Small world

Some years ago, I decided I really wanted to sing in a band, and through a sequence of serendipitous events I found myself involved in what was termed a “rehearsal group,” a group of musicians (or wannabes) who wanted to build some performance chops. Within a couple of weeks, the originator of the group had brought on a man who was a music director (for what, I’m not sure) to be an accompanist and provide some guidance for our group for the low, low price of $10 a session. (The original group was fee-free.)

I really, really wanted to be in a band, so I coughed up my $10, and for awhile, it seemed worth it. Eventually we were practicing in the studio he was building downtown, making progress, and began to discuss actually playing out as a group. There was some dissension in the ranks. The bassist wanted to get out in front of people immediately, whether we were playing decently or not. Seeing as we couldn’t actually all finish a song at the same time just yet, I thought it was premature.

One Tuesday night, I had to miss a rehearsal. The next day, I heard from the bassist, who asked me if I’d heard from the director dude. I said I hadn’t, and asked him “What’s up?” He told me that he and a couple of the others had shown up at the studio for rehearsal at the usual time to find the studio dark, the doors locked, and the phone number disconnected. The scuttlebutt was that he’d cleared out the studio, including some equipment belonging to one of our band members, and was incommunicado after a show he’d organized had failed financially. I recalled that he’d tried to impress us band members into service as brute labor for the show, which I passed on.

Some time later, I tried to get something going with the guitarist from our group, because he and I seemed to have a rapport, but on our own it just wasn’t a comfortable fit, and I let it go. The epilogue was that I joined one more band as a singer, a band that also disintegrated before we ever played out, and at that point I decided if I didn’t want to be at the mercy of instrumentalists anymore I would have to learn the guitar. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, so that’s what I did. Last Friday was the 4-year anniversary of my becoming a guitarist, and I’ve never looked back.

The Thursday night before that, though, found me in the audience prepared to enjoy the delightful musical genius that is Lyle Lovett and his Large Band. (It’s large, not big.) And large it was. Before Lyle came out, he sent his band out, 10 excellent instrumentalists, including 3 guitarists (one of whom also played mandolin), 1 lap steel guitarist, 2 drummers, a pianist, a cellist, a fiddler, and an upright bassist. They were ultimately joined by Lyle on acoustic guitar and 3 backup singers.

A word about Lyle. I can tell you why Julia Roberts married him. If you listen to his music, you will find it’s witty and smart, and therefore he must be, too. And then there’s that face. It’s irresistible. Lyle Lovett has a face like a crumpled up paper bag that has been smoothed flat again. He always looks like he’s on the verge of crying, especially when he sings, with his mouth naturally set in a sad frown. When he smiles, the change is so subtle, you can easily miss it. And yet for all that, there’s a dignified handsomeness to his face that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Yeah, I’m crushing hard on ol’ Lyle there. But back to his Large Band. Which, by the way, is large; not big.

If 14 skilled musicians on stage weren’t enough musical joy for you, they were joined by a local 10-member gospel choir, to excellent effect. Imagine my surprise when Lyle introduced the director of this gospel choir as none other than the musical director of my little rehearsal group from all those years ago. I wasn’t quite sure about the name, but I never forget a face, and it was he.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about someone who’d behaved somewhat shadily being up there with Lyle Lovett, who seems an eminently decent fellow. Hardly seems fair, especially since I’d happily give some barely used bodily appendage to be able to sing backup on the same stage with Lyle Lovett. But sometimes it just be that way. Though I suppose if he’d been more of a stand-up guy, I might never have ended up in that other failed band. And if that hadn’t happened, I might’ve never started down the road to learn the guitar. So perhaps I owe him my thanks.

Bonding with my fellow beings through food

Tuesday afternoon at work I grabbed the nectarine I’d brought for my snack and retired to the office kitchen. It was an especially ripe nectarine, and I knew that the first bite would result in rivulets of sweet juice running down my chin and arm, so I was prepared with paper towel under my chin as I ate. I wasn’t wrong; it was a 2-napkin snack.

Despite the brilliant decoration of my cubicle, the office kitchen is my favorite spot in the building because it is possessed of huge windows that look out onto what is a pretty active spot for wildlife. I myself have seen javelinas and a coyote, and some folks have seen a bobcat as well, but mostly it’s the occasional hummingbird, and lots of lizards and ground squirrels. I once spent 10 minutes watching a pair of ground squirrel pups body slam each other in a performance worthy of the WWE.

As I ate my nectarine, I spied in the underbrush a ground squirrel sitting on his haunches, merrily chomping away on a mesquite bean, which are thick on the ground this time of year, shaken down by the monsoons that sweep through most nights. Our dogs eat them, too, and we are constantly finding them in odd places in the house under chairs and in between couch cushions. It’s their favorite chew toy, other than each other.

I was struck by the symmetry, me eating my treat with two hands and the squirrel eating his likewise. Despite the fact that I am much bigger, wear clothes and shoes, and am eating my fruit in air-conditioned comfort, as I looked at that little squirrel, there was no question that I was as much a critter as he was.

