April 8, 2013

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  The Daily  News

  1   We’re baaaaaaaack!!!

  
  

  2   Anybody looking?

  
  

  3   Even if you’re a Dodger fan you had to love the picture in yesterday’s Merc of Mays and Posey sitting next to each other. The look on Willie’s face was sheer poetry. I tried to pull it up for today’s DN but couldn’t find it. For the record, it was priceless.

  
  

  4  Baseball.

  
  

  5   Moving on, Part One: Welp, let’s get on with it. I had a bittersweet Spring Break. The reason that my last DN was so short was that Helene’s brother Ron had passed away after a long illness that very day.  Ron was and still remains awesome, and he will forever be my bro, and my hero. We all miss him tremendously.

  6   Fortunately the family decided not to have a service last week. We will have one in early May. This took a lot of pressure off the week, and after a lots of tears we managed to talk and laugh about all the good times he gave us. We also realized that It was okay to laugh and relax, so it wound up being a pretty nice week. 

  
  

  7   Anyway, I want to say that while I miss Ron, I salute him as a soldier, fighter and brother to me, as Uncle Cool Guy to my daughters, and as a loving son and brother to Helene’s mom and to her brother Russ. 

  
  

  8   Tough times. Lots of love. That’s what happens. Lots of love.

  
  

  9   Moving on, Part the Second: The other day I realized that it is Spring, and that I needed a new look. I bought myself some new shirts and ties, but something was clearly missing. Socks? No. Pants? No. Overshoes? Wait. I got it!

  
  

  10  A new hat. 

   

  11  I looked up hat places online, but most of them seemed a bit uppity. I thought and thought about where to get a new hat in San Jose. Then it came to me in a vision.

  
  

  12  Maria Madre.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  13  The Flea Market.

  
  

  14   I chugged the Ol’ Timuh over to Berryessa, and took the familiar right turn into the parking lot. I hadn’t been there in years. I walked down the underpass and emerged into the exotic world that I often visited as a youth. 

  
  

  15  I was greeted instantly with Mariachi music and incense. I looked at the sky, which displayed April clouds and magnificent rays of sunshine. I wandered through frying pans, wedding dresses, sports’ memorabilia, and naughty lingerie. I smelled incense, stale beer, corn dogs and pineapples. I saw literally thousands of hats. Buyers market.
  

  
  

  16  I had forgotten what an amazing place it was. People of all colors and from every conceivable place on Earth walked around  with smiles and laughter. It remains a fun little market place. The day brought springtime smiles to all: families, lovers, dreamers and schemers.

  
  

  17   One place in particular had various hats that looked like they came from the back lot at Turner Classic Movies.  Bogart hats. Sinatra hats. Edward G. Robinson hats. 

  
  

  18   Yeah, see?

  
  

  19  This pretty young lady asked me if I needed help.

  
  

  20

  
  

  
  

  
  

  21   I was standing there holding a handful of hats.

  
  

  22   “How much are these?” I asked.

  
  

  23   She had a lovely accent. “Usually they are seven dolors. I give them to you for five.” She paused. “Tomorrow four dolors!”

  
  

  24   Sold. I remain a sucker for charm. Always will remain one. 

  
  

  25    I made bargains all morning and came home with an entire Spring ensemble. I think that out the door I got six shirts, four ties, and three hats for fifty-five dollars.

  
  

  26   Dolors.

  
  

  27   Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.

  –Unamuno.

  
  

  28   Ah yes. As I recall I got that quote from Dale Wasserman’s intro to Man of La Mancha back in the days when I was still an artiste, and a dreamer. 

  
  

  29   The other night I got home from Dad’s a little after seven, and was asleep by nine. When I awakened, I tried to remember that wonderful quote and couldn’t. The morning wouldn’t unwrap it’s tiredness on my dreadful mind. The quote was up there, but it took my getting on the freeway for it to unwind itself. 

  
  

  30   I was somewhere like Redwood City when it cleared and fell into my head like the clouds have fallen into the April sky, first scattered, then brilliantly clear and immediate. 

  
  

  31   Redwood City. Me old friend and confidant Goof Van Maaaastricht once told me that New York City and Redwood City had the same mystical rhythm. That same rhythm went on to become the Drama knock. Students of my productions knew it meant you don’t answer a knock at any door to the Theatre unless it was that rhythm. It kept  administrators and other miscreants reasonably at bay so that we could rehearse or build our dreams in peace. 

