The Special Folks

After college and without a degree to show for it I had a variety of menial jobs. A transporter/darkroom tech, A sound mixer for a couple of cover bands and I was in a couple bands myself. I worked doing landscaping (mowing lawns) with a bunch of musicians. All were part time and didn’t paid well but between the lot I was able to live from month to month more-or-less.

         It occurs to me that I have people on my friends list from
         each one of these endeavors as well as the one this blog
         is about.

One of the bands I played in was Annie Wells’ band. Besides being a dear friend Annie is a singer/songwriter/pianist that is simply wonderful! I am planning to write an entire blog about her at some point and you must go check her out right now: http://anniewells.com/ She's on iTunes too!

Annie’s day gig was treatment specialist at ARC (Association for Retarded Citizens). She recommended that I apply for a not-so-menial job there as a resident manager. I balked at first. Not so much at the prospect of working with retarded folks. It was the word “manager” that through me. Annie persisted and told me I wouldn’t have any problem getting hired or doing the job.

I later learned employees make fifty dollars for anyone they get hired but I know she would have encouraged me anyway.

After some training and certification, I was a resident manager at a group home. I soon learned that, the like vice presidents at some companies ‘managers’ were nothing special. In fact at ARC the managers were the lowest folks on the totem pole. I was only relieved.

Our job was basically to help our ‘folks’ as we were told to call them, live comfortably in their home. Make sure they kept themselves clean, cook there meals, deliver there meds, help them with goals in their care plans and document it all. I also had training on how to physically control and restrain a client without hurting them or myself. Fortunately I never needed it.

Since all of our folks spent their days at various ARC programs, our rotating shifts were evenings, overnights and 2 weekend shifts. The first weekend shift was fourteen hours on Saturday and Sunday each. The second was a brutal single all-weekend shift. We were allowed to sleep on the overnights and the long weekend shift.

Due to my own poor planning I once managed to find myself scheduled to work nights at my hospital job and a fourteen hour-a-day weekend shift at ARC. After being naturally awake during the day on Friday I worked all night at RGH drove straight to ARC to work all day with just enough time to get back to RGH to work all night and return once again to ARC for another 14 hours.

Never again! I paid better attention to my calendar after that.

The home I worked in was a rather nice large house in a nice Neighborhood just North of the Gannet Park Zoo in Rochester, NY. Not far from the “House of Guitars” It had previously been the residence and office of a family physician. The paneled basement was the doctor’s office which served us nicely as our office, meds room and storage.

The upstairs had a large kitchen, dinning room, entry foyer, a formal living room which no one ever went into and a front enclosed porch that had been converted to a “rec room” in the fifties where everyone spent as much time as they possibly could—that’s where the TV was located.

There were around eight folks who lived at St. Paul (all the ARC group homes were referred to by their street address). I’ve changed the names of everyone I refer to accept for one for reasons that will be apparent. They ranged in age from mid-twenties to mid sixties.

What they may have lacked in skills and abilities that you and I take for granted, they made up for in personality.

‘Barry’ proved to me that even if a man’s mental and emotional development happened to stop around the age of eight his body develops as anyone’s might with hormones and sex drive as healthy as a horses… okay, bad comparison.

Barry had a girlfriend, or at least claimed to have a girlfriend at his day program named Katherine.

“I want to kiss Katherine,” Barry would announce loudly. Then the voices, apparently, of his day staff took over. “No, no I shouldn’t kiss Katherine.” “I love Katherine… No I don’t love Katherine… Katherine loves me… No Katherine doesn’t love me.” Like all roads lead to Rome, any conversation with Barry eventually led to Katherine. His sexual frustration was palpable and constant. He was a slave to desires he would never understand.

You know, like all guys.

John had a different sort of motivation. He was a good looking guy in his late twenties. He liked sports.

As a PKU baby his disabilities were less apparent to the eye. Every day I saw John walk in the house from the program van he always had the same question for me.

“What for dinner?” he would say staring at the middle of my chest and with the back of his hand placed affectionately on my shoulder.

“Nothing,” I would always say. “We’ve not having dinner tonight John.”

“No,” he would say. He didn’t believe me but had trouble processing my lie. Sometimes I would continue with something outlandish like: “Okay John, dinner tonight is mutilated pigs livers and gravel.”

When I finally came clean with that evening’s menu, no matter what it was, he would express a brand of joy I find difficult to put into words.

Then he would sniff his watch.

John was not a big guy but as he approached middle age, his love of food was beginning to show.

You know, like all guys.

Henry was the eldest in the house and correspondingly gruff. He had a long gray beard and eyes so intensely light blue that looking him directly required protective lenses. He always wore a tweed suit jacket that along with his beard provided remarkable anthropology of his last several meals.

Everyone was a little guarded around Henry, residents and staff alike. Along with his intense eyes he had a history of outbursts. I don’t think I saw more than one or two minor incidents during my time there but everyone else’s nervousness was a little contagious so I tended to treat him cautiously too. Henry often kept to his room. He didn’t watch very much TV and rarely went on group weekend outings.

Some exceptions come to mind.

Every Sunday without fail we would drive Henry to the Record Archive (a record shop in Rochester) and he would purchase one Mitch Miller Album. I’m not sure how Mitch sustained his output enough to provide Henry with something new to buy each weekend and how the Record Archive kept a used stock that size on hand.

One day he joined several folks in the TV room. For no apparently reason, save for the one obvious to us guys, he pulled out his penis, gave a few solid jerks and put it way as nonchalantly as he had presented it.

I said nothing but I didn’t need to. The ladies in the room incredulously chorused “HENRY!”

He ignored them completely.

There were few events at the house during my time there that created more talk and sensation that the impending release of the first “Batman” movie.

It started out with one or two of the ladies who had been swept up in the McDonalds-based ad campaign and soon the rest of the house caught the fever. Even I was looking forward to the Saturday we were planning to take them to the theater, mostly because I was sick to death of hearing about it.

Henry seemed impervious to all the fuss but I the day of the movie outing I asked him if he wanted to go, as we always did as a courtesy. He would always politely decline. “No, no Joel I think I’m going to stay here.” On this occasion though he surprised me with a perky “yeah, I’ll go”.

Okay.

