Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars

Grandpa Summer Vacation! Whee!

Grandpa Howling' Steve will have 10 weeks off from daily babysitting of the grandkids starting next week! Yay! While I love my little Munchkins and enjoy my time with them, I need to recharge. (My daughter is a school teacher, so she gets the summer off.) What will I do?

I'll be taking a week long road trip to Chicago with a stop in Detroit. In Detroit, I'll be meeting a Facebook friend for a trip to Comerica Park and a Tiger baseball game. In Illinois, I'll be visiting my soon to be 90 year old mom and taking in a Cubs baseball game at Wrigley.

I considered continuing out to Colorado so that I could buy some 420 from a retail store, but that's a long way to go for a 1/2 ounce of pot. A lot of wear and tear on my 2011 Ford Ranger pickup, too!

The grandkids will still be very much in my life. My 3 year old girl has made it clear that she wants picnics in the backyard with chocolate ice cream. That's fine with me! My back yard is a great place for my one year old twins to play, too. You couldn't find a quieter, safer place. No traffic noise. Only the birdies and the deer.

And, I have no doubt I'll be called on for spot babysitting.

Unfortunately, I have another surgery scheduled for this summer. What can you do? I'm old, as my toddler Munchkin so often tells me. My body is starting to break down. The surgery will hospitalize me for a couple of days, then I face a month long recovery.

I'm still recovering from two surgeries over a month ago. Yesterday, I did a full set of yoga for the first time since those surgeries. I was afraid to go all in. Now that I have, everything feels better and my outlook has improved.

The picture above is from Uncle Grandpa, one of my favorite kids' TV shows. The grandkids do not appreciate the sublime humor of this show. They prefer The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Princess Sofia and P J Masks. I do love Minnie and Mickey, but a summer off from the endless reruns will do me some good.

Most of my great Grandpa Summer Vacation will be spent at home, doing what my dad called "puttering around." Bicycle riding, softball in the backyard, tending to my yoga regimen, playing, writing and recording music, and sketching and painting. My house needs some minor repairs that I can manage, too.

My time with the grandkids is already running out! I've been babysitting them almost full time during the school year for three years. Next year, it's off to pre-school for my toddler girl, so I'll only see her half days. In two more years, my baby twins will also head off to pre-school. Within four years, all the kids will be in school full time and grandpa will have to find something new to do with his life.

Getting Off the Pot

I've given up on pot... for the moment. It's not as if I've discovered the evils of the demon weed and decided to become a better man. No, I'm simply tired of the hassle required to buy the shit. Could be I'm only putting off smoking the weed until it becomes legal in New York State.

Buying illegal weed is a pain in the ass on a number of levels. Going to some shady character's house for the buy sucks. Add to that the problem of legitimate weights and measures.

It always works out this way... When you first start buying from a dealer, he gives you some extra, the quality is off the charts and the product is fresh and properly cured. With each buy, the quantity, quality and freshness declines until you're buying worthless shit. Then, you've got to go looking for another dealer.

My decision to do without was triggered by two consecutive buys from a dealer who sold me worthless, unsmokeable shit. Paying 100 bucks for an eighth of an ounce of worthless crap that I couldn't even light because it was so poorly cured does not fit in my retirement budget.

I'm not one of those propagandists who denies the negative side of smoking the weed. Regular smoking increases your risk of heavy colds and other respiratory problems. That tar in the bottom of the bong gets into your lungs, too, and I doubt that's good for you. Hot smoke cannot be doing your tongue, throat and esophagus much good. I accept the negatives because I like the high.

Really powerful weed also puts me to sleep. That's something I have to fight in retirement. I don't want to spend my days in bed.

Please, New York State, legalize the weed so that I can go into a store and buy my bag from a clerk. I don't want to form a relationship with a dealer to buy my weed. In particular, I don't want to sit through listening to some dope hippie in Woodstock ranting on politics and culture while I sit for a half an hour to make my time in his apartment seem like a social visit so as not to alarm the neighbors.

When I was young, flaunting the law was part of the charm of smoking weed. In my old age, it's become a pain in the ass. I don't want to put up with the BS any more to buy my weed, so I guess I'll do without until I can buy it in a legit store.

