Blogger, realist, clarifier, if there is such a term. Truth teller, who's not afraid to admit I'm wrong. Hellacious, renegade violist and "computer whisperer"; was once accused of practicing the Dark Arts with systems.
I'm tougher than most and survived things that would have killed most women. I still love life. I was homeless, now I'm not. No longer in the 'hood. Now, somewhere in the Carolinas. The stories are priceless and endless.
Every
so often, on a Sunday, the Internet, Cable and phone will go
completely to hell, and by that, I mean, it all stops working. For
everyone. It doesn't matter who your ISP is, it just goes away, and
it's usually for a full 8 to 10 hours and always on a Sunday. It's
not every Sunday, and it doesn't happen with any regularity or
frequency that we can report on, so we just all sit here, like clams
in the dark, until our Internet, Cable and phones start working
again, generally around six pm'ish.
I
tried reporting this outage to my internet provider and they were
just as much in the dark and mystified as I was. They had also had
several other calls from customers in our area reporting the outage
and they had no explanation; everything looked good. It wasn't until
we read a little blurb in the paper, that we discovered that the
Department of Transportation had purchased several of the older
houses in and around the areas of I-275 that they were going to
expand and rather than tear down these fine old houses, they decided
to move them to other parts of the neighborhood.
I'm
all for the preservation of history and we do sport some pretty nifty
old houses and all, but only in or around Nebraska Avenue, would the
Government come up with something so cock-eyed.
Yes,
we must expand the freeway, but rather than tear down these old
houses, let's buy 'em for lots and lots of money from their owners,
(who've skipped off to Key West), and spend lots and lots of money to
move them to empty lots that we've ALSO bought from some other people
(who fled to Monte Carlo) for lots and lots of money! Then, let's
move the houses, but let's move them in the most inconvenient way
possible; say, like, by Conestoga Wagons and Oxen, and turn off
everyone's Internet, because we're not sure that it's safe to leave
it on when we move these here houses, because we're the Department of
Transportation, not the Department of House-Moving; I mean, we have
to figure out some way to use up all of this money, so we'll get more
next year? Right?
Yeah,
yeah; I was going to write about Historical buildings, but there's
been so much written on it and it's so boring at this point, what fun
is that? I've got some history, but I also have my own take on some
of the dwellings, huts, edifices, superstructures, but not ziggurats,
and some domiciles that inhabit V. M. Ybor (pronounced ee-bor, not eye-bor, as this moron did, when first exploring the place), and Ybor City, which we
are cheek-by-jowl with, and in some confused way, a part of.
So,
let's get started with this nightmare. It's on the corner of 15th
Avenue, or Columbus Avenue and Nebraska and it has no windows, no
doors that I can see and I never see any activity, although I did
notice cars parked in an adjacent lot, one evening. It could be
anything, since this is a mixed-zoning area. The more prosaic guess
is some kind of hum-drum manufacturing of small bits of metal
doo-dads goes on here, but I'm not the only one who thinks this is a
scary building.
This building doesn't look that ominous in the daytime, but the fact that what windows it did have are painted over, and I can see no egress or ingress, is creepy to me. Mebbe the workers tunnel in, or climb a ladder in the back and enter from the roof. Crappy working conditions, if you ask me.
Two
violinists of my acquaintance, who drive me regularly to and from
rehearsals and concerts have both commented on the more sinister
aspects of it's appearance. Of course, we're usually viewing this at
night, when we've been plowing through something like Mussorgsky's
“Night on Bare Mountain” and are a bit jumpy to begin with, so
perhaps we are to be forgiven for our hesitance to ascribe anything
benign going on behind those sinister walls. My best guess? Bad juju
as there is a Haitian church nearby and this is where they make
zombies with that scopolamine we sell them at the “Farmer's Market
Gun and Knife Show”. We have no one but ourselves to blame, when
the missing neighbors lurch north and start trying to munch on our
body parts.
This is more a case of the building isn't scary, but what's in it is. When you have people who are basically bored and shiftless, you're bound to have trouble.