Henry in public was kind of a touchy thing. He didn’t do well in crowds.

At the theater Henry separated himself from the rest of the folks in our house. There was another staffer that stayed with the rest of them. I followed Henry.

Henry did pretty well. During a preview of the Lion King he suddenly said enthusiastically, “KITTY”.

I spoke back to him I an extra quiet voice instead of admonishing him hoping he’d get the hint. He didn’t but he didn’t feel a need to comment very often. During Batman when the action and the plot began to get intense he patted my knee and said “I’M GLAD YOU’RE HERE JOEL.”

Then when the action became to much for him and he’d had enough he simply stood up and walked out of the theater.

Naturally, I followed.

We hung in the lobby and used the rest rooms. Eventually he went back in, took his same seat and watched the rest of the movie without incident.

I admired him for knowing his limits and acting before it got the better of him. I’m grateful that I didn’t have to diffuse an outburst in front of the theater of strangers.

I would have to wait for the VHS release to find out what happened in those climactic moments of Batman.

The staff at St. Paul were a colorful bunch. I was used to being the odd duck in most crowds but I wasn’t even in the running there. I was the only one in our house who didn’t seem to have a life full of tragedy, a debilitating dysfunction or handicap.

There was one evening when a fill-in ‘manager’ I didn't know showed up and it took me a full five minutes to determine, without having to embarrass the guy by asking, if he was a staffer or one of the retarded folks visiting from another house. Honestly, I really could tell at first. He was in his forties and seemed rather disheveled and disoriented. I learned later that he was a recovering alcoholic.

Diane, like myself, seemed pretty normal. She was a college student at the University of Rochester and quite attractive. I had actually considered asking her out but I think she sensed this and told me sweetly but plainly that I was probably pretty naïve on what comes along with a cross-race relationship and that I should probably forget. I guess if it was love it wouldn't have stopped me but it wasn't.

One night when I was finishing a 3-11 shift Diane came in for her overnight. Soon after, the phone rang--odd for that time of night. Diane shouted from downstairs, “if that’s Tyrone, I’m here, if that’s Todd, I’m not here.”

It was Todd.

It’s the kind of detail that I never would have remembered. Like the thousands of day-to-day goings on that slip between the cracks after a few days or weeks. After I learned the next day that she had been beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend Todd when she got home from work in the morning, those last words I heard her say became stone pillars that will never erode.

It occurred to me years later that it’s possible that in putting off my advances she may have saved me injury or possibly saved my life.

Or maybe she just didn’t dig me.

When I arrived at work the next day our treatment specialist’s car was parked in the driveway. She was there to help us deal with something none of us had ever had to deal with before: Helping eight developmentally disabled folks understand that the staffer that they had said goodbye to that morning was now dead and it was going to be on the news.

A lot.

Todd had run to Florida where he was apprehended a few days later. I didn’t follow the trial but I have little doubt he was convicted.

It was hard on the folks at St. Paul and not just a little. They found just the high turnover of staff difficult emotionally. We acted as the adults in their family so it’s hard when we have to tell them we won’t be seeing them anymore simply because we found a ‘better job’. No one said this per say, but after seeing hundreds of staff come and go in their lifetimes, they knew how it worked.

With Diane it was that much harder and we were reeling ourselves from having lost a coworker and a friend so horribly and violently while offering comfort to our folks.

Then there was Tina. Tina was a four-foot-nine inch fire ball with Downs syndrome. The first thing that Tina will tell you when you meet her is that it’s “tie-nah, not tee-nah”. A pronunciation she herself invented at some point to correspond to her size.

Tina was in her thirties or close to it when I worked with her. She had a heart condition. Her lips and finger tips were often bluish. She was a diabetic who pricked her own finger and gave herself her own injections three times a day. I found it hard to watch because between the acres of scar tissue from previous injections and IVs and the swollen hard flesh from her heart condition, the needle actually bent a little before it piercing her skin.

Amid all her physical frailties she had a spirit that, if seen in physical form would have been somewhere between a flowing heavenly angel and a pro wrestler. She always had a joke or was as ready to laugh at one. I sort of thought of her as a Huck Finn the way she sauntered, her boyish red haired looks and the way her swollen tongue made her speech sound as if she were about to spit tobacco juice out of the side of her mouth.

Tina (remember, it’s “tie-nah”) was obsessed with the Partridge Family in a way that made Barry’s Love of Katherine, John’s love of food and Henry’s devotion to ‘sing along with Mitch’ look like passing fancies. More to the point, she was obsessed with David Cassidy.

Tina had stopped developing mentally and emotionally at thirteen. As a thirteen-year-old in the early seventies she and all her peers were wetting themselves over David Cassidy. Tina simply never grew out of it.

There is a Partridge Family album, in fact the first record I ever owned, where the birthday of everyone in the family is printed on the album cover next to their picture. David Cassidy’s birthday, April 12^th was the same as Tina’s. This proved to Tina that her destiny with David set in the stars the same way that movies are ‘available’ on DVD in China before they hit theaters in the US.

Susan Dey who played Laurie Partridge on the TV show and played keyboards in the band was at the time I knew Tina, playing a role on the series “LA Law.” This only further convinced Tina that her place was by David’s side as there was clearly an opening in the band.

Tina was not about to passively wish for these things, she was going to be ready. She rehearsed every night after dinner in the dining room, where the stereo was located. She strapped on her guitar put on her headphones and belted out the most gawd awful caterwauling you can imagine along with her many PF albums. Her practices were limited to a half an hour; a compromise with her housemates who wanted her to stop altogether.

Tina’s guitar playing was nearly as bad as her singing. Not knowing at all how to play she simply strummed the open strings with the vigor of Pete Townsend. I tuned her guitar to a nice open chord so at least the dissonance would be limited to her voice.

She believed her fantasy with such conviction she was able to convince her doctor it was real. She once came home from a doctor’s appointment with a prescription for ear drops. When asked what this was for she gave a cryptic answer and went off to watch TV. We called her doctor ourselves to get the story.

“The ear drops are for her trip,” the doctor said, “so her ears don’t bother her on the flight.”

“Flight?”

“To Los Angeles… She’s moving there… right?”

We were instructed to intervene in Tina’s fantasy, to interject reality and help her understand the difference between what’s real and what’s not.

