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Daily Drivel – Another Good Day!
I have no complaints about this day, soon to turn into tomorrow. I got a lot done and no further bad news either. I’d hoped that maybe once I physically shipped this order with the hold on it that maybe they’d release my funds, but nope. It’ll be a few days AFTER the buyer gets it, which makes absolutely no sense. They do this at random it seems, but I’ve been victimized now 4 times!!! Unfair!!!
But it would just get worse if I were to engage with one of Ebay’s “customer service” cretins, who are well trained in how to make your money stay theirs for as long as possible. All for maybe 10 bucks an hour and lots of free bad coffee. They’re getting more than enough for their investment in these chumps, who seem to enjoy fucking you up. Maybe that’s how they pick ’em! “Are you a sadist? We’re hiring! Only the truly sadistic need apply! Management positions always available!”
A fairly nondescript day, which I mostly slept through, though I did spend some time talking to Mike at some point, which makes any day much better! That’s really why I’m always bitching about nobody commenting here – I have no friends except Mike, maybe Steve but he’s weird, and I desperately need smarter folks to talk to! Simple as that!
So take the plunge! Subscribe, then like, then comment frequently, on everything! I’d be ever so thankful! That’s it for today, and I got it done before midnight! Yay me!
I’m adding this paragraph after the fact, and after remembering today’s food intake. I had a pint of that great Hagen Dasz coffee ice cream, for breakfast today! It’s the second time I’ve done that recently and man oh man is it a great way to start the day! It’s heavy enough to be a meal, has some nutrients, and tastes great, plus it has a little extra caffeine too! This will be the way forward as I strive to get back over 130 lbs. I’m shooting for 140, my max weight ever as far as I know.
I do tend to put on some pounds during the winter months, and with Maria’s Mexican restaurant waiting for me up in Rochester, or Webster to be precise, a northeastern suburb where Xerox once was, I’ll be eating like crazy! Enchiladas, the shredded beef ones, will be local again! That makes me happier than words can convey! I’ve tried, often!
I worked at Xerox as a temp before they closed for good, late 90s I guess, testing these gigantic printers that were like 100 feet long and could spit out a 200 page bound booklet in seconds. My first exposure to real Unix rather than Linux! I got the job because I was Linux aware, but I learned a lot there on the job. It was rough at first! The desktop environment was CDE, which is almost DOS-like in its lack of user friendliness. I’d spend parts of my days wiping various big iron computers that needed Sun’s Solaris operating system, so I installed that a lot, which was very cool, educational too! Loved that job! Then we took a vacation, planned out ahead of time, with me even telling the temp agency I’d be out for just a few days. I was fired before we even got home, and they had nothing else at the time.
Kodak, Xerox, and more were all closing forever, a huge impact on the local economy and people’s lives! What can you find after being a Xerox grunt for decades? Pizza shops and other fast food or retail jobs. That was it! Rochester’s economy consisted of everyone making pizzas for each other now! I struggled from then on to find steady work, and not for lack of trying.
I did telemarketing, the phone operator thing with 9/11 and all that, the Harris poll company, in the old channel 8 building I could walk to easily, pretty much anything but retail or fast food, or any food work really. I still thought I was worthy of more! I spent a few decades not long after that feeling the exact opposite way about myself, some of which lingers even now!
Damn, started with the ice cream for breakfast thing and things got real! My therapy for the day! Sorry! Hey, if nobody’s gonna comment I need to get something out of this! I’ll start shutting up, a little, once anyone else gets brave enough to show themselves. Not holding my breath… They’ll see! In a few months this place will be crammed with paparazzi and supermodels! Just you watch! Book deal in the works already, documentary by summer 2027. That’s the plan at least. Get in here before the masses! Prove how smart you are! Or just be my friend, OK? I need as many as I can get, then more!
Damn! That was raw, even for me! Feeling confident though, so fuck it!
Not gonna hilariously demand cash this time. Probably tomorrow, unless the Ebay hold is over. Even then… What I really need is to get a little button that you can use to easily donate. My PayPal is a mess, but there are other ways. If anyone knows a good one, please let me know. You’ll have to write to do that. Telepathy hasn’t been working! Just makes my hair tickle a little. So someone get right on that! I’d be thankful…
Later!
