two reasons why I’m not a bright person (fingers edition)
27 June 2007
I have a little sitting area in my apartment, an alcove that has a comfy chair, a standing lamp, and a small bookshelf. On top of this two-level bookshelf sit some bar items. There is an ice bucket, a shaker, a jigger, a bottle of sweet vermouth and a bottle of dry vermouth, and two decanters, one I use for bourbon and one for wine. It’s a nice little area to go and relax, to enjoy a strong and refreshing Manhattan while reading a large book or The New Yorker. The only thing missing from my picture of patrician leisure is a pipe and a robe/dinner jacket, but I’m working on that.
Though I love obviously luxury and refinement, I am still not fully schooled in their ways. Recently my friend Meredith, professor-to-be but waitress-right-now, was over my apartment and, good host that I am, I offered her a glass of wine. She accepted, so I poured her a healthy measure of wine from my fine decanter. She took the glass, put it to her lips, then stopped and asked, "Are you serious?"
Off my puzzled look, Meredith asked how long the wine had been in the decanter. I told her that I didn’t know, but I guessed a week or two. It was at this point that my luxurious facade began to crumble.
I had thought that the purpose of the decanter was two-fold: 1) to hold alcohol; 2) to say to visitors, "Look at me - Look at how fine my things are, look how I enjoy pleasure. I belong in places like Monte Carlo and Monaco; you belong in prison." But Meredith pointed out that wine decanters serve a particular purpose. I don’t recall the exact purpose because I wasn’t listening, but basically you can’t have wine in a decanter for longer than a few hours, as otherwise it goes bad. Meredith made me smell the wine, which smelled a little vinegary and was even getting a little yellow. Whoops. I had always had wine in the decanter, drank from it, and never really noticed that I was drinking rancid wine. I guess I’m not quite the oenophile I pretend to be.
Lesson learned. I immediately dumped the wine from the decanter into the sink, poured her a glass from a freshly opened bottle, and grabbed myself and my other friends cans of PBR from the fridge (I can’t be all luxury, all the time).
Yesterday, while home from work sick, I decided to wash the decanter. The problem with cleaning the decanter is that it has a small opening/mouth, so it’s impossible to really get in there to clean it up. Usually, I just fill it with warm water and soap, shake it up, pour the water out, and repeat until I think it’s clean/I get tired. But this time around it wasn’t so easy. Because the wine had been in there for some time, there was a stain rimming around the inside of the decanter, only three inches or so off the bottom, which would not wash away. Crap.
I tried squeezing the sponge in order to slide it into the decanter to reach the stain, but it did not fit. Even if it did fit, it wouldn’t have reached the stain line; the best case scenario would have been that the sponge popped into the decanter then expanded – I never would have been able to get it out.
Frustrated, and without an ounce of forethought, I stuck my middle finger into the decanter. I, as I should have known, couldn’t reach the stain. When I went to pull my finger out, I couldn’t. My finger was stuck in the decanter. Completely, 100% stuck.
What followed was arguably the most terrifying two minutes of my life. I struggled and struggled to get my finger out of the decanter. As I pulled harder, I felt like I was only getting more stuck; I began sweating, my heart started pounding, my eyes darting, my body and limbs beginning to tremble. I pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and my finger was stuck in there. I was in full panic mode.
My first and only rational thought came about 90 seconds into the ordeal, when I realized I might have to reach below the sink into the cabinet and grab my hammer in order to destroy the decanter and somehow free myself. But just as quickly as it started, my finger jolted out of the mouth of the decanter with a plop, sending my body backward for a step. Immediately, freed from the decanter, my heart rate decelerated back to normal, I stopped sweating, and calm was restored. Crisis averted. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
What struck me about the situation was how intense it was. Those fleeting moments when you’re trapped in a elevator or locked in a bathroom or otherwise stuck in a place or position you don’t want to be in are really, in hindsight, not that big of a deal. But the rush of terror that overcomes you in these moments is a powerful, powerful force. My middle finger was stuck in a decanter and I almost started screaming like a wild monkey. A few more minutes and I would have begun gnawing off my own finger. There was no limit to my hysteria.
So today, after work, I’m going to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get one of these things. Because I will never stick my finger in a decanter again. Promise.
*******************
I wrote on here that about a month ago, I got a banjo (note: not my actual banjo). It was a love at first sight. I can play the guitar and the bass and a little bit of the ukulele, so I was able to take the banjo out of the box and make sounds that were at least not painful to the ears. So happy was I by this development, I played with myself. Hell, even if I sounded terrible I still would have played with myself, but you get what I mean.