I ignored this care plan. I never had the heart. I couldn’t see the harm. She was at the end of her life expectancy for a person with Down’s syndrome. It made her consistently and profoundly happy. Who was I to tell her she would never meet David Cassidy.

I only lasted a year at ARC. Six months full time and six months part time. They say it takes a special person to work with special people. That’s true, and it ain’t me.

I became another staffer in their life’s who came and went. The most consistent thing in their life’s was each other and even that changed from time to time.

A few months after my last shift at St. Paul I happened to be at my brother’s apartment. His roommate had a news paper lying around. I happened to glance down at a small sidebar article.

It was a picture of Tina, standing next to David Cassidy. She was smiling so wide she must have been sore for a week.

David had recorded a new album and was touring heavily to support his comeback (anyone that shows up in Rochester NY is touring ‘heavily’). One of the managers at St. Paul was also a jock at the local pop station and a photo-op was born.

Tina died of heart failure only a few months after her meeting with David Cassidy. I’m glad I had the chance to know her and to learn that reality doesn’t stand a chance against a dream.

Running Away From Home

My brother-in-law… My eleven-year-old brother-in-law asked me not long ago what the worse thing I ever did as a kid was.

Unfortunately, I didn’t need to hesitate with my answer.

My parents kept a vegetable garden and we grudgingly helped weed and harvest. It was my job on one particular summer day to pick one row of green beans before I could play.

Just one row.

It was hot. It was summer. The cool waters of the lake teased me from the bottom of the hill. Man, I had serious summer things to do like swing on our rope, hang out in our tree house or ride my bike.

Our family posing for a picture on and around our
beloved tree house.

Nothing was worse to me at that moment than having to bend over and pick those darn beans. I hated green beans anyway. I conjured up a plan that very well may have been the dumbest thing I have ever done.

I reasoned that if I could make my one row of beans appear as two, I could pick half the number of green beans would be finished in half the time. I carefully bent every other plant so that the even plants tilted to the left of their row and the odd to the right. Despite my suposed ‘care’ I did irreparable harm to those plants. Of course my dad saw my vandalism, the horticultural horror I had wrought right away. He expressed his displeasure briefly but not nearly in proportion to my offense. He did however go alone into the basement where I could hear him yelling and breaking things.

It would have been merciful had he taken me over his knee or screamed at me for an hour.

You have to know my dad. He is the most gentle, sincere, wonderful man I have ever known. Perhaps he was scared to death of his dark angry side the same way that I am and that’s why we never saw it.

I had never seen him like that before or since and it was my stupid scheme and disregard for his hard work that brought it out it.

I was so ashamed. Frankly, I still am.

Of course I did what anyone at that age might do in my position; I ran away.

Perhaps to escape the wrath I imagined when I faced him again, a wrath that of course never came, maybe to rid my family of someone who could do such a horrible thing, yeah, there was surely some self-pity in there too.

As kids, we had a plan for running away—if it was ever called for. It was brilliant, we thought.

To the south of us about ten miles was the town of Naples which is known for its wine country, rolling hills and spectacular views of the lake. Not far from my parent’s house, the hills grow progressively steeper leading down to the long and narrow Canandaigua Lake and grapes become increasingly the crop of choice.

We often took walks in those vineyards and helped ourselves to the plump purple orbs by the handful.

It only made sense to us that this bounty we could feast off of during our trek would continue to the Mason Dixon Line where orange groves and banana trees would begin and sustain us the rest of the way to Florida, our ultimate goal when running away.

Naples was the type of place we went to eat dinner at a restaurant, a rare treat then. There were no bad days in Naples. I'd never had any.

If I didn’t make it to Florida, Naples would do.

A church on Main street. in Naples. I used to think this was the coolest church anywhere.
I wondered if the Flintstones went there.

I made it nearly two miles from home on the day I destroyed the bean plants.

My plan to run away finally became a reality at the age of thirty-three in 1998 when I sold my house and moved to LA.

I missed Florida by over two thousand miles but I found my California born wife precisely.

There were things growing up, things I did that I oughtn’t have done, dangers I faced that I shouldn’t have faced; things that my parents never found out about. That is until all of us kids and grown up and the statute of limitations had long since expired. For years, as adults  we came home for family dinners and delighted in horrifying them with a series of giggling confessions of all those things we had gotten away with. We tried to top ourselves each week and give them reasons for retroactive heart attacks.

An alligator and a moving train were the subjects my favorites, but the time I used my Dad as an unwitting pawn to help Scott Simmons run away from home is right up there.

In Eighth grade, my friend Scott told me he was running away from home. I don’t remember why. I just saw the opportunity to live an adventure through this kid that I didn’t even like him that much. He had once played strip poker with my ‘girlfriend’ in sixth grade. He was a braggart, a bit of a pathological liar and kind-of obnoxious in general.

It was clear my folks were so darned good they were never going to give me cause to run more than a couple miles during part of an afternoon, so if I could help him off on an adventure that was the next best thing.

“Really? You going to Florida maybe?” Everyone talked about going to Florida back then. “Boy, do I have the route for you! I’ll help you get started. You’ll have 10 miles behind you by tonight!”

After school, Scott and I walked to the high school where my dad taught science. I went into my father’s classroom to inform my dad I was riding home with him while Scott lurked around the faculty parking lot as I had instructed. I told my Dad I’d wait for him in the van and “could I have the keys please?”

I hid Scott under a seat when I saw my dad approaching. We picked my brother up from the elementary school where he was in sixth grade. I flashed my brother the ‘sshh’ sign when he got in the back and noticed some kid hiding under the bench.

My younger brother was often like an older voice of reason when I was on the verge of doing something stupid; like taking a stick and taunting a live un-caged alligator that was sitting beside a pond in a park near St. Peterburg, Florida (no I'm not kidding), or hopping in an open box car of an accelerating train in Minneapolis or one a ten thousand stupid things I tried or almost tried in the barn across the road from us. All great fodder for those family dinner confessions later in life.

In those situations, my little brother was usually a few feet behind me and several years beyond.

“Um, Joel, I don’t think this is a good idea,” he would usually say.

He was no snitch either. In the “Free Scotty Mission”, it was clear we were already beyond the point of turning back.

