so I pushed the thought out of my head that the old lady was playing me for privileged white boy who was going to cough up the tax on her vodka, and was able to get into a happy and grateful frame of mind.

As soon as I had done that, from out of the doorway emerged a second figure in a wheelchair; an older black guy who, upon hearing that I was going to the store, asked me if I would get him a bottle of Smirnov and a pack of Kool cigarettes, giving me 11 dollars, and telling me that I could keep the change.

At the store, the lady's vodka indeed rung up at $4.99 plus tax, but the change from the guy's vodka and cigarettes was just enough to cover it, with 16 cents left over.

I got back to Sacred Heart, where the guy gave me 4 of his cigarettes and the lady 1 of hers -enough to keep me going using the one hitter into which I put only a pinch of tobacco every 45 minutes or so, as I sit here on the computer, for most of the day. 

Back inside my place, with a hungry Harold, I decided to try again one of the cans of Fancy Feast that a lady had bought for him at Winn Dixie, but which he didn't seem to like the first couple times I tried it. He ravenously ate it, along with a second can. I have 20 of them left. Hopefully he scarfed it down because he was 8 hours behind his feeding schedule but found it to be to his liking, even though the smell of it might have dissuaded him the first time. 

Soon, it will be time to leave for the Caesar's Dome, to set up in the spot that I discovered about 7 years ago, which is under a staircase that throws the sound outward a bit, and is across the street from where the cops would tell a busker that he couldn't play, and in between two other spots that have uniformed people patrolling them. The one little piece of property where I play just happens to have nobody in charge of running buskers from it. It's kind of a handicap access ramp behind a building. How I ever found it can probably just be chalked up to the dumb luck and serendipity that has been hovering over me ever since I decided to start busking, back in 2007. But it also ties in to the fact that I started my day by helping out a couple people in wheel chairs and will wind up playing right by a wheelchair ramp. Either you believe everything is connected, or you don't I suppose...

In 2007, I was in Jacksonville, playing in front of different Kangaroo and Circle K stores according to a schedule that I had to keep of which cashiers were working inside at which time. Some of them seemed to resent the fact that I was out front making more money than what their hourly wage was for cashiering; while others applauded me for my initiative, and offered me free coffee. It all depended upon the cultural values of whatever countries the cashiers emigrated from.

If I were to use that as a rough barometer, should I ever want to tour the world as a busker (beginning in about a year, after I start getting social security and get a passport) I should think that I would do well to busk in Morocco and Spain and Italy, but not so much Russia or Albania; and stay the hell out of Puerto Rico; those cashiers were bitches...

It's been a long strange trip to go from looking for a Kangaroo to play in front of, to looking to travel the world with a guitar on my back; but I suppose that is the life I am attracting to myself.

Time to brush up on "Marrakesh Express..."  

If I Don't Stay On The Charts

"Damn, it's slow out here. I don't even see no money baskets to grab!"

 

There are times when I feel weak and insecure and wish I had a Significant Other to give me pep talks and send me out there with a kiss...

These times often fall on Tuesday evenings...

"Honey, I leaned your guitar against the wall by your bike...and, could you toss those empty Häagen-Dazs containers in the dumpster on your way out, er, or bring one with you so you remember to get the right flavor; so I won't have to send you back out at 3 in the morning again..?

Have fun...remember, more Beatles songs, dear! I'll be waiting up!"

Yup, a Significant Other...

I did run through "The Entertainer," by Billy Joel, from his first album...years before Christie Brinkley came along and p***y whipped him, to the tune that he wrote songs like "Tell Her About It," and "Leave A Tender Moment Alone," the first of which gives the relationship advice to "tell her all your crazy dreams," or alternately, you need to know when "the moment isn't right to tell her a comical line" and so, just "Leave a tender moment alone."

Talk about conflicting  messages; from a guy that a whole generation of young men had put on a pedestal, and then looked up to, for wisdom, and guidance in how to land a supermodel as a wife.

By the time Billy's breakup with Christie became public knowledge everyone was just as baffled as him over why any man would ever "go to extremes" over a woman like that...

The first time I ever played "The Entertainer" at the Lilly Pad, it was about 3:45 in the afternoon, and during the last verse, a woman came running over from the direction of the bar and dropped 43 dollars in my basket, and then hurried off. I still remember that it was a 20, a 10, a 5 and 8 singles.

Left: I just need to polish up the verses a bit, and see if I can double the little synthesizer line at the end of every verse on the harmonica and guitar. That would be a real show stopper... 

        "I am the entertainer; I know just where I stand.

Another serenader, another long-haired band.

Today I am your champion; I may have won your hearts.

But I know the game, you'll forget my name

I won't be here in another year; if I don't stay on the charts..."

I figured that she had probably just broken a 50 dollar bill to buy a 5 dollar bottle of beer at Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern, and had probably tipped the bartender a couple bucks, tipper that she seemed to be...
And now is a good time to pass along this tidbit of busking wisdom, gained through a 15 year practice:

It is good to do obscure songs by artists who also have big hit songs that everyone knows. People who are huge fans of these artists like to have a chance to demonstrate their loyalty by the fact that they have every one of his/her albums and know every song he/she ever did. And that is where "B sides" and "deep cuts" from lesser known albums come in.

I got a similar response once, when playing "Harmony," by Elton John, which is the B side to a very famous 45 rpm single.

"That brings back memories," the 50 something, well dressed man had said while dropping a 20, and a few singles, in my basket.

"I guess I wasn't the only kid who flipped "Bennie and the Jets" over, out of curiosity..." I said, which got a smile.

