A Portrait Of Cristóbal Colón As A Young Man


I remember Columbus Day because I used to play music in a hundred and one bands anyone that would have me and try to make money to eat and get cigarettes and I don’t smoke and there still was never enough money and I played at a tee-totaling biker association party for two members’ wedding not gay a man and a woman that arrived on a motorcycle with the woman I think wearing a white Wedding Dress and no helmet and we played for one hundred sober bikers and ninety-nine of them were like accountants and one was like a serial murderer but they all looked exactly the same so you had to assume they all would kill you if they got the chance instead of the more likely thing that they’d do your taxes if you asked nice and I never played Born To Be Wild for a Wedding Song before and the bride’s father was in jail I think so she had to dance with the groom twice and the whole thing was held at the Italian-American Club on Gano Street in Providence but everybody calls it Guano Street for a joke haha and it’s a real long time ago but it might have been the Portuguese-American Club I don’t remember but I do remember it was Columbus Day and I went into the bar to get away from the sober biker accountants and that one serial murderer that were in the function room and it didn’t matter if it was the Italian-American Club or the Portuguese-American Club or the Knights Of Columbus Hall haha that would be funny but I don’t really remember but I distinctly remember a guy with a knife a real knife not a just a knife a dagger that came to a perfect point and didn’t fold or look like you could do anything wholesome with it it just looked one hundred percent like it was designed and made to gut a bass player and that guy held that knife right under my chin and explained to me in Portuguese that Cristóbal Colón was Portuguese and don’t you forget it and my Spanish was very sketchy and Portuguese sounds like Russian to me not Spanish anyway but believe me I understood every damn word he said and I advise you all to answer the question did you know Cristóbal Colón was Portuguese in the affirmative at all times.

The end.

Buxtehude Dude’s Guitar Goes To Eleven

Reader Arkadiy wants my boys to adapt some Buxtehude for guitar and drums. Nice music. Prehistoric Bach. It’s not a bad idea, but I refuse to carry a harpsichord up the stairs.

But, whoah; how much loot for that lute? That bad boy goes to eleven. You could moonlight on the weekend harpooning minke whales with that. I could change car tires using that for a lever. Joust. Our second floor windows could become secondary means of egress if we leaned that against the side of the house. I could pick apples on that thing. I could beat an elephant senseless with it in a pinch. It’s awesome. I want one.

No, I want two, so I could strap them to my legs and join the circus. 

Griffin Podiatrist/Woodworker Sure Looks Funny On Your Business Card

Carving the “Ball and Claw” leg.

Chippendale furniture is as dead as a Pharoah. It had quite a run. Thomas Chippendale was the fellow, 1718-1789, but he had a son named Thomas, too, who went into business with him, and went bankrupt. Welcome to the furniture business.

They were designers. They specified all the stuff in the rooms, and even the paint colors. More Ralph Lauren than Norm Abram. And the ball and claw foot is only a tiny portion of their furniture leitmotif, but it’s the thing most anyone can point to and utter: Chippendale.

I sat on Chippendale chairs, gone to seed, in my grandmother’s old apartment when I was a little kid. When the dirt poor end up with stuff, you’re near the end of the string. Next stop oblivion. Of course, right up to fairly recently, people still bought Chippendalish ensembles of furniture for the rooms they never went in in their big houses. The living room and the dining room in houses that no one ate in or lived in. Furniture museums, I called them back twenty years ago when I was still in the house business. The ladies of the houses were constantly asking what color to paint the rooms to entice anyone, including themselves, to enter them. I never did find that color. The husband wrote the check and went back in the family room where the TV was.

I have a copy of Chippendale’s Gentlemen’s and Cabinet Maker’s Director.  It’s around here somewhere. In a box. In a closet. I think. I guess. Never mind. I’ve got Hepplewhite’s book, and if you take out all the harewood inlay on everything it’s just farm furniture and everyone wants some of that.

Still. Look at how exuberant we used to be. We carved the feet of our chairs to resemble the feet of a mythical beast. Nowadays forty-year-old men and their doughy Slave Leias dress up like mythical creatures and go to conventions, where they sit in plastic chairs.

You can read the Gentlemen’s and Cabinet Maker’s Director here, if you  think you’re going to live to be a thousand and have time to spare.

Too Many Notes



Hey, Mozart’s got a new tune out, and it’s got a beat and you can dance to it, I’m tellin’ ya.. He was about ten when he wrote it, so I don’t know about you, but I’m prepared to forgive the hint of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I picked up in there.

Mozart’s latest. 

Tag: 1700s

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