When we arrived home, a house ten miles out in the country, I whispered to Scott to hang tight in the van for a few minutes then make a break for the woods where I would bring him some food when I could.

He seemed nervous. I hope he wasn’t backing out on our plan for him to run away.

After dinner I snuck him some food as promised. I talked excitedly about his upcoming adventure. He didn’t say much.

As luck would have it, my parents were going out that night and I had recently been promoted to the family babysitter. When our folks left for the evening I brought Scott in the house and fed him proper. We watched TV while we planned his escape to Florida.

I knew I was being dishonest to my parents and then there was that little rule about not having friends over while my parents were away, but I could see the higher good was being served here. Obviously, if he was willing go this far to run away, Scott’s parents must be horrible. It was like I was freeing a slave on my own little underground railroad… just one that ran South instead of North.

My brother and sister looked on with cautious enthusiasm. They felt sure I was going to get into trouble, but at least it was an evening that was out of the ordinary, kinda cool for a Friday night. We all just kept watching TV; way beyond our one hour limit.

The phone rang. We all looked at each other. I answered it carefully. It was an unfamiliar adult voice. He was blunt and annoyed. “Is Scott there?”

I was stunned. The success of the whole plan rested on my next words but they wouldn’t come. First of all I was thrown off by the fact that the adults I was ready to believe were slave-driving abusers out of the cast of Oliver and celebrating around in Scott’s absence, maybe weren’t such rotten parents after all. Apparently missed the kid enough to him dig up our phone number.

Scott and I didn’t hang that much and I’m not sure he had ever even been to my house before. I still have no idea how they knew who I was and how they tracked him down.

“Hang on,” I bluffed, stalling for time. Not thinking about the fact that I had effectively answered his question.

I covered the phone tightly.

“Scott, it’s your parents,” I said. I threw in a desperate look of inquiry as if to say, “what are we going to do now?”

Scott surprised me by calmly getting to his feet and taking the phone from me. His answers were subdued, monosyllabic.

Little was said after he hung up. I realized I was actually relieved. The sound of an adult voice reminded me that I would eventually face some sort of interrogation. You can imagine, in the midst of all this confession. How tight-lipped I am.

Not.

Twenty minutes later an unfamiliar car pulled into the driveway. No one got out.

Scott said good bye, walked to the car and got in. I imagined the what was going on inside the car; screaming silence, I couldn’t tell. I wondered what kind of trouble Scott would get in. I wondered for about a minute and haven’t really thought about it till just now.

My parents came home about an hour later. With an oath from my siblings, they were never the wiser until a Sunday dinner when I was in my twenties.

You should have seen the look on their faces.

Baileys Shakes on the Mississippi

There’s something magic about sitting and watching the Mississippi River roll by. Watching the river tugs gracefully maneuver their cumbersome barges around the bend in the river and through the current; swinging wide until they’re literally going sideways, then, almost implausibly, ending pointing straight, without turning at all. There’s something about blowing off work for the better part of an afternoon and just sitting.

It certainly wasn’t the first time anyone had ever played hooky on the banks of that muddy water.

Several days before, I was in my apartment, my packed bags waiting at the door. I recalled how I used to go to the Rochester Airport just to watch the planes and imagine that I was going somewhere, anywhere!

Now I was!

Travel itself hasn’t always been sweet. I had flown back to LA only a couple of months before from Rochester. I had lived in LA for a little over a year at that point and was coming back from the holidays at my parents’. It was like leaving home for the second time, I was freshly separated from my wife and was coming home to an empty apartment. I had just enough money to take a cab from the airport. The cabbie agreed to a flat rate. I had no TV, no money to go out and no friends to do anything with.

The next day started work on my first real TV show, “Win Ben Stein’s Money”. I was the game graphics operator and was having a hard time of it. I was stressed. I’d mess up, get more stressed about messing up, mess up some more... Twice, the director asked to have me fired.

Gradually things got a little better. After a month I got my first paycheck and no longer had to use the Ben Stein craft table as my only source of nutrition. I filled my gas tank and no longer had to walk to the studio. A few months later I was asked to work on a game show demonstration at the National Cable Television Association convention in New Orleans.

The morning of my trip the front door buzzed. My car—they told me they were “sending a car”—had arrived.

Instead of seeing a shuttle van packed with harried travelers as I had figured, there was a stretch limo parked in front of my building. That can’t be right, maybe the shuttle was behind it or something. No, the dude in the bad suit grabbed my bags, opened the door for me and placed my luggage in the trunk.

If this was a mix-up and I wound up at a filming location with a bunch of people in headsets and clipboards saying, “Wait, you’re not Sigourney Weaver, are you?” it would be worth the adventure I figured so I got in the car.

I was thirty four years old and it was my first ride in a limo… even a regular limo.

I looked around my street in the predawn light. I suppose it would have been too much to ask that one of my neighbors saw me getting into that long black car and chauffeured away.

When the plane touched down in New Orleans—and yes, I am talking about literally as the landing gear hit the ground and the brakes and reversers kicked in—the pilot came on the PA and said “WHOOOOOOA NELLY!”

Only on Southwest.

Ironically, my second-ever stretch limo ride was from the New Orleans airport. For myself and the three other guys I was traveling with, it was all of our first time being ripped-off by a crooked limo driver.

Only in New Orleans.

We were installing and operating the electronic controls for game show demos for both MTV and Gameshow Network’s booths at the NCTA show. Fortunately, it was, pre-9/11, hand-over-fist MTV that made our hotel arrangements, not the notoriously cheap Gameshow Network. Otherwise I might not have stayed in the nicest and largest hotel room I had ever seen. The ceiling was over twelve feet high! MTV hosted a party in a fancy bar with an open bar all night and “Moby” for entertainment.

New Orleans itself was amazing of course. Every evening was a culinary adventure followed by an eye popping stroll through the French Quarter. Music flowed from each hole-in-the-wall and even on the sidewalk there were amazing and colorful performers. Helen Keller would have been aptly entertained walking down those streets from an olfactory adventure ranging from urine to gumbo spice, not to mention the vibe coming from every crack in every wall. I’m glad I’m not blind though. I got an eyeful of bared chests several times without even trying.

