When I was a kid I thought I’d grow up to have a big old house with big old extra rooms. Maybe it’s all the old black and white movies I watched. But the houses I saw in the back of my head were like World War 2 era brownstones with mahogany libraries and such. In the modern day of computers and all-in-one office machines and wireless routers and Netflix-ready Blu-ray players, I have a question that feels… inevitable.
What the hell would I do with a roll top desk?
In my recent pseudo-romantic ramblings about pre-bought lingerie and preferred anniversary gifts, I may have missed something. It seems that after the age of 40 some men (and let me emphasize this with repetition and all caps) SOME MEN look for something other than spousal intimate apparel. An expensive watch even. One friend simply stated la flor dominicana. So, apparently a good cigar trumps good lovin’?
Again, let me emphasize the SOME MEN aspect. I mean, I’m sure a good cigar is lovely and all, but… well, I don’t watch a lot of sports either. Could there be a connection?
You know, thinking about that last post and the pre-purchased lingerie, I have a flood of thoughts. I mean, on the one hand, when I think “find an anniversary gift for a man“, I can’t help but think about a lingerie-clad wife. I mean, let’s face it, give most married men a choice between a watch, a tie, or his wife in sexy unmentionables and…well, I don’t think there will be a lot of mentioning. If you know what I mean.
After all, as Billy Bragg said, marriage is when we admit our parents were right.
When I was in High School I had a friend with a bit of lingerie. It wasn’t anything too racy, but a bit of black lace. It was for the girl he would eventually date. And to tell the truth, I knew a few girls back then who would have been willing to try it on, you know? The funny thing, the thing that always stuck with me, is that he had the sexy undies beforethe girl. I mean, where is the romance there. What if he, God forbid, fell for a chunky girl? No way she would fit into the lingerie corsets bit of something something he’d procured…who knows where.
It always amuses me when sites use targeted geographic advertising. Since I live in a somewhat rural location, the only high speed access option outside of Pentagon level satellite service (requiring a Pentagon level budget to finance) is cable. Our provider has a few hubs that we get routed through, depending on general volume. I won’t go into level of service (or lack thereof) at this point, but what I find interesting is the ads that certain sites serve me based on the hub. I can meet lonely singles or find a barbershop or check movie times or browse menus for all sorts of distant towns. And that wouldn’t be such a big deal if the ads weren’t so poorly written as to make assumptions about my proximity to these services. And since I’m not in the mood to drive 50 or 60 miles to get my dog groomed (not mention that I don’t have a dog) it makes the advertiser seem like a bit of a doofus.
When I VPN to work it gets even better because I may be connecting through the network hub of any one of several offices we have around the country. So I get so-called targeted messages like great barbecue in San Antonio, local house cleaning services Cary NC or best babysitters in Norfolk. Technology – ain’t it grand.
A few years ago I gave guitar lessons. Quite a few years, in fact. In that time period I recall a few basic platitudes I developed. One was that you are either born with a natural strum or you aren’t. If you’ve got it, you can spend a couple weeks learning open chords and barre chords, and before you know it, you’re rocking out Crazy Train. If you don’t have that natural strum, however, you’re looking at months and months and maybe years of practicing rhythm and you’re lucky if you can bang out a rough Wild Thing.
One of the most common topics of conversation with my various students in those days was the differences between electric guitars. And it’s no surprise, really. When you’ve embraced the instrument and become a die-hard guitar player and lover, you tend to forget that to anyone who is a music lover without being a musician, particularly a guitarist, guitars are basically colorful shapes that produce sound. But the nuances of body shape and style, pickups configuration, amp selection… these are pretty meaningless details to the non-player.
So when the topic turned to different styles of electrics I usually simplified the discussion to start with. Putting aside a lot of the finer points and details about specialty builders, I would say there are two primary types of guitars to consider. There are the slab style stratocaster-types, and there are the hollow and semi-hollow styles like Les Paul and ES models, most often associated with legendary manufacturer, Gibson.
Now I know everyone brings up the SG and Firebird and other solid body models from Gibson. And yes, I know Fender has made some hollow and semi-hollow models. But remember, this is a simplification, and I was talking to people with little knowledge of these things. at least at the time.
There are a lot of different schools of thought on which style is better, and really, such a designation is kind of silly. The reality is that different styles of guitars are appropriate for different styles of playing, and the sonic results speak to the choice. Of course, aesthetics are important too. I recognize that we’re talking about rock and roll here. Brian Setzer playing a strat just doesn’t offer the right visual, you know?
