Red Meat And Gasoline

All I Want For Christmas Is A New Basket

I've realized the extent to which I beat myself up for not going out to busk at times like now (when the photo below was taken). 

There is a 99% chance that at least one 20 dollar bill would have gone into my basket, along with a "Merry Christmas" being uttered. It might have even come from someone who lives in the Quarter and walks past me every night, but doesn't tip, because that would get expensive; but who might at least throw me something on this Christmas Eve's Eve. But, of course there is always the real Christmas Eve, tomorrow.

I should go out there during daylight hours. One of the matters on my mind when I was plucking that figurative daisy earlier ("I should busk...I should busk not...I should busk...etc.) was the fact that, a couple nights ago, after I had bagged up my stuff and went out into the parking lot to find that rain was falling pretty heavily; and came back inside, a couple hours passed before I turned off a couple lights because Harold was trying to sleep. I then noticed a faint orange glow coming from inside my backpack; and discovered that the switch to the Yamaha amp had switched itself on from being jostled around in the bag.

The question became: How much juice is drained by an amp that is turned on but has nothing plugged into it? 

I know, from being an "electronics technician" in a previous life, that that creates an "open" circuit, through which no current can flow, and so no juice would be used; except what is used to light the front of the amp and make it glow orange. This might be just to make the amp look "cool" when it is on, but uses a tiny amount of electricity. 

Of more concern to me, it advertises the fact that I'm using an amp to play in front of Lilly's house, which is hypocritical, given that on at least one occasion, other buskers have been run off by residents who were looking out for me, under the guise of no amps being allowed in that residential block. Perhaps the most infamous example being the running off of Johnny B., known as "the clean guy," by long ago blog readers.

There's ol' Barnaby!

Barnaby and his then girlfriend, Vickie used that particular regulation, which they pulled out of their asses for the occasion, to remove Johnny B. and his Roland Street Cube amp, on that fateful evening in 2015 .

I blogged about that whole thing.

Johnny B. busked on Royal Street, which typically dies down around midnight, which is right when the Lilly Pad is just hitting its peak in traffic.

It was the time he was staying at my place for a couple weeks in exchange for that same Roland Mini Cube amp. He was preparing to go back to New Jersey and didn't want to have it in his luggage; and had proposed that deal.

It was a very good deal for me; and it saved him the cash he would have used to rent a place for those last 2 weeks and lightened his load at the same time. He even threw in the Beatles Complete Scores sheet music book (with U.S. $85.00 printed on its back above the bar code) telling me that he couldn't read music. We were getting along swimmingly.

But then, as a solution to the problem of him needing me to be at the apartment to let him in when he finished busking, I suggested that, when he knocked off around midnight, why didn't he pull his little tote holding his amp and guitar, over to the Lilly Pad, where, instead of him just waiting for me to finish, we could do a few songs, then go together to the street car when we finished.

Well, the first night, we did a few songs and made something like 80 bucks -it was just one of those nights; we had 36 bucks, I recall, thrown into the basket during the first song we did, which was "Comfortably Numb."

This precipitated a sea change in the attitude of Johnny B., who decided that the next night, he would skip Royal Street entirely and accompany me at the Lilly Pad.

I was agreeable to that; partly because it would only be for a few more nights, as he was leaving for New Jersey; and because I thought maybe we could repeat our success of the previous night when we had been able to harmonize vocally like a couple of Simon and Garfunkle's. Johnny knew all the lead vocal parts, and I knew all the backup vocals for songs like "Turn The Page," by Bob Seger, and a slew of Eagles and Beatles stuff.

The first sign of trouble came after Johnny had emerged from the bathroom after having made his toilet (if people still use that phrase). This took him at least a half hour; time spent combing and spraying, sneezing and tweezing, before getting into his spit-shined shoes and putting on his immaculate jacket.

I could use a thousand words to describe the end result of this daily ritual; but this photo (right) which made me think: "Wow, that's Johnny B.!"  the first time I saw it; is frighteningly close to him in appearance. It is most likely the look he was "going for," and probably calls himself Johnny B, because the guy pictured went by "Mr. C."

Johnny had everything but the ink...

Myself, I was just lollygagging about, finding a shirt that I hadn't blown my nose into the night before, or at least turning one inside out, if I had, and choosing between the brown or black hat.

"Dan, it's almost 7:30; I don't know about you but I like to start a little before 8!" said Johnny, a bit edgily.

Then, after riding the street car down to the Royal Street stop, and hearing Johnny bark: "Come on!" as soon as the thing had stopped, as if he thought I might sit there for a while, we started up Royal, myself with the guitar and backpack, him pulling his 2 wheeled thing behind him.

