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Following in the footsteps of Benny Goodman

I was prepared for Winter. I was ready to hunker down, watch movies, and work on my screenplays. I just wasn’t prepared for this Winter. This February has been like Spring. I haven’t worn my Winter coat in weeks. Usually a light jacket is all I need, and I didn’t even need that half the time. I was all prepared for being snowed in, but instead we got days that are much too nice to waste sitting inside. I’m not complaining, but I was stuck for things to do. The Barnstormers don’t start playing until late April, or I would just go to ballgames. My hip is feeling much better so I can go for walks around the neighborhood, but I can only go for an hour or so before that becomes painful.

I could sit in the backyard, but there’s not really anything I can do back there. I’m not into gardening or anything like that. So, I dug out the clarinet and saxophone I bought when I first moved here. I figured I’d sit in the backyard and practice. It’s been 50 years since I played those instruments, so I wasn’t very good. That’s not true. More truthfully, I was actually god awful, and I only had one song book. So I screeched through the same songs over and over again, but at least I was getting outside in the sunshine and fresh air.

Then the library annex held a sale of “gently used books.” They normally sell used book for a couple bucks, but on this day everything was half price. For less than $20, I filled up my knapsack and a shopping bag full of books. I bought every songbook I could find, Wedding songs, Love songs, Traditional songs, and the songbook from my favorite Musical, Jekyll and Hyde. Now, I could go out in the backyard and practice until my lips were numb, and I didn’t have to repeat the same songs. I also didn’t have to worry about bothering anyone with my screeching. My backyard faces a parking garage.

So, whenever the weather is nice I head out to the backyard with one of my instruments, usually the clarinet, since that’s easier to play than the sax. Since the weather has been great, I’ve been getting quite a lot of practice. I’ve worked my way up from god awful to just plain bad. I can even play some of the easy songs fairly decently. It’s getting to the point where you could guess what song I’m playing, if you knew the song. The other day my 6-year old neighbor, Isabella, heard me playing and grabbed her plastic recorder to join me. Together we made the backyard sound like a slaughterhouse, but we had fun. She didn’t know any of the songs I was playing, and she only knows how to play a few notes on her recorder, but that didn’t stop us. I thought I might find something she knew in the traditional songbook, but a 6-year old can’t be expected to know By the Light of the Silvery Moon or Mack the Knife.

It finally dawned on me that she might know some Christmas songs. So, we tried some of the classics like Santa Claus is coming to Town. I didn’t have any sheet music for these songs, but we both stumbled our way through, figuring it out as we went along. Then we hit on Jingle Bells. There are only a few different notes in that song, and we were both able to figure out what they were on our respective instruments. Since it was the only song we could both play we did it a couple times. After the third time we heard somebody politely applauding. There was a girl on the 2^nd floor of the parking garage listening to us. She stayed for one more rendition, but I guess that was enough Jingle Bells for her. She waved, got in her car, and drove away.

Today was a beauty with temperatures in the 70’s, so I got out the clarinet and headed for the backyard. After a short while ‘Bella appeared with her plastic recorder and a friend, another 6-year old named Lisa. Lisa said she was also learning how to play the recorder, but that she didn’t have it with her. “That’s okay,” I said. “You can be the drummer. Just use your hands on the table.”

I played a few classics which they didn’t know, but we had fun anyway. Then we reprised our hit single of Jingle Bells, and we were finding our groove. Then I thought of a Rock N Roll song that I thought they might know, The Tokens hit from 1962, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Sure enough, thanks to The Lion King, they knew it. So, that became our song of the day. We even worked out an arrangement. I played the wee um ba way wee um ba way part on the clarinet and they played drums and sang the chorus. After a while I heard a third voice singing. Isabella’s mom, Rene was sitting on her balcony singing along with us.

We haven’t signed with any record label yet, but we’ll be appearing here all week, if the weather is nice. Don’t forget to tip your bartenders and waitresses.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

Back in the ‘80’s Jean M. Auel wrote The Clan of the Cave Bear, a fictional book about a clan of Neanderthals who raised an orphaned 5-year-old girl they found near death. The girl, Ayla, is one of “the others,” the Cro-Magnon people who gradually dominated the Neanderthals and eventually evolved into us. The 700 plus page book was a best seller and it was followed by even more sequels than Rocky. Each of them was just as long as the original, and I read and enjoyed all of them, even though it took me many years.

