Epistle 26 – Computers

Maybe they’re just a fad. Computers, I mean. That’s what I thought when I first met one in college. It was a big, hulking monster that you timidly fed punch cards in hopes of some grand pronouncement from the Beast, or at least a passing grade. It was like a carnival fortune-telling machine, only less reliable and without a raven-haired gypsy painted on the front.

I was in quest of a regression, correlation, rectal analysis, or something geeky like that, and had carefully filled in my stack of data cards with just the right information. That part took weeks and there was a foreboding sense the slightest blemish in the wrong place, like a beer stain, for instance, would strip the gears of the ravenous Beast and bring it grinding to a halt. At least I hoped so.

Alas, it was not to be. A week later I anxiously reported to the computer lab (an apt description for a room that compared favorably with Dr. Frankenstein’s lab) to learn that the Beast had gone tilt. The inference was that my stack of punch cards contained an evil message. Something erotic, I hope.

As it turned out, the Beast ate a lot of punch cards, producing only indigestion among the student body; the project was cancelled; and I concluded that if I ever needed a computer in my life, I would have to hire a geek. And then someone steeped in the occult invented the personal computer, and life as we knew it was forever altered, mostly for the worse. I now am the proud owner of four computers plus a cell phone that nags me with email messages anywhere on earth. Furthermore, none of them will play well together.

I’ve heard rumors that they sometimes cooperate on networks, but you couldn’t prove it by me. I’ve spent a small fortune trying to achieve some sense of teamwork, but they all treat me like a goof, running from one to another with a little stick of information that I plug in the side just so I can repeat everything I’ve done on all the others. Sometimes, even the little stick refuses to help and sends me an evil message, just like it’s ancestors, the punch cards.

I’m sure that I am somehow complicit in all this lunacy. Most of the human race says it’s because I use Macs (plus a blueberry or a gooseberry or whatever), which cost a lot more but are really cool. Well, maybe so, but I think it’s just one more major social trend with which I am woefully out of step, in typical Boomer fashion.

Hmm . . . maybe I can bring harmony to my private cyberspace if I cram this old-fashioned 3×5 card into this slot . . .

We Will Win

Epistle 25 – Bein’ Green

My car has 750 miles on it and is sitting in the garage, plotting to at least scare me to death, if not outright kill me. That’s what CNN says, and they ought to know. My car is being recalled because the floor mat or the accelerator or the brake or the computer or all of the above was designed by a mad, serial, automotive engineering loon.

Maybe it’s industrial highjinks by those multinational corporate funsters, but I believe it’s all my fault. I went green. Not just light green–green green. I decided I was not too old to save the planet and spent most of my money on a hybrid. And not just any hybrid.

One that came all the way from Japan with lots of whistles and bells and a spare tire you could also use on your bicycle. The GPS system magically pops up on the dashboard when you start the car (which you can’t hear because it has a big flashlight battery instead of an engine), and will pinpoint to the n^th degree the exact location of my death. So be it. I will be one less greenhouse gas polluting our planet, and for Boomers the gas can be considerable.

Oh, I know there are misguided people who pooh pooh this global warming stuff. I even did it a time or two myself. I just can’t shake this nagging image of dinosaurs heating up the climate in South Dakota with their automobiles. Anyway, I cast aside my doubts and fears and bought my hybrid. Not to say I haven’t carried my share of the ecological load in the past. My house in New Mexico had a swamp cooler instead of an air conditioner and a solar pool heater.

I turn off the lights as soon as my wife turns them on, which especially annoys her when she’s trying to read, and I only water my lawn on odd numbered days. I even recycle my plastic Perrier bottles. What a guy. Let’s forget the fact that I generate all those bottles in the first place.

So now that I am no longer driving a gas-guzzling, smoke belching vehicle, why is my life being threatened by a car that refuses to stop? In the good ol’ days, I didn’t have to worry that my cars wouldn’t stop. Most of them wouldn’t start when I needed them most, but they’d always stop. I was once cursed with a Nash Rambler that should never have been allowed on a public highway, but it always stopped.

I also had a 1959 Ford that occasionally had important parts fall off, but it always stopped. In fact, on the very day I tried to sell it, it stopped for good. And then there was the red Pontiac that I took to the car wash every Saturday because the wax was all that held it together. That car was world class at stopping–anywhere, anytime– until I finally had to put a bullet in it on a Chicago freeway.

Now, after all that, I am cursed with an evil machine bent on my destruction. Not only will it go 500 miles on a gallon of gas, it will keep going . . . and going . . . and going until I run out of road and meet my Maker. It ain’t easy bein’ green.

We Will Win

Epistle 23 – Java

I have a Starbucks gold card, which I think means I hang out there a lot. It’s like your friendly, neighborhood bartender having your “usual” set up on the bar before you even reach your stool. It’s comforting to know there is someplace you always belong. Of course, the barrista (Spanish for bartender) changes more than my shirts, but somehow, despite a bewildering array of ways to serve you a cuppa Joe, they always add a personal touch. “Room for cream?” they ask, genuinely concerned for my every wish. I never request room, thinking I’ll get more for my money, which leaves me anywhere from a half empty cup to a puddle in my lap when I add my own.

