Want to Have Done ...

There's a line about wanna-be writers that sometimes gets bandied about: He doesn't want to write, he wants to have written. It means that the notion of being a writer is appealing to somebody, but they somehow want to get past the actual doing of it to the already-did-it-phase. 

This is not unique to writers, this desire. There are times when I need to go to the gym, but don't really feel like it. I know that if I go, and once I get cranking, I'll be fine, and I'll feel better about having gone, but what I want is to have worked out. To get the benefits without having to put out the effort …

Inertia can be a powerful thing to overcome.

That shortcut isn't real, and part of the deal is that if you don't enjoy the doing of a thing in and of itself, you are apt to not do it. If all you can see is the goal but not the trip getting there, you tend to see it as something to be endured. This tends to keep you from giving it your best, or sometimes, any efforts at all.

If you lift weights, you have to enjoy the process of picking one up and moving it and putting it down not just as a means to getting stronger or gaining more endurance, but as an end in itself; else you will find reasons to avoid it down the road.

At least that's how I view it. 

Someday, Maybe ...

If ever I do an autobiography, this quote, from the mouth of the director at a meeting on the Universal lot regarding a script I co-wrote with Chris Warner, will be the title ...

Fooling around with a magazine cover generator. Kinda cool toy ...

Technically-Correct Failure

I was channel-surfing last night and I came across a spy-thriller, that looked promising.

Couple-years old, I vaguely recalled hearing something about it when it came out. A lot of movies go by without me seeing 'em.

The picture featured a female lead,  kind of a La Femme Nikita operative, who worked for a private company that contracted to governments for assorted skullduggery. Had a stellar cast, mostly doing small parts, and it started out with a Jason-Bourne-like fight sequence between the girl and an ex-boyfriend the firm had sent to fetch her.

The firm wanted to get rid of her for some reason, probably she Knew Too Much About Something She Wasn't Supposed to Know About, but ... I didn't get that far ...

There wasn't anything particularly bad I could point at. The writing was okay, the acting not bad, though I kind of got the feeling the Big Name Actors doing small parts were phoning it in.

I could hear the dialog between the director and actors: Hey, c'mon, you have a few lines, couple days, you collect a nice check, you're gone. Besides, you owe me one ... 

The locations were exotic, the directing competent, the camerawork looked fine. Pacing was mostly okay. It had all the elements of a good spy thriller, but it wasn't working for me. Ho-hum, I didn't care about the protagonist and her backstory, and after a few minutes of waiting for it to get better, I turned it off.

Back when I first started writing, I got some advice somewhere about creating stories that were technically fine, they had all the elements they were supposed to have, but that failed nonetheless. Yeah, yeah, all the beats are there, but there's something ... off.

What I came to realize was that the missing element was usually passion. If the writer wasn't having a good time, if it wasn't fun, that showed, and such would not so much turn off an audience as never turn them on in the first place.

I wrote a few of those, and the rejections were always along the lines of, "Yeah, there's nothing particularly wrong with it, it just doesn't float my boat."

Kind of like the old joke about surgery: The operation was a success, but the patient died ...

Before I went to bed, I logged onto Rotten Tomatoes to check the reviews. Maybe it was me, and when I first saw the critics comments, I blinked: 80% approval.

Great acting, directing, good action, yadda-yadda.

Really? Wow. I must be missing something.

Then I read the Audience reviews, and the numbers there?

40% ...

Ah.

When there is that much of a gap between the critics and audience, somebody is missing something. (Usually, it's the critics who savage a movie and that audiences love I find more likely to be the case, as happened when the first Star Wars movie came out.)

So, in this case, critics liked it but audiences didn't.

Not that I absolutely needed that confirmation for my own opinion, but it doesn't hurt ...

Customer Service

Spring of 2013, we had our kitchen redone. New floors, countertops, sink and faucets. As part of the deal, we had a new filtered drinking water spigot installed.

