This is a quick pictorial version of my walk to roughly King’s Pointe from by the outlet in Lakeside (approximately the first half of the trip through Lakeside is omitted):
Cracks Perhaps You’d Like To Fall Through
Category: Silently Thinking Out Loud
I like to think out loud and see if anything sticks or salutes before I go ahead with it. It’s like the Grateful Dead cooking songs for years on the road before they committed them to commercial recordings. It’s way-social.
Walking Around Thinking About The Heat
About a week ago, I decided I better not drive my van anymore until I can get the brakes fixed.
That’s a little inconvenient, since I can’t mail Things from the house until I get a printer going with the new computer I haven’t gotten yet.
So far, I’ve gotten by with just one ten dollar taxi ride although I know that’s going to get worse, and while I was under no obligation to mail Things today I was out of cigarettes.
After spending the requisite hour thinking about why I should quit smoking cigarettes, I decided maybe I should just walk up the road to the local Inconvenience Store to get them and that would probably teach me. That store, according to Google, is 1.6 miles away.
Today was one of the hottest days we’ve had lately. I think I heard a local announcer say it was the equivalent of 104 degrees with the heat index (whatever that accursed calculation is). I took along a bottle with 20 ounces of water.
After all, I used to walk back and forth across Iowa City, and I can remember that those treks could actually be pleasant, so off I go.
Right away, I noticed I live on a cement street with not much adjoining grass on the side facing traffic, but I walked on the cement, said hello to two guys who mentioned it was pretty hot, had an interesting little nine block walk up to the Cobblestone.
From there, the trail system through the parks is available, and there are lots of big trees with some shade. I decided to smoke my last cigarette. No go, forgot to fill the lighter. How ironic.
Well, I head off down the trail, which winds, carefully noting where the spot-a-pots were located along the way and also carefully noting that it takes me about 20 minutes to walk to Sunrise Campground where there are machines with Coke Pepsi and stuff.
This life on foot isn’t so bad, I think, carefully choosing to ignore the large blister forming on my right heel. I’m a little hungry though, this exercise is bad that way, I’ll get more than cigarettes when I get to the oasis.
Past the Canada Geese which consider this territory to be their own, past the two hot city workers trimming brush by the lake, past not one other trail user because this is the stupidest day of the year to be out walking on it.
I got to our new resort. I found a way to walk through it, availing myself of their nice men’s room, but I’m pretty sure they’d start to recognize me as a regular non-regular if I do that too often.
I’ll bet homeless guys make a science of this stuff, I thought.
The resort is across the street from the cigarettes, and after I waited my place in line behind two vans full of Japanese college students, I had my stuff: smokes, a lighter, two Hostess apple pies, a loaf of way-overpriced bread.
Whew. I only had to get back. Trouble was, I was getting a little weak, so I had a picnic of one of the Hostess pies sitting on a stone bench on the way back. Ah, this is the stuff of us Street Guys I thought as I finally LIT one of the cigarettes with the new yellow Bic.
The park’s nice-it’s grass anywhere but the actual winding path, and I made quick order out of ignoring the path and walking on the grass, until I once again reached the Cobblestone, the beginning of cement town.
The other side of the street is a little better; there’s some grass, a few trees, and it became an object of the march to spot the next little patch of shade up ahead.
As I got dizzier from my impending dehydration, the next little patch of shade up ahead became real important. Apparently 20 ounces of water was not quite enough.
But I made it, a little alarmed by what the march had taken out of me, but feeling smug nontheless that these were regular-priced cigarettes, not ten dollar plus cigarettes. Nevermind the part where it took a few hours to feel like smoking them.
Or getting out of bed.
I saved the ten bucks though.
Turtle-punch Happy Sunface: Outsider Art, 2000
Art by me while I was babysitting my daughter’s dog:
Cobblestone Ballroom ashtray
this is from my personal collection, not-for-sale
Shooter
This is me in college. I’m just doing a little housecleaning and don’t know where to put it.
And then they changed the water
It’s been stormy around here lately and maybe a week ago or so the power got interrupted for a second and my old computer went down. That was the Mac G3 my son “loaned” me in 2002 after my junk computer of that day died protesting the paces I wanted to put it through.
They don’t last forever.
Blue really took a beating. When the power went down the other night Blue was over nine years old in my possession, under constant usage and sometimes a little confounded by my requests. The Internet is advancing, Blue’s Operating System was generating lots of warnings almost everywhere: Steve, you’d GOT to upgrade something. Blue had a hard time coming back on that night, and I thought, uh oh, what if………..but it DID come back on and that leads up to the lightning storm of two nights ago.
