A Real Good Day

Today was a real good day.

GA and I went to see "White Christmas" at the Theatre Under the Stars, or TUTS, a non-profit but professional theatre. It's one of GA's favorite Christmas movies, so she has wanted to see the stage production ever since she saw it announced when we moved here. It's very nice, and at the end, they have it snow on the entire audience during the finale and final bows. As an extra blessing, the three seats directly between us and the stage were empty - no-shows. So we had a clear view of the entire show.

On the way home, I discovered that hwy 288, which is convenient to our house, makes a direct connection to Interstate 45, which goes north to Dallas. This will mean a shorter, more convenient trip to Wichita Falls when I go to visit family and friends.

We got back to the plantation just in time to swing by the amphitheater to see the living nativity, which turned out to actually be more of a Christmas pageant with live animals, as the actors moved from place to place as the Christmas story from Luke was read, and carols were sung. They had sheep, goats and a very stubborn donkey led around among the angels and heavenly host and wise men and so forth - sorry, no lobster at this production - and this little boy spent the entire performance dancing around and tossing his little shepherd hat up in the air and fetching it, and falling down and rolling in the grass. The donkey, who was constantly fighting Joseph about where he was supposed to be - you know how actors can be - decided to poop right in front of the bales of hay. And here came the little boy, tossing his hat, and rolling around in the grass... and into the donkey poop. He kept right on dancing and tossing his hat.

After the nativity, we drove to some of the wealthier neighborhoods to see how they had decorated, and many of the lights were brightly and tastefully done. One house, though, reminded me of the house in Deck the Halls: not only could you see it from space, I bet people who saw the satellite image were asking which bright spot was Houston.

Sometimes I really like living here.

Brilliant criminals

Crime is low in our area, especially given that we're near Houston.

But when we do have crime, it's at least entertaining. I have to share the latest one, which was in Missouri City. This guy stole a GPS out of somebody's car. He then sold it to a pawn shop. But before he sold it, he entered his own address to try it out. Yep it took him right to his own house alright.

It also took the police there, because he didn't bother deleting his address before he sold it.

As Bugs Bunny used to say, what a maroon.

you're tagged, maybe

Here are the directions: Just go to your 6th photo folder on your computer (or external hard drive, or memory card - pick one!), post the 6th photo, and hope you can remember the details to share them. Then tag 5 others.



This is the courtyard at the Hotel Ancira in Bustamante, NL, Mexico.
The car is a diesel Oldsmobile, which we drove to Mexico to visit the cave there.
I love that place.

I tag the first five bloggers to see this.
Acknowledge that you were tagged by leaving a comment with the url to your response.

Whoa

OK, that was weird.

We were watching this movie, The Bucket List, and the credits had just rolled at the end.

The lights went out at 8:37 pm, and then came back on two seconds later, and then our front door blew open.

So if either or both of us dies in our sleep tonight, you'll have a cool story to tell at the funeral.

Life is a box of chocolates, after the coupon

I just read a short blog about what two of my grandchildren did. Go read it. I'll wait here for you.

Now that's the quality I love in people everywhere - I love it when kids or grownups (but especially kids) do something different and original.

But this blog will intentionally be rambling and random. You know you love it.

This past week I went to visit my best friends in the whole world, back in my old hometown of Wichita Falls. It was a short visit, centered around seeing the play that they are both in, Move Over Mrs. Markham, which is a British farce, only they Americanized it because most of the cast wasn't able to handle the accent. I found it most enjoyable (and it is still playing to sold out audiences), and all the more so since I played Mr. Markham in that play and in that same theatre many years ago, when I still had dark hair.

While there, I met their new outside cat, named Princess, who looks and acts so much like a cat I used to have that I couldn't help but pet it and coo at it.

We watched a movie together (not with the cat, but with the family) - "21," which is about some MIT guys doing a card counting thing in Las Vegas and making tons of money. There is a scene where the professor is explaining to the class about probabilities and how change affects them. So he describes a game show where you're supposed to choose the best door out of three. A student chooses door number 1. Now the professor reminds the class that the odds are 33.3 percent that he has chosen the correct door, but - now the game show host reveals that door number 3 is not the best door, and is therefor out of the equation. Would he like to change his mind?

The student says yes, and now he goes for door number 2, because its probability is now - I forget the percentage, but it is higher than the obvious 50%. And the professor agrees, and praises him, and now wants him to go be a card counter in Vegas. And I'm all like "what???"

I was willing to agree that there are probably some mathematical principles that are way beyond me - I know that there are other dimensions besides the four that are obvious to us - but this was nonsense, or so it seemed to me, and still does.

Suppose you have the same scenario, only this time you have two students participating. One chooses door 1, the other chooses door 2. The game show host takes door 3 out of the equation, as before. Do the two students now switch doors, because each door is now greater than 50% likely to be the correct door? I would love for someone to explain to me how 1 out of 2 can possibly be anything but 50%.

But back to the family of my friends. One of their daughters is almost certain to be a semi-finalist merit scholar or whatever you call that, which doesn't really surprise me because she is so brilliant. Both daughters are, of course, incredibly smart and visually attractive in the bargain.

After the show Thursday night, the plan was to hit the backyard hot tub, so as to enjoy the near freezing temperatures and high winds that Wichita Falls was providing for us. But the female half of the partnership had to back out due to work interfering - honest - and that would have left two guys in the hot tub, and that would have been too... you know. The G word.

It was probably all for the best, since I was getting sleepy already and I had to leave early the next morning for my long drive back to Houston.

I wonder if my life would have been any different if either of my two brothers had been creative enough to want to sell me on a treadmill while playing store?

