Oh I am so pissed.
Really totally completely and utterly Pissed The Fuck Off. Angry Strapped Muppet Pissed.
I guess it's just my knee jerk reaction to being cheated on. It's just my knee jerk reaction to being cheated on 4 times over the past three weekends.
Like most despicable lies and secrets, this one wormed it's way to the surface in an innocent conversation. Like most subterfuges and ugly canards, it kind of just popped out. In this case it came up naturally in the course of the conversation with a common friend and relation. Poof! There it was. His wife gave him up without even knowing it. Amazingly - she did not seem upset!
Sfumato has been hiking without me!!! GAAAAH! With his brother-in-law!! OMG!!!
Fucking Sfumato and his big secret hiking in Ramapo. Fuck him and his so called Tiki Run which he hikes / walks and stumbles through whilst being swarmed by bloodthirsty mosquitoes bent on giving him malaria and West Nile. Maybe he could go faster if he wasn't stopping to set up a lab to measure the chemical composition of the food he got at the deli in feeble attempts to determine if it's right for his blood type.
All of the time I'm like -- Hey Sfumato, lets go for a ride. Hey Sfumato, lets get together and run. Hey Sfumato, lets go for a bike ride. Hey Sfumato, let me put you in a triangle choke and beat your ass down for a while. Invariably - the guy is booked more than Tony Robbins. Or.
Or,if not booked he is:- not into running
- not into mountain biking
- not into getting triangle choked.
- kick boxing and dreaming of Bob Sapp.
[Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin enter from screen left. They are wearing leisure suits. Georg speaks] "That James, he is such a wild and crazy guy! Such a jokester. He jokes! Funny Funny man. He kids. He is a kidder. Everyone knows that Sfumato is the hippest cat to cruise after Tiki Barber in tight slacks since Claude Lemiuex!"[They exit. They look disappointed that their writer could not come up with anything better]
:-) Nah - I'm not mad at Sfumato. Not even miffed. I am amused though! Now, if for a brief moment, you or he bought the rant and at first thought I was talking about cheating with a capital C, or thought I was pissed at him --- well, you could describe that as having been "Rizzed".
If you bought it, I'm like 1 - 0 against the Internet.
If Sfumato bought it at all I will have improved my record to like 6 for 375 lifetime against him.
Ok. Now to tie in the rest of the title of this meandering stream of a post....
I'm playing guitar again. Like AGAIN. At one point, ages ago when I was 15 I had a nice left-handed Ibanez Artist ( a double cut with a sunburst finish) and played till I was about 18 or 19 and then dropped it until I was like 26 and dropped it again when I was like, still 26. Then hard times hit and I pawned it and that was it for guitar. A couple of years back, lets call it three + I got an acoustic guitar from Samash.com. Nothing fancy, just a Japanese Fender dreadnought. Strum strum strum. Clarisa, bless her and her supportive nature, goes out and gets me a tuner and a stand. I actually I play for a while. Just long enough to get to sound like actual notes are being played and I lose interest.
Ah, no one saw that coming, right?
So last year I pick up a Samick Les Paul knock-off which goes by the moniker of "Avion". Let's face it, no one knows what that is. Not one to lie, when asked what type of axe I have a bravely say I have a Les Paul knock-off and try to explain that I am beginner. Still. After 20 years. Anyhoo, since I got the Samick I've definitely played more and longer, though inconsistently. I've even jammed out with some talented friends here and there. Each one waaaay better than me. Each one infinitely patient though and very supportive and each with a bit to offer in the way of teaching. A definite highlight was over this winter. I played with my friend Barry and covered the acoustic version of "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters. It was the first time, ever that I actually played and sang. It even sounded pretty good.
So, I've been playing again. A little theory, a little scale work and a little cover action. Enough practice to get me craving some gear. In the honor of this latest phase I finally went out and bought an amp (I'd been playing it through my PC with a Line 6 GuitarPort which recently went tits up) - a little Marshall MG15CD 15 Watt Combo and a Line 6 PODxt Amp Modeler with Effects. Of course, the price of these two items is more than I paid for my Les Paul knockoff. The amazing thing is I had no problem dropping the cash. Spending 15K on renovations and praying for insurance checks kind of nipped that problem for me I guess!
Perhaps one day I will become enough of a player to get a Gibson Custom or Gibson Standard or an American Strat or some mixture thereof. Until then I'm going to beat on the two guitars that I have and figure out Ten Years Gone by Led Zeppelin, a few Neil Young tunes and some blues stuff. If I could play like anyone it would be like Johnny Shines or Robert Johnson. They are A-mazing.
Another emerging hobby is magic. All I've got so far is a a couple of card tricks, a rope trick and a rather poorly executed vanishing coin sleight. Naturally, I have a book (Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic) and when my fingers begin to ache from guitar I can turn to the cards and fumble through some knuckle busting tricks. The funny thing is, as much I enjoy doing it, I always feel like a bit of a charlatan. But I guess that would be right on the money though, no?
Finally, out of my myriad interests there's this blog and you, Internet. Thanks for listening.
3 comments:
First off, Bob Sapp is an absolute freak. I can't believe a man can be that big. I want to see a steel cage match between Bob Sapp and Michael Clarke Duncan. Now that's some serious beef.
Also, you mentioned the Line 6 guitarport. I've been thinking about getting one of those. Could you post a review or maybe just some comments about it specifically. I'd be interested to know what you thought of it.
It was three times, not four. So how you can believe this misanthrope's uncredible musings would be up to the irresponsible reader.
I know you really are mad inside, bitch. Wanna hug it out?
Bob Sapp vs Michael Clarke Duncan!!! LOL. Yeah, that would be pretty crazy. The only Sapp fight I've seen is the one the guy's from ESPN's "Cheap Seats" show used as their satirical punching bag. The best line from that show was one the guys responding to the question "Do you think Sapp is telegraphing his punches?" with the line (and I paraphrase) "He's telegraphing yeah, but he's calling first and then following up with an email"
I keep hearing rumors of him fighting Tyson.
As for the GuitarPort - it's a great little gadget. It has to be used in conjunction with the GuitarPort software, which is free. This also means you are tied to your PC or a lap top when you play. This may or may not make it hard to travel and play with friends. So, it's really more of a practice set up. The effects are really good and you can choose from a multitude of preset cabinets and effects so you can sound like The Edge or Eric Clapton et al.
The software, for $6.00 a month allows you access to tons of lessons which come with tones to download, sheetmusic and tablature. You can also loop through sections and/or slow the track down by half without losing tone.
All in all its good stuff, just designed for practice. If you want the tones without the software you need the PODxt mentioned in my post, or some other Line 6 product.
As for some pics of me jamming -- I don't see why not. Like I need an excuse to wear leather pants. :-P
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