Everything’s broken, with too long to wait before the bad people have to go away. Our only hope is that they won’t have broken everything by the time we start chasing ’em with pitchforks and/or torches. Maybe there are some relatively honest leaders still left that will step up and start rallying folks around causes that help people instead of using them as weapons against perceived enemies, which turn out to be us. We screwed ourselves, and now my own goddamn birthday will forever be remembered as capital riot day, so I’m taking it very personally.
We’re all in survival mode, hoping things can at least stop getting worse. Not sure we’re there yet or will be any time soon. Guess who’s loving it though? Those rascally billionaires, scooping up what little is left from us poors as we work 3-4 jobs to stay just a month behind on bills. In a sane reality they’d be imprisoned, put in solitary, and maybe shackled extra tightly to make extra sure they stay put forever. Or you could just hang ’em all… I could go either way, but I like the maximum security prison thing best, on a live feed 24/7. The orange guy’s bathroom habits will be on display for the world to be repulsed by!
Until tomorrow, just get through today...
Today in Music History – 9/29
1907 – Gene Autry, the “singing cowboy,” is born Orvon Grover Autry. Autry was as huge a star as there was back then. And strangely enough he recorded lots of blues songs early on. He found the formula for success soon enough… Kind of a jerk in some ways – ultra-conservative morbidly rich baseball team owner is how I remember him.
1930 – Bing Crosby marries his first wife, Dixie Lee. The couple had 4 sons together before her death in 1952. Those sons were all abused, as if Bing was punishing them for their mom’s early demise. Everything you read about Bing is pretty unpleasant, maybe because he was the biggest star on the planet for a very long time, decades perhaps! I remember him shilling Minute Maid orange juice as an elderly person, like he needed the money. Another Bob Hope with the obsession with money, America’s most common and dangerous addiction because it harms everyone. The addict himself thinks he’s a good guy yet the surrounding community lacks basic services, a lot like it is everywhere here now…
1947 – Dizzy Gillespie makes his Carnegie Hall debut. People today don’t know how big a cultural trailblazer Dix was! For decades cartoonists used him as inspiration for very dumb humor around beatniks, their music, etc. Everyone laughed it up, but Gillespie and his music slowly jumped over the barriers that had existed around jazz from the beginning. This Carnegie Hall gig was proof that bop had broken through and was being taken seriously at last.
1954 – The original musical version of A Star Is Born, featuring Judy Garland, opens in Hollywood. The first non-musical version debuted in 1932 as What Price Hollywood?, starring Constance Bennett. I’ve never seen any of these, don’t plan to. Garland is an interesting cautionary tale, but I’m not sold on her talent really. One of the first big time celebrities to become a caricature of herself pretty early in a career that lasted far too long. Rooney too, and he was a mean motherfucker too! His kids were hilarious in their looks and deeds. Not normal people, any of these old school Hollywood types.
1959 – Little Anthony & The Imperials record “Shimmy Shimmy Koko Bop” (Anthony is quoted as saying the song is “stupid”). And he was right! These guys could have been bigger, but I guess the goons didn’t get paid enough or the hookers were not prime quality…
1961 – The New York Times publishes a glowing review of a Bob Dylan performance, giving the 20-year-old upstart his first press in a major publication. Nothing surprising here! He wasn’t gonna make it based on the music alone, so he relied on myth-building, which media outlets like the Times were happy to provide. His music until “Like a Rolling Stone” was not anything people wanted to hear. So many odd twists and turns in his career, some hilarious, some tragic, all part of the myth.
1963 – The Rolling Stones begin their first British tour at the New Victoria Theatre in London. They are the support act on a bill with the Everly Brothers and Bo Diddley. I haven’t mentioned this yet, but it’s my belief that Mick Jagger’s singing is kinda offensive, at least by modern standards. It’s like the real olden days when the genre name for music made by black people was “coon songs” and the singers and lyrics would all be in broken and exaggerated black slang, with every “the” changed to “de” and every “ing”” an “in’”. “Brown Sugar” alone could have caused race riots if anyone understood what he was saying! I like the Stones, some of it, but Mick’s voice is a real problem for me… He sings in blackface!