I drank beer in a bar where over two hundred years of boots had worn deep grooves in the brick footrest at the bar between the more resolute layers of mortar. The orange light of early evening soaked so deeply into the ancient brick streets that they seemed to glow long after dark.

 Jean Laffite's Blackmsith Bar, the oldest in New Orleans
and just about anywhere else in the US

At midnight everything closes and the streets are soon empty. The parties continue in private and till dawn I’m told.

I also saw the birthplace of American Music: Congo Square.

Some locals, friends of friends, picked me up and took me to see the ‘real’ New Orleans far from the Quarter. We hung out at a corner bar and sucked the heads out of ‘mud bugs’ (crawfish) at a local restaurant. It was every bit as amazing as the fancy joints in the Quarter. We saw a band of high school aged musicians play at a bar. They weren’t playing guitars and drums though, it was a brass band: trumpet, sax, trombone, sousaphone (tuba), a guy carrying a marching snare drum and a guy carrying a bass drum. Unencumbered by amps and cables, they danced around freely and even marched out into the street at one point. For New Orleans, they were as badass and hip as any punk band.

A mudbug (crawfish) boil

There are streets in New Orleans that are officially spelled one way on the street signs in one neighborhood and another way across town. I was told by a local that this is a prime example of New Orleans logic.

Later, on one of our lazy strolls through the Quarter, my local friend explained how much of the area was below sea level and how a big enough storm could put most of the city underwater. I looked around at all the beauty and history. I shuttered to think of it.

Unimaginable.

A Side Story:

Many of my friends that I work with on Jeopardy also work on “Wheel of Fortune”. That show also made a trip to New Orleans to tape a series of shows; remotes, we call them.

After a week of setting up lighting, the stage and the mobile production trailers, the ’Wheel’ crew had taped their first day of shows on a Saturday at the New Orleans Convention Center. At the end of the day, the crew was gathered for a meeting. The second and final day of taping would be canceled. They would strike the huge stage and lighting rig that night (normally a two-day task) and load it onto the 12-or-so tractor trailers.

There was a hurricane over the gulf that was headed straight for them. It was Saturday March 27^th, 2005.

Back at the hotel, the bar was still open even though the windows had already been boarded up. The drinks were on Harry Freidman, the executive producer. The locals seemed fairly casual as if they’d had many of these scares before.

The next morning, on some of the last buses available in the city the crew of 110 was evacuated along with the rest of the City of New Orleans. There were no flights out of the airport so they would have to trek to Houston to fly home to LA. The traffic was moving so slowly, friends tell me, that they could get off the bus, walk off the freeway to convenience stores and casually make their way back to the bus without fear of being left behind.

It was later discovered that both of the drivers who had driven the Wheel crew out of New Orleans had lost everything they owned in the flooding. Back in LA a collection was taken up.

Normally a six hour trip, it took them over twenty hours to get to Houston. It was 5:00AM Monday morning. Katrina made land fall near New Orleans an hour-and-a-half later.

The crew checked into a hotel. They had about an hour to clean up before meeting the shuttles to the airport.

Some on the lighting crew had elected to stay try to deal with some of the lighting equipment that had not yet been loaded onto trucks. They ended up stranded in the city for several days. The lighting gear remained for weeks and had to endure the onslaught of storm refugees that took up residence in the convention center. When they were able to retrieve the lighting, it did not smell nice, to put it politely.

-If you happen to be Facebook Friends with my friend Jeff Schuster, he has a wonderful photo album of that particular trip to New Orleans and the crew’s subsequent evacuation. If you aren’t friends with Jeff, I highly recommend it :)

Back to my own earlier trip:

On the 2000 NCTA Convention floor I saw more forklifts than I had ever seen in my life. They whized by loaded with crates, cases and carpet rolls for the different displays like two ton ants. The displays ranged from single tables to city-block-long strongholds of the bigger networks. Once the convention was underway and all the carpet, banners and curtains had been installed the suited throngs looked even more like ants; seeking booty to carry back to their nests. Every vendor and network had some sort free gimmicky item they were giving out by the arm full and logo-emblazoned bags to carry it all in. The must-have item for that convention was a “Mr. T” Chia Pet that TVLand was giving away. I think I gave mine to a friend.

For some reason though, it wasn’t the convention, or the French Quarter, or the food, or the New Orleans Jazz Festival I got to attend my last afternoon there. It wasn’t the bright colors or the wrought iron railings or the beads that I remember most about this trip. The defining moment for me was far more subtle.

It was only our second day of set up. We ate lunch at a food court by the river. Afterwards a couple of us treated ourselves to Baileys milkshakes at a Hagen Daz stand and we all sat outside on some benches by the river. The convention had not yet opened and there was almost no one else on the entire riverfront. It was rather warm and humid but there was a nice breeze that kept it from being uncomfortable.

We were ahead of schedule with our work in the Convention Center and even though we were sort-of expected back in an hour we sat there by the river watching the barges slip sideways in that tricky bend for at least another hour-and-a-half. No one said much of anything. There was no need. We all felt the mood of the timeless south, like old men sitting outside a barber shop. The river was speaking for us.

To us.

My impending divorce, my old friend who was furious at me for it and his efforts to turn a simple amicable divorce complicated and ugly, my debts, my empty apartment and its empty refrigerator, my lack of health insurance and the lump I had found… all these things were gone from my mind.

There was only the river, the breeze and the milkshake.

I was happy.

It’s a different world now, a different New Orleans perhaps, but my life is much improved since that time. It was simple moments like the one on the river that helped get me through.

Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this week, but one day soon I might be a little late to work. You’ll find me sitting on my balcony, watching the clouds go by and sipping a home-made (real) Bailey’s milkshake.

By a lazy river is usually best, but the being lazy part, watching life slowly drift by and forgetting your troubles, if only for a little while, that’s the key.

Cover Art

I can’t believe it’s gotten to be Saturday morning and I haven’t even thought about what to write for the blog yet.

…

Nothing!

Okay, lets just do an update and then I will talk about cover art.

I haven’t heard anything about the status of the NPR Monitormix Bass Solo Contest. I don’t even know when they will post the finalists. When I know of something I’ll surely say so here in the blog.

