Biff Mayhem

Look, I love me some Canadians but you might start an international incident with that. One of my motorcycle buddies rode a full bagger with a passenger right across my lawn not long after a watering and the tire track was there for about 6 weeks. He thought it was hilarious. I've yet to let the air out of his tires.

A very angry Burt Reynolds on the Tonight Show. The story goes that Leno made a joke about Burt's recent divorce and it turned very sour. Marc Summers then exasperates the situation by making another crack about the divorce.

And as well she should.

Read it again moron.

Word. But then again there is kimchi. That is allowable.

One positive thing that occurred in our household is my wife slowly but surely built up about three months of dry goods, laundry soap, paper goods etc. She didn't panic buy or "hoard". She just bought extra of everything that didn't spoil when she was out. When this happens again and things may end up going more nuts, we're good to bunker down for months. If she started burying food in the backyard, I'd have to put the kibosh on that!

Pics or it didn't happen 😉

We just got a notification from our superintendent that mask mandates on school buses is done and students can make their own choice and he encouraged the kids to respect the masking choices of the other students.

That is hilarious and true. It feels like that was ten years ago already. These last two years are like dog years.

I think it's the consensus that 2 years ago we had no idea what was going on and the fear/panic was real and justified. At the time I found some of the restrictions absolutely ridiculous such as certain parts of stores were off limits, car washes were closed (even though most people could and did use monthly passes) then there was the "you can't buy paint or seeds" restriction that was and is utterly ridiculous. From a Michigan standpoint, I do not envy the position that Whitmer was put in. What a nightmare. That said, there were things, such as what I mentioned above, that were completely unnecessary and I don't think the general public is going to let that fly when (not if) it happens again.

Purely out of curiosity, in hindsight what restrictions were necessary in your opinion and what ones, if any, weren't?

I need to see video of you practicing in the interest of science.

Asus is also a fun one....play a barre A cowboy chord and add the third fret on the b string. Sweet Emotion baby. That can be moved all over the fretboard too. Then try playing a d/a to an a (A0D4G2b3 to barre A). That can move all over the fretboard too and requires a bit of precision to not slop.

Yes! Dsus. Plus moving that d root chord around gets especially cool when you drop d.

AC/DC. Some appear simple and uncomplicated and the basics are just that because they utilize a lot of cowboy chords. Then when you get into their picking, hand pressure and different techniques, it will challenge you to play it correctly. A lot of guitarists dismiss them as simpletons but if you deep dive, some of that stuff is really hard to play correctly because most people assume they use a lot of gain when they really don't that that presents the challenges. Then there is Dirty Deeds. It is what it is and definitely helps with chord progressions.

One is from Uganda and spent the first 13 years of his life mute (Ironically we can't shut him up now and says he can "only" speak four languages!). Instead of going out to play with the other kids, he went and tinkered with the instruments so he can play the keyboard, guitar and bass that I've seen before but I'll bet there are more. The cellist and our MD were in orchestra/band in HS and just went from there. I don't know that any of them are "formally educated" in the form of Berkeley etc. I think if you have it, you have it. If you don't, then you can do it but not to the level these types can. It's like a MD vs a Brain Surgeon; Both talents but one is a bigger talent.

Lots of them - I think we have five in current rotation. Many of them are multi-instrumentalists. Our MD, who charts out all those songs, at last count can play 18 instruments proficiently. I played with a cellist recently who said she doesn't even review the songs before playing; she just shows up, reads the charts and improvises where she needs to. I'm over here struggling to play a chromatic scale cleanly.

If you ever have a phillips head screw that is stripped, put a rubber band in the slots and try again. Viola!

Nice job!!!!!! Thanks! That juke box was part of my childhood and I hadn’t seen it in over 40 years. I always remembered the pictures.

It’s a picture I took on my own. It currently resides in a very old jukebox along with pictures of Kris Kristofferson, David Cassidy/Susan Day and, oddly enough, Roman Polanski and Nastassja Kinski.

Hey old farts. Help me identify this band.

So here’s a peek behind the curtain: We have iPads on stage with our sheet music in pdf form. The people who read music have significantly less notes (or none at all) I always have a ton of notes because learning four or five new songs in a week is taxing to my adhd brain and it’s a way to keep from noticing moving boom cameras etc. Recently I’ve been putting my iPad close to the ground to alleviate the visual distraction of an iPad on a stand. This requires me to put the chords/notes in large font so my old eyes can read them. Sometimes I’ll write things like Metallica chords for inverted chords (which I first learned with the song Creeping Death), DL which stands for the Def Leppard chord I learned in their song “Let it Go”. Then there’s “Dream On” which means I have to pick a line up and down much in the manner that one would play the rhythm for that song.

It's certainly a good exercise and it may be a test to see if you have the skill. However it is completely unnecessary for the hobby guitarist. In fact, of all the guitarists I know that play professional gigs, not even 1/3rd of them read music. So if he pushes that as a criteria, you need a new teacher.