Before I start this post, I must nip downstairs for something chilly to drink (to accompany my [fanfare] New Modern Air Chilling Device!)
[nip]
Drat. Nothing but Lactaid and juice dregs. Room temperature seltzer and a big glass of ice will have to do.
Sunday morning, I decided I needed a bit of a pick-me-up (what with me international-style travel weariness and all), so I went out and bought a mandolin. The Ovation MCS-148, lovingly fashioned in Korea from scrap mahogany, spruce, and melted car tires. It's the sort of instrument that will make a purist bluegrass type give you the evil eye for bringing it to the festival and mutter, Ya'll are goin' to mando-hell. Mando-hell, I am reliably informed, consists of: eternity, you, your mandolin, and a room full of banjo players who never play anything...they just tune their instruments.
But I didn't really want to spend a minimum 0f $800 for a passable archtop mandolin, and the Ovation electric mandolins sound decent enough plugged in for live play or for recording, so I bought it. It's neither an A-style or F-style. It's a dwarf-style. That is: it looks an awful lot like an Ovation steel string guitar, only smaller and with a big head. The aforementioned evil-eyed purists would also say that it sounds less like a mandolin and more like a small guitar, but all I wanted was something new with strings on it that I could noodle around on.
And so there it sits in the corner, looking like I didn't read the care label and put it in the dryer after I washed it instead of hanging it up outside.
I'm learning to play Led Zeppelin on it.
No, really: Hey Hey What Can I Do, Going to California, The Battle of Evermore. Rock on.
Plus, because it's electric, I can hook it up to my Boss GT-6 and make it sound like I'm playing it through a Marshall stack. Rock on.
This is not an option. If I find that you are not rocking on, I will come to your house and play Indian Killed a Woodchuck at you until your nose bleeds.
So, yeah, I bought a mandolin. I got the idea of acquiring a new stringed instrument early last Saturday evening in Zürich, looking through the window of a closed shop that sold various odd items...assorted bouzouki-looking things, an electric sitar, some frame drums and flutes. The exchange rate--about 81 American cents to the Swiss franc--made the prices look pretty good, if I could manage to get whatever it was I impulsively bought back home on the plane instead of shipping it in an easily-crushable box. But the store was closed, so my impulse remained unfulfilled.
When I got back, I thought about getting an archguitar--sort of an extended-range classical guitar with anywhere from nine to thirteen strings, that ends up sounding a bit like a lute. But a quick Googling told me that this was a bespoke intrument--if I wanted one, I would have to find a luthier to build it, or stumble across a used one. Too expensive and I'm too impatient, so my original bouzouki gaze through a Zürich shop window ended up motivating a trip to my local music store.
I also bought two air conditioners and a newer, larger television last week. This is because I'm being mercilessly crushed by the Bush-driven Middle Class Squeeze. Gosh, am I miserable...and indexed!
(I think that's probably the extent of my political rant for this evening, so if you're in the mood for more and better, move along).
We've had summery quick-flash thundersqualls moving through all day, on their way up the valley to dump some rain on New York's sweaty asphalt. A single 90+ degree day last week was what motivated us to get the new A/C units, which promptly caused the temperature to plunge to the low 70s, but this evening we're reminded why we got the things: home offices in attic rooms. Bob the Cat--being of some distant desert-cat lineage--routinely hangs out up here, but I--being of some distant swine lineage--turn into a melted pat of butter when it gets above 85 degrees. So modern chilled air is a blessing indeed. And they came with remote controls. So if I'm simply too hot to roll my desk chair four feet to the right...I don't have to.
Wondrous age, just wondrous.
And now, having regaled you with Tales Of The Banal! I will go downstairs to clean out the catboxes and do the dishes. That was the deal I made with Pea so that I wouldn't have to do the food shopping this evening, because there was only Lactaid and juice dregs in the fridge.
See? Full circle.