1966 – Jimi Hendrix meets the final member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, bassist Noel Redding, when Redding unsuccessfully auditions for Eric Burdon’s new Animals lineup at the Birdland club in London. Not much to say on this one. There’s a Birdland in London?
1967 – John Lennon flips on the radio while working on “I Am The Walrus” and hears a BBC broadcast of the Shakespeare play King Lear, which he decides to mix into the song. It worked! The only reason anyone’s heard of King Lear now is because of this!
1976 – At his 41st birthday party, a drunk Jerry Lee Lewis attempts to shoot a soda bottle with his .357 Magnum and instead hits his bass player, Norman Owens, twice in the chest. Owens makes a full recovery. I think ol’ Jerry Lee shot a few band members over the years. That guy was fucking crazy!!! I think one died!
1977 – In the middle of a tour, James Brown’s backup band, the J.B.s, walk out before a gig in Hallendale, Florida, complaining of being underpaid. Most of the band return to complete the tour. I have friends that played with ex-Brown band members. I hope to hear some stories soon. Pee Wee Ellis was the main one, he kinda made Rochester his home base I think. I bet working with JB was a fucking nightmare! Wrong color shoelaces? $500 fine, motherfucker! That kinda bullshit…
1980 – Kurtis Blow releases his self-titled debut album. Released on Mercury Records, it’s the first rap album issued on a major label. Thanks a lot Mercury! This could all have been avoided had they not smelled cash in all the young and uneducated wallets… That supply will only increase over time unless we get serious about education by paying teachers as much as the average weasel…
2003 – McDonald’s launches the “I’m Lovin’ It” ad campaign in America, with Justin Timberlake singing the “ba da ba ba bah” hook and releasing a full-length version of the jingle as a single. It becomes the company’s longest-running ad campaign. Feels like this one kinda proves the last one, right? Now they have enough money to make big time serious actors like Brian Cox, the evil patriarch on Succession, sing this dumb-ass jingle! It’s really accelerating now! By the time I’m gone we’ll barely be able to talk, let alone read or write!
The next few hundred years won’t be very fun I don’t think…. But future civilizations will never know because who’s gonna write it all down? Maybe that’s why the bible is such a mess! A bunch of half remembered tales scrawled on stones that were eventually used by the rich to control the poor. They can make it say whatever is most convenient for their wealth hoarding habits, as we see now with the orange guy cozying up to all the evangelical mega-church dipshits. Those people won’t be happy until the rapture ,or a return to pre-civil war standards, where only white males with money have power. Like it is now!
2008 – T.I. releases the album Paper Trail, made mostly under house arrest while awaiting trial on gun charges. It includes collaborations with Justin Timberlake (“Dead And Gone”) and Rihanna (“Live Your Life”), and the hit “Whatever You Like.” I think I’m beginning to hate Justin Timberlake…
2013 – Ten million tune in to the finale of the TV series Breaking Bad, which ends with “Baby Blue,” a 1971 song by Badfinger. The song represents lead character Walter White’s love of his creation: blue methamphetamine. I LOVED this tune when it was a radio hit, maybe 5th grade for me. I have a mental image of hearing it come on my friend’s transistor radio while I was helping him with his paper route. I never wanted to do that after seeing how much work it was, and for very little money, which you had to collect yourself from the customers. That’s like 4-5 different jobs! Paper boying was not what I thought! I think my friend made maybe a buck or two per week, but worked like 12 hours for it! America in microcosm! Uber eats and other driving jobs are the same, just with added vehicle expenses! We’re so fucked…
2020 – Mac Davis, who wrote the Elvis Presley hits “A Little Less Conversation” and “In The Ghetto,” dies at 78. I covered Mac recently, his TV show specifically, which was more popular than I’d realized! Two whole seasons! The Starland Vocal Band Show went the typical one, as did the Captain and Tenille and all the rest. Mac was different, and genuinely talented too as a songwriter and performer. Sweat Hogs on Ice didn’t even make it to air! Ron Pallillo, an excellent skater, was shattered by that! Poor Horshack… That Kotter show was a hotbed of enmity, with the main characters all hating the rest of the cast and each other. Kaplan and Marcia Strassman were having fist fights on the set! No wonder Barbarino left so soon…
2020 – Helen Reddy, whose hit “I Am Woman” soundtracked the women’s rights movement in the ’70s, dies at 78. She also hosted the Midnight Special, for years! First it was Wolfman Jack, then her, then nobody, just the acts. The mobbed up Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert had much better acts, so I watched that more than this piece of shit.
