Slow News Day

It is Thursday morning,

I know, it isn't a very "giant" whale, and the cars
are from the 1940's, but it's a dream!

I woke up with 86 cents in my pocket, but I had a lot of smoked brats, two loaves of bread and some corn chips, which I had gotten from the Save-Even-More, and an empty bottle of Mountain Hollar cherry flavored pop.
I had woken up thirsty, in the middle of the night, and emptied the Mountain Hollar, which is very similar to Mountain Dew code red, eerily similar, actually -amazing how two companies, thousands of miles apart, working independently could both come up with the same red cherry flavored drink with a lot of caffeine in it and then name it "Mountain" something...
Then, I went back to sleep and had the tortured dreams which I always seem to have when I drink a lot of caffeine before going back to sleep. The smoked brats, themselves, were nightmares waiting to happen, also. These dreams are always hybrids of what is really going on, and what I am just dreaming is going on. I was being chased by a giant killer whale, which was able to swim through the streets of Mobile, yet, there was a train rumbling along beside me, as I ran.
I woke up, and there was indeed a train passing by, 20 feet away but; no sign of the whale.
I left some smoked brats and a loaf of bread and some corn chips at Howard's feet when I came "in" around 11 p.m., with a note telling him to wake me up when he got up around 7, to go for his coffee and newspaper.
I was planning upon playing at the "big clock" spot, on the corner of Royal and Dauphine streets, for the early morning "business" people. This has netted me 7 or 8 bucks in the past.
I didn't play there, though, because there was a piece of heavy machinery making a lot of noise.
Last night, I made $2.85 in about an hour off of the 20 people or so, who walked past.
The Cookie Monster
There was a short black guy in a yellow shirt with a round head who was running across the street from Bienville Park, intercepting every pedestrian and saying "Excuse me, can you help a man get a cookie? I need one dollar; just one dollar, so I can get a cookie."

Since it's a slow news day,
Here is the girl that bought me
a beer at Phat Tuesday's Tuesday night.
Her name is Yo-Jonesy, which I had mis-
spelled, along with the name of the bar...oops.
I forgot to ask her if she wants to come home with
me on Christmas, to meet my mother...oops, again!

I wanted to yell "He ain't gonna get no cookie!," but I couldn't yell it because A: He might; just might, this one time; have gone and gotten a cookie. B: The exchanges between him and every pedestrian had nothing to do with me; he wasn't talking to me, and it was none of my business (except for the fact that people are less likely to stop and pull out their wallets to throw me a couple bucks with him lurking there,). And C: There is no C, except when I went into the Dauphine Market, to spend one of the dollars that I made on a beer, he walked in shortly thereafter.
I said "More cookies?!? You must really like cookies!"
He didn't respond, just walked past the cookies and to the cooler, grabbed a can of beer, paid for it in change, and then walked out.
That was about the highlight of the evening. That, and the fact that John the street preacher is back in town, having been to Los Angelos, Houston, New York and other places.
He stopped to talk to me at my spot, as about a dozen people walked by when I wasnt' playing. I didn't mind. It's God's way of keeping my beer consumption at a minimum; He sends John the street preacher by to talk to me so the tourists will walk past and not throw me any beer money. John, if you're reading this, I'm just kidding. If you're not, then, I'm not kidding.

Didn't Sound Right, To Me

And The World Grew One Day Older...
I left the library, and then went to the Shell and bought a microwaveable cheesburger. I added two turkey patties, from my 3 pound supply of them, and then heated it all up, poured hot sauce on it and ate it.

Apparently, "Father" Shauris Has A New "Commision..."

There were two guys standing by the side of the store who asked me for 20 cents and then acted as if they couldn't believe that I wouldn't give it to them; looking at me as if I was the most uncaring and selfish person they had ever seen. I only had paper money, no "20 cents" at all. Do you think they would have brought me back change?
John The Street Preacher

I then ran into John The Street Preacher, whom I haven't seen since before I got my glasses. He didn't recognize me at first, because of the glasses. He has been working in exchange for rent at the Adventure Inn hotel, where he was headed with some provisions from Save-A-Lot. He gave me 6 dollars.