 

Kudos To Google For Non Woke Pixel 6 Commercial

Reset To Zero

I got a beer when I was at the Shell, getting kratom this afternoon.

Out of the blue, without too much thinking, except for the fact that I had made the 39 bucks the night before; and that the batteries for the portable amp were a lot cheaper than the 10 bucks I figured they would be.

They last about 3 hours in the amp, for a total of $2.17.

I sort of knew better than to ruin the 24 days sober. 

I guess I had forgotten why drinking had become so much of a pain in the butt that I purposely spent the remainder of my money on the night that I purposed to quit, and that I would use a juice fast, into a water fast to give me ten times my normal will power.

But, the beer tasted like beer did the first time I ever drank it. That would have been as an 11 year old, and would have been stealthily sipped out of my best friend's father's mug of it, which would have been left unattended on one of the steps of a ladder that he was using to scrape paint off the side of my best friend's house.

Dave's father would pour his Shlitz out of the can and into a thick, glass mug, which would not only keep it a lot colder than in the can, but would allow a head to foam up, which releases an aromatic component which is crucial to enjoying the full flavor of beer. They say that, when your nose is stuffed up so that you can't smell anything, it makes it so you can't taste anything either.

I suppose that's right; I just held my nose shut and took a sip off my coffee and I guess I couldn't taste it...

But, last night's beer reminded me of why I quit, for 24 days, and now 1 again.

It made me cantankerous and prone to abandon my adherence to The Law of Attraction, and to dwell upon the things that I didn't want, namely skeezers. And it made me stop for another 24 ounce can on the way to the Lilly Pad.

I was playing alright, and enjoying it, but the darkness was creeping in, like shadows when the sun is about to set, and, after I had made only about 10 bucks, I decided that I just didn't want to play any more. Right about that time, the street was starting to fill up with people, with probably a hundred within my vicinity. Who knows how much money I could have made, but, with the second can of beer finished, and only about a half hour of playing in, I just packed up and left.

As I was doing so, a tourist, seeing the sea of bodies coming down the street actually said: "He's leaving now?"

The best I can do to make sense out of it was that the alcohol had turned me into kind of a jerk, which included being a jerk to myself. I was taking myself out of a situation where I could have made enough to live comfortably for the rest of the week, telling myself that I had kratom and a nicotine vape and a can of food for Harold, as I ran for the shelter of my apartment, where a hot bath and YouTube waited for me.

And, of course, I would get fourth beer while picking up another can of food for Harold at the CVS, looking askance at all the skeezers I passed along the way there. In case it seems that I leapfrogged from the second to the fourth beer, that's because I stopped at the Unique Grocery, to see if they happened to sell cat food, even though I was 99% sure that they didn't and grabbed a beer while in there; for the walk to the CVS, I supposed.

And, true to the laws of The Law, it became a night of skeezers. Because I was focusing hatred upon them; I was attracting them like I was a skeezer magnet.

There was a loud, drunk heavyset black lady that was griping about something at the top of her voice.

"Damn, imagine living with that, and having to hear that every day and night?!" I asked the nearest person to me at the beer cooler...

Then, to a middle aged white guy, whose uncertainty when looking around the store, as if he was wondering which of the 3 registers he should go to, and the way he just deferred to the loud black lady after she brusquely cut in front of him and then started demanding certain scratch tickets of the cashier, painted him as definitely a tourist. He had kind of shrugged his shoulders as if he was thinking: I guess that's the custom down here, you just cut in front of people, every man for himself...

The Ethiopian staff in there are like the guy from Ghana that I worked for in Charlottesville, back in the early 2000's. While having brown skin, these guy's who came here from Africa harbored the same disdain for the same skin-toned, yet damaged culture of the African American.

"I can't stand these n****rs," said my manager, Modou, from Ghana, as if feeling more of a rapport with me than with those that happened to have the same skin color as he. "They think everything is owned by the white man, and it's OK to steal everything, and that's not right!" said Modou, as that was his name.

He was shrewd enough in the business sense, after having taken over, a gas station that had been hemorrhaging money to the tune of around $2,200 a month, as manager, and tasked with remedying the situation.

His approach was to fire the all African American staff and replace them with white workers. This plugged the biggest breach in the dike, as, I never stole from the business, and neither did another white lady named Brenda, who was married to a black man and felt that, as such, she was under intense scrutiny by white community members who would have been quick to judge her as having been corrupted by her husband, had she ever have been caught stealing.

Race relations in Charlottesville in the early 2000's are beyond the scope of this post, but it was easy for me to read between the lines and figure out what happened years later with the protesters and counter protesters and Trump saying that there were "good people on both sides."

Modou came from a very morally strict country in "The Ghana," as he called it. He told me a story about 2 homosexuals that ran a certain restaurant, and were espied by one of the patrons, who, unbeknownst to them could see a reflection of them off a glass door or something, kissing each other in the kitchen area; well, on the lips, but while standing in the kitchen area...

The news spread to all twenty or so customers in the seating area, who all, as if on cue, put their utensils and glasses down without taking another bite of food that they now deemed tainted. The 2 gay guys found an empty restaurant when they emerged from the kitchen area.

Soon, the authorities entered and arrested the 2 of them, bringing them out into the street where they were both summarily executed by gunshots to their heads.

So, it seemed almost ordained that, after replacing the staff at the gas station with an all white crew, and finding that, while not having nearly the problem of losing $2,200 a month, there was still the problem of someone stealing smaller amounts and it turned out to be Rene, who was a flabbily fat lesbian who worked there.