See y’all tomorrow, same cat time, same cat channel! Don’t step on the hot dogs!
Today in Baseball History – 9/29
1879 – Baseball’s reserve clause is born. National League owners, seeking to limit player salaries, led by Boston’s Arthur Soden come to a secret agreement whereby five players on each team will be “reserved” – off-limits to all other clubs. The reserve clause will be in effect for the 1880 season. The owners tell the newspapers that they have agreed upon a uniform contract with no salary advances.
1913 – The Washington Senators beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 1 – 0, to give Walter Johnson his 36th win of the year. The future Hall of Fame right-hander will toss a record 110 shutouts during his 21 seasons in the major leagues.
1919 – Arnold Rothstein decides to finance the World Series fix. The plan calls for Nat Evans to give a $40,000 advance to Sport Sullivan to give to the players, with an additional $40,000 to be put in a safe at the Hotel Congress in Chicago, IL. Evans takes $29,000 and bets on the Cincinnati Reds, giving Chick Gandil only $10,000.
1920 – Babe Ruth hits his major league record 54th home run on the last day of the season. Only one other team in the American League will hit more than 44 homers.
1921 – Allen Sothoron establishes a major league record by not yielding a home run during the 178 innings he throws this season. The 28 year-old right-hander, who started the season with the Browns before being sent to the Red Sox for a brief stint, will pitch the majority of his games with the Indians.
1947 – Joe McCarthy comes out of retirement, accepting the managing job of the Boston Red Sox for 1948. When asked about Ted Williams, McCarthy responds “A manager who cannot get along with a .400 hitter ought to have his head examined.”
1951 – Don Newcombe becomes the first black to win twenty games in a season. In a must win for the Dodgers, the right-hander bests Robin Roberts, also a 20-game-winner, when he blanks the Phillies at Shibe Park, 5-0.
1953 – American League owners finally get rid of Bill Veeck… for now. The AL announces that Veeck’s controlling interest in the St. Louis Browns has been sold to a Baltimore, MD group headed by mayor Tom D’Alesandro. The new owners get immediate approval to move the team to Baltimore, something Veeck had been trying in vain to get approved.
1957 – Ted Williams becomes the oldest batting champ when the 39-year old finishes the season with a .388 average.
1963 – In his last game, Stan Musial helps the Cardinals beat the Reds, 3-2 at Busch Stadium, getting two hits in his final three at-bats. The ‘Man’ will retire with 3,630 hits, during his 22-year tenure with the Redbirds, collecting 1,815 in St. Louis, and the other 1,815 on the road.
1971 – Ron Hunt gets hit by a pitch from Milt Pappas. It is the record 50th time this season Hunt is plunked.
1978 – Jim Rice doubles and singles against the Toronto Blue Jays in Fenway Park. Rice is the first American Leaguer to amass 400 total bases since Joe DiMaggio in 1937.
1986 – Bert Blyleven surrenders three homers to the Cleveland Indians, giving him 49 on the year, breaking the major league record of 46 set by Robin Roberts in 1956.
1996 – During a 4-1 loss at the SkyDome, Orioles’ center fielder Brady Anderson becomes the 14th player to hit 50 home runs in a season. The power surge comes as a surprise, given the Baltimore leadoff hitter’s previous season high was only 21 round-trippers.
2012 – Rookie Manny Machado homers off Felix Doubront in the 7th inning to give Baltimore a 4 – 3 win over the Red Sox. With New York’s 3 – 2 loss to Toronto earlier today, the two teams are now tied for first place in the AL East.
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All Today in Baseball History items are courtesy of either Baseball Reference or nationalpastime.com.
“Okay, but I’m not good at details. Or the big picture. I also show up late. And drunk.”
Today is National Coffee Day. Free coffee and a donut at Krispy Kreme today. I wish there was one near me…
Howdy, How Goes It, and Other Salutations! (a brief intro)
I’m a former semi-pro blues musician whose life was very lousy for a very long time. My own fault completely. Not any more. At last I’m controlling my own destiny, selling guitars as my sole means of support, reengaged with music after far far too long, and mostly enjoying life again, maybe for the first time ever! I’m a born again heathen y’all!
