Lot In Life

I'm being reminded that there are a number of different levels of people in this town. There are the highly cultured folk, very interested in all the fine things that life can offer a creature as unique as a human being. And last weekend, I saw that face of a human: Friday night - there were only two couples, but one of the couples made my night.
Attentive, interested, requesting songs, and very generous with their consideration at evening's end, they made my night, and I got a student out of one of them to boot.
But...
Saturday night - Close to a full house, and for some reason, I was playing great. On fire, actually. You would think that the crowd would've responded in kind, wouldn't you?

You'd think...

What I got was a resounding bit of complete - indifference! Saturday showed me that other human face. The one no one wants to see, unless one is fond of speed-eating competitions while enjoying watching "Borat" for the 100th time. Or perhaps "Borat" is a page out of their daily lives. Anyhow, we had a restaraunt populated with precisely those people, folks who were largly indifferent/ignorant to the level of services being provided for them.

What does one do in tn cases like this? The best one can, as always - What else can you do? If no one else gets it, at the very least, I can make sure I keep my own standards high...

What a waste...

Scarlett Fire - another band with great potential, featuring a chick singer, a little long in the tooth, but I'm in no position to address that, so we'll move on. Pretty self-absorbed, but strong front people often benefit from such an atitude. And it's true in her case. Very strong vocals, and if she lost about 30-40 lbs, she would also be a looker, even at her age.

That's where the good news stops.

This is another case of a girl singer surrounding herself with people that won't help her get where she wants to go. She did have me for a few months, but didn't know how to respect that fact - I got a better offer, and that's life. She has a fairly amazing bass player, but the rest...well, they are certainly all better than Joelle's recent new players. I guess that's something. And in Narda's favour, she has business savy, and a cold, business head. but she knows little about music or arranging. Surprising, as she uses her voice like an instrument. And she doesn't know how to really treasure her top people, which is why I'm no longer there.

In all fairness to her, that band did keep me in the loop for a couple of months, and it is tough for a full-time musician to be in a part-time band, and tougher still when the band is indifferent to that fact. But, in spite of all that, I think they may have a shot. How much of a shot really depends on the decisions she makes in the next year. A smart move for her would be to take the decision-making process out of her own hands, and into the hands of a manager. Where that manager could be found is no longer any concern of mine: She has her own career, and God bless her in it. I have my own career. Time to get back to it...

How Sad...

It always saddens me when I see someone with real talent, but he or she wastes it by surrounding themselves with totally incompetent people, whole sole interest in the potential artist is to go along for the ride, however long it lasts, and once the ride is over, (Or all the Milk is gone, and the cow is empty) See ya...

LOL...I think I just described my last agent!!

Anyway, I went to watch a very charismatic, professional and talented lady named Joelle perform with her band. This is my second time seeing her, as I am a friend of one of the band members. I have played with him in the past, in other situations, and musically, as well as in other ways, I deem him worthy of great respect. And I could say the same of Joelle's band the first time I saw them.

But not this time.

This time, my friend, and Joelle herself, were the only ones who acquitted themselves. But the rest of the band - well, Joelle has lost my respect if she is unable to hear what's happening. She must get rid of that guitarist of hers, as I believe his bad clearly non-musical advice is the source of all the other bad music choices. Since I am a keyboardist, I'll save the worst lashing for him: I stood at the side of the stage for a while, and watched his hands, and since I've played most of the songs they were doing that set, I know what I was supposed to be seeing. I didn't see it. He was turned down so low; you couldn't hear him at all, which is just as well, because he was on vacation up there. He must've been, because he sure as hell wasn't playing any of the tunes that the band was attempting to play.

I don't think I've ever been so disappointed in a musical performance since the last time I hit a karaoke bar. But at least they aren't being paid. This guy was.

Sorry Joelle - you'll have to do much better if you really want to go somewhere. And the sad thing is, you could - you really could.

Two-Tier Justice System...

I'm in Calgary, AB for a New Year's gig, among other things. But that will not be the subject of this blog.

I was at the courthouse today to pay a speeding ticket. While I was there I met two lovely young ladies who say they are Jazz fans, and one even gave me a potential lead on a gig. And later on, I met another lovely young woman who is kind of involved in the classical side of the music world, and she's Italian to boot. But, that also, is not the subject of this blog.