I wanted to run into The Unique Store for something, when we got there. 

Johnny fidgeted outside, after having rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh over my wanting an energy drink or something.

I was somewhere in line half way to the register when I heard a whistle like someone hailing a cab. Looking towards the source of that, I saw, you guessed it;  frantically pointing at his fake Rolex and then spreading his hands out in a gesture that could only have meant: forget about your drink or your cigarettes, just throw them somewhere and come on; we gotta go!

This irked me enough to say: "Hey, man, I'm not a really schedule driven type of guy; never was. I'm not really into this kind of pressure, I've kind of spent my whole life rearranging it to avoid this kind of thing. This is like having a manager! Why don't you just play your Montdeleone spot and we can meet up after midnight like last night; because I like to just take my time; I might even want to stop and talk to somebody, who knows?!"

At this, he changed his tune and kind of apologized, saying that it was the waiting in front of the Unique Grocery that was freaking him out because "There are some people that hang around there that I don't really want to see..." and that he had been worried that one of them might happen to show up.

It crossed my mind that he might have owed some heroin dealer money, and was hoping to avoid him -skip off to New Jersey and leave the guy holding the bag. But that didn't make sense because everyone there would have known that he was 2 blocks up the street every night, across from the Hotel Monteleone. Most likely, he was just trying to test how far he could push me before I pushed back (OK, nix the dog whistling...type of thing).

Johnny B. Gone

We got to the Lilly Pad and set up. Barnaby and his girlfriend were sitting on their stoop with the door to their condo open behind them.

I "set up" by plopping myself down on my milk crate. 

Instead of sitting on the stoop next to me like the night before; Johnny erected his microphone stand and stood next to me, in his shiny shoes.

The night before, he had adjusted his amp down to the level of my acoustic guitar, but not 30 seconds into the first song, it was apparent that it was going to be "The Johnny B. Show," with my guitar a faint drone behind him. His voice had the echo and reverberation on it; mine, well it's a moot point because you couldn't really hear it.

I caught an incredulous look on the face of Barnaby's girlfriend, Vickie -kind of a "Who's this guy think he is?" expression. And then, at the appropriate point in the song, when about a half dozen people had congregated around us, Johnny snapped his fingers at me; and in a Perry Como way (I guess) said: "Give me a solo, Danny boy!"

I thought I was doing a pretty good solo; having shrugged off the thought of: "Excuse me?...give you a solo 'Danny boy?!'" that went through my mind; but it was pretty hard to hear my acoustic solo. Maybe he was trying to demonstrate how loud the amp was that I would be getting, I don't know.

"Go Johnny, Go!"

I didn't have to wonder long because an irate and pretty well lit on gin Vickie was soon in Johnny B.'s face: "Excuse me, but we live right over there; and nobody has ever been allowed to use amplifiers on this block! Daniel has been playing here a long time and we like to listen to him; but we can barely even hear him over you. You've got to go, buddy!"

Then, turning to me: "Do you know this guy, or did he just show up?"

"Yeah, I know him...we did a few songs last night, but I didn't know he was going to crank his amp up to 11..."

Then it was Johnny's turn to look incredulous (picture Perry Como with steam coming out of his ears) "All, you had to do was say 'could you please turn down some, that's all!"

"You mean, snap my fingers and say 'Give me some lower volume, Johnny boy?'" I figured I could be snide because he was the one who wouldn't have a place to sleep if feelings became hurt.

"Alright, alright..." Johnny quickly packed his 2 wheeler, muttering under his breath something out of which I could only catch an occasional "bitch" or "something up her ass" or "can't appreciate music" type of things. He went off in a huff, staring straight ahead as he went by Barnaby and Vickie, who were once again side by side.

I walked over to them and started to explain how I had thought the two of us might have been able to do OK.

Barnaby (who works for the "drug court" as a probation officer, but was an "Easy Rider" type hippie biker in the late sixties) said: "No, it was clear to me that he was just trying to move in on your territory. How long before you show up one night and he's already here and tells you he wants to play solo?" and then, Vickie kind of hit the nail on the head:

"When he snapped his finger and said: 'Give me a solo, like you were just his side-kick...give me a break, he's not even as good as you; that's when we were like; this guy's got to go..besides, he was too loud for some of these other residents...and when he walked past us, he didn't even say 'sorry' or 'have a good night' or anything!" 

I guess people see the dinner jacket and expect the guy to exhibit manners commensurate with it...

So, that (illustrated through a short anecdote) is why I wish my little Yamaha amp didn't have orange lights glowing through its grill...warning: hypocrite ahead!

A Gift To Harold From The Lidgley's

I went to Winn Dixie for food; trying not to berate myself too much for not going out to play tonight.

