My Last Job

A simple list of all of the jobs that I have had would fill the page. My work history has been a vagabond's journey that began with me outside the church after each of the Sunday masses hawking the diocese's weekly newspaper, the Tablet, and a smaller magazine called the Sunday Visitor. That took at least six hours. Me and my friend Bobby, and I can't remember if they paid us or not. That was sixty years ago. Last week I resigned from what should almost certainly have been my final job.

“Almost certainly?” I hate to break this to you, but our exciting new world has denied us certainty in any matter that you could think of. I could peacefully live out my remaining years, or I could be reduced to begging for coins in return for teaching young English-learners the mysteries of English grammar.

Several of my jobs were pleasant, but difficult. Some of them were physically demanding and totally annoying. A couple were just annoying. One or two were mellow and almost enjoyable. The lawyer jobs were all very stressful. My worst job was letter-carrier for the US Postal Service. In New York weather? Are you kidding me? Summers are way too hot, and winters are way too cold, and it rains all year. I lasted just under two years. The second winter was out of the question.

I recently realized that I had spent most of my adult life sleep-deprived. I was lucky to get almost seven hours of rack time, and often had to settle for six. I've been making up for it, and enjoying every extra minute.

My last job was in the “mellow” category. I worked there for almost fifteen years, a statistic that amazes me every time I consider it. My previous record was three-and-a-half years. My vagabond's journey of a career made many stops, lasting between one day and about eighteen months to two years.

Does the Peace Corps count? My ex-wife and I joined together. Peace Corps spun the Fortune Wheel, and it stopped on Thailand. A teacher training program. That was mellow, and I believe that they were happy with my contribution to world peace and understanding. That was a term of two years and three months. It turned out to be too much of a good thing. The resulting rebound-depression back in California resulted in the end of my forty-year marriage.

I returned to Thailand, because I knew the situation, had many contacts in education, and I knew that I could easily get hired and provide myself with a good quality of life. I taught for a time at a big high school full of naughty, lazy students, and then received an offer that I simply could not refuse for what turned out to be the last job I'd ever need.

My last position was as a lecturer for the Faculty of Law at a big government university in Bangkok. I taught undergrad and graduate classes, and was asked to travel to the school's remote campuses all over Thailand about ten times every year (until COVID hit). My deepest thanks and appreciation to all of the faculty and staff at Ramkhamhaeng University, and a special mention for several who have predeceased me, and many who have already retired or simply moved on. Thanks to everyone who ever helped me or made me feel welcome. I almost never felt like an outsider.

James Black - The Hook & Sling (Instrumental) [US, Funk] (1960s/70s) -- ...

James Black is the drummer. Very New Orleans style, and, in fact, he worked mostly in NOLA. He always make me smile. 

The Andrews Sisters - Rum And Coca-Cola(Cover by The Barberettes)

I will allow that much of the new music is really very good. As it turns out, most of the good new stuff comes from overseas. Not all music from Korea is that K-Pop crap. These enthusiastic, talented young women are Korean. 

THE FANTASTIC JOHNNY C BOOGALOO DOWN BROADWAY

These days this is deep catalog, but weirdly enough, deep catalog is what's selling. People are realizing that today's new music is mostly crap. 

Do You Feel Tense?

It's been a while. Sorry, but I've been a bit preoccupied.

Russian propaganda claims that their check points and filtration sites, used to monitor the movement of Ukrainian citizens away from the explosions, are there simply to intercept “bandits and fascists,” who only wish to pass into Mother Russia to blow things up and kill Russians. The wording is familiar.

Long ago, when Mao was alive and the USSR was definitely on the Chicomm shit list, Chinese propaganda liked to refer to Russians as, “Soviet-revisionist-fascist-bandits.”

There was a time when I was very interested in politics and current events, a time when I found such oafish lies interesting, or even amusing. That time has passed.