How did we ever order coffee in the good ol’ days, without lattes, mochas, cappuccinos and tarantellas? (I think that last one is some sort of dance, but it sounds like it should be on the menu.) I can even remember when decaf was invented—Sanka, I think—so not a lot of menu choices before that. My grandmother ran a diner and all you got was a white cup (made of real glass), with a hot, strong (very strong) dark brown liquid beside a beaker of sugar and a small pitcher of cream, which was probably really milk. But none of this sissy non-dairy creamer or white stuff in little paper bags.

No, sir. Not in the good ol’ days. You ordered coffee, you knew exactly what you were getting. The food service was about the same concept. Regardless of the daily Blue Plate Special, my grandmother gave you a plate of brown, green and white stuff mixed in a glurpy swirl. Her theory was that it all got mixed up in your stomach anyway, so why not give it a head start. Ambiance was supplied by the curly strip of flypaper hanging from the ceiling. One look at that, and you didn’t care about the presentation either.

So much for mellow nostalgia. Back to Starbucks where my gold card (it’s really coffee brown) also allows ol’ Starbuck free access to my checking account so he can make sure I never run out of money while I’m in his store. God forbid I should run out of credit and swoon from a frappuccino attack right in front of the barrista. Talk about service! Oh that my bank should treat me as well as the Bank of Starbucks, which didn’t even get a federal bailout.

And what about the snob appeal? Here I sit, sipping my cardboard Venti, in my overstuffed chair, thinking I should have a cardigan sweater and a pipe. I’ll bet everyone in here knows I have a gold card. The staff continually fawns over me, genuinely concerned for my every need. In fact, just this morning the barrista asked about me.

“Room for cream in that?”

We Will Win

No matter what level of playing you’re at now or which musical instruments you may know how to play, learn piano blues and you’ll be much better off for it regardless of the level of expertise that you are at or even if your focus is another instrument.

Playing the piano is invaluable for musical ideas, arranging for other instruments and just plain fun, relaxing and will open up opportunities when you can accompany other performers.

By learning piano blues you will have also learned many rock and roll songs as well since that technique developed out of blues music.

By simply learning some simple and easy patterns you can get in to the spirit of the blues. Before you know it, you will have mastered those patterns, develop some more complex version of those patterns and develop that are slightly more technical and before you know it you’re playing some very decent boogie woogie blues.

This style of blues with a bit of speed is very impressive. The boogie woogie style came directly out of the blues and is one of the best ways for a pianist to show off their technical ability.

If you ever get the chance, stand behind or next to a blues piano player and just watched what they do with their hands. Watching what they do will really allow you to see what’s going on with both hands and how these repetitive riffs are being implemented.

Just take it slow, analyze and study you will surprise yourself how easy things can really be. Then, like anything else, and a little commitment to some daily practice your peed and dexterity will come. Sure, kids usually pick it up quicker than adults or even easier than us boomers, but anyone who has the desire to learn can do it regardless of age.

Even if you decide to only learn to play the blues, think of the enjoyment that you can have at a jam session. Blues is the international language of music and who know learning to play blues music may spring board you in to other styles like gospel and jazz.

Epistle 20 – Juke Boxes

Back when there where diners with padded red and green plastic booths, on the Formica table next to the window there was a juke box, a machine that didn’t look like a box or a juke, whatever a juke is.  It had chrome sides, a glass face and a half-dozen pages of type-written songs that you could flip through with little levers on the bottom.  Some of the list was even legible.  The songs were an interesting combination of the very popular, the very obscure and Frank Sinatra.

For a nickel (or five songs for a quarter if you were really flush), you could punch a couple of buttons indicating your favorite tune, and the juke box would magically send instructions to headquarters, a mammoth 4-foot machine that held all the vinyl records (no CD’s, thank you, only 78’s or 45’s), standing on edge, hoping somebody would punch their buttons.  The lucky selection would then roll out of its slot and lay flat on the turntable while the arm with the needle would descend on the first groove (usually) to play your favorite song.  Of course, you could also put your money in the big machine and punch those buttons but that wasn’t nearly as mysterious.

Apparently, the record selection was changed periodically to reflect the modern tastes in music, plus a seasonal song or two like “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”, but you couldn’t prove it by me.  Did anyone ever see somebody change the records or type up a new song list?  I didn’t think so.  Of course, the obscure songs and the Sinatra songs never had to change in my lifetime . . . and probably didn’t.  Maybe the hot modern hits by the Andrews Sisters and Frankie Laine were installed in the dead of night when the diner was closed so the owner wouldn’t be blamed if the tune was really bad.

Now, of course, everyone has an i-Pod plugged into their ears so you don’t even need a clunky old juke box to entertain you and your friends.  You can get a vaguely similar experience in a nightspot with some kind of electronic gadgetry, but it’s too loud to recognize the tune, if it even has one.  That’s probably a good thing because nobody had to type anything, nobody had to push any buttons, and it’s probably not Sinatra.  Hell, I once tried to play one of those modern music machines, and it wouldn’t even take my nickel.

We Will Win