She devised a way to steal around 50 bucks every night; and do it in such a way that whomever worked the shift after her got blamed. 

She would victimize new employees. Several of them never became old employees, due to Rene's machinations that made their money come up short every night (that they worked the shift after Rene's). Most of them just quit rather than be accused of being a thief. That would be White Pride in action.     

But, I guess my point is that the Ethiopians at The Unique Grocery harbor Ethiopian Superiority over the African Americans whom they encountered upon arriving in this country. 

An older black guy approached me in CVS, asking for "a few dollars, so I can get me something to eat.." and then, after giving me a spiel that sounded like a well rehearsed and oft rehashed line; he paused, and then asked: "Well, what do you think?"

"You don't want to know what I'm thinking," I said, and then just ignored him until he spotted another potential victim, and went off to skeeze her.

I became full of hatred for almost all the street people I saw; deeming them to be skeezers; without having any evidence.

I found reasons to hate them; and was prepared to be begged by them; before they even spoke to me. It was the alcohol talking, I realized, because I hadn't had those kind of thoughts over the 24 days that I had quit.

Anyway, I didn't feel like playing after I had made a few bucks; I just left when it was so busy I had to push my way through the people just to get out of there...

And it reminded me why I quit drinking 24 days prior. It makes me over critical of the black people down here, among other things...

The Verdict Reveals: There Still Exists A Sub Class Of The Unwoke

I was happy to see a commercial for a Google Pixel 6 that depicted a small black boy enjoying his Pixel 6 and then showed that he had 2 parents in the house, who weren't a mixed couple, or a couple of gay guys or lesbians. There was even shown an elderly black man wearing a beard that said: grandfather. 

Wow, Google has finally figured out that woke people aren't likely to be able to afford the Pixel 6.

The "Doctor Huxtable" nuclear family role model might be making a comeback...It was starting to get irritating, how many recent commercials doubled as woke virtue signals. Like every product was designed for freaks who would be dragged into the streets and shot if this were the Ghana; but who are a privileged class in this bastion of freedom of a country.

I'll bet that Google had 2 different commercials ready to go for the Pixel 6, dependent upon the outcome of the Rittenhouse case, to run during Sunday Night Football. The sane commercial, and the woke one.

They ran the one that is targeted towards the people who can actually afford the Pixel 6, rather than at the inner city driftwood blacks who can't even afford school books, never mind Pixel 6's.

Good job, Google!

Now just don't censure this post...

$15.60/Hr. Friday Night

My sound has rebounded nicely, almost as good as before the pandemic after just 4 days back on the job.

8 p.m, and almost time for me to go out there...

Jacob and I started playing right around midnight, Friday, until about 2:40 Saturday morning.

There weren't a whole lot of tourists, and a little black guy who carries a bass drum around, which he plays and sings along with, was on the scene, but was just sitting in one of the chairs in front of the bar, talking to one of the bartenders instead of banging away.

I can tolerate him for about 20 minutes every now and then, and since the residents who live in the block can't tolerate him any longer themselves, we have been able to coexist.

Though he does have a tendency to move in on any group that might be gathered around me to try to drum up some money for himself, out of their pockets.

My second night back, he had showed up and tried to grab the attention of the 8 or 9 people from the wedding party that were listening to me.

I just let it go, planning upon getting back up to speed with my playing and competing with him that way. I kind of feel like an athlete returning after being sidelined with an injury, only seeing limited action. Once I get back to sounding good, then I'll say something to him if he comes around trying to skeeze.

I'm still getting used to using the little amp and the headset microphone, and re-memorizing all the songs I used to know by heart, before the 19 month lay over.

That was the main reason that I hadn't said something like: "Hey, man, you're crashing my gig!" but instead let him play his 3 songs, "Sexual Healing," "Ain't No Sunshine," and "My Girl," even joining him in the last two. The group had already thrown all their spare change in my basket; but offered to buy him a beer out of Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern. He would take a Corona, he said.

By then I had been chatting with and befriending the group of people, and I was sure that I could have enlisted their help in running him off -pulled one of them aside and said: "Man, what that guy did wasn't cool; he knows better; he just walked up and tried to block my hustle...not that I see you guys as just a hustle, but I had to hold myself back from saying: "What the hell are you doing dude, can't you see I'm playing here?" type of thing.

He actually approached me to shake my hand and to compliment my playing, telling me that he was going to bring me some sheet music of the songs in his drum/vocal repertoire, as if he thinks we are going to form a partnership, through which he will have access to the Lily Pad, and the tourists who stop to listen to me.

I hope he didn't get the wrong impression because I hadn't objected to him commandeering my tourists on that particular occasion. 

It was only my second night back and my skills were a little rusty. I didn't want to run him away and then proceed to play crappy music. He might have taken the stance that I was "wasting" the spot, and that I wasn't going to make anything playing that way; while depriving him of an opportunity to do so.

Last night, after a couple stopped to listen to Jacob and I, he walked by, vocally protesting the fact that the same couple had not stopped for him when he put his skeeze into play upon them, claiming that it was an outright case of "prejudice," that they were listening to Jacob and I.

It is easy to despise black people who play "the race card" like that. It had nothing to do with his drunken thumping and his out of tune singing, they were just racists, sure, OK....

The new normal seems to be that the people in Lafitt's have relaxed their restrictions against people like him standing in front of the bar, trying to busk. 

In the past, they would be seen as interfering with the piano player, who plays in the back of the bar, but can still be heard out front, by anyone who steps out for a smoke, and who might go back inside if the guy starts playing something they like. Unless there is a little old black guy drowning him out with a bass drum.