Living, as we do, in the midst of a never ending oaf carnival, our daily bread now consists of hilariously obvious lies. The lies have gotten more preposterous over the decades. 1940s? “The Democrats are mismanaging the war and wasting money!” 1950s? “The State Department is full of Commies! I have a list!” 1960s? “The fluoridation of water is a Communist plot!” 1970s? “Commie university professors! Student protesters lost the Vietnam War!” 1980s? “Big government! Tax-and-spend Democrats! Trickle down economics! Tax cuts for the rich will make America productive!” 1990s? “Whitewater! Monica Lewinsky!” Then came the wall. We hit it hard in late 2000.

That election fiasco in 2000 should have frightened American citizens to death, but most people just let it slide. People still had that naïve confidence in American democracy that had sustained us through thick and thin for a couple of hundred years. Our great democratic institutions! Let them do their work.

Since then it's gotten exponentially worse. “It's your money!” Saddam Hussein was behind the whole 9-11 thing. WMDs in Iraq. Permanent war and corruption in Afghanistan. How many Iraqis got killed for nothing? We midwifed the birth of ISIS. Then it was eight years of the Kenyan witch doctor, and his wookie wife! (How the Obamas handled all of that so gracefully is beyond me.) Some of the connective tissue was dissolving in America. Not only in the country, but in individual brains, lots of individual brains. Trump took an ax to all of the mooring lines, and we've been adrift in a sea of blind idiocy ever since.

Does this make anyone else tense? I can't be the only one.

School shootings are just crisis actors, no one was hurt. Or, if anyone did die, it was a false flag job to make the Republicans look bad. There's a portal above the White House where demons from another dimension can enter and control President Biden. The Democratic party is a cabal of cannibalistic, demonic pedophiles, who kill and eat babies. Afterwards they make masks from the cut-off faces of the babies and wear them to their Satanic rituals.

Jewish space lasers! Lizard people!

And that's before you get to fascist superpower geopolitics, the unfortunate weather situation, failed states, nuclear brinkmanship, growing income inequality, the creeping threat of artificial intelligence, universal surveillance (related problems, those last two), greed, corruption, and homicidal mania.

It's all got me a little wound up. How y'all doing out there?

Chet Baker-Blame It on My Youth

Singing is a fascinating thing to consider. The voice; the song; the ornamentation; the accompaniment; the emotion; the singer's commitment. It's all on display. There are surprises in the final analysis. 

It turns out that deep, rock-solid sincerity, and an emotional commitment to the song that is totally heartfelt and perfectly expressed, are more important than a great voice presented in an emotional vacuum. 

Chet obviously loved these songs, and he understood them, and he needed to share them. The results are wonderful. 

I think that it was Ornette Coleman that said, "It's crazy, but the guy doesn't have much of a voice, yet when you listen to him sing the songs, he makes you cry." (Or something to that effect. I ain't Sheldon from BBT. 

PIZZICATO FIVE きみみたいにきれいな女の子 ( A beautiful girl like you ) single version

When did Japanese culture first get its hooks into me? Let's see. I guess the first Japanese movie that I saw was the Mysterians (1957). Right around then, Godzilla, the horrible Raymond Burr version, showed up on the Million Dollar Movie. This was closely followed by Rodan. I was getting the bug. This shit was boss. 

Kyu Sakamoto somehow got Sukiyaki on the radio in 1963. Not exactly my style of music, I was more Bo Diddley/ Beach Boys by then, but it was nice to find out that Japanese was a good singing language. No tones; no difficult sounds; uniform stress across all syllables. Tailor made for singing. Then in about 1966 I discovered Japanese cinema, the entire catalog, at a tiny all Japanese/ all the time movie theater close to Times Square. I was sold; I was on board. 

There wasn't much music around. Themes to TV shows; Sadistic Mika Band; Pink Lady. We had moved to Los Angeles, so there was lots of Japanese TV and the rerun houses played the Japanese classics. 

In the late 90s a law client of mine gave me a copy of the soundtrack to the Doom Generation. The client was involved with the production somehow. There were two Pizzicato 5 cuts on it, and I was over the moon. 

It's all historical now, memories of a bygone era. Their music still resonates with me. It's not just that Maki Nomiya is so elegant and beautiful, although that doesn't hurt. Yasuharu Kinishi's composing, production, and playing are all wonderful. 

This music is out there now for all of us to discover. I highly recommend it. "It" being P5 and the discovery process in general.