I have wide ranging tastes and some weird opinions I suppose, and can’t wait to enthuse about all kinds of things – not just music. I’m also a WB animation nerd, a baseball fan that once worked for the local team (Baltimore Orioles, upper deck usher, NOT vomit patrol), though I’m much less of a sports fan now. I’ve ridden over a hundred roller coasters, love vintage sci-fi novels and eat like an 11 year old boy at his own birthday party.
Big comedy lover too, everything from Chaplin to Conan O’Brien to my longtime best friend Mike Puffer (or Plouffe to be accurate), as seen in cult classic “Where is the Chesterfield King?”. His even more obscure film “In The Bag” is impossible to find, so you know it’s gotta be great. “Not many modern day absurdists taking cues from Jackie Gleason”, said one critic, under extreme duress and nearly homeless. Talking to old friends lately has been quite an experience…
I’m still fumbling my way around in here, adjusting the lighting and testing the plumbing. Liquid Plumr has been metaphorically deployed as I’ve moved some elements around, changed the dark backgrounds to light, and tried to tighten things up in general. There’s still some work to do but less every day, and I think I’m nearing the end of the “fix all the shit the AI got laughably wrong” part finally.
I still don’t feel like I get it yet fully, but I’m getting there. I’m allegedly “smart” y’know… They’ve been trying to convince me of that since first grade but clearly my life decisions prove otherwise. I believe I have smartness in me though. Dumb or smart, I’ll continue to learn on the fly if possible. I just resisted a bad insect-based gag there, so you’re welcome.
Still not much traffic or activity here, and I’m not sure there will ever be. That’s fine I guess, but I’d love to see more likes and especially comments. On the old tumblr blog we had a core group that would comment depending on topic, most often on O’s posts.
Music fans that like the good shit are much less common than sports dorks and I know that. I’ll be happy if we get maybe 2-3 regulars who comment somewhat often, if only to keep me motivated to write fresh stuff rather than more recycling of the old shit, which there’s a LOT of… Be a commenter if you’d rather see new stuff!
Thanks for visiting, and come on back any time! I’ll leave the lights on for you! Coffee maker in every room! Ask about weekly rates! Exclamation points for all! Huzzah!!!
Contact Me?!?
You can reach me by searching/using claudecat17 in the typical places – Gmail, YouTube, tumblr, Ebay, etc. I’m out there. I’m everywhere. Or as Peter Frampton once declared proudly, fresh off the mega-flop Sgt. Pepper movie, “I’m In You!”
Pretty bold statement if you ask me. I think that movie was directed by Nancy Walker, Rhoda’s mom and the Bounty paper towel spokesperson for years, kinda the female Mr. Whipple with less groping. I reserve the right to be wrong naturally… Can’t sue me!
Incidentally, the photos above, quickly thrown together to replace the terrible AI-generated stock photos, are as follows:
On the top left it’s a photo of three former Doggie Diner signs. Doggie Diner was a bay area chain of hot dog restaurants that I have clear memories of from early childhood. These dog heads would be on very tall poles, visible from a distance, and different for every location. They’re fun, though a tad disturbing. I placed it where it is so that the rightmost doggie appears to be ogling Alice Faye on the lower right.
The cat is named Bubba, not by me, and is a real sweetheart, a total love sponge but afraid of his own shadow. He’s the one that enjoys catnip. I call him Bob. I’m gonna miss him a lot…
The cat on the front page is named Gus, again not by me but that name fits him well. He’s got the loudest purr ever, and can use it to express himself in various ways. He has a massive chest and a very substantial tale that reminds me of Godzilla. He’s well over 20 lbs but the most social and friendly fella imaginable. He can fetch! And he’s taken to joining me in the bathroom for my morning shit, often rising up to bump my face as I reach for the tp… He’s built like a bulldog that’s swallowed a bowling ball, and you can whack him on the back at any time, even while eating, and pretty hard too. He loves that! It makes a fun sound! I should sample that for future use as percussion… I’ll miss him too but Bob’s my guy…