Now
that we've sorted out that mystery, we can go on to something that is
truly scary and does truly exist. Take a look at this purple number.
It's a supposed “halfway-house”, although I have yet to see a
halfway-house with an attached bar that is open during the day. When
I was homeless, one of my roomies, who didn't have a screw loose and
I would walk to the library with one of the guys who liked to read;
safety in numbers, and all that.
The first time we passed on the same side of the street as this place is on, 42 guys all came out and in various states of sobriety, or sanity, cat-called us all the way down to the library. I might mention that there were women who live in this squalor, too, although, I think this was just the prospect of fresh meat. Guys were hanging off the roof of the bar, off the porch and just making all kinds of noise. After that, we either walked on the other side of the street, or even safer, took the bus.
Checkers: Proudly serving you 4-day old grease, heartburn, strokes and heart attacks since forever.
I
know that the police go to that place much more often than they ever
went to our shelter, and I'm pretty sure that is a place, where you
could get ANYTHING, up to and including fissile material to make your
own nuke, if you had the brains. It's been that same god-awful color
since I've lived here. They've either cornered the market on
“Midnight Blue” or it's more than likely paint full of lead,
judging from the way the inhabitants act.
Checkers of the Damned. Once you've shuffled off this mortal coil, who says you stop craving those grease-and-bacon burgers, and spicy-oily fries? I think you just change venues and come here for your Happy Meal!
Next
on our guided tour is this curiosity. I'm not even sure that this
building was ever opened, or why it was painted the way it is, but
Alex and I speculate all the time. I personally think that because
this is such an old neighborhood and that there are regular
paranormal activities going on, that this is probably “The Checkers
of the Damned”. We just can't see all the ghouls and ghosts, as
they are in the spirit realm. They coast through in their Christine
cars and order wormy slug-burgers with crispy toads' feet, and drink
minty, or vanilla ectoplasmashakes.
There's
a Checkers for live people right across the street, and the ghouls,
being Nebraska ghouls, set up shop there, thinking they'd give the
other Checkers some competition, and then they went “oh... wait...
yeah. We're dead.” and shrugged their little ghost shoulders. I'm
sure their service is just as horrible as the live Checkers; the
staff flirt and yak on their cell phones and make drug deals. A
person could starve to death, or just eat a few meals there and let
the cholesterol kill you. Either way, you're gonna end up at “The
Checkers of the Damned” sooner or later.
This is how the house looked during it's Roosevelt-Truman-brothel and apparently "Paul's Tourist Home" era. I've been inside this house and up and down and all over it. It's a wonderful house full of nooks and crannies and the trim and original fixtures are marvelous. Some of the rooms are roped off, because they are designated historical sites, where Teddy and Harry laid their heads, and just their heads. At least I think so.
So,
now that we've established that V. M. Ybor is full of hysteria, we
can also establish that it's full of history – as is anything that
is more than a decade old. My dear friend (okay, my “pretend
adopted son) Alex, lives across Nebraska Ave. from me in a house that
is considered the heart of V. M. Ybor. It has been declared an
historical building and anyone who owns it, has to put up with many,
many regulations to fulfill the “restoration clauses” of the
house. Alex rents a room there and has been there forever.
What's
interesting about this house is that Teddy Roosevelt stayed there and
used the University of Tampa as his staging area to muster his
troops; the “Rough Riders”, for the taking of San Juan Hill in
Cuba. Ole Teddy mustered the 1st United States Volunteer
Cavalry, which was one of three such units raised in 1898 to
participate in the 1898 Spanish-American War. President William
McKinley called for the volunteers, because the American Army was so
poorly understaffed after the Civil War.
The white house as it looks today. It is a stunning house, both inside and out. My pretend adopted son, friend, Alex lives here in one of the rooms upstairs.
Teddy
slept in the big white house, while musterin, as did Harry Truman.