"I'm starting to get the feeling that someone wants us all to go vegetarian and drive electric cars," I said to a guy who was next to me at the meat cooler. 

First I had kind of looked him over to assess the odds that he would get the joke. He didn't totally ignore me, which was fortuitous, here in Ignoreleans, and smiled after I clarified with "given the way the prices on them have gone up..."

There was a "rack" of lamb, about the size of a small ladies purse that was priced at $95 and change. "Hey, can I borrow a hundred bucks so I can make a couple lamb sandwiches?" I joked to the nearest person to me there...

Then, into the canned fish aisle I went, where I noticed that mackerel has closed the price gap between it and salmon, with salmon having gone up maybe 20%, but mackerel having nearly doubled over the past couple years.

Oddly, wine seems to have remained somewhat stable in price, except for the cheap 4 dollar bottle having become the cheap 5 dollar bottle. My theory on that is that this proves that wine has always been artificially inflated in price; not because of the cost of producing and shipping it, but rather, on how good tasting a particular batch had come out. They are able to avoid raising the prices on certain bottles because they are already priced with no grounding in normal economics.

I got a can of mackerel, planning upon trying some on Harold, and a tin of sardines for the same reason. Tuna "in water" remains the ol' standby as far as being able to feed him when I have no cash, but plenty of food stamps.

Finding sympathetic (to Harold, not me) people in the cat food aisle who would be willing to let me use food stamps to buy something in their basket of a value slightly more than the cans of Friskies that I'm trying to get, is an option that becomes far less viable when it is a half hour before the store closes and that aisle is empty. I might try to start showing up earlier when the store is busy; especially since cat lovers seem very likely to just hand me a couple dollars in cash, saying: "Here, you don't have to buy me anything, just get your cat its food..." type of thing.

Over by the alkaline water, I joked to an employee who was stocking eggs: "Ah, alkaline water, been swearing by it since 1853 when I first started drinking it; they say it's good for longevity!" 

The egg man didn't get the joke initially, but I explained it. 

I then noticed that the only difference between Egg Beaters "Original" and their "Egg Whites" versions was that the original had beta carotene added to turn it the color of egg yolks, as if whole eggs were used to make it; even though both styles had only egg whites listed in the ingredients. 

I wondered if that was a psychological ploy, the way orange color is added to orange soda (which would otherwise be clear).

The reason in this case would be people feeling more comfortable biting into an egg sandwich that has yellow egg in it. Or, maybe they are trying to fool people into thinking that the original flavor is made out of whole eggs; like how they put the whole milk next to the skim stuff. 

It is kind of deceptive, I think, to have "original flavor" next to "egg white only" when they are both egg white only; as if one is a lighter, more healthy alternative, when they are literally made of the same ingredients except for some fake yolk coloring.

"I don't know," said the chubby white guy in his late twenties who was stocking the eggs..

"I don't know either. I gave up trying to figure out the egg game a long time ago. Have a good night, Merry Christmas..."

"Merry Christmas"

Coming Soon: The story of the twin that I was once told I had; but now am apt to believe in, given photo evidence...

This isn't me; I swear!

I once met a guy who looked kind of like Kenny Rogers in St. Augustine, Florida. His name was Art, and he invited me to share a beer or two with him; and asked me if he could take a picture of me; otherwise the people in Key Pine Bluff, Florida wouldn't believe him when he told them he had met a guy (me) who was the exact twin of some guy who lives there.

"I want to show him your picture, because you guy's could be twins. He even talks like you; about the same kind of things; and he plays the guitar!"

I let Art take a few pictures of me and asked him if he would e-mail me copies, because I had so few pictures of myself for this blog, back then in 2010.

This was about 2 months after Alyne Lidgley had taken pictures of me and promised to send me copies. By then I had figured that Alyne had either lost my e-mail address, or lost her camera, or whatever.

Art promised me he would e-mail me copies.

The very next day, I logged on to the computer at the library and went to my e-mail, and the first thing I saw was mail labelled: "Here are your photos!"

Wow, that was fast, Art really is efficient, I thought.

When I opened the mail, though, they were the photos that Alyne had taken a couple months earlier, that she was just getting around to sending.

I looked at the timestamp on her e-mail, subtracted the 8 or 9 hours between St. Augustine and London, and it seemed that Alyne was hitting "send" to send me her pictures within minutes or at the exact same time Art was snapping his pictures; pictures that I have never gotten, even to this day.

When I saw the above picture; I couldn't help thinking this is the guy from Key Pine Bluff who looked so much like me, that Art just had to have a photo of me to show him "Because it's gonna freak him out, the resemblance!"