The residents who live near where I play are my best insurance against him trying to set up camp right by me. He might get away with 15 minutes of his act before drawing a: "Hey, I'm trying to sleep!" from one of them.

He knows that it is technically against the law for him to disturb the residents.

Last night Jacob and I made 39 bucks in what turned out to be about 2 and a half hours, with Jacob letting me keep all of it, in light of my financial situation at the time... Plus, he is owed 600 bucks from his job at the Christian radio station, where he produces the show of Bob Carvajal, who was his guardian for a few years before Jacob turned 21.

 

A Total Eclipse From Sacred Heart

And, I am still struggling with the mental fogginess that made me miss most of Jeopardy today. I looked at the clock about 20 minutes before it was to come on, and then I became distracted and missed almost all of it. That has been happening almost every day lately...

Last night was the full eclipse of the moon, the longest such eclipse since 1447, or something.

Our skies were clear and the air was dry, due to a cold front having moved in. We had a crystal clear view of it.

I went out to see, and found it to be just the moon shrinking in size, but looking different than the typical crescent shape because of the arc of the earth's shadow being different than the shape made by the sun hitting the moon.

Other than that, it was just fading out. It was a good chance to ponder the celestial wonders and get an idea of just how big and how far away the moon is.

I went out at about 2:30, a half hour before full eclipse and walked up to the bar on the corner to look for tobacco in the ashtrays. I'm still busking only for cat food and not allowing myself to make enough to tempt me into drinking...

There was a young couple outside the bar, which had closed, who were looking skyward. The guy was tall and kind of skinny with wild and kind of scraggly hair. He was in the middle of narrating the eclipse to a pale skinned, medium sized girl, with washed out looking freckles on her face and hair that that obviously been dyed red; a combination that made her look like Jen Psaki, the press secretary.

She exuded all the warmth of an inebriated person, by extending her hand to me, asking me my name and telling me hers, something that went in one ear and out the other. I don't think I remembered it for more than one second. She then admonished me to "Look at the moon!"

The guy had lowered his voice and changed the tone of it to one of annoyance, upon seeing me pick a whole cigarette, which was broken in the middle but hadn't been lit, off the ground. Each of them were holding lit cigarettes.

The guy affected much annoyance, as if the act of me picking a cigarette off the ground was a passive aggressive way of trying to bum one off them. Like I was trying to manipulate them into offering me one of theirs.

"Yeah, it really doesn't look much that much different than a regular crescent moon," I said, and before I could qualify that any, the guy jumped in:

"Well, it looks interesting to me!"

I gave him that, "Yeah, you can see the arc of the shadow and get an idea of how big the earth is..."

That seemed to annoy him just as much, as if he would have rather that I had tried to argue that it wasn't very interesting, so as to give him a chance to be confrontational. People's reactions to alcohol differ and he might have been the foil to the young lady's gregarious, hand shaking warmth -the odious drunk that allowed them to drink together with him keeping her in check with his cantankerousness..

I walked back to Sacred Heart, after finding enough butts to unwrap and smoke out of my one-hitter to last the rest of the evening, thinking about how I, in a sense, had exerted more gravity than the moon itself; being able to change the state of mind of another person merely by picking a cigarette up off the sidewalk.

The irony of them both puffing away on tobacco throughout the encounter wasn't lost on me. They are probably "woke" and the guy had projected their own fault -tobacco addiction- upon me, and had found a reason to hate me for something that they were so blatantly just as much at fault for... That's from the playbook of "the left," YouTube tells me...

That Rittenhouser trial, or whatever the kid's name is, is over. 

I guess the jury agreed that they wouldn't have just lain there on the ground while hoodlums kicked and beat them with skateboards. Not if they had the means to put their attackers down. I wonder how many jurors had their businesses burned to the ground or their cars smashed and set on fire...

The attackers, like "Dirty Harry," had, I guess, lost count "in all this confusion" of how many bullets the kid should have had left. They probably weren't knowledgeable enough to know how many that exact model of rifle could hold.

Too bad for them; that none of them Googled it when they first saw it in the kid's hands. Then they could have sent one wife beater after another child molester to offer themselves as sacrificial lambs, to "take one for the team," until the tell tale "click" of an empty firing chamber was heard. 

Then, they would have been able to descend upon the kid like the zombies in that "Bronx Tale(?)" movie, or the Night of the Living Dead or whichever they chose to imitate; or maybe just like a simple pack of wolves. (I have seen less than 30 movies in the past 30 years; 20 of those in the past 2 years; but, occasionally seeing "trailers" and posters hung in front of theaters, I guess qualifies me to use movie references).

That's what the generals did in World War I -send 2,000 guys over a wall into a spray of machine gun bullets, with the strategy being that 200 would survive and be able to step over the 1,800 dead bodies of their buddies so they could set up a "position" in enemy territory.

That's what our grandfathers were willing to do to defend our freedom.

Now all these woke progressive's just want to burn and loot and cry when 3 of them get vaporized; give me a break. This is a pathetic generation; except for kids like that Kyle or whatever his name was; from Wiscoshia, or wherever that was...I don't feel like looking it up...

I kinda hope they do riot and expose themselves that way...

Good for those people of Kashcoska Wisconsin, or wherever it was. Those are good, salt of the earth people, who believe in doing the right thing. That would be a good community to move to -one worth defending.

It doesn't matter if a kid has a poster of Trump in his bedroom which he saluted on his way out to protect those businesses. The law protects everybody. 

