Chuck E. Cheese for President

I just got a Chuck E. Cheese token as part of my change from a US Postal Service vending machine. I’m not sure what this means; either Chuck E. Cheese tokens are now legal tender, or they’re indistinguishable from Sacagawea dollars to a vending machine.

TV, Guitars and Gay Pr0n

Naturally, as soon as I tell Comcast to cancel my basic cable subscription, I have a reason to watch TV: me. I’m going to be on television! This Saturday on the WB at some point in the evening they’ll play Stanley Knox’s new variety show that we taped last Saturday night at Legends, a local sports bar. For those non-Central Arkansans in the audience, Mr. Knox is the former host of the 103.7FM morning show, which was recently cancelled due to two of their minions handing out gay pr0n DVDs to a minor at a recent gay pride parade in Conway. As amazed as I am at the fact that Arkansas actually witnessed a gay pride parade that didn’t end in bloodshed, my glee is tempered by the fact that Arkansans can still be counted on to perform stupid human tricks at just the wrong moments in time.

And yes, you read that right, I cancelled my basic cable. In effect, I am killing my TV. I’m really just allowing it to exist on DVD/VHS life support. My reasons for doing so are three: 1. I don’t have time to watch TV, 2. When I do, there’s not a damn thing on worth watching, and 3. $50 a month is not worth it for The Daily Show alone. So Barry will tape it for me every week. I have to give props to Natalie for showing me that there is life without television. In fact, there’s far more than I realized. I’ll miss you, cable television, but until I can subscribe only to the channels I want for a reasonable price, I’m through with you. Not that this means I’ll stop supporting AETN, though.

In addition to the gig at Legends on Saturday, I also played at Anthony and Ashley Nguyen’s wedding. Good luck, y’all. And on Sunday I went to see KISS at Alltel Arena thanks to free tickets from Jessica. I took many pictures at a party beforehand, and several at the show. The party consisted mainly of people I don’t really know. They were friends of Chris’s but everyone was having such a good time, doing so many photogenic things, I had to pull out the digital camera. I later forgot I had the camera on me for the KISS show, but the security didn’t notice, so I took some pics of the show, as well as Chris’s drunk self, which I had to help carry in and out of the vehicle. Some of the photos are risque, so email me and I’ll send you a link if you want to see the drunken heathens in action. Several of the girls are just horribly hot.

Also, the Zappa people keep delaying the delivery of my Dweezil guitar. I guess I can’t complain, since I got it cheap, but it has been over a month since I ordered it. I am however thoroughly enjoying my Richie Kotzen telecaster, which I played at the gig Saturday. So the tele will be on the telly, as the Brits would say.

I Hate Cats

I had just returned from a nice dinner with the Lombeidas and their lovely 3 month old, Tori, when I suddenly found myself punctured 9 times by cat claws. I was lying quite happily on my bed, full of Mexican culinary bliss courtesy of Senor Tequila, when Stinker hopped up on me and set to work doing his tiresome biscuit-kneading/purring routine. Suddenly he was spooked for some reason, dug his claws into me a few times, and scurried off the bed and out of the room.

The pain wasn’t as bad as the itching, since I’m semi-allergic to cats. Some ice fixed that, though, but then the bleeding began. So Neosporin was called in, and I suppose I’m patched together. At least I’m not as bad off as Amy was.

In other news, I went to Dallas last week and picked up my pretty new twanger. I traded a Kotzen for a Kotzen. My blue strat for a green tele. I also got to hang out with my friends Odie & Mona and Torrey & Liz. A fine weekend all around. And of course now weekend in Dallas would be complete without a half dozen bargain CDs.

Brown Shoes Don’t Make It

More fun with old quotations. Another one from Uncle Frank.

"I think that if a person is making music — even if it’s the most crass, commercial kind of crud — that person should be doing that because there are people who want to consume crass, commercial crud. And they’re doing a necessary function for the audience that needs to be entertained. Just because I’m not the consumer of that stuff, it’s no reason for me to go on some big campaign against it. I don’t think it’s particularly aesthetic, but then again, if it’s providing enjoyment for somebody, then fine."

– Frank Zappa, 1983

What Fun Is It Being Cool If You Can’t Wear a Sombrero?

Often do I ponder the Nature of Cool. What is cool and why? I’ve come to the conclusion that what conveys cool in humans is confidence, and that confidence can either be authentic or a pose. Cool can be truth or it can be an elaborate front.