The plan of late has been to do some quick and dirty videos of my solo performances song by song for my own evalueation. Because I’m also some sort of exhibitionist masochist show-and-tell addict, I seem to think it’s a fine idea to post these primal efforts for you to see. If this were not such a small and intimate audience I might think twice.

Alas, the next two songs I’ve been rehearsing for this purpose aren’t even ready to embarrass myself with here yet. I hope to have at least one posted in next week's blog.

I’ve found rehearsing with an actual PA system has been very helpful. Audra said my performance instantly improved once I started singing into a microphone and having a monitor blasting back up at me. However, it’s been hard to get much done only rehearsing at my in-laws’ pool house only two days a week. They live in Highland where I have my studio and my PA system set up. It’s far enough away that it's only practical to spend a couple days at a time. This coming ‘weekend’ (Tuesday-Wednesday for me) we are staying here in town to give ourselves a rest from the constant treks to the desert. Also it’s getting hotter out there as summer and the trip to the Rochester, NY area in August is headed towards me like a freight train.

I think it's finally time. I need to break down rent some rehearsal space here in LA. I’m not sure where to begin. I can’t afford my own space so I’ll have to find another band to share one with. This brings with it all sorts of problems but there is no affordable alternative at present. For this coming week I will rent a space by the hour. That will be easy but a little expensive. There are loads of rehearsal studios in LA that come with bass and guitar amps, a drum kit and a PA system though all I need is really the PA system. Some can be dingy and smelly and there always seems to be a death metal band quaking the walls in the next room. It will have to do for this week.

The trip East will include my parents’ 50^th wedding anniversary most importantly, but it will also give me an opportunity to perform once or twice in the area and there’s much to be done to have my act up to snuff.

“Up to snuff”, where the heck did that expression come from anyway?

I haven't contacted any Rochester venues yet till I have some more videos under my belt to show them. I have a couple good ideas of where I can play.

Not only to I need to be ready to perform as a solo act—something I’ve never really done before—I also want to have at least a demo version of my CD available for those who would like a copy. I’ll probably charge five bucks for two copies—one for you and one to give to a friend.

It will be a great opportunity to get feedback on the songs and the mixes as well as to raise some capital to have a final version of the CD professionally mastered and manufactured. It will also be a good incentive to get things moving. Most of the tracks are recorded. I have to record all my final vocals and bring in some women to track some backing vocals including my friend Danielle who’s been waiting patiently since January when she agreed to come in and sing. Then there's mixing and mastering. I'm not going to get too fancy on those this time around.

Cover art is something else I will have to finish up. I have spent time on graphics since the beginning. I fancy myself an amateur graphic artist and will be doing my own album art. Not only does this save money but I can take my time to get exactly what I want. I also find it to be a lot of fun.

Here are some concepts I have played with so far. Please give me some honest feedback.

 The rental on that astronaut suit was a killer

This concept started out as a picture of the foundation dig for an apartment building being built on our street. When I removed the color from the dirt it looked like moon dust. I took off from there. Unfortunately the end result doesn’t seem very eye catching and not very hip.

Hipness is a danger zone. I’m not hip; I know that. I’m not even the kind of hip some can achieve by being decidedly un-hip. I certainly don’t want to appear to be the kind of pathetic wanna-be one can become from trying.

Perhaps there’s something to be said for having someone else do your artwork. You are, in effect, hiring someone hip to be hip for you.

See also: interior designers, professional shoppers, image consultants and campaign managers.

Back in my world, it’s still just dorky old me and my attempts to save a buck while not looking like I’m trying too hard. The moon thing to me not only looks unhip, it looks like I’m trying to be.

One cover concept evolved from my wife’s boredom. I was leaving to play a gig and wouldn’t be back till the wee hours of the morning. Audra said she was going to be painfully bored so I gave her a task: “Do something you’ve never done before,” I said.

When I returned she, as always, amazed me. I was thinking she could visit a website she’d never been to or make up a new word. Instead, she put on her headphones, cranked up the tunes, took a dry erase marker and drew a life-sized self portrait of herself drawing a life-sized self portrait on the mirror of the studio.

We left that portrait on the mirror with the intent of photographing it before we destroyed it. It stayed there for over a year while I pondered, put-off and procrastinated its preservation.

It was not a simple task. Since the drawing was on a mirror it had to be shot at an angle so that the camera could not be seen. It should be a low angle too so that the featureless ceiling would provide a flat background the art could be plainly seen against. The low angle, however, would distort the perspective of the drawing though and the camera would be too close to get the whole drawing in one frame.

We were expecting guests that would be staying in that room. The mirror had to be cleaned off. What to do?

Finally, I got an idea. Using a different colored dry-erase marker, I took a yard stick and drew straight lines on either side of the drawing and marked them with ticks at regular distances. This would give the drawing a reference of to a regular grid that I could use to return it to its proper persective. I photographed the mirror from a low angle at three or four different heights to capture different parts of the drawing. Then I combined the images in Photoshop using the lines and ticks to bend and stretch the different photos back to a flat perspective and line up together as one unbroken image.

Here are all the photos composited and straightened using the reference
of the red lines and ticks. You can see the real artist/model in the background

I meticulously traced the image in Photoshop till the lines Audra had drawn were free of any background.

Up till this point I was only interested in preserving her artwork, but after looking at it for that long, I decided it might make really cool artwork for the album.

I came up with these two concepts.

Audra never finished drawing her feet on the mirror so
I drew her coming out of a flower pot in Photoshop.
Not so much for an edgy artistic touch, I just can't draw feet.

This reminded me to much of bad ‘80s album art. It also begs the question: What exactly is she drawing?

I answered that question with a portrait of myself drawn from tracing over a photo on a simple white background.

Better, but it still didn’t exactly blow my skirt up. At the time I was thinking of naming the album “None Taken”. Later I changed the name to "82 Feet of Water" after the first cut; a song about a ship wreck

Here is an idea in keeping with that theme.

I'm not sure what I think of this. At first I think it's kinda cool but the album title has a bad horror movie quality I hadn't intended and it could be thought of as a Nirvana rip-off.

I love to take pictures in low light, leaving the shutter open for several seconds or longer to get an exposure. The next two examples started out with me doing just that.

During a full Moon in my in-laws’ back yard I took this picture that I turned in a potential cover.