So, fearing that winter might force me inside for some months, and spying a nineteen CD set of unabridged recordings of The Clan of the Cave Bear at the library, I decided that this might be a good time to revisit the Earth’s Children series. I went from one CD to the next, still just as enthralled by the story as I was 30 years ago, and I quickly zipped through all 19 CD’s in just a few days. Now, I needed something else to keep me busy for the winter.

I rushed back to the library to see if they had The Valley of Horses, which was the next book in the series. Unfortunately, they didn’t, but they did have thousands of movies. Since I was also using the wintertime to work on polishing final drafts of my three screenplays, I decided to let the library become my film school.

Many of the movie DVD’s contained director’s cuts with commentaries about making the movie. If I particularly liked a certain movie, I could check out other movies by the same director, or from the same studio, or with the same actors who impressed me. I also checked out audio books by actors and directors. I listened to “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future” by Michael J. Fox. He explained about how he, a high-school drop-out, had acquired the equivalent of a college education just by living life. I’ve acquired quite a film education over the past few months by watching more than 100 movies and listening to dozens of audio books, but the main thing I’ve learned is that an education is only intended to give you a foundation for the real work of living your life. So, using what I’ve learned, I finished the final draft of my screenplay, Miles to Go Before I Sleep.

Soon, Spring will be here, and I will crawl out of my man cave armed with more of the tools I need to improve my writing and further my education in Life 101. Some say that our opposable thumbs are what separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Now, I tend to agree with that, because our opposable thumbs gave us the ability to hold the writing instruments that allowed us to pass down our knowledge and stories and thus affect and enrich the lives of others. We began with prehistoric cave drawings and now have DVD’s and Internet streaming of information and stories. I’m glad I live in these modern times, and I’m grateful to all those who paved the way. The stories of our ancestors are now our stories, and many of them are now movies. Director Michael Chapman, screenwriter John Sayles, and actress Daryl Hannah did an outstanding job of bringing The Clan of the Cave Bear to the Silver Screen in 1986. Now, I look forward to the stories, which we will all enjoy in the future. I’m also hoping that some of those stories might be mine.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

 

In Super Bowls of the past, Tom Brady was guilty of deflating footballs. In Super Bowl LI, (The one named for Long Island) he deflated an entire city. He turned Lady Gaga’s amazing half-time show into a warm-up act for his second-half show.

To open her show Lady Gaga jumped off the roof of the stadium. After Tom Brady’s show, I wonder how many Atlanta bettors jumped off bridges. General Sherman is probably more welcome in Atlanta today than Tom Brady.

Congratulations to the New England Patriots, and congratulations to my friend Sally in Maine, who was rooting for the team all the way. I don’t know how she manages to get through winters in Maine, but I’ll bet that days like yesterday sure help.

My condolences to the Falcons and their fans, but, as the son of the world’s biggest Brooklyn Dodger fan, I learned that quite often in sports you are forced to wait ‘til next year. Just stay off the roof until then.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

 

All things are relative. I didn’t originate that phrase. Some German guy did. I just proved it.

My latest doctor’s appointment began with one of the assistants leading me to the scale. I stepped on and waited for the digital reading to appear. A few seconds later “209.0” flashed on the screen and I jumped for joy. The assistant wondered at my behavior and I explained that per the height/weight charts I had finally gotten myself out of the obese category. 210 was the dividing line.

When I arrived in Lancaster three and a half years ago, I weighed 247 pounds. So, I wasn’t just clinically obese then, I was 37 pounds into the category. By losing 38 pounds, I was now just plain fat. Halleluiah.

Most people wouldn’t be happy to be told they were overweight, but to someone who’s been obese for as long as he can remember, being just plain overweight was a cause for celebration. All things are relative.