You’re supposed to play the banjo with finger picks, but the banjo didn’t come with any and I didn’t have any lying around (I don’t know how to fingerpick on the guitar; I’ve never had a guitar lesson, so for the past fifteen years I’ve been winging it). So for my first two weeks of banjo ownership, I played using my fingers but without picks on them, going over so simple fingering (tee-hee!) patterns I found the internet.
I found the patterns were quite easy and came naturally to me. Even though they were the basic and simplest patterns on the banjo, I dreamt of becoming a world-renowned banjo player, a bluegrass musician so famous I would soon marry the most beautiful girl in all of Appalachia.
I still wanted to learn with the picks though, and enlisted the help of my friend Jeremy to grab me some. Jeremy lives on the same street as my nearest guitar store, which closes at 6pm everyday. As I’m usually still working at that time, I asked Jeremy to pop in the store and pick me up some banjo picks, which he could then give me next time we hung out. He did and he did. So soon I started practicing with my banjo picks.
Almost immediately, my hopes of marrying the Helen of Harlan County were greatly diminished. I sucked with the finger picks. They were cumbersome and made me clumsy. Each time I hit a string, I had to do so very delicately, lest the pick fly off my finger. How the hell would I ever be able to fingerpick as quickly as Tony Trischka or Bela Fleck does?
Knowing the my musical virtuosity could not be at fault, I blamed the picks. Jeremy had gotten me some bad picks, so I’d need to go to the guitar store myself and really get in there, try out different picks, see which ones felt comfortable, and get those. I mean, c’mon. Clearly I don’t stink at banjo. It was totally the picks. I’m fucking awesome.
About a week later, I stood in the same local guitar store at which Jeremy originally bought me the picks. It’s a mom-and-pop type store, small in size, with a staff that is actually friendly, as opposed to the megastores with "associates" who are monster assholes and take every opportunity to remind you that they are not only much better at guitar than you, but also know a lot more about guitars than you do. Fucking jerks. Bro, a word of career advice: your band has been touring for 19 years and you haven’t hit it big yet – it might be time to throw in the towel. Just a thought.
Anyway, there I stood in the nice mom-and-pop music store, trying on finger pick after finger pick and to my dismay, they fit exactly like the ones Jeremy got me. Sure, I was able to find a few that were a little more comfortable, but still, trying these on, I had no idea how anyone could play the banjo with them. How the hell could I possibly get used to plucking a string and the pick nearly flying off my finger?
As I grew more frustrated, a gentle hippie salesman appeared before me on the other side of the counter. He asked if he could help me and without looking up I told him that I had just gotten a banjo and was trying to find finger picks that fit me properly. I continued to try on different picks as the two of us stood there in silence, me trying on and tossing back various picks, him looking over me. After a few more seconds of watching me grow frustrated, the gentle hippie said, "Um, you know, you’re putting those on backwards."
Um, oh. I didn’t know that.
Maybe this was the reason I found it so hard to fingerpick the banjo. I was putting the fucking things on backwards.
I am generally a stubborn man, but in few areas does this stubbornness manifest itself as in music. I take so much pride in the fact that I’ve never had a guitar lesson that it has hindered my development; rather than biting the bullet and getting lessons to really get good at the guitar, my playing ability has increased only marginally over the past, say, six or eight years, because I have this "I can do it myself" mentality. I try to stay away from guitar tab sites on the internet because I like figuring things out by ear, even though doing so usually takes hours and possibly days off my life because I get so frustrated and angry in the process (and though my cholesterol is surprisingly low, I have the blood pressure of a 52 year old professional poker player and former drug mule).
So when I got the banjo, I ripped open the box and started playing right away. A friend whose brother played the banjo mentioned to me that banjo-playing was all about fingerpicking patterns, so with no other option I deigned to find some of these on the internet and learned them. When I got the picks from Jeremy, I immediately put them on my fingers in the way I thought they’d fit: the "pick" portion of the finger pick laid on top of my fingertip, thereby essentially extending my fingernail – it looked like I had a fake, metallic fingernails on my fingers. I didn’t think twice about whether this was the way the picks were supposed to go on.
When you play the banjo, your index and middle fingers are plucking in an upward motion against the bottom strings of the banjo. My difficulty arose when each time I struck a sting with my new metallic fingernail, the resistance was so great that the pick would nearly come off my finger. This got old and frustrating. Very quickly.
It never occurred to me that a simple google or google image search might clear up this matter for me. This is the first picture that comes up when you search "finger picks" in google images (this is the correct way to wear the picks – I had them on the opposite way). This is the third. This is also on that first page. It’s pretty much all there.