My good friend and producer Juan, pointed out to me that it resembles a Johnny Cash album cover.

All the better!

Conceptually, this is my favorite. I think for a real cover will have to be re-shot with a better camera and lens and it might be more appropriate for the album title “82 Feet of Water” if there was ocean in the background.

The other cover was done in the same back yard with a fifteen second exposure and a flashlight with a red LED.  I wrote the “JTJ” with the flashlight while the open lens captured its motion (it took many tries). The smaller parts of my name I faked in Photoshop which I think will have to be done a little better ultimately. At this point this concept will likely be the cover of the demo I will be selling at gigs.

The un-retouched version of this photo is my Facebook Profile pic as of this writing.

Again, let me know what you think. Meanwhile, I’ll be inching my way towards putting together a great show and recording to bring East.

And then back West.

NPR Bass Solo Contest, Part II

Those following the blog and my posts already know that I learned of a NPR bass solo contest just a week before the deadline and right during the French Open (tennis tournament) where I would be working every day and would not have the ability to record at my studio in my in-laws pool house about eighty miles from our apartment.

Only hours after I had posted my last blog Audra and I drove to her parents’ house in Highland during day light hours—normally something we avoid like the plague because of traffic. I packed up nearly all of my gear to bring back home. Miraculously, it fit all into my small car. Fortunately, there was room for Audra.

The trip as it would turn out, was essentially a waste, but we didn’t know that yet.

Sunday evening I spent setting up the studio and testing everything so that Monday when I came home from work I would be able to start recording immediately. The major goal was to keep the noise level at a minimum which is harder than it may seem.

It is necessary at this point to give a primer on guitar tube amplifiers -musicians, guitarists skip ahead.

Over-simply put, when a guitar amp is overdriven (made louder), it no longer recreates an exact copy the sound coming from the guitar pickups. The peaks of the signal waves hit the limits of the tubes and those peaks are sheered off. A smooth, round sine wave goes into the amp, a more jagged, squarish wave comes out. This adds frequencies to the sound that weren’t there originally: distortion.

In most amplified signals distortion is the enemy and must be avoided, but as musicians have discovered in the last sixty or-so years, it can be a very good thing, adding warmth, richness and intensity to the sound of a guitar, bass, organ or even harmonica; especially if you are playing rock or blues.

There are all sorts of devices, and now software, than can create/recreate this desirable distortion at many levels and in many flavors. In general however, the best, most natural sounding distortion comes from over driving a tube amplifier and the only way to get a tube amp to distort significantly is to turn it up… loud!

Since my music contains bass and most often no guitar at all, I have to fill a wider spectrum of sound. A big part of my sound is to split the signal coming from my bass into two amplifiers. One is a modern bass amp to recreate the very low and very high (string slap) sounds of a modern sounding bass. The other is a blues guitar tube amp with more midrange qualities and the ability to create that wonderful tube distortion.

The bass amp and guitar amp sides of  my bass rig respectively

The entire reason my studio is normally set up at the pool house is so I can turn-up loud and get the sound I need. It would be a real pain in the ass for my neighbors if I did this at home, especially the fastidious one in the apartment below me.

These, however, were extenuating circumstances. This contest could really be a milestone for me, not just if I win but if my music gets posted on the blog. Even just the mention of my being posted to the blog in my press kit would be huge to say nothing of the exposure. I had nowhere else I could go and record both audio and video in the small window between getting home from work and sunset. Taking off from work was not an option because of the short notice and the fact that this happened to be the first week of the French Open. Rehearsal studios often have very loud bands a wall away, ok for rehearsal but not recording. There’s no way I could swing the cost a real recording studio and going to a friend’s house would involve travel time and set up that would add pressure and take away precious daylight time or involve lugging in and setting up lighting for the video.

There was really only the one option.

The bass amp side could be recorded direct without sacrificing too much of the amp sound plugging the amp direct out into my laptop. Guitar amps, however, as a rule must be mic'd to prevent a harsh sterile sound.

There are some tricks to getting an amp to sound loud without it being as loud. A dummy load placed in-line with the speakers absorbs the energy the amp puts out decreasing the energy going to the speakers thus making them quieter.

I reasoned that if I dummy-loaded the guitar amp using my two bass speakers, placed the bass speakers face-down on our bed on top of the couch cushions, place the guitar amp up on a step stool with a thick folded furniture blanket in between the stool and the floor and swaddled the guitar amp in yet another furniture blanket. If I turned down the overall volume of the guitar as much as possible and got the song recorded within a half an hour by the time someone complained, I’d be done.  

I should have taken some pictures but I had other fish to fry at the time.

On Monday when I recorded however, I couldn’t get a perfect performance in the thirty minutes I had imposed upon myself. Playing and singing at the same time is still relatively new to me. I keep getting better at it but it’s still a rare thing when I can do both perfectly. I would try again the next day and hope my neighbors would be either absent or understanding.

On Tuesday I still was having trouble performing. The pressures were getting to me and each take was worse than the last. Finally, things seemed to be getting better when it happened. I heard pounding and yelling from the apartment below. I stopped immediately. Audra said she would go talk to the guy, explain the situation and promise this would not be the norm. He wouldn’t even listen and called my building manager who then called me.

I was finished.

Even if I was granted a temporary reprieve my emotions were ragged. If I was having trouble making it through a take before, another time would have been even harder.

Audra and I were both so upset were barely slept that night. We brainstormed solutions but each time, the restrictions of time, money, light and my increasingly frazzled nerves made every option highly impractical if not impossible.

It would be possible to submit an audio only version of the song. The contest specified video or audio was acceptable. However listening only to my tune, it is so different that one could easily assume they are hearing a guitar. It must be seen.

There was only one thing left we could do. I already had a video of the song that I had made strictly to evaluate my performance and share with my friends: you. This was the video I posted in last week’s blog and one time before that.

Originally, I was loathe to use that first video for the contest because my singing had gone off-key for a moment or two and had some slightly weak moments. Also, it was just a single boring wide shot that didn’t illustrate my unusual playing style and technique very well. Now, it was all I had. If I took that video and added some close up shots to it and did some brief vocal overdubs to fix the mistakes, it might be passable. If we shot close enough it wouldn’t be too obvious that those close-ups were shot in a completely different room city and county.