Truman also has a “Truman White House” in Key West. Truman,
apparently, loved Florida. The house also gained notoriety as being
one of the finest brothels in the country, but I'm hazy as to when
this was, and I'm thinking that it may not have been when Roosevelt
or Truman were sleeping there. Or maybe it was and that's why they
slept there. Who am I to judge?
One of the many beautiful houses that grace V. M. Ybor. They probably don't have nearly the vivid past that the white house does, but they are pretty. Most were built in the 1920s to 1940s and have gone some kind of renovation. They are typically built "shot-gun" style, with the rooms in a line to take advantage of the breezes, as the homes were built before A/C was a thing here in Florida.
But,
the real heart of Ybor, meaning “Ybor
City”, and not V. M. Ybor, are the Cigar factories and now, the
micro-breweries, which are on the edges of the tourist district.
People flock to Ybor City for it's fine Cuban and Spanish cuisine and
the night life. I used to play with my string quartet there, almost
every night in the tonier restaurants. It's within walking distance
from where I live, but it's a world apart.
I
love to tell the story about the Washington D. C., national
journalist for HuffPo, Jason Linkins, who was sitting in a bar in
Ybor City during the 2012 GOP convention. He was tweeting about the
pizza and beer he was drinking. I was busily “live-blogging and
tweeting” the convention from the comfort of my blogging chair, as
if I were at the convention. When we got to the “family values”
part of the speech some nameless gorm was making before nominating
Mitt Romney, I tweeted, “Yup, some family values. Nebraska Ave
looks like a Hollywood Premiere with all them damn stretch limos
running up and down. Guys looking for crack 'n' ho's!”
I
tweeted that to Jason, and he is one of the very finest iconoclasts
I've ever known. He said, “ha ha ha ha ha ha.” We tweeted back and forth a bit, and became Twitter friends; the man knows his political shit! Thus, a
years-long friendship was born. I admitted later, I was just making
shit up, except the part about the limos. That was true and it was
before noon. Guess the GOP wives were getting their hair done, or
some shit.
Just
more history. Just more hysteria. 'Cause, Nebraska Avenue.
In
the course of this year's A-to-Z challenge, I chose the theme “Music
In My Life” and as such, this challenge is not just a random bunch
of composers and performers that I like particularly, but people who
influenced and continue to shape the course of my musical outlook and
tastes. By and large, I am pretty eclectic, although like everyone, I
have my likes, loves and dislikes and absolute loathings. You won't
see anything about Mozart in this challenge, or if you do, it will be
something disparaging.
Anyway,
Franz Joseph Haydn (March 31, 1732 – May 31 1809) was a
prolific and prominent composer of the Classical period. He was
instrumental in the development of chamber music and his
contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets of “Father
of the Symphony” and “Father of the String Quartet”.
Count Nicolas Esterházy, Haydn's patron for much of Haydn's career.
Haydn
spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy
Esterházy family on their remote estate. This left him set apart
from his contemporaries, and thus, he was “forced to become
original”, which was a wonderful thing for music. At the time of
his death, at age 77, he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.
He had two brothers who were also involved in music; Michael Haydn, a
highly-regarded composer, and Johann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor. Franz
Joseph was a friend of Mozart and also taught Beethoven.
Haydn
was born of a mother who was a cook in the local aristocrat's house
in Rohrau, Austria, near the Hungarian border and a father who was a
wheelwright. While neither parent could read music, Haydn's father
taught himself to play the harp and was and enthusiastic player of
folk music.
Franz Joseph Haydn, Father of the Symphony and the String Quartet
Early
on, Joseph's parents realized that their son was gifted in music, but
there was no one in Rohrau to teach young Joseph, so a relative
twelve kilometers distant, Johann Mathias Frankh, a choirmaster and
schoolmaster in Hainburg, offered to take young Joseph into his
household where he could begin his musical training. Joseph never
again lived with his parents, although he did remark later on, that
the entire family was musical, and they spent much time singing
together and playing.