Recently, during an attempt to open a stubborn kitchen window, a slipped grip and flying elbow resulted in the spout of the drinking faucet being snapped off at the base. Like it was sliced off with a knife it was so clean …

So we called the guy at Chown, who had arranged for the work, and asked about ordering a replacement. Gave him the specs. Next day, he got back to us: The company, Mountain Plumbing Products, said, no problem, and they shipped us a replacement.

No charge.

The new part matched, fit, and are back up to speed. And a big thank you to Chown and to Mountain Plumbing Products. They didn’t have to replace the part for free, and I appreciate the customer service. 

Richard Cory

With the recent passing of Robin Williams, I was reminded of the poem "Richard Cory," and of a young man I knew forty or so years ago.

First the poem:

“Richard Cory” by Edward Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town, 
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown, 
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich – yes, richer than a king, 
And admirably schooled in every grace: 
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread:
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, 
Went home and put a bullet through his head. 

The young man I knew–call him Lawrence–was from the days when I taught martial arts at a school back down home. He was a college student, twenty-one, as I recall, showed up for class one day in a new Porsche.

He was tall, fit, blond, blue-eyed, a good-looking kid; and, I found out later, rich. His parents had died in an accident a few years earlier, and left him several million dollars.

He was enthusiastic as a student for the first month or so. Very likable guy. Funny. Smart.

One day, he showed up in a new, Tweety-bird-colored Corvette. 

So, what happened to the Porsche?

Got rid of it.  'Cause, you know, the 'vette gets more women, dude.

You serious?

Yep.

I just stared at him. Handsome, funny, bright millionaire college kid, and he felt as if he needed a Corvette to get women? I shook my head. Jeez.

A few months later, he stopped coming to class, White-Belt Syndrome, and that was that.

Except a couple months past that, I picked up the newspaper and saw that Lawrence had died in a tragic accident, involving a shotgun. At home.

The story was, he was cleaning it and it went off. That didn't sound right to me–it's kind of hard to accidentally kill yourself with a shotgun.

So I contacted a guy I knew on the local police force and asked him what the deal was.

Suicide. Lawrence put the muzzle under his chin, thumbed the trigger. Messy. One of his relatives had words with the local law, and the story got spun. Better an accident, hey?

When somebody who seems as if he or she has it all takes that route, there's always that wonder: Why would they do that? But depression knows no class, nor does it care about wealth, nor popularity. I was stunned when Richard Jeni killed himself, and again when Robin Williams did. But, you never know. What you see isn't all there is.

Guardians of the Galaxy Review

So this one is easy: It's a hoot. Go see it.

My son and grandson and I opted for the 2D version, because, save for Avatar, I haven't seen a movie since that 3D benefitted particularly, but we had a fine ole time. 

Funny, silly, whole lot of action, snappy dialog, lovable charters, nasty villains, a giant-tub-of-popcorn experience, about as good a time as you can have at a summer movie. Gonna set a high bar for the rest of the season, this year's Men in Black.

Although I imagine Vin Diesel is going to get a lot of razzing about his voicing of the character Groot. I won't spoil it for you, but you'll know what I'm talking about once you see it. I bet he laughs all the way to the bank ...

I do so hope the the folks doing Star Wars for Disney are paying attention. This is what you need to be doing. Seriously. And not seriously, too ...

Lighter Pockets

Back in the day, we all carried combs. You were a guy, you had one tucked into your hip pocket, at least a basic model, and for a while when grease was really thick, a rattail model, that would let you do some of that sissy-styling, and which could also double as a weapon ...

Pre-hippies, men's hair tended to be full of gunk. There was the greasy kids' stuff, like Wildroot Cream Oil or Brylcreem; the dry-look, like Vitalis, and all manner of other waxy pomades. Go look at a movie made in the thirties, forties, or fifties.

We are talking slicked-down.

Men didn't use hairspray, not Real Men™, but you needed that comb for when you messed it up in a fight, or when the wind blew at Category-5 hurricane force, or when some girl who didn't mind coating her hand in grease ran her fingers through it. 

Then, long hair, which still could stand a combing now and then, came along, and what the hairdressers call "product" mostly went away. Wash it, comb it, you were good for the day, and the pocket comb faded ...

