Everyone's Tuesday
Tuesday Twilight Thoughts
Good Evening, I hope this post finds you well. It is well into Tuesday. Only 2 hours in after midnight, I suppose.
I’m literally burning the midnight oil because since concerts and events have started to happen, I am back to doing ‘the real stuff’. All The Time.
Tomorrow (or I should say, in a matter of hours) I will be headed to Somerville to do some recon on parking meter numbers, and whip out my AMEX at the Somerville Parking office. As one does.
My cohort Dursin, one of the many loyal, if reluctant, subscribers to this feed noted that I’m coming out of my Hell Week, which was last week, and he’s right. My part-time (and now, once a year) gig with the bigger bands, with work wife Rachel was a fine reunion after nearly 3 years. I’m tired from four days working for Dropkick Murphys at House of Blues and the new venue Roadrunner. And I’m happy tired. So damn happy tired.
Besides two separate embarrassing instances in the catering room, this was the best four days all year.
chew your food
don’t undress
be cool, man, be cool
All I will say is chew your pizza. The other lesson is to tell someone where the tattoo is that you are going to reveal to them before you start taking off your jacket. One musn’t employ a series of actions that would lead others to believe you are about to take off your pants to reveal a full moon and a ‘Rose Tattoo’. Crises avoided. No Heimlich needed. No lunar landings.
What do I have to report? I have a new episode of Sell it Now starring Dursin on our little YouTube channel coming out (posted below). I paid someone on Fiverr to do the edit because, while I TAUGHT myself how to edit videos like this, I don’t enjoy how much time it takes. And time is the resource I have the least of at the moment. I think I will take a hybrid approach to video editing, have someone else do the hard bits and I’ll later go in and sprinkle some love on it. And, not just because I know he’ll be reading this (which he will), I would want to service Dursin’s new show idea with the best possible edit, and I don't think I can do it well enough to ‘get there’. In fact, I think I can learn a thing or two from what the Fiverr person did for when I do, eventually, return to editing it all myself!
WITH regards to podcast episodes and video editing, and showing myself to the world I do have some other ‘news’.
Hopefully, I will document all of the trials and tribulations I am having with getting a brand new mouth! It has been a long pandemic of a shitty, uncomfortable upper denture, 2 years of NO dentist appointments, and now a race to the (very expensive) finish of taking my mask off and returning to public speaking and Zoom calls without my gaiter or KN95 on. Frankly, it was easier to even have a mask on in my house on Zoom than to put in an uncomfortable appliance for a 40-minute standard non-paid-for-full-hour Zoom meeting. Hey, I always try to keep it short. (SIDEBAR - just who the hell do these Google Meet, Skype, and Teams people think they are? I thought we picked one)! On Wednesday, knock wooden teeth, I will have a more comfortable, permanent TOOTH solution (though I won’t exactly be out of the woods yet until later in the year)!
The Will Smith/Chris Rock thing (sorry, it had to come up, but you will see why) is exactly the kind of insecurity I have been struggling with and has taken a toll on my mental health (the pandemic didn’t help)!
What Rock said was ableist, what Smith did was inexcusable.
I am super self-conscious about my teeth and I sort of always have been! I will need, like someone with a more serious condition, need some help from science, tools, man, bone, acrylic, nylon, porcelain, resin, or metal to be comfortable. To feel like I can present my face to the world, and simply smile. Jada may need a wig or something else. I wish there were an equivalent of walking around without teeth that would make me look half as beautiful as my representative Ayanna Pressley, but choosing to not have a ‘crutch’ is difficult to pull off below the nose and just above the chin. You sort of need the bone or something there to fully form the face. Not that I am embarrassed around my family and friends! (That’s a lie, I am embarrassed around family and friends about my current situation!)
Jada Pinkett Smith - Gotham’s original character, Fish Mooney
My point about this Oscar debacle (I REALLY didn't start this post with this in mind) is that I do understand feeling self-conscious about something beyond your control and it really fucking sucks. Chris Rock had an easy target in Jada — as Fish Mooney on Gotham! He went there when he could have gone THERE! Stacey was watching Gotham with me for a while and she thought her performance was way over the top and just bad. This seems to work with some characters in the show, and certainly, the scenery is being chewed a bit in Pennyworth as well — this seems to be Bruno Heller’s calling card. I bet fans in the real world that I don’t live in don’t know about Mrs. Smith’s appearance on the Batman television show but I sure did! One of the most unlikeable parts of the damn thing one-hundred-per-cent. It’s a Harvey Dent coin flip between Fish and Bane for the worst portrayed Batman rogue in the now-concluded series.
Gotham’s Bane - Shane West
I don’t respect or care for awards shows, awards for art and music, nationally, internationally, or locally. I eschew local music awards especially. I have no need for it, and I can proudly say I have held this belief for a long time. If you enjoy them, go nuts, have fun, I’m just not interested in following along or getting my picture taken (again) against a step and repeat. Live entertainment is for the show and the audience and the showcase of talent. This is done all year long in spreadsheets, calendars, soundchecks, cases of water, and in my case with lots of caffeine.
Taking a day out to recognize some up-and-comer’s accomplishments, that’s fine and dandy — but aren’t the most triumphant moments in live music the ones where your legs are tired, your ears are ringing, and you are eating pizza on your couch at 2 AM after playing or seeing your favorite band? I think so. So far, I have found no awards shows for that.