As my playing and tastes have evolved over the years, I’ve slowly moved away from the solid, slab-body styles. I’ve never been a strat man. The models I’ve picked up always seemed to have a mushy neck with oversized frets. But I’ve been playing my original Kramer Pacer for more than 20 years. But over time I’ve moved away from the controlled, metal oriented blast from the Pacer to something more open with the teeniest bit of feedback-y sloppiness that I can only seem to pull from a semi-hollow.
So, while I never would have said I was a Fender man, I definitely gravitated toward the solid bodies in the old days. But now, when I crank to 11, I find that I’m usually reaching for my semi-hollow Dearmond Starfire before anything else.
And it looks SWEET too.
You know something that’s missing from contemporary music? I mean, besides meaningful lyrics, competent unprocessed vocals, non-derivative guitar work and original creative ideas? Yes, you’ve got it. There are no good rock shirts anymore.
These days it seems the only rockabilia you see is 60s psychedelia, 80s metal and the latest Bieber clone. Most of the kids wearing AC/DC shirts have probably never heard Ride On, and don’t get me started on the Grateful Dead rehashes. If you were born after Jerry died, slip into your Kelly Clarkson eco-tee and zip your lip.
Personally, I miss the funny t-shirts of the 90s like “This is not a Fugazi T-shirt” and anything All-roy. I remember Sebadoh used to sell shirts that were Sebadoh graphics screened over over used Salvationb Army t-shirts. You could get a Go Huskies/Sebadoh shirt or an Earth Day 1994/Sebadoh shirt or (if you were the luckiest person alive) a Sade/Sebadoh shirt. How cool would THAT be?
So we went out for a little family dinner tonight at a chain restaurant with free kids meal coupons. Tis the season and all that. And for the most part, it was a lovely dinner. The kids were well-behaved and even the baby ate like a champ. Everything was tasty, the service was great. Not much to complain about at all.
Unless you’re me, that is.
Here’s the deal. They sat us at a table next to 5 women, clearly co-workers. Four of them were massive. Seriously. If there’s a halfway point drawn on the floor between adjoining tables, they totally destroyed it. I literally could not sit on the side of table that was next to theirs. Even if I could have somehow slithered into my seat without pulling it out, I would have had to such in my gut the entire me. For reals.
That, of course, has become so commonplace these days that in and of itself it would not have warranted writing about. It was the fifth woman, who seemed older than the others, and who was the only one at the table not at least 100 pounds overweight.
It started because her scarf was thrown on one of the chairs for our table. When the hostess brought us over, she politely asked the woman if it was her scarf. The woman glared at her and said “yes” in that challenging tone that suggested she wasn’t going to move it. She did, though, and glared at us as we sat down. Seriously. She got hostile because she had to move her scarf.
Did I mention that all five women were wearing reindeer antlers on their heads? And I won’t even get into some of the horrible things the old skinny one started saying about the infant at a nearby table who was a little loud. Just chattering excitedly and such. No shrieking, no screaming, no crying. Just being a kid. And boy did it piss her off.
If you’re going to go out for margaritas with your chunky-ass coworkers in reindeer antlers, don’t you think you would be leaving the humbug at home?
I hate that word, but it pretty much sums things up these days. I just took a week off from work, mostly because I had to burn up some time. The thing is, with a family of 5, there is almost nothing to do. Two of the kids are in school, and half of the mornings and most of the evenings involve driving one or more of them somewhere and/or picking them up. I barely got anything done around the house. Just way too much going on.
It would be lovely to get on one of those family all inclusive resort type trips, you know? Then again, I don’t know where the 10 grand or so is coming from.
Blast!
Careful consumption is top nof the list these days. On top of the 40+ minutes daily on the old elliptical, I am extremely careful about those nasty sugars and carbs. Maybe that’s why the ridiculously obvious decline in the state of the average American’s health is so morbidly apparent, so much moreso though a scant few months ago.
Maybe you’re not one of them, but I guarantee you know someone who is. It makes me think of those old stories about tough situations – sometimes a top law school, sometimes Army Rangers or something like that, but always the same basic anecdote. The guy at the front of the room says look to your right and look to your left, one of those people won’t be here when we finish.
Update it – look to your right and look to your left, one of those people is slowly dying because of the crap we let them consume. Why aren’t there more people going for Dietician or Nutritionist jobs? You’d think there’d be a massive call. Yet it is virtually impossible to find someone who isn’t just towing the Washington lobbyist driven FDA line. I mean, really, do you think an organization that takes direction from politicians with virtually no input from people in the medical profession has anything really valuable to tell you about healthy eating habits?
You may think it’s an expert in nutrition that is telling you how much bread and grains to eat, but the tragic reality is that the folks at Wonder Bread have way more say that any expert – or rather, any non-Marketing oriented expert.