21. August 2008 by John Arnold.

We’ll see….  Friday night.  At the Coliseum.  Here we go.  I was putting new strings on my guitars when I thought to myself (as opposed to someone else),  I should blog about this.  We’re playing an annual summer party for a college in Snyder, Texas.  Naturally, I want my guitars to sound as good as possible and, considering that the last time I played them they couldn’t stay in tune for more than five minutes and sounded like they were being muffled by a big hairy armpit, I should spring for strings. I mean, really, nothing is too good for a paid gig.  So, here I am supposedly putting new strings on my guitars when I became distracted.  I haven’t been here in a while.  To be honest, I’ve attempted to write a couple blogs since my last - Most notably “Pickle Lady and the Rootbeer Killer” - but my heart just hasn’t been there.  Something hit me tonight though, and I think it might be a copious amount of beer.

Friday night.  We’re going to be rocking Snyder.  We play mainly classic rock.  Songs from Credence (Side Note: Pretty sad that Credence doesn’t have their own website, but I don’t google much past the first page. Dudes, see me about page rank), The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, some B.B. King, and even some sweet rocked up Dylan tunes like “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”, except with some kick.  I know I’m missing a lot here, but hell, I don’t even know what the play list is for this gig.  That’s what final rehearsal is for tomorrow night, right?

It will be the first time the band has practiced together since before our last gig about two months ago.  If you’ve read any of my previous blogs about the band, you know this is no cause for alarm. We don’t believe in over-preparing.  As a matter of fact, we don’t even have a name.  One of the guys in the band keeps calling it the Joel DuffieldBand but Joel, as cool as he is, is very self-deprecating and gets flustered when we call the band by that name. We had thought about “Frostbite” because the building we practice in has no heat or air-conditioning and our fingers turn blue in the winter. Personally, I think we should call the band “The Johnsons” but I don’t want to start a gender war with the female members and end up being outvoted and playing for a band called “The Clappers.”

Are we too tight for Snyder?  Probably not.  We’re a guitar band for sure.  It’s an interesting mix though.   The guitarists range in ages from their early 30s to the middle 50s.  You’d never guess, but the youngest guitarist, Joel, is like Buddy Holly re-incarnated - plays this huge hollow-body Guild and when he kicks that overdrive pedal the thing screams.  Very nice indeed.  Mike and I, well we’re Stratocaster guys. Mike, lucky bastard that he is, proudly struts his VG around the stage with it’s blinking blue LED light while I drag my customized standard around with its EMG Active State pickups that’ll wrap some sounds around your head. We all bring a different sound and when we put it together we do a “Green River” that has to get John Fogerty hard, without Viagra.

Who would’ve guessed that the web address for Viagra was VIAGRA.com?  Did those letters grow?  What are they trying to tell us?

 So am I excited about this gig?  Hell yeah!  Just ask Viagra.

Posted in The Band | Print | 1 Comment »

9. August 2008 by John Arnold.

I was sitting around the other day wondering about the number of brain cells killed by alcohol. This thought occurred to me as I was changing in the locker room after working out and observed an obviously inebriated gentleman walk by with his underwear on backwards. There’s a lot to be said for country clubs wherein tuxedoed waitstaff, white towels draped over their forearms, take your drink order while you’re doing bench presses. Such is the good life.

It occurred to me as well, that if we can make drugs that will allow a man to grow breasts, why can’t we make intelligent alcohol? Target the ‘bad’ brain cells, so to speak? Depression? No problem. Drink three of these, stay away from the neighbor’s dog, and check back next week. Recuperating from disabilitating disorders can be exhausting and frustrating and the inherent stress can lead to further ailments. Shouldn’t sick people be happy too? Anxiety? How about Mike’s Hardly Worried Lemonade? Change the old mantra of “Oh poor me… I had my leg amputated!” to “Look at me! I’m a pogo-stick!!!”

Posted in Lateral Shifts | Print | 3 Comments »

8. August 2008 by John Arnold.

After years of wondering whatever happened to Dr. Threadwell after he suffered a drug-induced mental breakdown, I ran into my college calculus professor the other day.  I quickly observed that he got new shoes.  Unfortunately, he still has not seen anybody about the Testicular Projection Syndrome (TPS) he suffers. 

Grasping the elusive nuances of Calculus and Analytic Geometry requires a healthy dose of misdirection and abstract thinking. If peered at too closely, integral and differential equations, hyperbolic and transcendental functions, trigonometric substitutions and polar coordinates, will confound any attempt to be captured by mental accuity. Thus, distraction and a self-distancing approach to allow for a higher-level appreciation of the fundamental truths and axioms of the medium and their interrelationships are required. Dr. Threadwell understood this well and was a master in conveying knowledge in a highly distracting manner. Many are the times and raucous was the laughter when he stretched to the top of the whiteboard to scribe a parametric equation describing projectile motion, only to turn around to the class and discover he had popped a nut out of the side of that skanky outfit in the process. Projectile motion took on a new meaning.

