milod

Hmmmm... I guess I'd best check the "economy cable" plastic bag for the torsion rod tool. I have a few cables laying around. <grin> For what it's worth, I just got a new dot some five-six hours off the truck. I s'pose I can find something "wrong" with it if I look hard enough, but frankly it's been too much fun playing it. Nice action although I may lower it just a tad after a week of messing with it. I could care less about most except that tool. The guitar's only weakness is one of the control knobs that's a bit lower than the others. Frankly if something like this had been available in the 1970s, I'd still be playing the thing. Price for price it seems to me to be an incredible deal when I compare prices with what they were "back then." Maybe it's just old age talking, but for what it's worth, the "inexpensive to mid-range" guitars I've seen the past decade beat the socks off what was available in the 1960s. I know it's apparently "in" to be hypercritical, and yeah, if I have a problem with the new Epi I'll holler. But I don't expect a problem. Also, I wonder if the fact I got mine basically just off the delivery truck to a store if it weren't less affected by in-store messing by those who shouldn't have. m

I just picked up a dot. Fresh out of the box, only hours after it was delivered to the store. I swapped out a "brand W" that in ways was prettier - the flame top - but had a 50s neck that I really don't care for at all. The dot as of a cupla hours of playing seems to do quite nicely. I like the neck almost as well as I like my #1 and #2 guitars for the past 35 years. Now, why a semi over a full hollow? My #1 is an Ibanez patent infringement ES175 from the mid 1970s when Gibson wasn't doing so well and where I live makes west Texas seem like a metropolitan area with lots of guitar stores. It's also a lot colder in winter. It's my observation that a full hollow with a tailpiece is a lot more sensitive to temperature and humidity variations and that brings problems keeping it in tune in winter. Frankly I bought the dot as a winter guitar. OTOH, it sounds quite nice with standard stuff on it. Also, Jim "Epi" R. claims they've really upgraded the pots and switches. I'm not sure about the pickup switch on mine, but the pots don't seem too bad at all. Ditto the tuners. Actually the best guitar I own for winter stuff is a mid 1970s Guild SG clone, the S100c. It holds tune better than anything I've used since getting started in the early 1960s. m

Well.... <grin> If I may weigh in on this one... My boss and in ways best friend for some dozen years was frequently referred to, and in theory without any intent to hurt but rather to describe for others, as "that little fat guy." I know nothing ever was said in return; I know also it was hurtful in ways that many other terms might not be. Ethnic humor in the old days tended to be pretty much universal. Jewish jokes by Jewish comics who could do the half-Yiddish thing in the Catskills and all-English in NYC or tv... German jokes even were in the newspaper comics. I'll never forget a young black friend telling a bunch of "black" jokes and asking him if he had any "white" jokes and his response was, "Not really - white people aren't very funny." I thought that was kinda funny, myself. But I think it's different when it gets individual. Yes, I think we are far, far too sensitive as a group in the modern world; but on the other hand, there's a line somewhere between "group funny" and "individually insulting." If we'd get less sensitive and look for more humor among friendly folks... I think we'd all be better off... Laughter is, after all, among the best medicines known to mankind. m

There have been some interesting studies about what people consider "attractive" that have gone well beyond physical shape, racial attributes, etc., and seem to suggest that there are commonalities that transcend a lot of those factors. I'll admit that I do not find that person very attractive at all, but the physical shape ain't what does it. I don't see "life" in the face. It may be in other photos; she may be an exceptional actress who can add or subtract that sort of quality. One might see it in person; I don't see it in a photo. "Attractive" also need not mean "beautiful" in much of any sort of definition. I remember watching an elderly, outa shape, arthritic and creasy-faced lady being helped onto a stage at Blues Alley in Memphis before Beale Street was reinvented some 20 years ago. By most definitions of "beauty," she wasn't. But attractive? You were drawn to her face, her voice... Yes. Absolutely. Unquestionably. Alive; magnetic... m

Yeah, I've a friend who does the "walking, singing cowboy" thing with a headset mike. I can't do it. I had "use the mike and your distance" pounded into my head since I was a kid, even by my Dad. He used it as a "public speaker," but the principle is the same. m

It's a great point that pickin' and singin' are two different things. Yeah, I played in the early mornings in the downtown laundromats when I was in college, etc., etc., etc. And yeah, the Gary Altman - the real name for this South Dakota boy <grin> as I recall - old time radio trick does help somewhat but... Parenthetically, the regimental song for the 7th Cav under Geo. Custer was "Garryowen." --- I've a tape of a lady singing it quite well, which would have been typical in 1875 or so. Custer's bandmaster was an Italian immigrant named Felix Vinatieri - NFL place kicker Adam's great grandfather. Remembering words and getting musical phrasing and fingering chords and plucking/picking/strumming strings all at the same time are a bit much in ways. I'd recommend - giggle if you will, just humming or using a kazoo. Or to use the old-time jazz term, "scat singing." In the bathroom, that term might bring up an entirely different sort of image and metaphor, but what the heck. <chortle> It's always difficult regardless of your degree of experience. I'm at the point where I can play some half fancy fingerpickin' stuff while I'm singing stuff I really do know how to play - but when I'm singing, I have a bad tendency to overdo the fancy guitar stuff because I've made it into muscle memory rather than into a "okay, when I'm singing, I'll back off on the guitar except for fills." That's where recording yourself probably is among the last steps before getting into a public performance mode. You then realize what's going on with the guitar backing as well as the vocal phrasing that should have been figured out with humming or scat singing or kazoo while you've independently memorized and sung the words. <grin> In fact, given the cost of recording stuff when I was a "kid," nobody did it until cassette recorders at $100 or less - the equivalent of maybe $6-800 today - hit the market to replace hauling around a big reel-to-reel rig. m

I used to guzzle coke. Now... coffee until suppertime, then OJ. OJ until I make my morning coffee. Then it's coffee until supper time. Usually 3-4 12-cup pots a day. m

I hope you're reading this... I've made sorta a living since 1966 full time as a print journalist. Up until 1995 it got me onto three other continents to do various sorts of stories and pix. It was a blast. No money, really, but lots of fun and opportunity to see and be "inside" of things from politics on those continents to Northern Plains ag exports to hunting and fishing. I started in '65 part time while pursuing a secondary English teaching degree. It was so much fun as a part timer that it was an easy seduction for the small daily wheels to talk me into quitting school to go full time. That was the most stupid thing I've ever done. The starting paycheck was roughly what a starting teacher earned. Yeah, I've had some "better" jobs, but at this point I'm still making about what a starting teacher gets here. That's with a shelf full of writing and design awards, etc. Get the teaching degree - English with a J minor perhaps. Add history and even some political science and/or a couple of classes in logic, lit and rhetoric. Just make sure you get your teacher certification. Then if you wanna torture yourself, get a newspaper job until after a year or two you decide it likely isn't the fun - or even the paychecks - we had in the "olden days." They won't send you to Europe for an extended stay doing stories on ag exports and such; they won't send you to South America for sports stories or to Asia for culture pieces. If you stick with it, you end up addicted and with a constant adrenalin trickle that you're not sure is because of job/corporate circumstances or a long list of "pre-planned" stories that will be expected even with breaking news tossed in. <grin> So... m