Year: 2018

Slower Hand

Entertainment

Several years ago, as a demonstration about the importance of the rhythm unit (bass and drums) to a band’s sound, I had to play bass guitar to a live audience for the first time in over thirty years.

And I could barely play for more than a few seconds before the pain in my knuckles and wrist slowed me down. I haven’t touched a bass since.

At the time, I was 54 years old. How it would feel to play now, almost ten years later, I can only imagine — and how much pain I’d feel in another ten years or so is unimaginable.

Which is why I read this headline with the utmost sympathy for the man:

Musician Eric Clapton, 72, admits he’s going deaf and his “hands just about work” as he reveals concerns he will “embarrass himself” at 2018 shows

To say that I’m a fan of Eric Clapton would be one of the world’s great understatements. I first became aware of his skill when I heard the Cream hit “White Room”, which was a ground-breaker in that it had two lead solos — unheard of in any popular tune of the time. What was also ground-breaking was Clapton’s virtuosity, because (as I once explained to my son) while the solos now sound unremarkable, almost pedestrian, they were unlike anything else being played at the time. His playing was such that it spawned the various “Clapton Is God” graffiti on so many walls in Britain. My friend, the late Johnny Fourie was not only one of the jazz guitar greats, but was also for a couple of years the band leader at the famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London. After having seen him play a late-night jam session there, Johnny later described Clapton to me as “a shy, skinny kid who played like his guitar was on fire.”

And he got better. Much better.

I’ve seen Clapton play live, once at Madison Square Garden (during his Cocaine period), and much later at the old Chicago Stadium where he played only his favorite blues songs. While he was good at MSG, he was sensational in Chicago, and anyone who knows anything about him will know that while rock music might have made him famous, it’s the blues which holds his heart.

Here’s (to my mind) one of the best examples of his blues prowess:

Stormy Monday

…and here’s something different he did a couple years ago:

Autumn Leaves

Yeah, he can play the old jazz standards as well. Well, duh; he’s Eric Clapton.

Old age catches us all in its icy grip eventually, and not even “God” can escape it.

Gold Standard?

Health, Politics

The next time some liberal fool tries to convince you that a “single-payer” healthcare system is the bee’s knees and holds up Britain’s NHS as an example of “free” medical care, feel free to point him to this little snippet:

The NHS is struggling with its worst winter ever as A&E waiting times hit their highest on record, damning figures released today reveal.

New data from NHS England shows the health service is operating at a poorer level than at the same point in 2016, which was branded a ‘humanitarian crisis’ and saw the British Red Cross drafted in to help.

The alarming statistics, collected from between New Year’s Day and January 7, show:

  • One in five patients at major casualty units waited longer than four hours – the safe limit set by the Government – to be seen in December
  • The statistics showed that for all A&E units, 85.1 per cent of patients were seen within the four-hour period – equaling last January’s record low.
  • More than 300,000 patients were forced to wait for at least four hours in all A&E units – the highest amount since figures began in 2010.
  • Ambulance delays have also risen to record proportions, with more than 5,000 patients left stuck in the back of the vehicles waiting to be transferred to A&E.
  • While bed occupancy levels have hit their worst point yet this winter, with 24 trusts declaring they had no free beds at some point last week, the figures show.

With government, when there is over-demand there will always be under-supply, and rationing.

Caption Competition #1

Captions, Friday Feature

Here’s something I’d like to try, just to test y’all’s creativity and sense of humor: “Caption This Picture”. (The captions can be as dark, stupid, outrageous or smutty as you want, I don’t care.) If this idea proves to be popular and / or makes me laugh, then I’ll make it a regular feature.

Take a look at the picture below, and add your own caption in Comments.

Stupid Idea

Two-Minute Hate

January is a crappy month, especially in the northern hemisphere: cold, dark skies, short days, no Christmas holidays to look forward to, and (in the U.S.) the prospect of filing your tax return.

Which makes me wonder why people would want to make the month even more miserable by suggesting that this would be a good time to cut out those things which can alleviate our misery (“Veganuary”, how cute; and “Dry January”). What infamy is this? As if January isn’t shitty enough, now we have to add itching powder to the hairshirt by giving up meat and beer?

It’s only 7am as I write this, yet I feel a nagging need for steak ‘n (butter-fried) eggs, washed down with a Bloody Mary — and we’re not even halfway through the month.

I am getting so sick of people trying to change our lifestyle and behavior “for your own good” — it’s like living with Gwyneth Paltrow and Chuck Schumer in your house, with no earplugs to drown out their endless nagging do-goodery.

Leave me the fuck alone.

Sounds About Right

Patriotism, Politics

So Viktor Orban is being painted as some kind of fascist / racist / [insert liberal epithet du jour here] because he’s not in favor of allowing his country to be swamped with foreign “refugees”, saying for example:

Hungary’s controversial Prime Minister has said refugees arriving in Europe are “Muslim invaders” who have created “parallel societies that will never unite”.

Yeah, well he’s right about that. Muslims don’t assimilate, they aren’t willing to FIFO (fit in or fuck off) and they do want to impose their backward fucking belief system on all of us. And yes, I know: Not All Muslims Are Like That — right up until they form a sizable minority (+15% or so) within their host population, whereupon the shit hits the fan and it’s shari’a-shari’a-shari’a; in other words, honor killings, murder of apostates, barbaric treatment of women and all the other revolting little items from the Islamic playbook.

More from Orban:

He claimed that most refugees were not fleeing to Europe to escape danger, but rather were “economic migrants in search of a better life.”

Well, that’s true as well, isn’t it? As a one-time economic migrant myself (albeit a legal one, unlike most of these fuckers), I can sympathize with their plight and desire to improve their miserable Third-World lives — just don’t claim to be political refugees fleeing persecution because you aren’t, mostly. If these shitbirds were truly set on improving their lot in life, they’d assimilate into their host countries and become economically viable citizens — but they don’t, of course. They live in refugee camps, take welfare handouts and create rape-gangs.

But Orban’s most telling statement is this one:

“I can only speak for the Hungarian people, and they don’t want any migration.”

Lest we forget, Orban is the democratically-elected prime minister of a sovereign nation and given that in a few months he’s going to be reelected to office in a landslide (you read it here first), he’s telling the truth — and to ignore the wishes of his voters (as former Ossi-Commie Angela Merkel has done and still does in Germany) would constitute the grossest betrayal of his people’s wishes.

And speaking of Germany, Orban has this to say:

“The reason why people are in your country is not because they are refugees, but because they want a German life.
“I’ve never understood how chaos, anarchy and illegal border crossings are viewed as something good in a country like Germany, which we view as the best example of discipline and the rule of law.
Asked to explain why Hungary accepted no refugees while Germany took in hundreds of thousands, Orban told Bild: “The difference is, you wanted the migrants, and we didn’t.”

No wonder the Euros hate him: he speaks the truth, he speaks his mind, and he represents the wishes of his people, instead of spouting feelgood liberal pablum and ignoring the voters’ concerns — which is about as succinct a description of the European Union ruling elite as I can come up with.

I think The Donald should invite both Viktor Orban and his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki (who is cut from the same cloth and is likewise loathed by the EU goblins) to a state dinner at the White House. That will do several things: stick one in the eye of the EU (always a good thing, in my opinion) and reinforce Trump’s own bona fides in the matter of bogus refugees and illegal immigrants.

Mostly, though, Trump should invite Orban over because I think we could learn at least one thing from the Hungarians:

Seems to be working quite well, from all accounts.