Bulletin from the Present

[ed. note.  I am home now, but am at a loss to explain what happened.  This happened a day ago.]

Practiced at the coffeeshop last night.  Didnt get paid.  The coffee-jerk
girl bitched at my singer.  It was a bad vibe.

And to top it off, some little shit wanna-be prima donna electric guitar
player insistently tried to play with my band.  He was horrible, his sound
was out of joint, he overpowered our mix and drowned my guys out.  Just
combatative and wrong.  It pissed me off.  He kept trying to take control of
the jam, of my band.  I wanted to hit him.

"I'm going to go get some of my music."  he said, "Lets play
'Twist-and-Shout'."

I looked at Mick.  His eyes got wide.

"NO!" Mick started, then softened, trying to be polite, "I-I'm not feeling
twist and shout, dude."

I had to tune because my strings were slack from being on the plane. He gave
me harmonics.

"Give me your 'E'." I said.

Harmonics.

"I gave you my 'e'"  he said.

"I didnt ask for your harmonic.  Give me your 'e'"

It was like he was trying to show off.  I'm trying to tune and then
entertain people, dont fuck with me, small fry.  I wanted to smack him on
the head with an open hand.  He likely would have no idea why.

At one point I was hammering on the guitar as we stomped out some blues.  We
finished to applause and the cat walked up to me.

"Your low e is out of tune."  he said.

I noodled around, checking both, checking all my tuning.

"N-no!  You're LOW 'e'!"  He said, incorrectly referring to the higher
pitched 'e', "I can hear these things, they bother me.  I can tune by ear, I
have 'the ear'."

I wanted to strike him, yet again.  Physically punk him out so he'd leave me
alone.  Utter musical disrespect.

I had asked him to sit out, and he did, sitting off to the side, unplugged,
still playing his electric.  Annoying.



I snapped a string trying to change tuning.  It snapped in my face and
startled me.

"DAMMIT!"

He approaches me, and leans in admonishingly, "You've just got to learn how
to play without it."

I just about lost it.

"Listen," I said, as my anger bridled like horses ready to bolt, "I've been
playing for sixteen years.  I can play any fuckin' thing I want, whenever the
fuck I want.  Dont tell me what the fuck I have to learn."

He looked taken aback.  Mick looked at him, obviously annoyed with him also.
All the guys were.

"Dude, now is not a good time."  mick said.

"Look, I'm not trying to be a cock," I continued, "This just snapped in my face,
and I'm angry right now."

He slunk off.  Mick made some bad noise about him coming back next week, and
he demurred, thankfully.

The coffee-jerk then almost broke down as she told me her tale of woe, being
sick and having to come in to cover for a partial shift, then a whole
closing shift.  It sucks, honey, but its work.  Taking your angst out on
customers isnt a good idea.

Later on, Mick and I went to the bar. I bought him a mini-pitcher and kicked
his ass at pool.

Which is cool, because Mick is a good pool-player.