****

Update... OK, a computer geek in Midland explained it to me, though it wasn't clear in the movie. The game show host can't open your door, whether it's wrong or right. So if you have the correct door already, he has two doors to choose from. If you have the wrong door, however, he can only choose one door to open.

So your choice being wrong or right affects the door he opens, which in turn slightly affects the odds of your door being right.

to guitar or not to guitar

To guitar or not to guitar, that is the question.

If you have known me for thirty years or more, then you know that I used to play guitar back in the day. I had a fabulous Gibson SG-I, with a perfect fret board and the easiest action you could ask for while playing.

I played in a little Christian rock band very briefly, led by Bill Lee (I wonder if he's still around), and I've forgotten the name of the band. We were actually pretty good - each of us had written a song or two, and this particular one that I wrote had a "heavy" sound, and used the lyrics from a hymn out of the Baptist Hymnal.

This was in 1971 or so, and there was no such thing as a Contemporary Christian bin at the record store, and in fact, most churchy types considered rock music to be of the devil, and to be shunned at all cost. Annie Herring wasn't recording yet, and it would be another few years before we would hear Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music, by Larry Norman. So this was a cutting edge thing to do. I'm not saying we were the first, but I am saying that we were blazing our own trail through the Christian music wilderness.

What happened was that I was singing with a church sponsored youth group at Eden Hills Baptist Church, and we quite innocently had included in our repertoire a popular selection from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar - which was admittedly not even close to being doctrinally correct, though we hadn't really considered that. We were doing popular songs modified to be sort of Christian in nature - for example, I'm a Believer, the Monkees' hit, with a few altered lyrics.

We got invited to some little Assembly of God church which was doing some Sunday afternoon festival, and they wanted us to represent what the youth of today was doing musically. We sang I Don't Know How to Love Him, and one of the southern gospel groups walked out. Walked out! To their credit, they refrained from holding up crosses and trying to cast out our demons, but it was pretty darn rude when you consider that we were invited, paid our own way there, and we were kids for crying out loud. Well, practically kids.

Actually, all but one of them walked out - Bill Lee stayed in, and he apologized for the rest of his group. And later, before their group split up (Bill Lee quit or was fired, who knows), I dropped by one of their rehearsals. There they were, the group who had indignantly walked out on us for singing unapproved music, drinking beer and telling dirty jokes and using profanity like it was the king's English. Except Bill, who spoke softly and could have been in church. My opinion of the gospel music industry was dropping like a rock.

After their group fell apart, Bill thought it would be interesting to form a new group with some of us - me on guitar or bass, and some other people we knew - playing a mix of rock and gospel. Sure, why not? So we formed that little group. A strange thing happened. We were catching on. Churches allowed us to play in their fellowship halls (not the sanctuary, that would have been blasphemy), and we got invited to many youth functions. During one of these functions, a lady asked us if we would be willing to travel to another town. She thought we were pretty good, and if we wanted her to do it, she could arrange for us to play at the high school auditorium in Bellevue, to the southeast of our hometown, Wichita Falls. She would take care of the promotion, the ticket sales, everything. Well... sure, why not?

So we packed up our amplifiers and drove to Bellevue, and set up on the small stage there. On the other side of the curtain was a packed auditorium, probably holding a couple of hundred people. One thing was odd, though - I was expecting to see high school kids, and most of these people were adults. Well, not to worry, they were probably family types.

We opened with the song I had written, because it established so well that we were playing Christian rock. I played bass on that one, because the song depended on a heavy rock line, and I had written it. Only fair.

By the time we finished the song, the auditorium was empty. Well, not empty, there were four or five kids in the front row screaming for more. They were the only ones that hadn't been accompanied by their parents. The other kids had been dragged indignantly from the place by their gospel music loving parents. The promotion had been done, yes, but the posters had all said "gospel music" - the nice lady hadn't known what else to call what it was that we did.

That made twice we had been walked out on by gospel music fans.

After that, I had the blessing and privilege to find a small church that was actually into praise and worship, without all the nonsense. A group formed, named Peniel, and I found myself playing my Gibson SG-I, and we actually played Christian music without caring at all if we ever became popular or successful - we just sang and played and worshiped and it was the best time of my life.

Many of us were Air Force, and so what with transfers and such we parted ways. Many of us are still in touch via the internet, and we are still close friends. No, not just friends, brothers.

I began to lose interest in playing the guitar, and I sold the SG-I, or rather traded it in on a new acoustic guitar that was just coming into use: the Ovation. I still have it (model 1111-4). It's a little harder to play than the SG, because the first fret is kind of hard to get all the way down, as is the case with most acoustics, so an F chord is a bear. And a chord that requires more than three frets is impossible for me - I broke a finger at Amsco steel when I was helping to change a die on the brake press, and it never healed right. So my third finger is so weak that I have to use my fourth finger to make a "down" chord, the sort of bar chorded A. That works OK until I need an A7 or the equivalent, and then I'm in trouble.

And anyway, I'm way way out of practice. I barely remember how to play now.

So up the highway from us is this place that sells guitars and gives lessons. And I'm thinking about trading in my Ovation, which has increased in value and is in near-mint condition, for a new electric guitar and small amplifier. I have heard that they make guitars in 3/4 scale, so I could reach that third fret without stretching too hard. And at least one Ovation of that model has sold for $3000... though it may have been a special edition or something. I find it hard to believe that my little $250 guitar from 1974 could be that prized. On the other hand, if you adjust for inflation... who knows?

That and... and... taking lessons. Actual lessons. I never took lessons in my life. For all I know, I learned it all wrong. And I have the time to practice now, being retired and old and useless.

What should I do?

toast

I made toast this morning and there was a longhorn image burned onto the toast.
It's a miracle.
I shall now put it on eBay and sell it for a thousand dollars.