Back Up

Is today the day?

I just backed up my iPhone…

I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max. I skipped the 15’s entirely. The 16’s have been out for a while now but I’ve been holding off.

Is today the day that I stop holding off and finally upgrade?

We’ll see.

Is this photo of a sleeping cat the last photo I will ever take with my trusty iPhone 14 Pro Max?

Again… we’ll see.

Still Looks Good

It still looks like Sunday will have a band practice. The first one in ages.

I need to put new strings on my Les Paul Standard. I also need to not get too excited because statistically speaking it’s probably safe to assume something will take the plans and cock them up.

Ugh. I want to be in a band again! AARRGGHH!!!

Fingers Crossed

4:00pm on Sunday?

We’re trying to setup a time for the band to get together this weekend. I think everyone is in. At least we’re all in as of this moment. I need this. I so need this. I don’t even know when the last time all four of us got together to play was. It’s been way too long. So long that I was pretty convinced it would never happen again. Pessimistically I am still pretty convinced that it is never going to happen again but I am choosing to look on the bright side right now, like the ray of fucking sunshine that I am.

My fingers are crossed. Band practice on Sunday. Make it so.

Closer and Closer

It is just about 2:30pm on Friday January 17th. One week from today I will be post-lunch on the last work day before vacation. How am I going to focus on the real world over the intervening week? The Vacation is becoming an all consuming obsession. Partly because I really want to go, but also because it stops me from stressing about the end of American society on Monday next week.

The first full day of vacation is eight days away. The Florida/Disney World return is nine days away. I can’t wait to go. I can do without the upcoming shit hitting the fan on Monday the 20th though.

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Friday

It’s Friday. One week from today I am going to be writing about how I only have an eight hour work day standing between me and a full week’s vacation. I am already hyper focusing on it. Crazy.

I just watched the season two finale of Silo. It was very good. I sort of screwed things up though. The show is based on a series of books. A few weeks ago I got tired of waiting to see what was going to happen on the show so I started reading. I’m going to finish the third and final book probably this weekend. When the super confusing twist happened in today’s episode I knew what it was and I knew it was coming. I spoiled myself. I don’t care though because the books are good, the show is good, and the books and the show are just different enough that I can still feel engaged with both.

This week I also watched the season (series?) finale of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and I am down to the second season (series?) finale of The Alienist which I am enjoying a lot even though it’s creepy as hell. Fortunately season two of Severance came out today. I’ll watch that tonight before bed, I think. Silo is over, but I still have a Friday show to watch out for. That’s nice.

Last night I watched a video on the youtubes. Five Watt World’s Short History of the Les Paul Deluxe. My first “real” guitar was a Les Paul Deluxe. I didn’t learn how to figure out the date on a Les Paul until years later so I have no idea what year it was made. I think it was very late 70’s or very early 80’s. I bought it in 1988 at Russo’s Music in Lowell, MA. All of the knobs had cracked off of it and I never replaced them. I was a kid. I didn’t have the money or even the know how of how to get replacements that would fit. It also had a nasty gash in one of the frets, and I seem to remember that one of the inlays was coming unglued. I didn’t care. I loved that guitar. I adored that guitar.

On a Sunday night/Monday morning in November or December (pretty sure it was December) of 1990 it was stolen out of my car. That was pretty much the end of the world for me. I have never really recovered from the violation of it all. I bought my Les Paul Custom a short time later and that is still my number one guitar… but some days I really find myself missing that Deluxe. I would have loved to have taken it to a good shop and had all of the negatives fixed up. It would have been epic, mini-humbuckers and all.

Watching this video made me feel all the feels. Steve Hackett, Pete Townsend, and me. All of us, Les Paul Deluxe veterans.

Okay. Time to stop farting around and get ready for work. Happy Friday, everyone. The weekend awaits.

David Lynch

Frankly I am embarrassed to write this post.

With the possible exception of Dune, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any David Lynch work. Blue Velvet… Eraserhead… Twin Peaks… Nothing. I’m not even sure if I’ve seen Dune or not. I know I’ve seen bits and pieces, but did I ever actually sit down and watch the flick? I might have. I’m probably 66.67% sure that I have, but that’s not 100%, you know?

This is a guy who, purely by reputation, I should be very much familiar with. I mean… Eraserhead, right? How can I not have ever seen Eraserhead? Also, Twin Peaks? Eraserhead was before my time but Twin Peaks came out while I was in my first, first year of college and everyone on Earth was watching it. I mean… I was in music school for crying out loud, how did I not watch Twin Peaks?

Now David Lynch has passed away. It’s too late for me to do anything more than catch up in his memory. Somehow that seems very shitty of me.

As always when a celebrity dies, I have written a post about them that was really all about me. I am a selfish asshole that way.

Rest in Peace, David Lynch.