Movie stars and rock stars are generally considered cool by those who do not know them personally. From what we see of them, they move with confidence, either on screen or off. Most often, their cool is a product of their performing skills, their marketing, and their existence inside a glowing screen where dreams come true. Most often, however, this is a pose.

Authentic cool is the sort of cool we witness firsthand in people. Regardless of fame or social status, authentically cool people are self-assured and operate with a freedom that most people lack and therefore envy.

I’m always fascinated by fashion models and their variety of cool. One of our clients is a fashion photographer and I was talking to her assistant, who mentioned that listlessness and boredom have been the general tenor of fashion modeling for the last several decades. The Cool of Supermodels is interesting. They look bored because, as the poet Bill Watterson once said, “the world bores you when you’re cool.” Models, of course, are where the science of pose originates. The easiest way to appear confident and cool is to do as little as possible, lest you give away your pose. If you appear bored, an observer will assume that you’ve been somewhere better than the place you’re currently in, and so you devalue your present location. This sets you apart from your environment, as well as the observer. You are transported in the observer’s mind into the realm of the theoretical, the imaginary, perhaps the idealized. We can’t learn anything about a bored model, aside from the fact that he or she looks good. Beyond that, we are met by a wall of mystique. If a model were to appear excited or involved in anything, then we could learn something about him or her, and the mystique would be broken. The School of Boredom in Modeling retains that mystique, and so it is little wonder that it has gripped the fashion industry for so long.

This was much too long. Maybe I’ll make a full-fledged Two-Bit Opinion on it, since I haven’t had one in a dog’s age.

Also, I have a blue toe and a red toe. My guitar tree fell on me Monday night. I think I might have a broken toe. And my Ibanez Universe has a scrape on the back, which is actually more distressing to me.

Knowing Which Way the Wind Blows

The last weekend of most every month, I play guitar (actually bass, now) at Christ the King Catholic Church. One of the other guitar players there is Ed Buckner, Channel 11’s weatherman. He’s a good singer and guitar player. He was telling me about some of the crazy people that blame him for the weather. Like he’s got some control over it. He actually told me that once a guy told him something to the effect of “I know the government’s got a big umbrella up there” or something.

Also recently I overheard someone expressing frustrated disdain for doctors, which got me thinking. People often disparage doctors and weathermen. I suspect that there are a few reasons for this: 1) both professions involve a great deal of technical knowledge that confound most people (hence causing them some measure of unconscious resentment, particularly among the those who are complete idiots), 2) both jobs are subject to the whims, chaos and complexities of nature (or the vagaries of God, depending who you ask), and 3) people wrongly assume that these fields are scientifically mechanistic. A mechanic can inspect a car and tell you with a great degree of accuracy how well it will run, whereas a weatherman can only make an educated guess about how the weather will behave, and a doctor can only make a diagnosis based in the data available. Both jobs present the challenge of reading signs within an enormous confluence of factors, reactions and influences.

Lest You Think Anything Has Changed in 20 Years

I’m finding lately that reading old magazines can be more enlightening than reading current magazines.

"It’s the 13-year-old girls who buy the records in mass quantities, so the guitarists who make huge amounts of money are in vocal bands. Think about the psychological conditioning that starts to happen: I do less, I make more. It doesn’t matter. Nobody notices. The more poppy the band becomes, the less musicians there are. Certain days I’m real bitter about our lack of success, but other times I know this is the right way. My big gripe is the way the radio stations program the listeners: It’s all aimed at the pre-adolescent, everything. I’m proud to be in an underground band."

— Steve Morse, 1982

And Now a Few Words From Malcom Forbes

Here are some great quotations that I came across recently
from Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990).

“Profits shouldn’t be the sole measure of success. It’s also making sure that not too many people are getting screwed by the system, and that people understand that the system as a whole is working for the benefit of the most people. I’m not suggesting that they do that just to be nice to everybody but to be damned sure that the system survives, and it doesn’t help if everybody thinks he’s getting the short end of the stick.”

“I’ve found it hard to swallow a Republican candidate, and in the privacy of the voting booth, I didn’t always [vote Republican]. The majority of the people lean to the Democratic Party because it is the party of greater awareness and greater conscience, and the voice of the Republican Party is often the voice of reaction.”

“The Republican label is endangered, in my judgment, because often the people who call themselves conservatives are merely using a polite word for reactionary.”

“In terms of Government and the economy, I simply think that the way you conserve what you value is to anticipate change, and if you’re not in the vanguard, at least be flexible and open to the nuances. You don’t preserve by dropping roadblocks in the path of change.”

— Malcolm Forbes, 1979