The only thing that mattered was that two seconds, when the guy was too far away to grab for the kid's gun, but then started to step towards it. Yes, he might have just wanted to shake the kid's hand, and say: "Wow, you must have been a cute boy when you were seven," or whatever that guy might have said.

And the half second when the other guy was raising the skateboard, poised to bring it down upon the kid a second time; that half second also needed to be brought into evidence; nothing more; who cares what the kid's "beliefs" were, are, or ever will be..?

We mourn the loss of the antifa guy's, despite their criminal histories, don't we? Death is the Great Equalizer... and so is Lady Justice.

The business that Kyle was protecting happened to be in one of the HUD "Opportunity Zones" targeted for destruction by the global corporatocracy. 

There is a correlation between riot damage and the tax-attractive Opportunity Zones in Kenosha, Minneapolis and Portland.

The razed properties will be sold for pennies on the dollar, and the government may use them to build apartment high rises to accommodate the influx of immigrants, perhaps. Or to facilitate the moving of people from the suburbs into cities where they will live a lot like people in China do.

People who can be controlled by propaganda coming over their smart phones are probably lost causes.

If you actually think that that kid was guilty, after seeing all the evidence (the damn video) then you are goofy; and dangerous -you could be made to believe anything, by whomever controls "the narrative."

The narrative

Covid-19 is a special, extra deadly virus like the world has never before seen. It is "novel" (not to be confused with fictitious). 

Down The Earth's Throat

Now, everybody lock down so that 90 % of gas powered cars can be taken off the road immediately, and so that money can be funneled through "pandemic assistance" programs to pay people to not work, so that those monies can be taxed as soon as it is spent, not at small businesses, but at the Amazon's and WalMart's and Whole Foods, of the world; enriching a few, while depleting many, and wind up being taxed right back into the governments hands so that it can be paid to pharmaceutical companies, for the purchase of 3 shots for everybody in the world -rich nations first; then nations of color; then, of course at least one booster shot, as the little people become more and more dependent upon a government that is being directed by an elite few to force a green planet down the earth's throat.

I don't have the energy to try to articulate this OPINION of mine in an any more organized way than in the rant above...

Brain Fog

The juice fast that I'm supposed to be on, to clear my mind and give me boundless energy, I have been sabotaging by sneaking a little apple pie here and there, and, last night, eating peanut butter with fruit-only preserves, and this morning, stirring stevia and cocoa into my coffee.

That's kind of a recipe for brain fog; at least for me.

But I'm glad they -the jury- didn't let the mob imprison that kid, merely because they think he might vote for Trump, after he turns 18...

XinJiang Dance To Start Wednesday

 A New Practice

I have decided to make practicing the guitar the primary thing to structure my day around.

Going to Youtube and then watching video after political video is, I believe, wasting time and sapping my energy at some level.

"How can these people be so stupid," say's one side about the other.

"They must think we are stupid," say's the other side.

"How can anyone be stupid enough to watch these 'news' channels for a couple hours every day?" say I.

If I start practicing my scales and things, then I become absorbed into that and never get to the Youtube stuff, which might be yet another form of addiction.

Instead of practicing to the simple click of a metronome, I decided to choose a beat from about 400 of them that are programmed into my keyboard. After settling upon the XinJiang beat, I then Googled that type of music to discover that it is the rhythm for a dance done by those Uigyurs (sp?) from China, that are purportedly being oppressed by the CCP.

The video of their women dancing to the XinJiang beat had comments under it by people claiming that the smiles on their faces were fake, and that they were acting happy under the points of guns...

Then, after it ended, there were no recommendations at all on the right of my screen -first time I've ever had that happen...
Then, I remembered that my blog has been secretly banned by the CCP, according to one comment I got that was written in Chinese..

The Blog That Has Been "Secretly Banned" By The Chinese Government

Well, it's a Tuesday morning and the time when the crews go through and spray down the whole French Quarter, seeing who is asleep and who is dead, type of thing.

I'll bet that if I was at the Lilly Pad, about 3 blocks ahead of these 3 guys, playing "FM," by Steely Dan, at least one of these guys would throw a couple bucks in my basket, perhaps sensing in me a desperation, that is driving me to play at 9:11 in the morning, as if I had squandered all my money the previous evening, and was unable to even start my day (i.e. buy my first beer) before making some more.

When I lived under the wharf, I was in a better position to do things like that, and can remember playing at such hours, and having five dollar bills thrown to me by one of the very few people out walking.

My theory was; they were out walking in the morning, even though they were on vacation and at liberty to sleep in, because they were working class people whose habit was to be at their job sites by 6:30 each weekday morning. 

They would become restless, sitting around the hotel room, and would decide to at least walk down to a store, or something, to expend some energy. They might see a kindred spirit in a guy who is busking so early. The busker would certainly stand out, in the morning light, on a street that is void of other people and trash, and is glistening from having just been sprayed down.

There are a lot of things they might think, with almost all of them favoring the busker. Maybe he just got into town and hopped off a train flat broke and doesn't want to wait until the crowds pick up in the afternoon, in order to eat or drink.

I really miss the busking adventures I used to go on, like the time I went to Baton Rouge on the 5 dollar Hotard bus -a special service that was started in order to bring more workers into New Orleans by making it a cinch to come here from the capital city, which was then only an hour and 5 dollars away.

When it got slow here in August of 2011, I took the 5 dollar bus up there and would play at certain spots where the LSU students, of which there were a good number, even though it was out of semester, would be at the various clubs on weekend nights, and then in the downtown area on weekends.