Under normal circumstances a meal of bread and water would be considered a punishment, but to a man dying of thirst in a desert, a glass of water would be more precious than Dom Perignon Champagne. Someone who was starving would delight in a crust of bread. All things are relative.

Right now it’s pouring rain outside and I love it, because the usual precipitation around here in January is snow and I hate that. I’m sure there are others, like skiers, snowboarders, and my friend Patrice who would prefer snow. Once again, it’s all relative.

I just finished reading Where Nobody Knows Your Name, a John Feinstein book about life in baseball’s minor leagues. Most of the players were not too happy about being stuck in the minors, but there were a few who were happy that they were getting paid to play a game they loved. Even attitude is subject to relativity.

My target goal is to weigh 186 pounds. So, someday I may be disappointed to step on a scale and have it flash “187.” Not today, though. Today I am happy to be overweight. You might say that I’m now pleasantly plump. Someday I might be at Clipper Magazine Stadium for a Barnstormer’s ballgame and be disappointed by rain, but today, as it washes away all traces of the last snow dusting, I am happy to watch the rain fall.

To some, playing in the minor leagues might be a big disappointment. To me, at 68 years old with an arthritic hip, playing a sandlot game would be a dream come true. Attitude and relativity.

It’s warm today, but I know that most of the winter will be a lot colder and I will be cooped up in my apartment, but when I visit the local library I see a group of people who are there because they just want to stay warm and charge their cellphones and they don’t have their own apartments. They spend their nights in the Water Street shelter.

I am happy even when cooped up in my apartment, though. The cold winter days with the windows closed give me a chance to play my clarinet and saxophone. I’m not very good. Actually, I’m terrible. I bought the instruments when I moved here, despite the fact that I hadn’t played either instrument in 50 years. There are 59 notes that can be played on the clarinet, but, so far, I only remember how to play about half of them, and for some reason, I’m having a lot of trouble playing the note b flat. I haven’t yet developed the mouth control to make it come out cleanly. Every time I play b flat, it sounds more like an animal is screaming in pain, but I’m still having a ball playing simple songs poorly. I don’t think my neighbors are having near as much fun as I am, though. All things are relative.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

After I stuck out my tongue and said, “aaaah,” my doctor told me that I had a bad tooth in the back that would probably need to be extracted.  I told her that I would have it done as soon as possible, but I knew that wouldn’t be until after I cashed my annual annuity check in late September.  So, I forgot about it, until the tooth started to hurt, but that was about a month ago and I still had 3 weeks before the check came in.

So, I went to Plan B – shots of Jack Daniels with a Tylenol chaser.  That worked, and I forgot about the tooth again, even after the check came in.  Then last Thursday night it started to throb again, so I decided it was high time I made an appointment with the dentist.  By the time I got there on Friday, though, the Dentist office was closed, but the liquor store was still open and Dr. Jack was there waiting for me.  That got me through Friday night and Saturday, but by Sunday an infection set in.  Nothing helped, so I was at the dentist early on Monday morning.

They took x-rays, gave me an exam and the dentist said, “That tooth in the back, #31, needs to come out.

“Gee, I thought so.  When can you extract it?”

“We’ll do it right now, if you’re ready.”

“I’m ready,” I said, smiling for the first time in days.

“Are you on any medication?

“Oh yeah, blood pressure meds, cholesterol meds, Lasix, baby aspirin, and Plavix.”

“That’s a problem.”

“Problem,” I said, losing the smile.  “What kind of problem?”

“If you’re on blood thinner medication, I need your doctor’s approval before I can do any kind of oral surgery.”

“No problem.  My doctor is two blocks away, and she told me that the tooth should be extracted.”  So, I took the form that needed to be signed and hustled over to my doctor.  The receptionist took the form, looked at it, and said, “We’ll call you when you can pick it up.”

“Any idea how long that will be?

“A week to 10 days.”

“I can’t wait that long.  I’m in pain.  Surely, you can expedite it somehow.”

The receptionist took pity on me, and called the doctor.  She turned to me and said, “She’s at lunch now, but I’ll give her the form as soon as she returns, and I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

“Fine.”  I went home, waited an hour, and went back.”