The courthouse was more crowded than I have ever seen such a place. In fact, I was in for a three hour wait before I was finally done. But, places get busy, and that's just a part of life. And now we come to the meat of what I have to say: A lawyer showed up, about an hour and a half into my wait, also to deal with a ticket, like the rest of us. From his behaviour, and familiarity with the courthouse staff, he clearly is a colleague of the JPs we were all waiting to see. Perhaps he is a JP himself. Now we come to it: I don't know why we make such a fuss about a two-tier health system in this country, because we already have a tow-tier legal system. My proof? I, and many others there waited a good 2 1/2 hours or more for service but this 'gentleman/Lawyer/JP/whatever' had his situation resolved in 20 minutes. Is that fair? Well, it certainly is a good reflection of life which is clearly unfair in many respects. It's no wonder the ruling elite have no concerns about what happens to the rest of us, because they wait in a different line from us. Perhaps one day, those of us in the slow line will wake up. I wonder what will happen then...?

Lessons...(Finally)

I have recently ventured into the world of music lessons. As in me both giving and receiving them. Two times - the first was a serious miscalculation, as I arranged to take lessons in reading music from some local woman in exchange for my teaching her son how to play Jazz, and basically, improvise. The miscalculation was this: I approached this woman as a peer, with just a different skill set. She however, saw herself as the teacher, and me as the lowly student - she says "jump", I say "how high?"

Those of you who know me are likely laughing right about now...

In all fairness to her son, to my mind he was so over-committed, there was no way he was going to learn anything well from me. So, he had no time to work on the things I gave him to work on, and he didn't at all. It was obvious. Also, I checked his ears. Similar to his mothers. No perfect pitch...no relative pitch, barely any sense of pitch at all. And whatever hearing ability he may have, his Mother's Gestapo-like teaching methods killed any freedom or sense of spontaneity that would assist in him learning something as freeing as jazz improv. And to think that this woman may end up achieving a Master's degree in Music education. No wonder this generation is turning to rap and techno in record numbers, if this woman is typical of today's music educator.

Needless to say, I didn't stand for this long. My next adventure was with another young lady, and in this case, She's teaching me how to read, and teach, and sing, and again, in exchange for me teaching her to play like me. Now, based on our sessions so far, she even feels different. Although she says she came up the classical way, she feels like a musician like I am a musician, not by the "I'll make a musician out of you by God...now drop and give me 20..." which I think is the school my previous music educator went to, but this woman seems to have come up the way I, and many like me have. She listens, and copies. Just like a child learning to talk, by imitating what the parents say to him/her and each other. In my humble opinion, this is how music should be learned. Because then it becomes internal.

As a student, she's sucking up what I'm giving her like a sponge, and I'm attempting to do the same with what she give to me. And, in terms of the voice, I'm already seeing some improvement: I've increased my range in the top end by a major 3rd: no small accomplishment given only 2 weeks.

I'll keep you posted...

Wall Street Journal Sizes up Obama -

The article below has been incorrectly attributed to Eddie Sessions of the Wall Street Journal. The attribution is wrong. It was not written by Eddie Sessions.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/e/Eddie-Sessions-WSJ.htm

It was written by Alan Caruba and posted on his Warning Signs blog under the title of "Obama's Make Belief Life."

"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group (George Soros anybody?) took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author.

His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska .. It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, nearly a full 2 years into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.

Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.

Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.

Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.

He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America .. He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.

Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life.

When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.

We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America

Disney Revision

Hmmmm...

