Wednesday, June 29, 2005



Children make you gray. Grandchildren make you golden.

Charles Conroy Anderson.

Arrived exactly three months after his great-grandfather departed. I'm not a religious man but if I believe in a pre-existence and the after-life crossroads I hope they had time for conversation.


Tuesday, June 28, 2005

I'M with the band

So my kid is in a band called The Falling Pianos out of Calgary, Alberta. They practice in the basement of the house and they have some good tunes that have catchy melody and the word fuck strewn about in such a manner that his mother can't pick up on too many.

My son is the drummer. There is a bassist-singer and a lead guitar who both read Marx and Lenin. My son is more like me. There just aren't enough pictures in those books so he watches the occasional Marx bros movie and listens to Lennon. I pop into the room one night and say "hey dudes, them is some down right toe tapping tunes, why don't you record them in one of the local studios". They stare at me with gazes that make me check for this second head that appears to be on my shoulders. "Dad, That costs money". So dad rips of his shirt revealing the large red S with the two vertical lines and is promptly hoisted on the shoulders of the overjoyed punk rockers.

Some time later the CD comes out and it sounds great and it looks even greater with me heading the "thanks to" list on the back.

MONTHS pass I have now moved the taco stand to Vancouver and the boys are itching to take the show on the road. They've added more tunes to their rePEEtwar that have an Irish slant on them and the bass player is multi tasking with a tin whistle.

They're booked into a high class place in Vancouver called the Cobalt and their name is printed on the ad in the Georgia Straights. HOLY SHIT they've hit the big time!! All of their equipment fits into the van because some years ago hoping for just this very day I bought the GRAND voyager with 13 more inches than the standard voyager that the trailer trash buys. Off we go down to the Cobalt which is easy to spot with all the search lights, limos and blimp circling above. We blow into the place like victorious heroes and proudly plant Falling Piano stickers in several places. Proud dad tags the condom machine in the men's room.

The boys play a great set to the glee of the standing room crowd of six but what is more important is that the lady who booked them is very impressed and wants them to email her when the return so she can put them with a more attractive show. CHAMPAGNE for everyone!! Everyone except the rats running through the parking lot of the Cobalt.

They're booked into a top notch venue in Seattle in a couple of days so that gives me time to take them down to Redmond to pay respects to Jimi and ask for his blessing. We stop by to say hello to Bruce and Brandon Lee as well.

SEATTLE!! Sacred groud to young musicians such as these lads. INTERNATIONAL sensations are now the Falling Pianos. We find the place real early and I give it my thumbs up because the gal tending the bar has the MOST INCREDIBLE CLEAVAGE. I can tell this place is the hot shit because of the old black and white bondage spanking movie being played on the big screen TV over the space-on-the-floor-without-tables-stage. The lads go on 4th of 4 bands. We're fucking HEADLINERS. They played a great set to about 20 while dad stared at the cleavage behind the bar. Each of the three bands before were pretty good but couldn't go without kicking over the pitcher of beer provided by this place. The boys don't get any beer and dad is happy that they didn't slip on the leavings of the other rockers.

What is WAY COOL is that they run into a couple of guys who liked their set and offer opportunity to play other venues. So we toss all the stuff into the van and the boys are being chatted up in the parking lot. A black man comes over and tells them he dug their show and asks what the little flute is called. The bass player tells him it's a tin whistle to which he replies "that shit is GANGSTA".

This one guy is on his cell lining up another place to play TONITE and the other guy "will be right back" because he went off to "smoke a bowl" with my beloved cleavage. So we head off to parts unknown following cell phone man to play a house near downtown that is the venue to "shows" every weekend. We show up and are told that we go on right after the hip hop act working through it's set. The place is old two story jammed inside and out with silly cell phone jammering white kids. "We're outside. Are you still inside? Come out, so and so has to go and this cute guy is out here".

The hip hop group finishes and it takes us about an hour to get all the stuff inside and the sound man 20 minutes to get it all hooked up and off the lads go on their blistering set for the 15 people who stayed patiently to get the double bill action. What was cool about THIS show is that some people want to buy the CD AND want the boys to sign them. Dad meets and has excellent conversation with a beautiful very-out-of-place-for-this-crowd woman in the parking lot.

Connections are made and the future looks bright for the boys who dream of tour busses and groupies as dad drives the Pianos back up to Vancouver. They'll be back in Vancouver in September.

A stunning woman stopped by the taco stand today.

Definition: Stunning is as high as it gets on my woman scale. A stunning woman is the whole aura, beauty, outfit together that sets theme music off in the soul. A stunning woman can serve you a whole plate of shit and a half-worn urinal cake as dessert and you will thank her for it. Wow is the first thought in your mind as a stunning woman flows up to you. Men yearn for stunning women like puppy dogs yearn for the teat after a nightmare.

Example: Jane Seymour is stunning.

Rarity: I have seen maybe 12 women in my life that I would call stunning. Three have come to my taco stand. This one, Jane Seymour, and one who played an actress in the HBO movie "Pancho Villa starring as himself". Green eyed stunning.

One of the Lillix girls dropped by. They've all come by at one time or another and they're all real sweethearts. This was one of the sisters. Her hair is red and black now and I like the look and told her so. Their new CD is about done and I'll have to catch a show. Of course a 47 year-old fat man at a Lillix show oughta draw some interesting thoughts ranging from pervert to he must have a kid here in the audience.

My fingers are crossed for another one of my customers today who is on his way to LA LA land to pitch a series to HBO and another network. It's about four people from different parts of the world who have the same vision of the apocalypse.

Everybody else was boring today.

Monday, June 27, 2005

So I'm giving this thing a shot. Armed with Tony's rules and dead set on improvising and seat-of-my-pants-who-really-gives-a-fuck-devil-may-care-run-on-sentences. I used to fancy myself a writer in my younger days so here I may return to my youth in cyberland. What I intend/hope to do is learn how to post pics on this thing and at times say very little. If I get good it will be at MOST times say very little

Who knows what will happen but maybe I hope to reach the status of not being able to leave the house without being mobbed by adoring fans.

What makes me?

A Mexican mother and a American father. Great great uncles who died fighting with Zapata and some Yaqui Indian blood crossed with white working Indiana Hoosier who worked from the day he was able as a boy until the day he was getting ready for work and was felled by a heart attack.

A "natural" child born of a "gallant" who road a horse through the fields near Obregon Sonora and the maid of a rich yanqui farmer who would take the child adopted with him when the Mexican Government seized his land and ran him and his child of Mormon polygamists wife out of Mexico.

A son of a low middle class family in Indiana who had 11 children (of which only 3 now remain living) who was inducted into the army the day WWII ended and as a military policeman in Germany allowed German prisoners to sneak out at night. He told my sister that he and the others knew the Germans would return because they were taking food to their families and the meals that they were given as prisoners was the only thing that kept their families from starving to death in post war Germany.

Me? I make a decent living because I got lucky. I speak Spanish and the job I have requires it. I have become my father now that he is gone and I have no regret about it.

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