From
there, he went to Vienna in 1740, after successfully auditioning with
Georg von Reutter, director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in
that city. As he grew into maturity, he could no longer sing the
higher parts, and Empress Maria Theresa herself complained to Reutter
about his singing, calling it “crowing”. After a prank, where
Franz Joseph snipped off the pigtail of a fellow chorister. Tossed
out on his ear, Franz Joseph went into free-lancing as a musician.
He
struggled at first, but eventually, as his skills increased, his
public reputation grew. He had not had any real formal training in
theory, or in composition and counter-point, so he worked his way
through the exercises of the times, including the work of Carl
Phillipp Emanuel Bach, whom he later counted as one of his greatest
influences.
Mozart, who played in string quartets with Haydn, and in spite of my loathing of his music was unquestionably a fine musician.
With
the increase in his reputation, came notable interest from rich
patrons, crucial for a composer in those days. After several smaller
commissions, Haydn accepted a place as Kapellmeister in the Court of
Count Morzin.
As
most of his life was spent in either Esterházy's Court or in London,
where he was also very popular, and this is in keeping with most
other composers of the day, rather than just recite his c. v., I
wanted to focus more on the sense of honesty, probity, excellence and
fun that he brought to his work. He, like Beethoven were very much
products of their time; Beethoven was enraged by Napoleon's actions,
but that didn't stop him from working on, and completing a pivotal
work of the Classical-Romantic era. I could argue that it in fact,
made Beethoven's “Eroica” better for it. Whatever their
circumstances, these men, and later, composers such as Prokofiev and
Shostakovich wrote wonderful music and performed despite the huge
odds they faced; sometimes just the peril of living from day-to-day,
in Shostakovich's case.
Haydn's Symphony No. 94, the "Surprise" symphony, 2nd movement
While
Haydn knew no such difficulties as a mature adult, he did oversee and
care for the musicians under him in his role as Kapellmeister and
during one summer on the Esterházy estate, the musicians had been
forced to leave their wives at home. Haydn, concerned because his
musicians had been given no holiday to visit their families, sat down
and wrote his famous “Farewell Symphony*”. In the final movement,
during the adagio, each musician blew out the candle on his
music stand and left the stage, until at then end, only a violin, and
a viola were left playing a lone duet. Count Esterházy got the
message and the musicians went home the next day, for a much-needed
holiday.
*Yes, Robert, I DO remember almost falling off the stage, when Bev Taylor blew out her candle with me stumbling around in the dark, when we played the “Farewell Symphony”. Please continue to harbor the REST of my memories!
Many
of his pieces had this sense of fun. His “Surprise” symphony is a
gift to everyone who falls asleep in the audience. Not until
Beethoven cemented the idea in stone, dynamics typically had been
gradual, moving in steps, pianissimo, piano, mezzo forte, forte,
fortissimo. It was highly unusual for the dynamics to go from
pianissimo to sforzando-fortissimo, in two notes. Haydn did this as a
joke for everyone who would come to his concerts and fall asleep in
his “Surprise” symphony.
That lovely fortissimo after the pianissimo would have jerked my dad up out of his seat. He used to ask me, "Are you playing Beethoven tonight, because if you are, I wanna bring ear plugs, so I can nap." I'd tell him no, that we were playing Strauss. He'd say, "Oh good. I love Strauss waltzes." I didn't tell him we were playing Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra". Hee hee; no rest there.
Haydn
wrote one-hundred and four symphonies over the course of his life and
the last twelve are the “London” symphonies. He also wrote
sixty-eight string quartets and I've played several of them. They're
wonderful pieces, full of light and technically challenging.
Young Ludwig Beethoven, who was a student of the highly esteemed Franz Joseph Haydn
He's
also known for his Oratorios and I am not very familiar with those.
My experiences with choral music tend to Italian opera and Gilbert
and Sullivan. I do however, encourage anyone who wants to familiarize
themselves with Haydn to start with the “London” symphonies and
the “Surprise” symphony. They are delightful!
Harold
Clayton Lloyd, Sr. Born April 20, 1893. Died March 8, 1971. American
film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies.