I thought, THIS time, let’s power off the computer the way it’s supposed to, and go downstairs and sort stuff until the end of the storm, which I did. In fact, I added “watch some television” to that program and didn’t check the computer again until the next morning.
This time Blue was NOT waking up, and I tried every trick I know how to try, and it could be such a thing that it’s as simple as needing a new on/off button I suppose, but the machine just is not today’s machine for (especially) somebody trying to mismanage a business the way I am.
I should mention that Blue’s a Mac.
Uptown I go. I’ve seen a vehicle with advertising: The Computer Shop, which turns out to be Drew and Deb across the street from where Rainy Day Music operated from 1991-1994. Cosmic, I always liked that spot, I bought some Pakistani stuff there once in the mid-seventies that I’ve since given to my daughter.
They have sort of an Adequate Laptop deal for $300.00. I don’t have $300.00, and even if I did, my brakes on my van are destroying themselves and I must fix them. But they ALSO have a $100 Old HP Computer With Free Monitor deal.
Hmmmmmmm.
If it’ll somehow connect me to the Internet, and also edit photos, as far as I’m concerned, that’s worth a hundred dollars a day on half a good day.
I walk out with that. It does what they say it’ll do, and unfortunately, it doesn’t want to install my printer, so this is not a permanent solution but it beats the hell out of the 30 minutes you can spend at the library (that used to be an hour in ’99 when that’s how I DID all this without a computer at all).
The monitor scared the hell out of me, but we got that switched around and I can see colors about the way I know I left them, and a day later, I have in fact launched one listing at eBay just to prove I can do it.
Learning the vagaries of a new machine, a new operating system, new software, new everything on-the-fly has been a giggle. And I’m not sure how I’m going to edit my site yet, there is one hurdle there that I don’t remember how I solved it even when I HAD FTP and text editing software, but fortunately I do know my own code, and if I have to I’ll just do it from a control panel one page at a time like I also did once-upon-a-time.
Some days, my Dad has always told me, “you eat the bear” and some days “the bear eats you”. I’m not sure I ever completely understood that, but today I ate tater tots and chicken nuggets because I didn’t have any Super Burrito budget left.
I should be grateful I can still operate though, and at least my new modern browser solves a few problems that were driving me batty, right after I remember those places’ passwords and convince them that yes, that’s right…..I’m a different computer now………….yes, I remember my next-door neighbor’s middle name………
Don’t forget to ship your item
Don’t forget to ship your item! Based on the handling time you selected, your buyer is expecting you to ship this within 3 business day(s) from when you received payment.
Ensure buyer satisfaction, and protect your feedback score by following the steps below.
eBay started mentioning that a few weeks ago. Sellers can specify their intended handling time and I’ve had mine set at 2 days for as long as you could do that. I usually ship in one day but I don’t want to promise to do it.
Then I got stuck for some reason and let one slip past the two days and blip! a little note from eBay-don’t forget to ship your item.
Since I don’t like them looking over my shoulder, I changed my handling time to three days.
Along comes the Canadian postal strike. I ask a Canadian customer if I should ship their purchase into the strike, they say no, wait, let’s see what happens here.
Blip! Don’t forget to ship your item………………..
I’m not going to forget-the buyers punish that. My “stars” say I don’t forget. But now eBay is hands-on about it.
Ok, fine. If eBay monitors handling time anyway, do this-take away the distraction of making the buyers rate that star. If it goes out on time, five stars. If it doesn’t, some formula.
Nobody likes those things anyway-they’re arbitrary, without definition, and annoying to both users. Only eBay cares about them.
John Prine Iris Dement SUX 6/15/11
Tom and I attended John Prine’s performance at The Orpheum, Sioux City, Iowa, last night. Iris Dement shared much of the night, opening with about ten tunes solo on the piano and at various times with Prine, including the encore.
I came away with two immediate thoughts: Prine somehow reminded me of George Gobel, and I really should have caught on by now that Dement is and has been a resident of Iowa for some time now.
I’ve never been to a show at that venue, and maybe it’s customary there, but I thought the crowd was a little tame. Judging by the kind of surprised laughter much of his funny stuff evoked, I’m guessing there were a number of attendees who were not necessarily his “devout”.
