Friday, August 10, 2007

Alright, Busted, I Lied.

In the post where I promised, one time and one time only, Lisa from rangeragainstwar posted this:

Never have liked Siamese much. Too thin, nasty mewl, bit standoffish, even by feline standards.

Give me a hearty barn cat any day of the week. For him, I'll give a can of jack mackerel and all my love, 'til he turns tail and walks off.


That's pretty much how I feel about cats too. I admire my passel of barn cats and am proud of the symbiosis we have reached. Sometimes though, boundries get crossed.

Meet Mom's other cat.



This is Stormy. She is three years old. She started her life in my barn. My mom came to visit and while she was there we had a huge monsoon storm. This little grey kitten came dragging up on the back porch. I scooped her up and brought her inside to dry her off and as soon as she was done she jumped up on my Mom's lap and they have been together since.

She and China are buddies, they race around the house playing "I'll chase you, then, you chase me, this is the bestest game ever!" for hours. Every now and then when China cops a pedigreed aristocratic 'tude Stormy shows her the moves that she learned in the barn and the 'tude disappears. Stormy has never shown any desire to return to the rough and tumble world of the barn. She prefers her life of ease and comfort being spoiled by a little old lady.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

One Time and One Time Only (no really, I promise)



CAT BLOGGING!


This is my Mom's Siamese, China. She is gorgeous and haughty. She doesn't put up with a lot of mess and thinks nothing of slapping my german shepherd Abbie one across the chops.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Road Story, the sequel.

This happened at Harrah's Lake Tahoe. It was the dead of winter and I was playing the cabaret room with a Motown singing group Drifters, Coasters, one of them or one just like them, I vaguely remember a lot of Lieber/Stoller tunes so if pressed I would say Coasters, but, before I sobered all recollections of a specific nature are suspect.

There was the Original Country Redneck Rebel playing the main room with his band of incestuous inbred deviants. He was a nice enough guy though. Good writer, good enough singer with a thin, reedy voice. Crappy guitar player though.

Anyway, the night before they were to open OCRR throws this big ass blowout in the star suite sitting up there high atop south Tahoe, hermetically sealed glass windows, panoramic views, hot and cold running keno girls, free flowing high ticket liquor, legendary pot and various and sundry assorted pharmecuticals and black market diversions.

And music. Live. Music. The main attraction was a good old fashioned Texas Guitar Pull. There were three guitars floating around the room that changed hands with every song. The person who sang the last song, and it was usually a song that had been written by, or for, that singer, would pass the guitar to the singer that they wanted to hear next. The other two guitars were to play support and backup, you know, be ready to solo if the bong hit between verses made them choke up a lung and stuff.

I was there with my National Steel Body axe ready to provide snotty slide guitar licks where ever it was indicated and to hoover up as much white powdery shit as hit the tables.

Somewhere in the night the tequila ran out. OCRR phones down to the front desk (it's about 3:30 a.m. or so, not late at all for Nevada musican time but on Rocky Mountain Standard for regular square working stiffs it's fucking late or fucking early take your pick) to have them send us up a couple cases of Cuervo muy pronto and he is informed by the kid on the phone that the entertainment director of the casino is concerned about the rampant substance abuse and reports of flagrant alcoholism that have surrounded this guy for quite a long time. He tells OCRR that he has been directed to refuse any and all requests for more alcohol to be delivered to the suite. He further informs OCRR that the normal restocking of the bar will occur at 2 p.m. that afternoon and that this is something that will happen once a day and once a day only in quantities that management has pre-approved. No special requests or appeals will be considered.

The Original Country Redneck Rebel is not phased in the slightest. He tells the kid on the phone that he is a good boy who is just trying to do his pinché job and that all is well in the land of the stars up here in the Star Suite.

Then, he moseys, and only true country boys understand the beauty of a genuine mosey, over to where there is a heavy oak chair at a table by one of those hermetically sealed plate glass windows 28 stories up in the air during a December blizzard in south Tahoe. He picks up the chair and throws it through that window. He watches it fall all 28 stories into the gathering banks of snow.

He walks back over to the phone, tells the kid at the desk,

"We got us a busted windah up here in this suite. I need a new one muy rapido compadre. Please, make sure it's got plenty of tequila too. Gracias chico."

Fifteen minutes later we were moved into a new suite just down the hall. Five minutes after that there was a knock at the door. It was two guys from hospitality services, two hand trucks, each stacked with four cases of tequila, and a sack of limes.

Debauchery commenced.
Discretion will not allow me to state the name of the OCRR. There are more than enough clues for a music aficianado to figure out. If you email a specific guess and are right I will confirm your suspicions in a more private medium.

3B's

Monday, August 06, 2007

Road Story

This is from my wild, indulgent, reckless and mispent youth. It still cracks me up to remember. I was reminded of this by my blogging inspiration litbrit so I will begin by assigning all the blame to her. (I'm practicing my republican blame shifting moves)

I was booked in the common back up band to a Dick Clark All Stars of Rock and Roll tour. Dick, being a savvy business kind of guy realized that if he hired a core combo of versatile professional players that the groups who mainly were all about their singers (like the Doo Wop bands), all about the singer (Dion Manucci), and the other headliners the changes in between acts and the sheer size of the tour would be reduced considerably. It was fun. We were playing great 50's and pre-Beatles 60's tunes (I think this was sometime in the early 80's)and taking our bus and truck caravan all over the country. We played lots of ballparks, lots of county fairs, while averaging four shows a week and thousands of miles of asphalt.

By the time we hit Phoenix we all knew and enjoyed being around each other. We were booked at a fairly new, fairly swank Hyatt Regency downtown. We had four different gigs within decent driving range of downtown so we were also enjoying a nice break from sleeping on the bus and stuff.

The only problem was that we were booked into this hotel at the same time as a huge Shriner's convention. Don't get me wrong, I love the charity stuff the Shriners do, it's a noble thing to help burned kids. It's just that when they get together and put on their funny hats they can be kind of overbearing.

We finally, after about two days of drinking in bars full of Shriners, eating in restaurants full of Shriners, waiting for our bus standing around groups of Shriners, just retreated to our own floor of the hotel. We ordered room service instead of going out, brought back bottles (sometimes cases of bottles) to our room instead of going to the bars and were mainly trying to keep to ourselves.

Usually after we got back from the show a room or two would be designated as "party central" and we would gather to unwind and jam and entertain what ever local road cookies managed to finagle a bus ride back to the hotel with us. All was going well. The Shriners were having their fun, we were having ours.

Let me make this part of the story very clear.

It wasn't me that started the water fight.
It wasn't me that escalated the water fight from squirt guns to ice buckets filled in the bathtub.
It wasn't me that started any of the wet towel action.
It certainly wasn't me that started the wet pillow fight.

I was, however, the guy that took the firehose off the wall, charged it and then hit the "UP" button on the elevator. When the doors opened on an elevator full of Shriners I was the hippie that hosed them down like civil rights marchers on a bridge in Alabama.

That was me.
I'm still laughing about that one.

3B's