Record For a Record

Saw something today that I've never seen before. In all my years of digging through bins and flipping through stacks of records, I've never come across a used (or new) record with a $360 price tag on it ..... and it wasn't a box set, .... it was a single record. Not behind the counter or displayed on the wall. It was right there in the common bins with the $8 and $10 records. (I bet they felt slighted.) Even with my senior discount applied, which I'm pretty sure I would have remembered to ask for, $324 would be far greater than the previous most expensive vinyl platter that I've ever come across. 

My heart damn near stopped beating for a few seconds today.

I was like: "Ooooh Ooooh!! .... until I saw the numbers to the right of the dollar sign.

And this was a used bookstore not an official record store. Since they started selling records a year or two ago, I haven't seen this sort of thing. But I think their vinyl buyer has discovered Discogs in the past month and is cross-referencing all the dead wax etchings. 

I'd go blind after reading five or ten of those. 

And now hours removed from the scene, I'm not even sure who the musician was. (It may have been Pharoah Sanders. It may have been Sonny Rollins.) They had several offerings from giant names in jazz on one of the elite jazz labels, 'Prestige', that hadn't been occupying space there previously. 

They had a $100 John Fahey record that I actually considered before walking away. 

I'm sure that todays $360 price sticker would be nothing in the eyes of some of the certified and verified freaks in the vinyl community, but it was a shocker to me. 

Hell, I'm embarrassed to admit that I spent $36 on a record today. 

And what if I did fall for it, made the purchase, got home and discovered that I already had it on cd?

The last time I experienced this level of shock was when I found 'Trace' by Son Volt for a quick glance $9.60 and took it to the checkout counter and heard, "That will be ninety-six dollars please." 

I used to think that my days on earth would likely end when I absent mindedly walked out into the street one day while looking east and got hit by a bus coming from the west, but now I think that sudden vinyl record price sticker shock is a heavy contender.

Talking Hoops

Talking to a co-worker / old city league basketball teammate ...... from the days when I was the old guy on the team and he was the youngish kid. 

Now I'm just 'the old guy' ....

And he's currently playing on an employer sponsored team where he's now assuming the role of the old guy on the team. And he's disgusted with all his younger teammates who just want to run to the three-point line and chuck up threes ....

And he's still of an old school mindset towards the game .....

And he's not too thrilled either by the leagues not keeping track of personal fouls on individuals. So a person can accumulate six or ten .... or twenty and the games can get a little overly rough on a fifty-five year old body .... 

(And we chuckle about this guy we used to play with who came from a football background and would tend to be in foul trouble two minutes into a game and how he'd have pounded away on people if they hadn't kept track of personal fouls in the old days and he had this no fouls tallied limit.)

And he tells me that I should be out there playing on their current team and I'm like: "Yeah right. A seventy year old man, toeing up to the three point line, trying to keep up with the way the game is played now."

And I can tell that he misses the days where as the 6'4" guy he'd post up three feet away from the basket and me with my wanna-be point guard mindset, would feed him the ball and he'd score at will over helpless shorter guys ....

But the game is not played that way anymore!!

And I always think about the time when we were teammates and he was absent on a random game night and my other friend, Steve B told me to get my ass down there and post up in that suddenly available three feet away from the basket spot and he fed me the ball and I was scoring at will over the helpless shorter guys to the total of 26 points just because with the one guy not present, there were a lot of shots in need of someone else taking.

Sunday Notes

Sunday notes of optimism, despair and wonder .....

• I'm thinking that my biological clock ..... my circadian rhythm is off. On workdays my alarm clock goes off at 5:45am. On this no work, no alarm Sunday, I wake up and inquire of Alexa the time..... "It's five forty-six am."
• I'm also thinking that turning seventy years old falls into that five stages of grief thing and I'm still in the denial stage.
• I'm getting really tired of all these commercials on both radio and tv for the upside app. Can't they, the upside app dorks, hear how tired their own little spiel is getting? .... "get cash back for the gas you're already buying anyway." .... repeated five or six times in each promo and a promo seemingly every fifteen minutes. If it was such a great deal, they wouldn't need all these ads. It's risen to my number one pet peeve status.

SuSu

I just stumbled across an obituary that an old friend from my earliest days working for the city, has passed away. The memories and flashbacks and sound of her voice are passing by tonight in a blur. I hadn't seen her in years and would wonder from time-to-time how she was doing. 

It's funny. When you're not around an old friend for the past twenty-five years, who for ten to fifteen years you were part of their circle almost daily, you just kind of assume that they stayed young. You don't realize ..... or it doesn't enter your mind, that they've been aging along with you. 

She was so full of life and a blast to be around. Rest in peace Susu. 

Flying Expletive

It was a perfectly nice day.

Until I let out a sudden loud and deafening, DAMMIT!!!"

I was driving the speed limit on the main street in town, with a tailgater behind me, a fat man on a motorcycle hugging the dividing line between lanes next to me and with some dude in a pickup attempting a left turn pulling halfway out into my lane and stop .... 

That's when I let the expletive fly. 

The good news? My (and everyone else's) insurance company will be happy to know that I avoided an accident and now I have it in my head that I need to listen to the Little Feat song, 'Fat Man in the Bathtub.' 

Relations with Alexa

I find myself these days trying to phrase questions very politely to Alexa. Just in case she's keeping track and taking notes for the day when AI takes over the world. 

The Ninth Plan

Oh far out!! This is how Saturday nights long ago used to conclude.

TV with bad black and white Sci-Fi or horror movies from the 1950's.

So bad that they are actually classically great. 

'Plan 9 From Outer Space' is on. 

Though 9pm may be a bit early for this genre. 

In the Kitchen

I should open a food truck or lunch counter or something .,.,.

My improvised tuna loaf creation last night that I feared was going to go so horribly wrong ....

        Well it turned out GREAT!!

               And I had a peaceful sleep afterwards. No 3:00am heartburn.

                      And the Saturday morning leftovers are even better!!

So, I now have the first entree for the menu.