I still have a comb in the bathroom, and I'll use it now and again, but mostly it is just towel-dry and go these days, or, if I'm in a hurry, my wife's hairbrush and her dryer. 

Real Men™ didn't use hair dryers, either, but they do now. If they have any hair left ...

Ooh, Shiny!

Some years ago–how many I don't recall, but more than twenty-five and less than thirty-five, my lovely wife bought for me a green fire agate ring at Saturday market. Picked out a stone, and the jeweler lost-waxed it, and came out with a ring I've worn since.

But, in my dotage, I didn't recall that he actually made two rings for me, a second fire agate that was multicolored flashes in a brown matrix. When I got my boulder opal wedding ring, I replaced the fire agate multi and put it away.

Completely forgot about it. Somehow, it wound up in the spare jewelry boxes which migrate dto the gun safe, and today, whilst digging around for something, I came across it. I think maybe I'll wear it for a while ...

It's subtle, you don't see the flashes save under bright light, but I have a thing for fire in stones ...

Broken Eyed Perry

I have been wearing corrective lenses since I was fifteen. Mostly glasses, but I started out wearing those saucer-sized hard contact lenses, then gas perms, then soft ones, fifty years ago. 

Contact lenses in this part of the world in the spring turn yellow from pollen, and working at a computer, they also tend to wear blisters on your eyeballs, so I went back to specs. More trouble than they were worth, contacts.

And no, the Lasix surgery isn't an option, because once presbyopia sets in, you still have to wear glasses for close work anyhow, and what's the point? And there are some side-effects of laying a cutter onto your eye ...

Couple weeks ago, I dropped my current pair of cheaters onto the floor. Onto the carpet, mind you, but even so, the little support bar across the top must have taken the impact and transmitted it to the lenses, and the result you can see if you blow up the image: a pair of tiny cracks radiating from the juncture of frame and support.

For years, I wore eyewear with glass lenses, for fear I would scratch the plastic. First pair of those I tried, I scratched on the way home from collecting them. Seriously.

Eventually, the anti-scratch coatings got better, and I went to the lighter, thinner super-dense plastic, and my nose has been thankful. They weigh about a third as much as glass.

So, cracks, that, like a windshield, were apt to craze and get worse. It was time for my eye exam anyway, and I made an appointment. 

In the good-news-bad-news department, Costco was willing to replace the cracked lenses for free. Thing was, my prescription, which had been stable for five years and essentially the same, had this time, decided to change, so I now needed a stronger one. Which meant that replacing the old glasses was useless. Unless I wanted another back-up pair, of which I already have three.

Swell.

And while the old glasses were covered, a new prescription would not be. Had to start over.

Ah, well. It's a first-world problem, isn't it? I found a new frame I like, got all the bells and whistles in the Transistion™blended/non-reflective/hard-coated/stops UV lenses, and ordered a second pair of spiffy sunglasses for driving. (The Transition™ lenses, which now go Stevie Wonder-dark a few seconds after you walk outside into the sunshine, are pretty good sunglasses; however, the window glass in your car stops UV light, and that's what makes the transition work, so they don't work in the car unless you put the top down, or stick your head out the window. Plus they don't polarize and take out the glare.)

Went with gold wire-rims this time. In keeping with my policy of shaking such things up every ten or twelve years ...

Excellence ...

Two of the world's best ukulele players together onstage, backed by a majorly-good cellist ...

Neighbors and Dogs

I did a post a year and a half or so ago about a neighbor who has more dog than he can handle. The problem has gotten worse; the old couple who owns the dog,  Zeus, can't collect him when he escapes, and he has become more menacing to passersby when he gets loose.

He fear-barks at people when they try to catch him and get him home, gets snappish, and sooner or later, he is going to bite somebody.

I don't know how often it happens, but it does so often enough that the closer neighbors are all aware of it. My wife and I notice mostly when we are walking our own critters and Zeus comes to harass them. 

Happened yesterday, and it is going to happen again. One of the closer neighbors and I managed to spook Zeus back into the house. 