I explored different playing spots using cities I was familiar with as the model. There was a part of Baton Rouge which was like a sister to the Mandarin area of Jacksonville, a place where I was able to prosper as a busker. 

It was the "Bluebell" part of the city and was the same 25 minute bus ride out of the downtown area as Mandarin was, and it had a similar Barnes and Noble and a twin Starbucks along with other clones of businesses. The same types of cars were in the parking lots, and the same types of houses sat in the surrounding neighborhoods. There was a library a lot nicer than the one downtown, etc.

I was able to sleep behind the library in a lush grassy area, plug in my laptop and use the library's wi-fi, and then in the mornings sit in front of the Barnes and Noble just as I had done in Jacksonville. The acoustics were the same because the architecture was, and people wearing the same kind of clothing as the ones in Jacksonville would come and throw the same amounts of money in my basket.

There were places where the homeless could get a shower, and a meal (which I skipped in favor of stuff I bought from a health food store, one of which was never hard to find). Someone might conjecture that this lifestyle was merely one of survival and that there is no future in it; but if the busker does his homework, he could put together an agenda, revolving around things like festivals and concert tours, along with finding the best busking spots in any given city based upon what the good ones were in the previous city.

I've often considered following a band like Widespread Panic around the country, stopping in maybe 72 different cities and then busking nearby the venue, to play for people coming and going. Your band may vary, depending upon what style of music you play. But, sitting on the side of a sidewalk right down the street from the Amphitheater in St. Augustine and making a quick 128 bucks off of the people who had just gotten let out of a Widespread Panic show, is what gave me the idea that I might have been able to follow them from city to city and do the same thing. I could go by bus, and arrive a day early in order to scope out a sidewalk just like the one in St. Augustine.

Then, in the off days, before busing off to the next city, I could locate the equivalent of the Mandarin area of Jacksonville, and find the Barnes and Noble and might wind up being able to bank at least a couple hundred bucks a week, while living pretty well.

I can see myself in the middle of a rainstorm in Broken Arrow, Nebraska, warm and dry in a tent, with an extension cord running to the power outlet of the library in the Mandarin-like suburb of that city, blogging and watching Youtube off the libraries wi-fi.

Then, after the skies clear, going to busk in a spot that I know will be good based upon its twin spot in Mandarin having been good, and at night, finding a steakhouse/sports bar type place where the patrons have to step outside to smoke, and playing about 30 feet down the sidewalk of the place when they do so.

Perhaps next year, when I turn 60, I will be able to get whatever Social Security benefits that are set aside for people my age every month, and that would give me a safety net kind of thing. I could tour the country, returning to Sacred Heart at least once every six months, in order to keep the apartment.

These are the things I'm thinking about, now that I am 22 days sober, give or take a day -I'll have to check my records.

Now to practice "FM," by Steely Dan and then watch Jeopardy in 15 minutes...  

$21 Thursday (Feels Like $210) With First And Last Dances Involved

"I'll Take It From Here"

I got my sleep the old fashioned way, by falling into it, sometime in the late afternoon; and then, somehow, I was wide awake at 10:30 at night, wanting to go straight from my bed, to the Lilly Pad.

Which is interesting because a look at my computer screen reminded me that I had fallen asleep to the "self help dialogues" that are supposed to hypnotize and motivate you. I could remember listening to the one where you visualize drifting out of your body and up to the ceiling, then stare down at yourself laying there, and give yourself advice, but I couldn't remember the next one.

I had washed down some Valerian root with coffee thinking that the caffeine would go right into my bloodstream and keep me awake for the dialogues while the Valerian was dissolving and, then the two substances would meet midstream and shake hands, with the Valerian saying: "I'll take it from here..."

It was Thursday night, which can be one of the best nights, even better than Friday and Saturday, due to such factors as people who are in town for the whole week choosing that night to check off some of their minor boxes like "visit the oldest bar in America," where they would encounter me in an environment more quiet than on weekend nights.

I was down to zero cash and one tablespoon of kratom; the weather man was talking about a cold front on the way which will make Saturday night below the buskable temperature of 43 degrees that I have established as the cut-off point for winter playing (each degree below that causing an exponential increase in finger stinging).

One time in Jacksonville, there was a bank across the street from where I played and, as the temperature dropped about a degree every 45 minutes, I had to finally quit when it hit 37 degrees. I had to keep my hands wrapped around the neck of the guitar even when I wasn't playing, or it would get so cold that it would suck the warmth out of my fretting hand. Below 40 degrees, I also had to switch to songs that only used the 3 most basic chords, which took all my strength to form.

But, it was 62 degrees, according to my phone, when I left.

Going "straight from my bed to the Lilly Pad," was complicated by things like having a cup of coffee and looking around for my blue bandana. The clock became the enemy. "There's no way that was 20 minutes, all I did was sit there and reconsider going out for maybe 2 minutes at the most..." type of thing.

It was 12:07 when I finally went out the door of Sacred Heart, wearing my red bandana; I never found the blue one.

The emptiness of the streets along the way might have caused others to turn around and live to see another day, but I have found the Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern to often be the last outpost of human congregation and, after riding through the deserted Quarter, it didn't disappoint. 

There was a group of about 50 or so people, both inside and spilling out into the street with a glance down Bourbon Street revealing sporadic handfuls of stragglers headed "this way."

I had found a milk crate along Royal Street and had my second go at setting up my current gear.