When
I first contemplated participating in the A-to-Z Challenge this year
and found myself on a team that was responsible for “themes” I
realized that, for the second time in my nascent writing “career”
I was going to have to do something besides winging it. By that, I
mean, I was going to actually have to commit some remaining brain
cells to coming up with something that looked like I'd actually
formed a plan, or a theme with which to participate in an otherwise
fun, challenge.
Harold Lloyd with future wife Mildred Davis, in I Do (1921). The kids are anonymous, I guess.
Last year, as is my wont, I jumped in at the last minute, made it up as I went along and had a ball. Although I was still dealing with untreated e.t. or “Parkinson's Disease Light; all the symptoms, one-quarter of the meds” or Parkinsonism, or a movement disorder, I could easily toss off a paragraph every day, based on a letter of the alphabet. The closest I came to planning the thing was creating a spread-sheet with the Columns containing the letters and the Rows containing the topics, only because I love to create spreadsheets, or relational databases, because I am a total geek and also because I had some kind of half-assed idea that I was going to hand the thing in to Arlee Bird at the end of the month for a grade, or something. This promptly went awry around Letter “B” when I had some inane thing like “Bravery” and decided to write about Beethoven's Third Symphony, the Eroica, in which he took the whole musical world kicking and screaming into the Romantic era from the Classical era, in sixteen measures flat, and we no longer had to play Mozart, thank the Christ!
So, Arlee liked that, but what does all of this have to do with Harold Lloyd? Not a damned thing! I'm just vamping here, because other than Craig Ferguson, I knew I was going to write about Harold Loyd, because when I was in college, and would come home in the afternoons, or wasn't playing a gig, on our local PBS station, there was a show called, “Hooray for Harold Lloyd” and this was the first time I had ever seen him and I thought he was hysterical!
Sailor-Made Man, Clip 1
There
are a few other comedians and some authors coming up, that I plan to
write about, but what I have been writing has not come across as
screamingly funny and hilarious and that is a hard thing to convey,
when you're trying to spread the love about some comedian or
humorist, that is popular in these here Untied [sic] States. Most comments
have been positive, but the last thing I want to do is turn off
anyone who reads this blog with any regularity, so back to the
drawing board, in a sense.
Sailor-Made Man, Clip 2
Harold Lloyd was a film actor in silent films, but he has to be seen to be
believed. His comedy lies in the timing and the complexity of his art
and it really cannot be described. Born in Burchard, Nebraska, and of
Welsh heritage, he was named for his paternal grandfather. He and his
father moved to San Diego after his parents divorced, although he and
his mother and older brother, Gaylord (also an actor) remained close.
Lloyd, like so many others of his era, acted in vaudeville from
boyhood and after graduating high school and then receiving training
at the School of Dramatic Art (San Diego) he started acting in
one-reel film comedies. He first starting working with Thomas
Edison's motion picture company, and eventually formed a partnership
with fellow struggling actor and director Hal Roach, who had formed
his own studio in 1913. The hard-working Lloyd became the most
successful of Roach's comic actors between 1915 and 1919.
Sailor-Made Man, Clip 3
By
1918, Lloyd and Roach had started to build his character beyond an
imitation of his contemporaries; Lloyd moved away from tragicomic
personae, and portrayed his protagonists with an aura of confidence
and optimism. Lloyd was never typecast to a social class, but he was
always striving for success and recognition. Probably his most iconic
movie is Safety Last!
(1923) but one of his earliest and most interesting just for the
short clips of sight-gags is Sailor-Made Man
(1921).
Last Scene of Safety Last!
Unlike
Chaplin, Lloyd did not have an “everyman” character, or persona.
His style of comedy was driven more by sight-gags and slap-stick,
with edge-of-your-seat will-he, or won't-he fall off the ledge, roof,
clock, etc. Lloyd and Roach parted ways in 1924, and Lloyd became the
independent producer of his own films. These included his most
accomplished mature film features The Freshman
(his highest-grossing silent feature), Girl Shy,
The Kid Brother and
several others. His final silent film, Welcome Danger
(1929) was going to be a silent
film, but towards the end of production, Lloyd decided to add
dialogue.