The elderly woman is, according to the neighbors to whom I've talked, fairly far along in Alzheimer's. She will open the front door and Zeus will streak past her, and if somebody notices, they will try to shoo him home.

The old fellow is gimpy, and on top of trying to care for his ailing spouse, the dog is just too much. The man stands there calling him, yelling "Bad dog!" and berating his wife for opening the door, none of which help. 

What can we do about it? Apparently, nothing. The next door neighbors have called senior services and animal control, and legally, there's not much either can do. Several of us have offered to walk the dog to tire him out, but the old boy isn't having any of that. There aren't any grounds to have the dog removed because he hasn't bitten anybody. 

Yet.

Eventually, Zeus will chomp on somebody's hand when they try to corral him, or get hit by a car when he darts into the street without looking. Animal control can step in if he bites, but it seems as if there should be something else we can do. I feel for the old couple. And the dog, who isn't living a very happy life, either ...

La Musica!

At the acoustic jam Saturday last, which, because the usual show runner had a gig elsewhere, I wound up leading, one of the players brought a nifty little recorder and captured some of our songs. Here's a SoundCloud link to "Woke Up Dead Blues," written by Yours Truly, and led by same.

Given that we were in a big pub and only the lead singer's voice and instrument were amplified–well, save for the bass player and one kid who brought an electric guitar and the keyboard players–the little mikes picked up the solos pretty well.

How the session works is, a leader gets up, writes the chords on a white board, then starts it off. S/he sings a verse or two, then anybody who wants to take a lead does a solo, then it goes back to the singer. 

We had a pretty good group of singers this time, though my version of "Little Egypt" was flat in a couple of spots when I lost my chord and had to scramble to find it ...

The songs are a little rough in places, it's a bunch of folks who only play together twice a month, if that, and different songs, but there are places where it doesn't sound too bad ...

Here's a partial list of what we did and a link to 'em, various singers, whose names I still don't know. (Michael did the recording, and led several of the songs, and posts on SoundCloud under SgtKashim:

This playlist contains 13 tracks, total time: 1:25:59

• 

  
  

  Don't Go to Strangers

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  Knockin' On Heaven's Door

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  Hoochie Coochie Man

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  Little Egypt

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  Summertime

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  In the Summertime

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  Wagon Wheel

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  Under the Boardwalk

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  Give Me One Reason To Stay Here

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  You Can't Always Get What You Want

  • 
    
• 

  
  

  Sweet Mellisa

  • 
    

July Set List

Just because ....

July Set List:

Here Comes the Sun - instrumental
Dock of the Bay
Stand By Me
Hallelujah
Yesterday
In My Life
Hey, Jude
Brown-eyed Girl
Little Egypt
Let It Be

Ashokan Sort of Farewell

I've been working on learning "Ashokan Farewell," by Jay Unger, as a solo instrumental on the ukulele. 

Haven't gotten there yet, but I am making progress, albeit slowly so. So I figured to spur myself on, I'd post the only vid I could manage of it that wasn't a complete wreck.

Even so, the sound is crappy, there are squeaks and squeals, and all like that. Usual excuses here.

I used to could play this piece on the guitar, after a fashion, and I thought I'd try to bring it across. It was from El McMeen's transcription in his book on Dropped-D guitar, so to keep the fingering anywhere close, I had to change the key to G. Then figure out how to lose the two bass guitar strings and still have some bottom. I think I mostly have the arrangement down, now it's just a matter of actually learning how to play the sucker. And to get past red-light fever when the camera goes on, which is always cause for immediate flubbery and a fast ride to clam-city ...

Statistic

I started this blog eight years ago, plus about three days. The intent, was, as much as anything, to have a convenient place to work on a journal, and to eventually start mining whatever got laid down and to use it for books and whatnot.

That's worked out; I have several non-fiction eBooks that have mostly come from these page, to various degrees of success. And a lot of other material I can access for research or odd bits hither and yon ...

I'm not making entries lately as often as I did a year or two back. Other things have arisen, but I'm still here.