“I told you that I would call you when it was ready,” the receptionist said.

“That’s okay.  I don’t have anything better to do.  I’ll just wait here.”  The Tylenol was kicking in, so the pain was subsiding, put I tried to keep my severe toothache face on, hoping that would speed up things.

After an hour went by, she went back to the doctor’s office to see if the form was ready.  It wasn’t.  After another hour slowly ticked by, I asked her to check with the doctor again.  She called my doctor, who told her that she was busy with patients and that she would handle it in the morning.

I snapped.  It didn’t help.  The squeaky wheel wasn’t getting any grease today.  I went home fuming.

The next morning, I got a call from the doctor’s office.  The form was ready.  I hustled over there and took it straight to the dentist.  The receptionist read it and in the details section my doctor had written that if the dentist preferred, I could come off Plavix for 7 days.  I told her that I wasn’t waiting 7 days.  She went to talk to the dentist.  The dentist said that as long as my doctor had signed the release form that was good enough for him.  I got an appointment 1 hour later.

A young man who just passed the bar did the prep work.  He’s also working on a screenplay, so we had a lot to talk about while he held a Q-tip dipped in a local anesthetic on the tooth.  When the tooth was numb, the dentist came in.

“Now, I’ll give you a shot to really make you numb.  You’ll feel a little pinch.”

He was right.  I felt a little pinch as he gave me some shots of what I assume was Novocain.  We waited a bit for it to kick in and he said that he would now give me a shot of something even stronger, because of the infection.

“No problem,” I mumbled.  My mouth was fairly numb.

“This is really gonna hurt,” he said, “because of the infection.”

“Bring it,” I said boldly, feeling that I already had enough Novocain in my system to neutralize any pain.

“Okay.”

He was right again.  It hurt like hell.

We waited a little bit longer and he said that he was now going to perform the extraction.  He said that because of the infection it was really going to hurt.

“As much as that last shot?”

“No, more.  This is going to feel like you’re giving birth.”

I didn’t believe him, even though he had been totally honest with me about everything else.

“Are you ready,” he asked.

“Just a second,” I joked.  “I’m still trying to think of a name for the baby.”

He chuckled and went to work.

The pain was excruciating, and my eyes pleaded with him to stop.

He tried to encourage me to hang on just a bit longer.  “It’s crowning.”

I wondered how any woman ever allowed herself to get pregnant a second time, as he continued to wrench away at the tooth.

“I can see the head.”

“Get it out,” I wanted to scream but my mouth was full of dental tools and dentist fingers.

“Here come the feet.”

“Get it out,” was my only thought.

Then, plop.  “It’s a boy,” he said, as he cast the offending tooth into the garbage.

“I think I’ll call him Hitler,” I managed to mutter.  “Now, please don’t tell me I’m having twins.”

An x-ray showed that there was no part of baby Hitler remaining.  So they packed the wound, gave me instructions to just sit quietly for the rest of the day, and sent me home.

I went home, propped myself in bed, and listened to a stack of audio books.  8 cd’s later I was asleep.

I woke up this morning feeling good.  The pain is gone.  The swelling is going down.  Good bye #31.  You served me faithfully for 60 plus years, but I’m not going to miss you.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

Since I dropped my contract with Comcast, I’ve been a regular at the Duke Street Library.  I usually go there 4-5 times a week to use the WiFi.  I spend my time in the Gerald S. Lestz Reading Room, a section of the library where the quiet rule is strictly enforced.  If you want to have a conversation, or talk on your cell phone, you have to leave the room and go to another section of the library.  It’s so quiet that if somebody sneezes, nobody even says “Bless you.”

I don’t go there for the quiet.  I go for the big desks, the free WiFi, and the numerous electrical outlets to power my laptops.  I bring both of my laptops – one to download racing results, e-mail, etc. and one just for entertainment, as I catch up on episodes of The Daily Show and my other favorite shows.  I’m not the only regular, as there are about a dozen of us who appear almost daily.  There is one guy who always sits at the microfiche reader in the room.  I don’t know his name, but I get the feeling that he must work for a local newspaper.  There are two guys who usually appear with him, but they don’t go on the microfiche reader.  They sit at one of the tables and work on whatever they’re working on.  Then, there is another guy who must be trying to read every book in the library.  He’s almost always there reading a book.  His name is Dave.  I know this because one day the microfiche guy called him over to show him something on the screen that he thought Dave would find interesting.