  
  

  32   Just a bit of Theatre history. 

  
  

  33   Moving on, Part the Thoid: Yesterday morning on the way up to visit my Dad I had so many notions and nonsensical ideas flitting through my frabjous head that I couldn’t stand the fact that they were all going to blow out the car window, never to return. 

  
  

  34   I had all sorts of ideas for songs, for poems, for plays, for everything. It literally drove me crazy because I knew darned well that I wouldn’t remember any of by the time I got to a computer, or even to a piece of paper. 

  
  

  35   AND my own computer crashed permanently just the other day. I am ironically using a computer we bought for Ron, so it is new, like WAY new, like it doesn’t even have Microsoft Word in it. It has some rare form, but it clearly wants me to purchase  the upgraded version. Meh.
  

  
  

  36   I started writing this yesterday around 9 a.m. because I wanted to remember about Mays and Posey, and about hats and clothes, and about just about everything that I now don’t remember.

  
  

  37   I did want to mention that last week I spoiled myself and bought two sets of strings for my guitars, and that I practiced around six or seven songs just to get back into it, like you’d be all interested.
  

  
  

  38   I even practiced some songs from an album I started working on a few years ago.

  
  

  39   It was called Old Hat. 

  
  

  40   That’s a song I wrote about a king who would shout of this and that, and who may call for his very very very old hat. 

  
  

  41   It was a really stupid song. 

  
  

  42   It was the second-to-the last song on Side A.  I wrote the names of the songs one day when I had too much time on my hands. I made an album cover and had all the songs listed on the back and everything. It had a bit of an Abbey Road feel to it. 

  
  

  43   My favorite song is called So Much Love. It had a fifties feel to it with the refrain, “So much love; so much la-la-la-la love.” It was inspired by a poem written to me by my great friend Thuy Ann Le and given to me when Mom passed away. As I recall the first song on the album was called A Place in the Sun, a sort of surfer tune about a beach shack where the singer hung out with two bikini chicks. 

  
  

  44  I also had a blues song called Sweet Annie Lee which was not at all inspired by nor had anything to do with Thuy Ann. It was in fact a song about a hideously ugly woman who won’t leave narrator alone. I recall the lyrics being pretty hilarious. 

  45   I spent the weekend taking care of Dad, and doing lots of laughing, but I was nowhere near those tunes, which are in my guitar case. I’m inspiring myself to get back to  working those tunes and putting them all together.

  
  

  46   It’s a bucket list thing, I imagine. This morning I found the album, but for some reason I put it on a Power Point, and can’t display the pictures yet. I’ll work on it. I do have a list of the song titles, many of which are already songs. Here is my list of song names:

  Side A

  A Place in the Sun

  Blue Water

  Peace

  Sweet Annie Lee

  Old Hat

  So Much Love

  Side B

  The Daily News

  Bistro

  Nothing Common ‘Bout Common Sense

  Seashells in the Sand

  I Still Do

  The entire concept came upon me when my Mom passed away. During all of the hoopla and hullabaloo surrounding those days, we asked Dad what he wanted to put on the sash of his flower easel that would be in the church. He said without a beat, “I still do.” It’s okay for you to cry. I did.

  
  

  47   Moving on, Part Four: I’ve taken to visiting this website called Guitar Tricks. It has online teachers who teach some nice techniques. 

  
  

  48   I’ve always been rhythmically challenged. Metronomes have wall targets with my face in their homes. They throw darts at me in four.

  
  

  49   Moving on, Part Five: I love clean jokes. I think I’ll leave you with a few this lusty Monday, just to reverse the mood.

  
  

  50   Did you hear about the fire at the circus? It was in tents.

  
  

  51   Here are a few more: 

  
  

  52   Why is there no gambling in Africa? 

  
  

  53   Too many cheetahs.

  
  

  54   Why did the cowboy adopt a wiener dog?

  
  

  55   He wanted to get a long little doggy.

  
  

  56   What was Beethoven’s favorite fruit?

  
  

  57   Banananaaaaaaaah.

  
  

  58   What kind of music do chiropractors listen to?

  
  

  59   Hip-pop.

  
  

  60   Why did the police officer smell?

  
  

  61   Because he was on duty.

  
  

  62   I’d better get outta here.

  
  

  63   All right. One more.

  
  

  64   Did you hear about the hyena who drank a pint of gravy?

  
  

  65   He was a laughing stock. 

  
  

  66   Happy Monday.

  
  

  67   Fly low.

  
  

  68   Peace.

  
  

  ~H~

  
  

  
  

  www.xanga.com/bharrington

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  • 9:49 am
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