Never figured it would set the world on fire, but sometime in the next few days, the hits will top a million.

Actually, it already passed that, since I didn't keep a counter on the thing for a while, then I had to switch to a different one, and the counters used different criteria, but hey, there you go ...

Tejano Conflict Cover

Got the cover art for the final book in the Cutter's Wars series. That's Gunny.

Book is due out, I think, in January, 2015.

Milestone/Millstone ...

Only one letter is different in the two words in the title, but it makes them significantly unlike.

The millstone was a large and heavy thing used for crushing grain into meal or flour.

A milestone is a marker at that distance from another point, often another such stone.

In the case of the former, it has sometimes come to mean a thing that drags one down, the proverbial weight hung around one's neck, say.

Milestones metaphorically show accomplishment. Passed another one along the road of life, which could be good or bad, depending.

Getting rid of one might help you reach another ...

Did that yesterday. Got up at the electric blues jam at The Lehrer, stood in front of the mike, and led a couple songs. Never played the uke standing in public before. Hadn't intended to, was just going to drop round and listen, but I took the uke along, just in case. Got coaxed into it, and while I skipped a verse in one song, there were enough instrumental breaks nobody missed it. Voice was okay, even managed to get that blues rasp when I wanted it.

Another long-carried millstone put down and a milestone reached. At this rate, Carnegie Hall won't take more than another fifty or sixty years ...

Party On, Garth

Party for an old friend, me playing the original song  "Mold ..."


I

I used to be so young and free, hard to believe I know/
                   
Now I can’t get it up, and it’s harder yet to go (to the bathroom)
   
My hair is gray, my faced is lined, my arches they are shot/
                                       
My hearing’s gone, my brain is dead, my belly’s gone to pot.

CHORUS:

God, I’m old / Sit down in my wheelchair and get rolled/

Wrap me in a blanket ‘cause I’m cold / 

spray me down, I’m all covered up with mold.

II

I used to party all night long, and labor all next day/

Now I’m sleeping while I work, and sleeping while I play/

The women all would smile at me whenever I would pass/

Now the women look at me and all they do is laugh (at my figure)


(CHORUS)

III

I used to eat my meat half raw, and chew it all to bits/

Now I’m droolin’ in my soup, and it gives me the fits/

My back is tired, my butt is tired, my pecker, it’s tired too/

My options are all running out, there’s one thing left to do 

(euthanasia)


(CHORUS)

Graduation Day

Zach

Oldest grandson graduated from high school today. Yay!

Bouncy, Bouncy

Youngest grandson's birthday upcoming, and his party, mostly family and a friend from school, was held early at one of those trampoline centers. If you haven't seen these, it's a big warehouse with assorted kiosks containing like twenty small trampolines, bounded by more trampolines angled up around the perimeter, pads between them. The kids can, literally, bounce off the walls. 

It has been awhile since I bounced on a trampoline, and it was, um, harder than I remembered.

Yeah, yeah, part of this is because, well, it's been a while, and I am not used to sproinging up and down for an hour. Part of it is because is actually is harder. The bedroom-sized trampolines upon which I played as a teen were more efficient; they had better (and more) springs. Back in the day, these were rubber, and they would allow for much more height.

The trampolines at the indoor center have been dialed down, so as to keep the kids from  going over the retaining walls and into low orbit. Or maybe to keep grampaw from saying, "Hey, I used to do this all the time! Watch this!" and throwing that long-gone double-back and landing on his head ...

Down the ramp from the arena in which we hopped like demented kangaroos was a large fan, blasting away. After an hour, my legs exhausted and heat coming off me as if I were a barbecue grill, I understood why the fan was there as I stood in front of it ...

There were also rope swings that let you fly and fall into a pit full of big foam blocks, and, of course, video games. You could get a drink and junk food up front, and I had a fine ole time, albeit I am passing sore two days later.

What was really fun was to see my grandchildren, only one of whom is any kind of outdoor-sports oriented, actually exercising and enjoying it. 

Six kids, with adult helpers, and a special rate, twenty bucks for all of us. Such a deal.