Trust Me On This...It Could Always Be Worse

One of the reasons I love current events is because it is a never ending source of ammunition for my "things could always be worse" arsenal. And that's a very valuable survival tool, especially if fate has dealt you the hard knock life.

No matter how bad or how stupid any situation gets, I need to be able to think of the counter balance. The thing that, in comparison, pales my travails.

Depending on the size of my discomfort, I can fill in the blank with the appropriately horrible event from any time in history. It gives me a lot to work with, and I find that being morbid doesn't bother me at all.

For instance:

"Damn, traffic sucks, and I'm gonna be late for work and get the stink eye from my manager." (I used to refer to him as my "boss" until I realized that ain't nobody the boss of me.)

It could be worse: "We could be in the wreck that caused the traffic, be dead, and not make it to work at all."

Sometimes, I'm quite virtuous in my rationalizations:

"Oh shit, I left my purse on top of the car and it didn't fall off until I hit 65 on the highway. Too bad I took that 300 dollars out of the ATM in case the electric grid died at the stroke of the new millennium."

It could be worse: "I could be one of the homeless people living under the bridge that will find that cash, and it will be like magic at their darkest moment and change their lives forever."

Other times, I have to reach really, really deep, which generally leads to some really, really ugly stuff.:

"Oh hell no, I did not just break both my feet while on vacation!!"

It could be worse: "I could be living in Cambodia, farming a rice paddie, too poor to even dream of a vacation, step on a land mine, get both my feet blown off, and have no access to prosthetics."

Which reminds me, I love me some foreign country, third world, kind of comparisons:

"WTF, who turned the lights out? Is it getting colder in here? Hey, I thought they didn't cut that shit off in the middle of February anymore."

It could be worse: "If we lived in Siberia, we'd always be cold, and have icicles running down our moustaches like in that movie Dr. Zhivago, and have nothing to eat but nasty shit like left over rotten produce we found in the garbage."

" No, the bank did not just charge me a big fat service charge for the favor of bouncing my mortgage payment because I was 79 cents short?"

It could be worse: "Well, I guess we could be starving to death in Ethiopia."

I find the middle east especially helpful when it comes to women's issue's:

"I'm just as smart as any man I've ever met. So why does he earn so much more money for doing the same job?"

It could be worse: "If I lived in the middle east, they would stone me to death in the courtyard."

My mothers personal favorite is Germany, because it covers so much ground:

You can fill in the blank on this one, no matter the how small or large the hardship.

It could be worse: "We could be living in Nazi Germany, poo-poo-poo."

"Mom, does he have to do the entire service in Hebrew, and hasn't he been talking for like 12,000 hours now? I can't feel my legs anymore."

It could be worse: "Be quiet, you could be in a concentration camp."

In closing, I'd like to share with you my current favorite, which is just plain stupid:

"Oh crap, I'm the same age as Susan Boyle!"

It could be worse: "Well, at least I'm not a virgin."

Go ahead, try me. Tell me anything and I'll tell you how it could be worse. So there you have it.

Does Anybody Remember when Alex Chilton Played The Dugout?

My friend Joe posted this story on his Facebook page today. It's about singer/songwriter Alex Chilton, who died earlier this week.

To learn more about Alex, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNVSjBRaJss

It's a great story, so I invited Joe to be my first guest blogger ever. Being a gentleman and a scholar, he agreed. He asked me to mention that the story took place 20 years ago.

Does anybody remember when Alex Chilton played The Dugout?

I was the soundman that night and I'd heard nothing but horror stories about how he loved to dress down sound guys from the stage. I was a little nervous as I was still kind of new to Atlanta and we had a more or less thrown together a PA, elements borrowed from here and there.

I did a little research and found out that Alex liked to smoke a little weed. He walked in the club, which was mostly still a sports bar in spite of the new stage and modest lighting rig, with a bit of a skeptical look on his face.

They showed him downstairs, to what would function as his dressing room, and (I'm guessing) offered him some food. I went down and introduced myself,

"Hi, I'm Joe. I'll be your soundman tonight. I have this for you." and handed him a big old hog leg of a doobie.

"I've heard you can be pretty particular about how you like your monitors to sound. I hope we can get them the way you like 'em."

Alex looked at that big fat joint and simply said, "Me, too." ...

About an hour and a half later, Alex and the band got on stage and we had (I'm told) one of the smoothest and quickest sound checks anyone had ever seen Alex have followed by a really terrific set. He even shook my hand afterward.

A few years later I mixed him at the Point. We had a similar pre-show meeting,

"Hey, Mr. Chilton, remember me? I gave you one of these last time."

"Oh, yeah! Good to see you again!" and another smooth show. I just wish I could find the recording I made that night. Oh, well.

You Now Have My Completely Divided Attention for the Next Three Seconds...Use it Wisely

Perhaps it's my incredibly short attention span, but I've always considered billboards to be great reading. There is no wording more succinct than the stuff you see on billboards. Sometimes, they're informative, sometimes artistic, and often times, just plain baffling. I love the variety of driving up and down I75 and consider myself a connoisseur of flash media.

Once, when the boys were babies, we went the wrong way to LasVegas from LA and almost ended up in Tijuana. It was the billboards that told me I was in trouble, atleast an hour before I got the nerve to tell my ex-husband. What should have been a three hour drive turned into eight hours, with babies screaming in the back seat about sitting too long. Somewhere around San Diego, I told my ex about my little navigation error. Having quit smoking several weeks before, all he said was "I'm buying cigarettes" and started searching for the next exit.

The all time best billboard was in downtown Chicago, near the Greyhound Bus station. It was for Camel cigarettes and it pictured a man from the shoulders up, smoking a huge cigarette. In my memory, the man was blowing smoke rings through a whole inserted in his mouth. In reality, he was probably just blowing smoke, which on it own was pretty damn clever for the late 1970's.

My current favorite is a billboard for Red Gold Tomato's that was erected a few months ago. It had a bright green, papermache vine built all the way from the ground up and around the billboard. For a few days, it was a huge mystery what it was for, and then one day it bloomed shiny delicious tomatoes the size of cars in beautiful 3D. It's gone now, but that's the nature of billboards, they come and they go.

There is one billboard that is baffling and I wish it would go away already. For whatever reason, it brings out the worst in me. I see it everyday on my way to work, and resent it for catching my already limited attention.

It has a huge picture of a child on it, but only from the nose up and forehead down. The oblong snap shot is all big blue eyes and white blond hair, and even though I can't see anymore of it, she strikes me as a girl. The only words are "Consider Foster Care".

This is how I sound as I slowly process the billboards message.

The first day I think "What's that? A billboard for Swedish nannies?".

The second day, I think, in a bad middle eastern accent "Hey lady! How much for the little girl?" in homage to the Blues Brothers.

On the third day, I think "Isn't 25 too old to be a foster child?"

On the fourth day, I think "Is this supposed to reassure white supremacists that they can be foster parents too?"

On the fifth day, I think "Why am I still making fun of this very serious, socially relevant billboard? Hey, cheese coney's are on sale!"

On the sixth day, I think "This could be a billboard for pedophile services."

On the seventh day, I'm thinking "Hey, Ayrian kids need love too."

Yes, I'm ashamed. Yes, I feel bad about it. Yes, I know I will be punished by the universe for having such terrible thoughts. But mostly, I blame really bad advertising. So there you have it.