That first album was 40 years ago; maybe his “devout” aren’t that mobile anymore (shudder).
I had a wonderful time, it’s a great venue, the sound was adequate (I would have tolerated louder), and all the performers turned in a solid night, albeit without “Illegal Smile”, or something maybe from Common Sense, and without the audience bursting into much sing-along, but I had several transcendental moments, notably during Angel From Montgomery, a song that has always “gotten me”, during which Jason Wilber’s guitar playing was positively sublime, throwing me into a brief Nils Lofgren moment from years ago……
Sioux City (known locally as SUX) is trying to cope with flooding and it’s hard to say for me whether that somehow impacted attendance, but the show wasn’t sold out, and that’s kind of surprising. Prine thanked the audience a couple of times for coming out on a Wednesday night and I wonder if that isn’t a nice way of saying gee, I notice there are rows of empty seats in the back…..
and maybe that has something to do with the part where tickets are sixty dollars. I wouldn’t begrudge the economics of that, but I also wouldn’t have been sitting in the seat if Tom hadn’t bankrolled the operation, so I need to express special appreciation for that.
It was a beautiful night for a drive, even through a couple of wrong Sioux City neighborhoods on the way out, and another successful event for the Rainy Day Music team of the 21st century.
Inside Glimpse Powerselling Insanity
There was a time I thought this stuff was for eBay boards, but now I just call it transparency and post it here.
I was rushed today, had a lot on my mind, aspirations of doing more than I could accomplish. And a pretty good-sized stack of postal shipments to handle, including three oil lamps which can be quite labor intensive when it comes to packing.
I’ve been running two IDs at eBay and both IDs had sales, so I needed to “administrate” a little, making sure I had orders printed out for each. That’s where things started to unravel. The newer ID has been offering airline timetables from 1967-1969, a custom project, and that’s been pretty successful, generating some repeat orders from buyers and multiple purchases from buyers to combine for shipping.
I got some of that flipped around and wound up convincing myself I needed to include a third timetable in a package of two when that wasn’t the case, shooting out into the wilderness twenty dollars worth of Thing that wasn’t mine in the first place. That’s one of those first rules of survival: don’t do that.
I’ve contacted both those buyers of course, and have no reason to believe we can’t straighten it out without anybody getting mad, and I’ve done the same thing before once. In over eleven thousand transactions. I really try not to. So I beat myself up. Oh no, I should probably refund the guy I’ve shorted, at least until I know I can fix it, but I just spent all the money on the day’s postage and my monthly payment to my ISP and that isn’t going to work too well. I manage to drop everything I’m doing while I fret.
In the meantime, downstairs is a very nice Cross Classic Black ball pen I stumbled upon at Goodwill. I don’t source at Goodwill, but I do buy candles there (yes, I spend money on stuff to light on fire). I glanced in a case standing in line at the checkout and there it was: a Cross box.
My brother bought me a Cross pen for my high school graduation. It was a silver one, with a gnurled (sp?) grip that was later discontinued, and when I sent it in for repair at one time they sent back the “carcass” because it was discontinued with a new pen as its replacement. He had popped for having my name engraved on it, and I was just impressed to death by the entire act.
So, I’ve collected and used Cross pens ever since the early 70s, rarely go anywhere without one clipped to me (present “traveling” model is a gold one with Firestone engraving), and keep one at my computer (silver), and one at my packing bench (classic black) and one upstairs in the loft with my tax junk (another gold one I think), and then I have a standard brass pencil holder with the rest of them: a rollerball pen, several pencils, a couple of other stand-by pens……
The Cross Classic Black is worth about twenty bucks if you hold your mouth right, as my dad used to say, or sometimes it’s worth five bucks when people price them like that and they go overlooked (it’s quite possible to day-trade Cross’s at eBay and I have).
So I think I’ll have another mini-drama: should I keep it because it’s one of my favorite styles or should I sell it because I never seem to stop needing twenty bucks?
Shouldn’t those two mini-dramas cancel each other out?
Today Is My 12th Anniversary At eBay
I registered at eBay twelve years ago today, originally as a buyer. I found I could cherry pick The Venue and stock my store with records that really weren’t as expensive as everybody thought they were.
I became a seller after I thought one day: hey, I can do that.
The rest of course is history, and it became my permanent gig.