Lip Sketch Study

I can get bogged down in studying things.  Sometimes, I misuse studying technique as a way of wasting time and avoiding confronting that dread work of creativity. Lips are tough shapes to sketch. I'm not sure I understand the structure of lips yet. But, here's my study:

These are female lips, all stylized with lipstick. Male lips, I'd guess have very different shapes. (Another set to study!)

What am I doing here?

Production is the goal. I have those CDs to create, those books to write, that animated 3D comic strip to produce. Plus "videos" of those songs that I put up on the web.

I'm reminding myself. Sometimes, out here in the haze of retirement and grandpa babysitting, I feel as if I'm floating away.

Before I Fell

Below, a pic of me when I was 17 or 18 years old (circa 1967 or 1968), taken by Richard Anderson, the sole professional photographer in my hometown of Watseka, Illinois back when I was a kid. Dana, his son, was my best friend. An all too common refrain... Dana died six months after Myrna died in 2004.

I used the Auto Tone function of Photoshop to restore this photo. It had faded to sepia over the years. My mother gave me the pic on my most recent journey home.

I attended the University of Illinois in Champaign during the summers when I was 16 and 17 years old. As usual, this produced good and bad outcomes. I was so far ahead of everybody intellectually and artistically in my hometown that I was going nuts for lack of stimulation. I had already decided that I wasn't going to marry my high school sweetheart and settle down to a life of children and duty in a farmhouse out in the cornfields.

I played in the university orchestra and jazz band. For the first time in my life, I encountered musicians who could keep up with me, even challenge me. In the dorm at night, I listened for the first time to Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis and the Lovin' Spoonful. Going home in the fall to a town where nobody was interested in my musical explorations felt like dying.

The Berkeley Anti-War Caravan stopped by during one of those summers, and I got an earful on the impending disaster that was the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. I met radical Jews from the East and West Coast. Passionate political, literary and theological discussions raged all night in the dorm lounge. This was my introduction, as well, to wild, radical women of various ethnicities. My hometown girls looked awfully dull and uninteresting upon my return home.

Upon my return home one early fall, I wrote a series of anti-war articles for my hometown newspaper. This drove a stake into the heart of my relationship with Watseka. All my uncles and all the men in town were World War II veterans and staunch patriots. The notion that the U.S. could be committing a horrible mistake... well, that wasn't a permissible idea. Several of those men offered to give me a sound beating, but decided against that when they considered that I was a three sport all-conference athlete, as well as a street fighter with a reputation.

And, of course, I discovered vice and fast women during my summers at Illinois. Dana had already greased the skids by showing up one Friday night for our usual endless drive around Watseka with an awful bottle of apricot schnapps that got me mildly buzzed. I discovered a bar that didn't card minors in Champaign and drank as much cheap beer as I could afford on most summer nights. One of those wild women introduced me to marijuana and sex.

Thus began a decade long era of disintegration in my life that continued through my years in San Francisco. I held myself together enough to get my B.A. and to succeed at a job, but beyond that everything fell to pieces. I gave up on my aspirations as a classical musician and recast myself slowly into a blues, folks, country and jazz musician. I even changed instruments, converting from trumpet to guitar. (I've played piano since before I can remember.)

My commitment to the Catholic Church fell by the wayside, too.

If I had it all to do over again?

I would not leave the Church. My best path in life probably would have been to have earned a degree as a church organist and choir director, but I didn't even see that as a option at the time. The Vietnam War was the disaster that I predicted, but I take no pleasure in being one of the first to recognize that.

My falling out with my hometown probably was unnecessary. Took decades for me to understand that the problem wasn't Watseka... it was me. I needed a larger stage than my teeny-tiny hometown. My fellow townsmen tried to support me in my intellectual and artistic endeavors, but they were in over their heads in even trying to understand where I was headed.

There is no second chance. I've lived an extraordinarily exciting and adventurous life. The end is coming for me, and there is no time for regrets.

The Hipster Left is the Boss

Following the R. Crumb page on FB is a bizarre experience. Crumb was an "underground comic" who played a huge role in broadcasting what were the once revolutionary values of the hipster left in the 60s. Below, a typical item posted on the Crumb page. Note, it is not one of his works.

Problem... the hipster left won the culture war and controls most institutions now, so it is the authority. The kids want to replay the rebellion of the 60s, but it's all posing, because there are no consequences and there is no danger. Mommy and Daddy and their teachers were all R. Crumb fans.

The notion that somebody somewhere is trying to keep you from screwing is a treasured relic of 60s hipsterism. In fact, colleges are hosting Sex Weeks to instruct the kiddies in the proper use of sex toys while masturbating. The most wretched and vile porn is readily accessible by 12 year olds on the internet. It's a Roman Circus of depravity.

The cartoon above is typical of this disconnect. Abortion mills are now routinely killing living, just delivered babies to harvest their organs for resale on the commercial market. We've moved so far beyond the issue of whether abortion is legal, or whether sexual pleasure is acceptable that the cartoon is dismally laughable.

The hipster left, however, keeps pretending that its 1966 and that they are not in charge. This has become hilarious. Can't go on much longer.

The truly rebellious act for a contemporary kid is to go to church. That would be a true act of rebellion against the Boss.

My Version... R. Crumb Self-Portrait...

I've always loved R. Crumb's cartoon style. His characters are so crappy and funky... just as all humans are! Almost every line in a Crumb cartoon is fuzzed up or hairy or just plain funky. Here's my attempt to cop the cartoonist's style:

Drugs, particularly acid and weed, obviously drove Crumb's vision. The hippie era in the Bay Area was his great subject. That tripped out feeling of the body dissolving is conveyed somehow in the master's off kilter style.

Here's Crumb's original:

What a disgusting, perverted old man, huh?

An interesting exercise, but I don't think I really understand Crumb's style... yet!

Pot Propaganda

Legalize pot. I'm all for it. But, I do not believe that pot is harmless. I say this from experience. The New York Times published an editorial yesterday in favor of legalization that omitted any reference to the negative effects of smoking pot. That's what you do when you are manufacturing political propaganda.

I've smoked pot since I was a teenager. At one point in my 20s, I smoked all the time. 

So, let's repeat all the cliches. No, moderate pot use does not drive you mad or strip you of your ability to compete or to cope with life. (I am one of the most aggressive, competitive people you are likely to ever meet.) I don't think pot has much effect on your ability to drive your car. Arresting and imprisoning people for cultivating, selling or using pot is an atrocity.

An honest pot user, like me, cannot help but notice the negative effects on one's health from smoking pot. I can't afford to buy enough pot to smoke on a daily basis because the shit is so damned expensive. So I don't smoke very much. When I smoke to excess, my throat and lungs ache for days afterward. So, yeah, smoking pot produces many of the same effects as smoking cigarettes.

Inhaling hot gases plays hell with your throat. Inhaling particulate matter into your lungs diminishes your ability to breathe and it makes your lungs hurt. This is just reality. Your throat and lungs were not made for this. Maybe the solution to this is edible pot candies. Doesn't appeal to me.

Sometimes this raspy voice is a positive for me. That raspy, gargling effect that smoking produces is a plus for a jazz or blues singer. That sound, for some reason, conveys emotional impact. But, it's a minus for my church performances. Vocal clarity is the key in church.

Take a look at that crap that accumulates in your pipe or bong... all that tar that looks like the stuff that roofers use to seal shingles on your roof. A lot of that shit is making its way into your lungs. That cannot be a good thing.

I'm convinced that, years or decades from now, we will acknowledge that there is a price to be paid for smoking pot. There's always a price to be paid for any vice. That's not necessarily an argument for refraining from vice. (Well, for some people it is. Good for them. I long ago learned to live peaceably with the reality that I'm a sinner.)

Political propagandists maximize the positive aspects of their issues, while downplaying the negatives. I have no political heroes, and don't want to be an activist for any cause. 

So, I can see the negatives of pot smoking, even though I agree that pot should be legalized.

Denver and Seattle React to Game

OK, my Bong Bowl prediction sucked! Fortunately, I didn't bet a penny.

Losers first. We all have a lot more experience losing than winning. That's just life. The Denver Post accuses the Broncos of choking. I was rooting for the old guy, Peyton Manning, because... hell... I'm an Old Dawg. Below, the front page story from Denver.

Manning looked old, confused and physically used up.

Denver's comic pratfall on its first play from scrimmage looks to be the perfect metaphor for the game.

I still admire Manning for coming back from a severe neck injury and continuing to play. Might not have been the best choice. But, I can understand wanting to remain in the game. Manning will have to console himself with his $18 million annual salary.

We can all identify with losers and fuck-ups, right? We all have plenty of experience losing and fucking up.

Seattle staged a big celebration in Pioneer Square. The pic below could just as well have been from a blood lust political rally to celebrate victory in war.

The great thing about sports is that next year somebody else is likely to be celebrating and mourning.

Seattle has a small town chip on its shoulder. It really is a cow town. My high school sweetheart lives out there, I discovered recently. I hope she's happy with the win. She was captain of the cheerleading team back when we were young.

The Seahawks are all about young guys. Their starting QB, Russell Wilson, is only 25 years old, barely out of the University of Wisconsin.

Thank God football is over for the year. Ten days until the Cubs report for spring training. Pitchers and catchers report to Mesa, AZ, on February 13. What's the prognosis for this year? 90 losses and a last place finish! Wait until 2017!

Denver Post Links to The Cannabist

I checked out The Denver Post this morning for articles about the end of pot prohibition in Colorado, and found a link to The Cannabist. Whether this blog is a part of the Post, I don't know.

Among the articles this morning in The Cannabist:

•  

  How to talk with teens about cannabis
• Wyo. State Patrol: Don't bring cannabis here
• Kitchen Kush: Sour cream coffee cake (marijuana enhanced coffee cake)
• Legalization of marijuana "could make coaches worry" about athletes

Time to take a trip to Colorado? Join the party?

Think about all those cameras surrounding states have erected on the highways leading into Colorado. It's easy now to take pictures of license plates as cars speed by. Gonna be a field day for the heat in states where pot is still illegal.

Can't see the current situation holding. The pressure is building up on other states to legalize. New York and New Jersey are among the holdouts. That's surprising. Both states are very liberal.

Below a little YouTube video from Fox TV in Colorado:

Haven't been out in Colorado since I was in college.

The end of pot prohibition is a good thing. Now, come the problems. Nothing in this life is without its problems... not even the good things.

I'll bet that Washington and Colorado legal weed makes its way here to New York on the black market.

Mexican Drug War Sites

When I’m up late at night, feeling all alone… I like to type “Mexican Drug War” into the Google search box and see what comes back. Two of the best sites I’ve found are InSightCrime and Borderland Beat.

I’m fascinated by the Mexican drug wars for a zillion reasons. First, I just love the Eliot Ness and the Untouchables stuff. I’m from the Chicago area. How can you not love gangsters fighting it out with machine guns on the street?

The War on Drugs, from every angle, is a study in human misery and stupidity on a grand scale. Irresistible. From on high in Washington down to the grand mansions of the narco-gangsters in Sinaloa, every human failing is on vivid display. There are no winners, only losers!

InSightCrime is an academic site focusing, just as it says, on organized crime in Latin America. The site is produced by The Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. So, the articles are well written and researched. I think you can bet that the staff of InSightCrime is leftist. I read everything with an eye to the motives and political orientation of the authors, don't you?

InSightCrime has a section for each of the countries that are big players in the drug trade in Central and South America. They’re trying to unravel the mess of gangsters and their bought off allies in government and military. What a maze that is, even if you’re just looking at Mexico. How do you tell the good guys from the bad guys?

Borderland Beat is a lot rougher. The staff of this website is referred to only by pseudonym, in deference to the preference of the drug cartels to gun down journalists who report on the carnage of the drug war.

Borderland Beat is anything but academic. The website grovels a bit in the violence porn so dear to the hearts of aficionados of the Mexican gang rampages. I don’t think you’ll find the snuff videos here, but I could be wrong!

I particularly enjoy the “Narco Terms” section. Here, you can learn the names of the cops and the bandidos, and the weird lingo of the narco trade.

For your edification, the greatest of the Narcocorrido bands, Los Tigres del Norte, singing “Jefe de Jefes,” or “Boss of “Bosses.”