When I first came here, I thought that this was like Crystal with kids, but now that I've been here a while, I see similarities with NCL as well. And by that, let me say first that Disney has a great product. I mean, they are an entertainment company after all. And a global one at that. So, how can I compare a company like this to NCL, when only a few weeks ago I called her " crystal cruises with kids"? Well, it's because of the Demographic.
DCL is basically a family cruise line. The kind of insanity that you may typically find on Carnival doesn't reign here, because it's not cheap to be on this ship. However, here in LA, we are sailing out of, and returning to, the same port. Los Angelinos are used to having the most famous, most glamourous, most highly skilled performers living and entertaining in their midst, for over a century. So, even the riff-raff that come on a ship that is leaving from, and returning to LA will have very high expectations of what they want to see, entertainment-wise. Pretty voices, Pretty Boys, pretty girls. They aren't like NYers, who expect to see brilliant instrumentalists, and the rest is just window dressing - No, For THESE folks, if you don't sing amazing, the rest of the package doesn't really matter.
The result of this is, a public that is very unforgiving.
Me, I'm used to having people either really loving me, or being indifferent. However Disney doesn't want anyone being indifferent to it. They have no tolerance for it, no understanding of it. The had it easy in Florida, but here, in LA, so close to Disneyland, and Universal Studios, This cruise line is getting its butt kicked. Why? Is it because the ship-board entertainment is bad? Not really. But, let's face it: No three and 4-star cruise line, not even Disney, is going to pay to have the kind of entertainment that the folks of LA are used to. Period. So, Rich, middle class or poor-ish, we're getting a very wide demographic as clients, who are NOT on vacation, but rather, they are giving their children a vacation. The net result of this is you have a clientel that are as picky, hard to please, and as distracted as the demographic that would take an NCL cruise. In other words, very tough to please. Disney is doing a great job, under the circumstances, but my first suggestion would be for DCL to get out of LA, or do LA - Somewhere, and then Debark/embark, Somewhere - LA debark/embark. Does that make sense?

To do LA/LA is really putting undue pressure on themselves, and for what reason...? To prove what? To who?

My 2 cents worth...

Some Thoughts At Sea...

In
1952
President Truman
established one day a year as a
"National Day of Prayer."
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
----------------------------------

In
1988
President Reagan
designated the
First Thursday in May of each year as
the National Day of Prayer.
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------

In June
2007
(then)
Presidential
Candidate Barack Obama
declared that the USA
"Was no longer a
Christian nation."
---------------------------------------------
------------------
This year
President Obama
canceled the
21st annual National Day
of Prayer ceremony
at the White
House under the ruse
Of "not wanting to offend anyone"

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------

BUT... on September 25, 2009
from 4 AM until 7 PM,
a National Day of Prayer
FOR THE MUSLIM RELIGION
was Held on Capitol Hill,
Beside the White House.
There were over 50,000 Muslims
in D.C. that day.


HE PRAYS WITH THE MUSLIMS!

I guess it Doesn't matter
if "Christians"
Are offended by this event -
We obviously
Don't count as
"anyone" Anymore.

The direction this country is headed
should strike fear in the heart of every
Christian,
especially knowing that the
Muslim religion believes that if Christians
cannot be
converted, they should be annihilated.

This is not a Rumour -
Go to the website

To confirm this info:
http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com


You know, at first glance, this looks like
Islam is truly the religion and power, that
for us, must be resisted at all costs, and by
all means. But, knowing what I know about the
ruling elite's agenda (The Bilderberg Group)
and knowing that, among their many stated
goals, they intend for the global population
to be no more than 500,000,000, this
so-called "clash of civilizations" which will
result in a global, and likely a nuclear conflict, will do the job
that all other attempts at population control
have been unable to do. And even if we succeed in reducing our numbers far below the target, we can always re-populate, right? So long as the ruling elite's infrastructure is still intact, what do they care? At least, this is how I imagine the line of thinking goes.

This is similar to the film, "The sum of all fears" where the architects of that conspiracy were fanning the flames of both sides of the potential conflict in the hopes of eliminating the competition. In our case, the ruling elite are funding both sides of the civilization clash, and let's face it; fanatical Islam and neo-fascism are both easy flames to fan. No one seems to recall the words, "we have seen the enemy, and he is us".

Would I love to be wrong, and think that Islam has to be destroyed? Sure. It's much easier, and I do have major disagreements with Islam and the Koran on SO many levels. But so many things happening now seem to be happening by design. Who's the designer? Whether divine or diabolic, these forces usually use humans to accomplish their desired actions. What if Alex Jones is right? Let's put our focus on the Real Target - the Bilderbergs. And with that dealt with, we move on to the next target, just like troubleshooting a PC, or a network. Process of elimination.