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Kamala Harris

Just saw the overwhelming support Kamala Harris has among politically active women of color. Looking at the 2020 primary calendar I see it is even more front loaded with southern states than 2016 and of course California is now on Super Tuesday. It’s like the calendar was designed for Kamala Harris to take an early insurmountable lead, even if Beto wins Texas and somebody besides Harris won in…

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That Dexter Gordon tone

Damn, I wish I could get that Dexter Gordon tone in my writing. You can feel the reed vibrating between your teeth, a big man’s sound that fills the room, every corner, every crevice, the ceiling to the floor and even reverberates in shot glasses and empty beer bottles. Toward the solo’s end it disappears out the lowest register of the horn and the pads close on air, then silence. Fried bananas,…

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Solar flare

Epilepsy been a little stirred up, sort of an unsettling feeling. It happens sometimes. A flu can do it. H1N1 had me off for weeks. covid a couple days. Had no idea what’s been setting this off. Then just now I see a long article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the health effects of solar flares. The nervous system is affected, and those of us with neurological conditions are especially…

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Eclipse

I was up till 5 am last night, well, this morning, doing a bunch of stuff. As I’m finishing up Fyl shuffles into the living room. A science fiction/astronomy/outer space nut, she was getting up early, way early, for the eclipse. I gave her a kiss and went to bed. I’m retired and figured I could sleep in past noon. I figured wrong. At 9:30 am she comes in and announces the eclipse is beginning!…

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Confessions of a non-cat person

I never was a cat person. I could’ve lived my life without a cat. My wife loved cats, though, and soon we had a cat. I put my foot down at one. Then I put my foot down at two. Then three. They stopped at three, though I don’t think my foot had anything to do with it. Anyway, she had three cats. I had two litter boxes. That was the man’s job, she said. Seemed logical to me, so sure. You sleep with…

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Ancient office technology and those who used it

About a decade ago I found a locked file cabinet at work that someone still had a key for. It must not have been opened since the nineties and was a veritable time capsule. Among a huge supply of stationery supplies no one ever uses anymore—letterhead, typewriter ribbons, colored pencils, white out, a huge variety of post it notes in all sorts of hues—was an electric pencil sharpener. It must…

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Grace Kelly

Lovely. Lace curtain lovely. First thing I remember learning about Grace Kelly was that she was lace curtain. Her look, her voice, her manner, very lace curtain. I learned the meaning of grace from Grace Kelly. But there was the taint of lace curtain about her. I learned that as a child. It was no accident she married a prince. I’m amazed that a lifetime later those thoughts still rise up in me…

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Retired guy stuff

Just bought a new Sink Swivel Nozzle Adapter Kitchen Aerator Tap Chrome Sprayer, which I could swear is just another Sink Water Faucet Tip Swivel Nozzle Adapter Kitchen Aerator Tap Chrome Connector but with either more or less words, I lost count, like the Sink Water Faucet Tip Swivel Nozzle Adapter Kitchen Aerator Tap Chrome Connector I just busted applying to much torque with the wrench while…

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Hy Maya

Fly PR sent me this years ago a couple years ago with a bunch of other newly released Ohio weirdness from daze gone by and somehow I don’t believe I ever listened to it (sorry, Ilka…) but it’s an incredibly avant-garde band or project or collective from Cleveland in the early 70’s that called itself Hy Maya. I don’t think a single note of their’s had been released by anybody before ever. Most of…

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Old Skool

Hadn’t heard Chaka Khan’s I Feel For You in years, and Melle Mel’s machine gun rap is still amazing, but does anyone even rap like that anymore? It’s feels more coke than kush, New York hyper instead of LA’s Snoop drawl. Makes me wish again that I hadn’t had to sell off my whole collection of Old Skool when it was all brand new skool, but we needed a new transmission. The buyer took everything…

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Unrecorded and unfilmed

Hot damn. At the Orange County Fairgrounds, no less. The fact that this, and similar festivals in ‘67, ‘68, and ‘69 were not filmed and recorded is I suppose because the concept of doing so was so new. The technology was new and the people with the necessary technical skills to film and record live music in an anarchic festival setting were few and far between. Financial backing was very…

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Smoosh

There were perks to being a jazz columnist. Free records, no cover charges, and awesome seats at the Hollywood Bowl were nice. And having lovely women in tight sweaters say Hi! and smooshing their boobs against me in a bear hug as they planted big smooches on my cheek and/or lips was always sort of disconcertingly pleasant. I say disconcerting because I could never tell if I knew the ladies or…

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Robbie Robertson

One of my very favorite moments from The Last Waltz, with Robbie Robertson and Eric Clapton out front with The Band on Clapton’s live standby Further On Up The Road. Clapton’s in fine form but far too polite an Englishman to engage in a tawdry North American style cutting contest, but Robbie, raised in gritty roadhouses on both sides of the border, doesn’t know any other way and goes for the…

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Death of a sofa

For a crippled old geezer I got a lotta life yet. Just pushed the much loved old sofa up and over the railing on the sundeck after a couple tries (I really do miss my fully functioning leg at such moments) where it landed with a perfect precision I’ll claim was planned. Hoped for precision would be more accurate. Lucky even more so. I then dropped eight large size garbage bags full of the various…

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Button

Bought a pack of 6 boxer shorts off of EBay, and they’re comfortable and prettily patterned and for some reason have a button on the front flap, and when you wake up from a deep sleep in need of a piss and you’re faced with a button where there’s no reason for a button to be you’d be amazed at how useless one’s fingers become, like they’ve never unfastened a button in their sixty six year old…

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Colonoscopy

Not to change the subject, but I only have one more colonoscopy to go. Been getting them every ten years since 40, and they always schedule the next one when you’re done with the last. Scheduling nurse says OK, you’re booked for your 70th, and that’ll be it, she said. That’ll be it? They don’t book any past 70, she said. That’s how you know you’re getting near the end of the road. That last one…

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Podiatrist

Went to the podiatrist yesterday to look at my shattered ankle and see how it’s progressing. Well, it turns out, it’s not crunching like a mouthful of potato chips, which is good, she said, and the swelling is way down, it’s a lovely human color and doesn’t feel hot. Plus it hurts a whole lot less—does this hurt? does this?—in fact it doesn’t hurt at all unless I’m standing on it awhile. So I can…