There are a couple other guys who usually have their noses in a book.  One is well-built young black guy who I’ve never spoke to, but we nod at each other as a form of greeting.  The other is a slightly built older white guy who looks to me like an old-time barber.  He sits there with his right hand inside his shirt like Napoleon.

Then there are the other laptop guys.  I don’t know what they’re into.  There are 3 or 4 older guys who read every newspaper every day.  Then, there is the crew I call the Water Street Irregulars.  I’m fairly sure that they are temporary residents of the Water Street mission.  They come in to charge their cell phones.  The librarian usually has to tell them a few times to be quiet.  They pretend to be reading but I never see them turn the page.

So, there we were, all doing our thing, and there were two newcomers sitting together at one of the computers available exclusively for research and job searches.  (If you want to play video games you have to use one of the computers on the main floor of the library.)  The woman was doing the typing and the man was commenting quiet loudly.  One of the librarians came in to tell him he had to be quiet in the reading room.  As soon as she left he got louder.  Then he made a phone call and was even louder.  I heard him say his name was Fred, even though I was across the room wearing headphones listening to the races at the Delaware Ohio Fair.

Another librarian came in to tell Fred that he had to be quiet in the reading room.  As soon as she left he got even louder, and a few minutes later a male librarian came in to ask him to be quiet.  Fred got even louder, as soon as he left.  Then Dave closed his book and went over to him and asked him to be quiet.  That set Fred off and he told Dave, quite menacingly, to mind his own business.  It looked like he might hit Dave, and I jumped up to back-up Dave, even though I was sure that Fred would have no problem kicking both of our asses.  He was a big strong guy, about half my age and twice my size.  I was hoping that the microfiche guy might stand up, too, but he didn’t.  I guess he wasn’t as good a friend of Dave’s as I thought he was.  Then, Dave sat back down, I sat down, and Fred continued to run his mouth, mocking Dave.

Then I saw two of Lancaster’s Finest walk into the library, and I knew that Fred wouldn’t be able to ignore them.  Lancaster police are all quite large and imposing.  They told Fred that he would have to be quiet or leave the library.  Fred started arguing with them.  He yelled that he was an Air Force vet who served 12 years and he had a library card, and he was using the computer to try to find a job, so he could do whatever he wanted to do.  The cops told him that he had to be quiet or they would arrest him for disturbing the peace.

A couple thoughts went through my mind.  Why do you get out of the service after 12 years, just 8 years away from a pension?  I’m thinking that with his attitude, it probably wasn’t Fred’s decision.  I’m also thinking that Fred is not going to suddenly wise up and shut up.  I turned out to be right about that.

Fred argued loudly with the cops, repeating that he had a library card and that he could therefore do whatever he wanted to do.  The cops decided that it was time to physically remove Fred from the library.  They told him to put his hands behind his back and, to my surprise, he calmly and quietly put his hands behind his back.  One of the cops fumbled with his handcuffs, and it took him a while to cuff Fred, even though Fred was not resisting one bit.  I thought about my niece who is Lieutenant with the NY Police Department and famous for slapping cuffs on a perp at the speed of lightning.  She could have given these cops a few pointers on how to slap on a pair of handcuffs.

Anyway, they finally got Fred cuffed and as soon as they started leading him to the door, his mouth started working again.  “This is how they treat a black man in America,” he screamed over and over again as they led him out.  The people who were not in the reading room, had no idea what had taken place, but I’m sure that they thought it must have been race-related incident.  I’m sure that was Fred’s intention.

So, I’m back in the library today to watch the Little Brown Jug and the other races from Delaware, Ohio.  None of the other regulars are here.  I wonder if they were worried that Fred might be back and looking for revenge.  Me, I’m not worried, but I did bring pepper spray, just in case.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl