Volume 16 – #9 – September 2013

Bette, our elderly neighbor, right across the street from our house, died a little over a year ago and left behind an equally elderly (18 1/2 years old at the time) outdoor cat, named Oreo. Jane and I watched over Oreo like mother hens until someone bought the house a few months later. We explained the cat’s situation to the new owner, Bruce, that Oreo had lived in this yard for almost 19 years, and expressed our hope that she could continue to stay, offering to take care of her. It turned out that Bruce was a fine fellow who loved cats and was eager to become Oreo’s new father. So, here we are. More than a year has passed, and Oreo is still alive. In fact, she just had her teeth cleaned. Jane and I continue to watch over her daily, take her treats, brush her and, generally, help take care of her. It’s not uncommon for me to go over to Bruce’s backyard with a small flashlight, at 3:00 in the morning to see how Oreo’s doing and take her a little food. Anyway, the point of the story is that I’ve been wanting a battery-operated lawn mower for some time and Bruce, our neighbor, found one on Craig’s list, drove into Dallas to buy it and pick it up and presented it, all cleaned up and ready to go, to Jane and me for helping with Oreo. I was so blown away, I’ve been happily mowing our front and side yards. I hated mowing when I was a kid, but this thing is so easy to deal with. You just drop in the battery, push a button and go. It makes about 1/3 of the noise of a conventional mower and doesn’t give off any toxic fumes or gas emissions. When the grass really starts growing again and our big back yard is full of haphazard green stuff, we’ll have the yard crew come out every week or two, but this will be perfect for those in-between times, like after a rain and it’s still a week until the crew shows up. This is sounding a little like an article in GUIDEPOSTS, a slice-of-life, inspirational Christian magazine my mother had a subscription to. FYI, if Oreo makes it to January, 2014, she’ll be 20 years old.

The Catio!

Speaking of cats (and who isn’t these days?), in our attempt to make everyone’s lives better at home, Jane and I had a catio (cat patio) added to our house. It’s the size of a room and is, basically, a deck covered in a coated wire mesh, like a nice chicken wire, except the holes are bigger and the wire is heavier. Although it’s big enough for several humans to hang out in, the catio is mainly for the cats, especially the exclusively indoor cats, Stacie, Blinkie and Eddy. You know them, right? The structure was just finished this week and we plan to immediately add a cat water fountain, some tubes and perches and a big indoor/outdoor rug. We had a pit (open area) added (subtracted?) at one end for plants and grass; a place for the cats to jump into and wallow in dirt. The catio is a no-food area, by the way. Right now the cats think they’re at a large squirrel and bird zoo. Their eyes are huge. Here’s the catio.

MY OTHER JOB. I have a band called Brave Combo. I dare say not many bands find themselves in the variety of performance situations we do. We play big and little festivals (rock, roots, avant-garde AND polka, of course), fancy concerts, famous night clubs, trendy bars, hoity-toity events, rich people’s homes, weddings, birthday parties, bar mitzvahs or any other reasons to celebrate, house concerts, benefits, store openings, wakes and funerals. This is a partial list of where you might find Brave Combo. Many of the gigs are fantastic, with great crowds, good sound, friendly production people and helpful promoters. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that 200 tickets have been sold in advance for your show that night in Cleveland at The Beachland Ballroom, for instance. That means we would get 250-300 in the room by show time, which would translate into a lot of love coming our way. But, as all bands know, the next gig could easily be a flop or disappointment (lower than our lowest expectations) or just too much of a hassle. It’s a very schizophrenic existence, full of contradictions, and the tendency to become jaded is strong. A few Brave Combo members over the years have had a hard time with the low moments; you know, like when the only person in the room even aware that a band is playing is the host who hired you and he’s frantically trying to get a handful of his disinterested friends to join him on the empty, snap-together parquet dance floor and gyrate to the wacky musician’s wacky music. If you dwell too much on the feeling that you’re above having to do that kind of thing, it, indeed, would be a miserable moment. I can’t ask someone, especially a side person that’s just hired to do a job, to embrace the concept when he or she feels trapped in a frat party and a dull one, at that. I’ve learned a lot of coping mechanisms over the years that work for me, which mainly have to do with controlling how I perceive something. But look what it takes to entertain me (see paragraph 2); almost nothing if I’m in a good state of mind. Hell, once I just get out of the house and actually make it into the grocery store, there’s a lot of humor waiting for me (funny packages, funny people, funny prices, funny displays, funny parking lot, funny check-out guy). So, certainly, the desperate host and his aloof guests can be full of entertainment value, at least for a little while. Whatever, it’s a sad fact, but a fact, that musicians have to do myriad shows that might put one in danger of feeling the opposite of a rock star; more like hired help that’s lower on the totem pole than the food or the parking valets. Those are the times you try to remember that playing music, in and of itself, as an activity, can be fun, even if the audience is emptying out a little more after each song. If the sound sucks, though, you’re just screwed, dude. Where am I going with this analysis? I don’t know. Stand up straight and put on a happy face and don’t forget that the definition of humor is “pain plus time.”

Okay, time to go mow! Check our itinerary. It’s all about polka, polka, polka, polka, polka and waltz. If you’ll be within 100 miles of one of our shows, you should do yourself and us a favor and come out. I guarantee you will want to take us home and introduce us to your grouchy relatives