I spent some time hacking through the vines that had grown over where I hang my spotlight, until I uncovered the little crutch which had actually grown around the spotlight and formed kind of a cradle for it, probably because of the warmth that the light's bulb emits; along the lines of how plants seek the warmth of the sun, type of thing.

Then, I reverted to habit, leaning the guitar against the wall, then finding the tuner in the pocket of the backpack where I had always put it, along with the harmonicas, then pulling the basket out, which had the tiposaurus and sign already in it, and centering them in the circle of light from the spotlight.

The only new territory involved putting the headset microphone on and then plugging all the cables in. I'm going to have to come up with a system, perhaps coiling the cables a certain way and taping them together so they won't get caught on each other, and so the extra lengths won't become knotted into a spaghetti like mess. I don't want the microphone cable to get yanked and damaged because it got caught on something when I was pulling it out of the backpack. Short and sweet and taped together; as concise as possible, I'm thinking.

It was about 12:20 in the morning when I started, but I soon had a group of 4 people listening.

"Golden Slumbers," hadn't gotten anyone to stop despite an extended harmonica solo which the echo on the amp made sound mournful, but the 4 guys hung around all the way through "Mary Jane's Last Dance," the Tom Petty song.

Soon there were about 8 people, with the new arrivals having uttered the "magic words:" "Do you know any Grateful Dead?"

Out of the 52 Dead songs that I've played at one time or other, I couldn't think of more than 2 of them. This is definitely why drinking and smoking weed would be "walking on thin ice" for me, at this stage of Alzheimer's Disease that I'm possibly in. Or Hippie Burnout; whatever the diagnosis..

What is happening, and has been ever since I started playing harmonica, is that I am limiting my scope of songs to whatever key the harmonica is in that I happen to be using. If I have the C major harp in the brace, then it's like I block out all the songs in other keys. The laminated list of "what I know," that I've been talking about making, since about 7 years ago, would be a likely remedy for that.

And, so I played "Shakedown Street," which fits the C major harp (even though it is in D minor; it is a "mode" of D minor that uses the C major scale) and the whole group sang along and fun was had by all and the 21 dollars went into the basket.

I then played my own song "Crazy About A Crazy Girl," which reminded me, after 19 months off, how drunk people can be blown away by a decently performed song that has lyrics that fly by just about as fast as the drunk can process that, with the effect being that I was praised profusely as being a songwriting genius and compared to Bob Dylan and Neil Young.

Then the bride showed up in a wedding dress and I learned that the group of them were in town for a wedding.

"Ripple," by the Grateful Dead was played (sounded out) by me; the couple had their first wedding dance* on the sidewalk in front of Lilly's youngest daughter's bedroom; and, as I rode home I had to smile over the thought that I had been considering getting a job stocking shelves at Winn Dixie, just a week ago -just letting go of the tumultuous busking lifestyle. "...I thought of quitting, but my heart wouldn't buy it..."

I had woken up with only one table spoon of kratom, but now I headed for the store to get a can of food for Harold and 3 more ounces of the stuff. Even though I think that over-usage of it might be what is making my ears ring lately...

*"We didn't want to have a traditional wedding," the bride told me; I guess as an explanation for why they hadn't yet had their first dance. 

Funny (but not unexpected, if you understand the Law of Attraction) my whole interaction with the group began with me playing "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and ended with me playing for the couple's first dance....*the Twilight Zone theme can play here*

David Adam Murray Was A Roommate Of Mine

What, Who, Where Why?

I woke up on my bed, with a wadded up blanket under my head and part of it over my upper back. I had to get my bearings. Harold was still by my side, where he had fallen asleep.

A song of mine was still playing on repeat. I'm going to have to bring up the lead vocal about 2 db and bring up the special effects channel about 2 db...

The flu-like symptoms persist. But so does them going away after I drink a cup of strong coffee and start moving around.

Of course I hope it is (the ugga booga). That would mean that I am getting immunity at the small cost of feeling just a little chill each morning.

I wonder why, when they printed those v********* cards, the ones that people have to have stamped and dated to document each s***, they printed them with 4 blank spaces. How could they have known that 4 of them were going to be needed? They have a crystal ball? Or is it a geo-political move to take gas burning cars off the roads, and drain the bank accounts of all small business owners and funnel it into the coffers of the few Amazon's of the world?

To give everyone stimulus cash and unemployment benefits; then, tax it every time it changes hands until it is all back in the treasury; and nobody has any stuffed in a mattress, or in a savings account.

Ear Rings

I have a ringing in my ears, lately, that, once I notice it, can be annoying. 

I thought it might be my digital TV or my laptop emitting a high pitched whistle, but the volume of it remains constant, as I move around the place.

So, it doesn't surprise me that Harold has an ear issue also.

I wrote here about how, the time I got shot in the side of the face by a paint ball, Harold came home with a bloody mark on the side of his face; same side and in the same place as my paint ball mark.

I have always suspected that some organization might be using us residents as guinea pigs to test out that microwave beam equipment that diplomats in China had been complaining about, in exchange for giving us a place to stay.

Seeing if it drives us crazy, or if we report whistling noises in our ears...

Sacred Heart Apartments sure had started out with grand intentions. Each resident had been assigned a caseworker, who, along with knocking upon our doors each Monday morning to do a "wellness" check, were keeping records and making reports on our progress as human beings.

Tim, my caseworker, would ask me questions such as: "What do you feel would be something that might cause you to leave here?" The only sense I could make of that question had to do with the fact that several people, who had gotten apartments here, chose to leave, with most of them having gone back to sleeping on cardboard in the French Quarter. That way, if they woke up and craved a cigarette, for example, they could just walk to a nearby ashtray and pick butts, or approach a stranger, who might be within 100 feet of the bush they were sleeping under and bum one. 