I then went downtown and made one more dollar, playing in the cold, gusty winds which threatened to carry that dollar away, never to be seen again.

Rig Won't Sail
I then went to The Garage for the open mic night.

The blues guy played, and then let me play.

I opted to use his "rig" when he offered. I probably shouldn't have, because the blues guy's rig would require a couple of hours of experimentation to get a good sound, if unfamiliar with it, which I was.

I stepped on a few pedals, one of which was labelled an "Eric Clapton" pedal, and tried to decide what song would sound good through the combinations of switches and knobs, concluding, at some level, that it just didn't sound good. The "clean" settings weren't clean, and the distorted settings drowned any hopes of the audience hearing lyrics as anything other than a guy singing "something."

It wasn't an advantageous setup for me. The audience was drunk to the point where they were just dancing sloppily to everything. I should have taken a cue from that and just done "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones and then gotten out of there.
Instead, I tried a couple originals, which weren't written with the blues guy's rig in mind and they didn't sound right to me...

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Songwriters On Songwriting



Self Explanatory

Yesterday, the skies opened up and it rained for a good portion of the day. I took refuge in the library, where I logged on to weather underground, and saw on their radar image that the rain was moving onward, to menace the homeless in Montgomery, and we would soon be rid of it. This made me abandon my plan to spend my first night at the Waterfront Rescue Mission, where John The Street Preacher has been holing up these past few cold days, and which has been assessed by him as being "clean."

Instead, I went to the Shell, bought an

Earthquake High Gravity Lager, and then sat in one of the trolleys, consuming it, and waiting a half hour for nightfall. It became pretty cold, enough so that I kept an eye out for musk oxen, because of their unpredictability.

Under the cover of darkness, and fortified by the Earthquake, I crawled under the trolley and, noticing that the ground where I had been sleeping had been encroached upon by a puddle, I grabbed an extra sweatshirt and my sleeping bag and managed to remove them without letting my body dip down low enough to encounter the puddle. It was like doing a one handed push up, the kind the Marines are required to master. I was glad that I had retained enough of my conditioning, from having worked as a laborer 3 years ago, to have accomplished the feat.

I tied my bag onto my other bag and then went into town, where I sat down and played for about an hour, and was only thrown some change by one of the few people milling about.
I walked back to the Shell for another beer on my way to Terry's former sleeping spot, in the back of a U-Haul van, which is "in moth balls," and has a mattress in it. Terry has moved on to a garage at a friends house, and I congratulate him, I'm not envious; my time will come...


Musk Oxen; Looking For Someone To Mess With

I slept pretty well, but had a dream that I broke a guitar string. The dream was so vivid, that I opened my case in the morning to see if I had a broken string.

Today was spent for the most part at this library. I found a book entitled "Songwriters On Songwriting," and spent 3 hours reading what Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Brian Wilson and Randy Newman had to divulge about their craft. Dylan said that Hank Williams was the greatest songwriter, Simon said that Dylan was, even though he is "impenetrable," Brian Wilson said that Paul McCartney was, and expressed surprise over the fact that Paul cited him (Wilson) as a big influence, and Randy Newman raved about Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, even though he couldn't understand what Simon's "Hearts And Bones" was about, nor what 90% of Dylan was about. He said that it is harder to write a song that has a clear meaning, rather than writing about crystalline apparitions in deep space, or words to that effect.

It is now almost 7 pm. I haven't played a note. Tonight is the first night in a month that Serda's Songwriter's Open Mic Night resumes being what it was before the contest.

I am going to refresh my memory of my lyrics by poring over some of them, and then I might go and play. I am down to $1.35, which is about "par for the course" on a typical Wednesday night. Serda's must be wondering if I will EVER buy a cup of coffee from them.

I am thinking of doing The Bum Song, but, knowing myself, I fear that I will get up there and be unable to resist the temptation to make something up on the spot about crystalline apparitions in deep space.