Although
Lloyd continued to make movies and produce them, he pretty much
passed from the limelight after 1937, although he did continue to
produce a few comedies for RKO Radio Pictures. His main contributions
to comedy and sight-gags came early in his career, although he is
recognized as one of the main contributors to the genre.
As
his film career dwindled, he became more and more active in
Freemasonry, where he had been initiated as a member in the Alexander
Hamilton Lodge No. 535 of Hollywood in 1925. He rose through both the
York and Scottish Rites and then joined the Al Malaikah Shrine in Los
Angeles. Later on in his life, he was known for his charitable work
on behalf of the Shriner's Children's hospital. Lloyd also provided
encouragement and support for many younger actors, including Debbie
Reynolds and Jack Lemmon. He died on March 8, 1971 of prostate
cancer.
I was
racking my brain for an “H” word today. In my usual fashion, none
of the words I chose and put in a list have been used. As a matter of
fact, I can't even remember the title of the list and have lost it
somewhere in the wilderness of my of my hard drive. I can't remember
what I chose, but it was probably something really Serious and
Meaningful. The hell with it.
The bigger it gets, the worse it gets. Its own peripherals hate each other. Links die and go nowhere, except to Existential Land, maybe. Twitter Support is lame-o. "Let us help pick your new PC!" they gush. I tweeted, "4MB RAM, 33MB processor." "Great! Windows 8 is for you!" "Really? I thought Atari might do!" I tweeted back. Idiots.
While I
was trying to work up a froth of “H” inspiration, I noticed,
wayyy up in the left-hand corner, a new folder icon, where earlier
today, my Recycle Bin icon had been. I haven't touched it, I haven't
deleted anything today; I haven't accidentally deleted my Recycle
Bin, which I have done in the past. I have Windows Vista. I used to
work at IBM and I was an OS/2 Engineer. I worked in 3rd
level support and I loved the operating system. It's robust and hard
to louse up, unlike Windows, which is nothing but a thriving, self-replicating bug
patch.
Vista is
probably one of the less intrusive operating systems versions of
Windows. We've had the Win95, 98, 2000, XP and I guess 7, which I
have no experience with and 8, which ditto. Frankly they all suck.
Apple sucks, too and you need to have Java loaded to run their
garbage. I got rid of all of that when I got some of their more
lethal viruses. I had to reload one of my computers back in 2008,
when I downloaded a Java update. I chased a trojan around on my old
Gateway system for 3 days and finally gave up and reloaded the
system.
I play Runescape; this is the MOST important thing I use my computer for. SETI@home, Math arrays and writing/blogging and fixing the world run a distant 2nd to this! ViolaFury and Linus on their way to the coal mines.
In
February, I got pneumonia and had to go to the ER. When I got home,
my computer nagged me to download an update to RealPlayer, which is
an Apple product and I did but didn't scan it before I installed it
and got a smitty_fraud Trojan worm. I caught it before it's 3rd
iteration. I then got rid of all of my Apple products. I had already
uninstalled Java. For good measure, I uninstalled all of my MS Office
and am running Open Office.org. I'm happy and my computer is happy,
too! There is so much nasty stuff running around out there and
Microsoft is sloppy. All big software publishers are getting sloppy
with their security, and their half-assed approach to security is
more apparent all the time. I bought a 2-year license for AVG
security and I run Spybot on every piece of software that a program
tells me to update. I have all updates set to “ask first before
downloading.” It's worth it to avoid the absolute frustration of
having to reload your system. I did this sort of work for 15 years.
Half-assed doesn't cut it, and the big companies don't care.
I'm half-assed myself; here it is 8:48 pm, just getting to my post. I think the "G" is for Golf was probably funnier. This is new you can use. Let's call it edu-tainment. Tomorrow should be for I is for Idiot. Naaa, too obvious. Ouch.