I would like to thank The Little People, whom I occasionally see in action from afar:
The Ex Landlord
My Ex’s Attorneys
The Accountants
The Physician’s Group
The Utility Companies
The Law Enforcement
The Credit Mongers
The Thieves
The Rules Which eBay Writes On The Fly
The World Economy
The News
Ray Manzarek, Roy Rogers Pearson Lakes Art Center April 19, 2011
Pearson Lakes Art Center, April 19, 2011: Ray Manzarek And Roy Rogers
My concert-going buddy of some 24 years called me a couple of months ago and suggested we attend this event at this venue which is maybe 60-70 miles north of me. Book lecture at 4:00, performance at 7:30, sort of a different kind of format, but especially since I can, and my partner Tom could, we made it to both with ease, despite the strange snow we had earlier today.
Lots of things went through my head. The Pearson Lakes Art Center is a small venue, and there was plenty of meet-and-greet time for everyone. As has actually been my custom now for a decade and a half, I didn’t ingest any stuff that made me forget anything and I remember too much. There was enough media there that I’d like to anxiously await somebody else’s review, but in the meantime I need to catch some thoughts.
Ray strode into the lecture refusing to lecture. He said “you better start asking questions or I’m going to talk about LSD” with a grin. I instantly called out a question: “talk about LSD please”, but it soon proved more popular of course to talk about his days in The Doors. I wish I would have counted the attendees, that was quite doable, but now I’ll have to estimate there were no more than 50-75 people in attendance. We were free to take pictures and collect autographs. I collected my autographs on my ticket and on my original Doors self-titled album I bought from the Columbia Record Club and subsequently took to college in 1969, neatly writing STEVE in block letters on the label so my record wouldn’t get mixed up with my roommate Findlay’s.
I’ve kicked myself ever since because we do not write on our records if we are serious collectors and the cover got damaged in small wet basement incident right after we moved into Royal in or shortly after 1984. But now that record is signed by both myself and Ray Manzarek. It’s “repurposed”. That’s what I do.
As many in the room posed for photos, the conversation continued, and when it became my turn I said “really, talk about LSD”, and Ray said “it certainly opened the doors of perception” (a reference to how they selected their name from an Aldous Huxley book which mentions a line from a William Blake poem). I’ll bet he gets reasonably sick of that crap, but he was very gracious about it.
When I sensed we could ask more than one question, I asked him about Dave Diamond, who apparently is mentioned in Manzarek’s Life With The Doors book. Dave lived down the street from where I am now and taught at Buena Vista College (now University) at the time. I met him through Rainy Day Music’s fledgling #2 store here, and fell in with him and a group of reasonably serious whiskey drinkers for quite a length of time. Dave and I spent one memorable night lying to each other about stuff in an uptown bar that resulted in my relocation to a ditch north of town in the middle of the winter, to be rescued by a state trooper who let me go even though I obviously barely knew where or who I was. I’ve always been grateful about that.
Anyway, Dave had some Doors stories, and when I asked Manzarek, he said “oh yes, he IS the guy who insisted Light My Fire was a hit. Wow. Small world. The book lecture was a great success even though they ran out of books very quickly.
Did he and Roy Rogers PLAY Light My Fire? No. They did play “Love Me Two Times”, “King Snake”, and an interesting instrumental version of “Crystal Ship”, but they also did play some stuff from their upcoming album “Translucent Blues” as well as some Miles Davis and several other jazz numbers. They also seemed to compose “Okoboji Blues” on the spot, although I suppose the song could have been a template that you could stick any name into.
I don’t get out very often. It’s amazing how small the world is getting-I’ll bet I recognized about half the crowd, and as been happening now for ten years, I also renewed several old acquaintances from the store.
From the middle of the fourth row, allowed to take photos, I was possibly ready for something just slightly more intense than I got during the performance. The format included several pauses for question from the audience, and those were fun, but I didn’t get to watch these guys really delve into any of those deep hour-long sessions that develop at many concerts I go to.
They knew that though, and Manzarek in particular has a wonderfully developed sense of humor and after joking about the LSD thing again, he did mention that dosing really didn’t turn out to be the answer either if you looked at it like Charlie Manson did.
He and Rogers semi-promised to come back to the area again in the Fall, this time with a full rock band. If they do that, I humbly suggest it’s a must-see.
This event was recorded by Mediacom. Apparently, according to the Mediacom guy, it’ll probably show up in their channel 22 programming (?) in the next couple of weeks. See: http://www.mc22.net/
Wish I would have remembered to keep a set list, but I didn’t.
Test Post Fillmore Cards