I took two semesters of Calculus with Dr. Threadwell. The last time I saw him, he was walking through the Business Building, in a haze. Eyes wandering twenty feet above everybody else’s heads, bumping into students every step of the way, no doubt contemplating l’Hopital’s Rule. My best friend in college, who was with me at the time, and with whom I’d just returned from a liquid lunch at Hills and Dales in preparation for our final in Sociological Research Methods, asked me in a very collegiate fashion, “Who the @#!* is that freak??” I just laughed and replied, “That’s my calculus professor, dude.”

Shortly thereafter, right before I was to begin my third semester of Calculus, Dr. Threadwell dropped from sight of the university - no explanations.  I had a hunch that maybe he had gone, permanently, onto that higher plane, and was happier in a place where he could deal with numbers and not people.  For those of us who had made it through those first two semesters and were looking forward to that third and final semester, we were much disappointed to find he had been replaced with an Engineering professor who had no talent or knack for calculus and who was also a very boring dresser.  (More on that later)

We all blamed his disappearance on the Dean of Instruction.

We lost a damn good professor that day…

Dr.  “Spitterman” Benny Cornett, shown here in his favorite Student Disciplinary Appeals Hearing outfit, thank you from all of us for depriving us of a quality third semester of Calculus and Analytical Geometry.

P.S.  Shaving doesn’t help…

Posted in Lateral Shifts, Uncategorized | Print | 5 Comments »

7. August 2008 by John Arnold.

Divorce sucks.  I’ve never been accused of having a knack for overstating the obvious, but feel free.  Sling away.  1:58 AM - Alarm going off in about 4 hours for work, and not even tired.  That pretty much sums it up.  Actually, I’m damn tired, but thoughts of tomorrow just don’t hold very much excitement for me right now and it’s as if I’m trying to put them off - the tomorrows, that is.  They show up anyway.  I miss my kids.  I’m getting ready to be missing them a lot more because they’re moving away on Saturday.

I’m glad I have my work.  There, at least, I can focus.  Here, however, I find myself turning from one thing to another, leaving most unfinished.  I guess I’m going to the office tomorrow in jeans and a pullover…

“Sometimes, there’s just not enough rocks.”  That, I’ve always thought, was one of the more profound lines from Forrest Gump. Speaking of rocks, the Olympics start tomorrow. If you can find a connection between the Olympics and rocks, let me know. I can’t, but it seems like they should go together, like a leg-humping chihuahua and a crispy beef taco. Go figure.

I’ve always been a big fan of Pink Floyd. David Gilmour is a fabulous guitarist. The music is mournful, soulful and brilliant. The lyrics - dark, controversial at times, but always inquisitive of the other side of things. So I listen to a lot of Floyd. Sometimes though, especially at times like these, Floyd can be like a gateway drug, like ‘They’ say marijuana is, or like gerbils. Gerbils are dangerous - before you know it you could be hooked on guinea pigs and they’re a lot bigger with all of the attendant increases in tooth and claw size. Explain that one to your doctor, if you can make it to the doctor before it chews and claws its way through your stomach. I’m really not sure what the purpose of gerbils are in the big picture, but I’m sure THAT’S NOT IT. So yeah, Floyd can be a bit depressing at times. But ‘fun’ music just makes me want to puke. Since when was music supposed to be about fun?

So nothing funny here today. Thoughts of people. New friends. Lack of certainty. Lack of sleep. Lack of desire for sleep. A strong desire for a new guitar. Patches on gaping holes that don’t work. A lot of gray and too little color. It’s not finished, so here I am - unfinished.

Posted in Lateral Shifts | Print | 5 Comments »

6. August 2008 by John Arnold.

What a load of crap.  Whoever came up with that needs to go spend a few bucks on some cheap thrills and find something that really moves them.  I’ve seen a lot of things in code - elegance, the de facto hallmark of quality engineering;  brilliance at times, but more often than not,  evidence of inbreeding and mild retardation, but NEVER poetry. 

There’s nothing poetic about code, excepting the instances where the clueless somehow manage to become managers of more of the clueless.  That, in a sense, would be poetic justice, but considering that they’re clueless to begin with, it’s pretty much business as usual.  If you’re trying to write poetry with code, you’ve probably been visiting too many porn sites and you’ve lost your connection with the Real and need to either go to work polishing balls at a bowling alley or hang out at city parks until they catch on to you and make you register with your local Barney Fife.  If you’re SEEING poetry in your code, there’s no help for you.  What are you writing?  “Red Rover, Red Rover, let de-referenced pointer come over…?”

You’re sick.  You need help.  Got Therapy?

Posted in Absence of Golf | Print | 4 Comments »