The next evening I quickly fashioned a homemade Steadicam type rig out of part of a lighting stand with a water bottle taped to the bottom and the camera mounted on top. The key principle of a Steadicam is to add mass to a camera and extend its center of gravity away from the film plane so making basic one for a small light camera is quite easy. I gave Audra a crash course on the shots that I wanted and we recorded a single take of close ups of my hands playing. The bass was unamplified and silent while I played along to the old video on my laptop.

A real Steadicam which creates dolly-smooth motion from a walking
operator and costs tens of thousands before even adding a camera.

A steady-rig I built a few years back similar to
the one I threw together this week minus the water bottle

I then placed the camera on the floor and got a take of low close-ups. I gave the illusion of camera movement by moving and positioning myself into different shots.  I edited a new version of the video with the additional footage. This was not easy as I had no time code to sync the shots to. I simply lined them up till they looked right. It took some time but the results were convincing fo the most part. The video was now much better but still, it looked too impersonal. There were no close-ups of me singing. On Thursday evening, I videoed my singing close up. I only had time for one take before I had to deliver Audra to a halfway point where her parents picked her up for a doctors appointment the next day.

Now to return home and do vocal overdubs to fix my mistakes before it got too late.

I turned the key in the ignition but it wouldn’t budge. My car occasionally has this problem but after fiddling around a bit I had always been able to make it work without much trouble.

Not this time.

In the parking lot of a Jack-In-The-Box in Pomona, for half an hour I tried working the key, spraying the lock with WD-40, attempting to loosen the stubborn tumblers with a dental tool I happened to have in my electronics tool kit and yes, pounding the snot out of the damn thing, I gave up and called a first one locksmith, then another. The second guy came and removed the lock from the ignition. He didn’t have a replacement lock but left it so that the key… any key, even a screwdriver or small coin, would start the car. I would have to fix it fully later.

If anyone wants to steal my bare-bones, no frills, 2000 Ford Focus, now’s the time.

Of course it was too late to record any singing when I got home. The next day was the deadline but I would have just enough time to record my overdubs, remix the track which needed more high-end and some other tweaks and submit the video for the contest.

The next day, around two-o-clock, I decided to double check the “Monitormix” blog for any details on the contest I may have missed. I’m glad I did. The deadline was not midnight as I thought it was, it was Five PM Pacific, just three hours away! Fortunately things at Tennis Channel were quiet and I was able to add titles, copyright and contact text to my video, re-render it and upload it with an hour to spare.

The video was not all I’d hoped it would be by a long shot but looking at it now, what’s important, the bass playing, came through nicely and if they can excuse a poor mix and some singing faux pas, I think it will make a great impression. Whether that impression will be enough to get me onto the blog for voting is up to God and the ether.

Overall, I have a good feeling about it. I’m a little wiser through all of this and I was moved and inspired by how my wonderful wife supported me, wouldn’t let be give up when things looked bleak and even went to bat for me to our irate neighbor whose balcony plants may mysteriously wither in the coming weeks (kidding).

Here is the result, the video I submitted for the contest:

I deeply appreciate everyone who supported me and offered help through this.

Bass Solo Contest

It was already going to be a busy week! The French Open (tennis) starts tomorrow which means no days off this week and probably long work days throughout the tournament. I have to record a simple version of a song I wrote this week for posterity before I forget it. I am feverishly trying to finish an ambitious (for me) flash photo gallery for my one of my few web design clients. I have to finish the blog you’re reading and write next week’s as well. I have just started a daily ‘Lessons Learned From the Movies’ series on my Facebook wall posts which does take up a small amount of time each day and I want to keep going for at least a month…

Then, this landed in my lap:

The NPR Blog “Monitor Mix” is sponsoring a bass solo contest!

I’m so there!

I have decided to submit for the contest a remake of the video I recently posted: “Rain Don’t Follow the Plow”. I also thought of the more virtuosic “Actually That Is a Banana In My Pocket” but, A. I don’t think I can redo a clean version in the time I have but more importantly… B. I know that a bass solo contest is going to be flooded with bass shredders that will be doing very similar things.

I need to stand out.

‘Rain’ is not technically a bass solo. It’s a song with vocals to bass accompaniment. The bass accompaniment is pretty remarkable on it’s own and there is a bass solo within the song. Solo bass/bass solo, tomāto/tomăto… I suspect the poor production assistant that has to screen all those bass solo submissions will be delighted to hear an actual song that happens to have some serious and unusual bass chops featured within in the universal appeal of the blues and lyrics that present some very NPR-friendly Americana and at least pass it on to the next level.

Like this, but better sung, played and produced.

This is the other tune I was considering… Nah, I suspect most everyone else will be doing this shred hero stuff.

The problem is…  No, no… The ‘problems are’ that, as you can see, with a deadline of  next Friday, I only have a six days to submit my entry. Right smack in the middle of the French Open.

Next; all my gear—amps, effects, recording equipment and lucky mousey cat toy— is presently at the ‘Pool House’ –my defacto studio at my in-laws’ place in Highland, 75 miles from our apartment.

Normally, I have my Tuesday/Wednesday weekend to go out to the Pool House and record a video. Now it will be a challenge just to find the time to drive out there, find a way to fit it all in my little car at the same time and get it back to my apartment.

The apartment is challenge number three: In order to record my particular sound, a certain, rather high level of volume is preferred if not required. That will be difficult in my building, nor would it be practical where I work, especially during the French Open. Unless I can find a place that’s not too far away and free, I will have to make due in my apartment.

I know all these things can be overcome in the next week. As you can see I have already made my blog shorter to save time. It’s going to be a stretch but I am energized to say the least and Audra has already shown me tremendous support!

I don’t really know what chance I have at this contest, but I'm optimistic. It’s hard to say how many entries there will be and they don’t even mention how many finalists will make it to the blog to be voted on by users. I’d say ten is a good guess. The prize is just some NPR merch but the exposure, just to be a finalist on the blog, would surely be a nice little mountain for my career to stick it's flag in. It would be a good boost, a good start. I have a good feeling about this. If nothing else it's got me in motion.

With some luck (and a new set of strings) I really think I could make the finals!

Wish me luck!  ..or send me some bass strings.