Not so at Sacred Heart apartments, where they might wake up in an apartment with all the amenities, except free money, food, alcohol and drugs. The drugs would come by trading their food stamps for them, and so they would wake up with the cupboards bare, nothing in the refrigerator, no cigarettes, and perhaps having the shakes from there being no alcohol to consume.

In the Quarter, one walk down the length of Bourbon Street would typically produce a fish bowl full of alcoholic beverage, should they just rifle through the trash cans for half full bottles of beer that had landed upright in the can. These would be the ones that people had been in the middle of drinking when they encountered a bar or club they wanted to go into, but didn't want to hurriedly finish before going inside.

Taking that tour, while panhandling everyone they saw along the way, might have had them returning to their piece of cardboard with a fishbowl full of beer, a half pack of cigarettes and a sack of weed, or maybe even a piece of crack, purchased out of their "Excuse me, can you help me out with something to eat?" fund.

Those people had been miserable at Sacred Heart.

Tim used to prod me a bit, se he could finish the report as quickly as possible.

"How are you benefiting from living at Sacred Heart?" could be covered by me saying that it gives me a place to keep my music equipment safe, and where I could work on recording an album on my laptop, just like the artist "Burial" has done..

"Perfect." Tim had about a dozen people to see, and would save me until last, usually showing up in the late afternoon, because he knew I didn't go to sleep until around 5:30 in the morning; being unable (unwilling, actually) to unwind and go to sleep right after arriving home at 2 a.m. after busking.

Now, most of the caseworkers have been permanently laid off, and we have no hot water about once a month for a few days. It always seems to go cold on a Friday evening, and always has to remain so "until Monday, when the maintenance guys come in."

The "happy and grateful" exercise had been difficult, upon waking at 10:30. I could have bagged up my busking gear and gone right out, but decided to drink strong coffee and ride my bike up to the Winn Dixie, where I was unable to find anyone who would buy me a couple cans of food for Harold in exchange for me buying them a greater value of food off my food stamp card. Going there a half hour before they close is working against me in that regard because there are usually only a handful of people in the store then. The one guy I approached told me that he only had EBT himself. I had approached him because he looked like a normal guy; not an entitled loser, too lazy to go out and work.

I wasn't my usual ball of energy, who looks at the aisles full of unopened boxes, and thinks: "I could put all that stuff up on the shelves, by myself in half the time that it is probably going to take these 3 people!"

The Mel Bay Stuff

I am getting ready to make a video on Page 2 of Mel Bay's Book 2, a song called "Senorita," which is one that I had moved on from at the age of 15, thinking: "Yeah, I can play it," before turning the page to the next song.

I was disillusioned into thinking that I wasn't going to become a more advanced player until I got up into Books 7 and 8, where the sheets were more laden with polka dots, and qualified as "performance pieces" i.e. if you mastered them, you could actually play them in concert somewhere.

I assumed that "Senorita" was just so simple an arrangement that the performance of it was never going to sound like more than a first year student plunking away, and it would only ever be suitable for entertaining the likes of a 7 year old student.

My approach in recent months, though, has been to not blame the piece for not being interesting, but to see a different analogy in it.

If you were to take one word from the Spanish language, to maintain the "Senorita" connection, that needed to be pronounced using the rolling "r" sound, you would have to learn very precisely how to do that in order to sound like a native speaker of Spanish. That involves a tongue motion that an English speaker would never be required to make. And a certain embouchure of the mouth.

It was through playing the harmonica that I became involved in these different manipulations of the mouth cavity. For, to bend a note downward on the upper 3 holes of the harmonica requires making a sound that would be somewhere between a "th" and a "ch" sound, if you were to be able to hear it. But, since you are drawing air inward, you wouldn't. Try speaking while inhaling, and everything is going to sound like a croaking sound. That is because your vocal chords are not a harmonica.

The information age we live in is amazing! It appears that "Senorita" from Mel Bay Modern Method For Guitar, Book 2, is actually this very modern piece, composed by Mateo Carcassi some time around 1820. I was lead to this information after reading a comment left on one of the existing "how to play" videos on "Senorita."

"Does anyone know who wrote this?" was the comment.

Back to the language analogy, if you were able to correctly make the "r" sound and learn how to pronounce just that one Spanish word correctly, it would open up a whole vocabulary of other words to you.

So, learning to play "Senorita" perfectly will give you tools that will come in handy all the way up to the "performance" pieces in books 8 and 9...
I searched for that song and found one guy who had about 2,000 hits on his video where he supposedly teaches how to play it.

"I could smoke that guy," I thought. He was worse than me.

But, then I found a guy playing it as "Andante in A minor" on a classical guitar and it was more my speed.

Singing Bird Clock

After setting the Singing Bird Clock back an hour a day ago, I found that the wrong songs were coming out of the birds on each hour. A Googling of "How to reset a Singing Bird Clock" has helped me to set the world right again. Now the morning dove once again coos at 7 in the morning, instead of sounding like a house wren. That's a relief... 

Video Uploading

Uploading a 5 minute video (with still shots; nothing really moving) is going to take a little over an hour. I have 41 minutes left, according to YouTube...

It's going to be a sparse outline of a song taken from the Halloween Night Jam..

When I add parts to it, like bass guitar; and maybe re-arrange the images, I suppose it will take over an hour each time to upload it again.

I guess that keeps YouTube from being inundated with billions of frivolous videos.