* * *

Scott and I stopped into the Texas Roadhouse for dinner the other night. I ordered my usual: 6 oz. filet, loaded sweet potato, and house salad.

“What kind of dressing?”

“French and blue cheese, please.”

“Really?”

I get this a lot in restaurants; people think it’s a very odd combo. My folks started eating their salads this way years ago, and I picked it up as a kid after my multi-year Thousand Island phase was over. A lot of restaurants these days don’t have French dressing, though, so I usually do Italian as a back-up, but when I can get it, that’s what I order.

“Yes, really,” I said, ever-so-slightly annoyed that I was being questioned about my salad dressing choices again. Only it was different this time.

“That’s what I always order!” said our waiter.

“No way!”

“Yes. And no one has ever ordered it that way before from me. Are you from the Midwest?”

“I am,” I said, not sure what that had to do with it, but perhaps he had some inside knowledge of regional condiment usage that I was unaware of. “Are you?”

“Yeah, I’m from Wisconsin.”

“Oh yeah? Where? My family’s from Superior, and we used to live in Manitowoc for awhile.”

“St. Croix Falls.”

“That’s right over the border from Minnesota, isn’t it?” Oddly, I had never heard of the city before that morning, and then I was hearing about it twice in the same day.

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

Outside of my own parents and myself, I had never met anyone else who liked French and blue cheese salad dressing before, either. I was quite tickled with the exchange.

Doesn’t take much to delight me.

Hanging up my toolbelt at long last

A long time ago, in a cold and mosquitoed place far, far away lived two much younger and more naïve Cunninghams. They were living in a one-bedroom apartment in Buffalo, Minnesota, and had recently been informed that their rent was going up $25 a month.

Given that our apartment was a tiny hovel unworthy of the rent we were already paying, and the fact that we seemed to find ourselves driving up to St. Cloud most weekends anyway, we decided to look for a better, cheaper apartment closer to a bigger city and my folks. We picked up the paper and among the apartment ads we found an ad that said “Why rent when you can own?”

Why indeed?

The short version of that story is that soon thereafter we signed our name to a piece of paper proffered by a company who assured us that there was no obstacle to building a house starting in November in Minnesota, despite our stated concerns that winter might be a problem. Turns out, that assurance was good only until the ink dried on the contract. (And to this day, whenever any service or sales person tells us that something will be no problem despite our stated concerns, we look at each other say, “Sure, we’ll just rrrrip right through the frost!”) In any case, we didn’t have any money for a down payment, and we’d agreed to do sweat equity on the house in lieu of a cash down payment. We signed on to do all the insulation of our tri-level in progress, all the priming and painting, and all the staining of woodwork.  Looking back, it’s clear to me that we only did this because we were completely ignorant of what that involved.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but by the time we moved in, because of the work itself, the trips back and forth from our apartment to the building site 50 minutes away, and the classic builder bullshit, Scott hated that house, and wasn’t the least bit sad to leave it behind when we moved to Arizona.

Building that house, we determined it was something we never, ever wanted to do again, and any naïveté we had going into it had been stripped from us by the builder’s shenanigans. It was at this point we came up with our new mantra: Pay. Da. Man. We had discovered through this long and maddening process that sometimes you save money at the cost of your sanity and health, not to mention oodles of time. Some things really are best left to professionals.  Like the installation of a corner lot’s worth of sod.

Somehow, though, I forgot this mantra over the intervening decade, and am frequently possessed of a DIY fervor I’m quite at a loss to explain. Every single project begins with a combination of cockiness and a zealot’s gleam in my eye. It’s always the same: I think, “I have a great deal of (baseless) confidence in my own abilities to get a job done. I own and understand tools. I can do it!”

Only, it turns out, I can only sorta do it. Nothing works out like it should for any of my projects, ever. Apparently, I possess the knowledge of how things are supposed to be done, but lack the art that allows some people to wield tools with finesse and panache. I live in awe of people who can do such things. I desperately want to be Bob Vila, but when it comes to home improvement projects, I’m more Tim Taylor. At best. Actually, I’m more like this:

Never has this been more apparent than in the bathroom project I have been immersed in for over two months now. I started a long and nerdy post about this torturous process, but realized that I probably would’ve lost most of you before I even got the toilet dismantled. So I’ll let the pictures tell the story, if you’re inclined to view the entire debacle start to finish. If you click the picture below, mouse over the image in the slideshow and click on the ‘i’ that appears, and you’ll get the commentary of what is a sadder, sweatier saga than even the pictures show. I spared you most of the swearing and throwing of tools.

I have come out of this project several hundred dollars poorer, but with a greater self-knowledge than I’d had previously. I have learned that I am so very done with DIY projects, and if it cannot be fixed with a hammer, screwdriver, pliers, or paintbrush, I will hire it out.

PAY. DA. MAN. Words to live by, I tell ya.

(Clickey da wee monkey for slideshow.)