But because I’m an asshole, I didn’t realize I was going about it all wrong until the gentle hippie showed me the light. Now, playing the banjo is much easier and much more fun, as the picks are not being ripped off my fingers every thirty seconds.
I think there’s a lesson here, something like, "Stop being so stubborn," but whatever. I’ve got to get back to playing the banjo.
(And shut up – I would have figured it out on my own eventually.)
Though I love obviously luxury and refinement, I am still not fully schooled in their ways. Recently my friend Meredith, professor-to-be but waitress-right-now, was over my apartment and, good host that I am, I offered her a glass of wine. She accepted, so I poured her a healthy measure of wine from my fine decanter. She took the glass, put it to her lips, then stopped and asked, "Are you serious?"
Off my puzzled look, Meredith asked how long the wine had been in the decanter. I told her that I didn’t know, but I guessed a week or two. It was at this point that my luxurious facade began to crumble.
I had thought that the purpose of the decanter was two-fold: 1) to hold alcohol; 2) to say to visitors, "Look at me - Look at how fine my things are, look how I enjoy pleasure. I belong in places like Monte Carlo and Monaco; you belong in prison." But Meredith pointed out that wine decanters serve a particular purpose. I don’t recall the exact purpose because I wasn’t listening, but basically you can’t have wine in a decanter for longer than a few hours, as otherwise it goes bad. Meredith made me smell the wine, which smelled a little vinegary and was even getting a little yellow. Whoops. I had always had wine in the decanter, drank from it, and never really noticed that I was drinking rancid wine. I guess I’m not quite the oenophile I pretend to be.
Lesson learned. I immediately dumped the wine from the decanter into the sink, poured her a glass from a freshly opened bottle, and grabbed myself and my other friends cans of PBR from the fridge (I can’t be all luxury, all the time).
Yesterday, while home from work sick, I decided to wash the decanter. The problem with cleaning the decanter is that it has a small opening/mouth, so it’s impossible to really get in there to clean it up. Usually, I just fill it with warm water and soap, shake it up, pour the water out, and repeat until I think it’s clean/I get tired. But this time around it wasn’t so easy. Because the wine had been in there for some time, there was a stain rimming around the inside of the decanter, only three inches or so off the bottom, which would not wash away. Crap.
I tried squeezing the sponge in order to slide it into the decanter to reach the stain, but it did not fit. Even if it did fit, it wouldn’t have reached the stain line; the best case scenario would have been that the sponge popped into the decanter then expanded – I never would have been able to get it out.
Frustrated, and without an ounce of forethought, I stuck my middle finger into the decanter. I, as I should have known, couldn’t reach the stain. When I went to pull my finger out, I couldn’t. My finger was stuck in the decanter. Completely, 100% stuck.
What followed was arguably the most terrifying two minutes of my life. I struggled and struggled to get my finger out of the decanter. As I pulled harder, I felt like I was only getting more stuck; I began sweating, my heart started pounding, my eyes darting, my body and limbs beginning to tremble. I pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and my finger was stuck in there. I was in full panic mode.
My first and only rational thought came about 90 seconds into the ordeal, when I realized I might have to reach below the sink into the cabinet and grab my hammer in order to destroy the decanter and somehow free myself. But just as quickly as it started, my finger jolted out of the mouth of the decanter with a plop, sending my body backward for a step. Immediately, freed from the decanter, my heart rate decelerated back to normal, I stopped sweating, and calm was restored. Crisis averted. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
What struck me about the situation was how intense it was. Those fleeting moments when you’re trapped in a elevator or locked in a bathroom or otherwise stuck in a place or position you don’t want to be in are really, in hindsight, not that big of a deal. But the rush of terror that overcomes you in these moments is a powerful, powerful force. My middle finger was stuck in a decanter and I almost started screaming like a wild monkey. A few more minutes and I would have begun gnawing off my own finger. There was no limit to my hysteria.
So today, after work, I’m going to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get one of these things. Because I will never stick my finger in a decanter again. Promise.
*******************
I wrote on here that about a month ago, I got a banjo (note: not my actual banjo). It was a love at first sight. I can play the guitar and the bass and a little bit of the ukulele, so I was able to take the banjo out of the box and make sounds that were at least not painful to the ears. So happy was I by this development, I played with myself. Hell, even if I sounded terrible I still would have played with myself, but you get what I mean.
You’re supposed to play the banjo with finger picks, but the banjo didn’t come with any and I didn’t have any lying around (I don’t know how to fingerpick on the guitar; I’ve never had a guitar lesson, so for the past fifteen years I’ve been winging it). So for my first two weeks of banjo ownership, I played using my fingers but without picks on them, going over so simple fingering (tee-hee!) patterns I found the internet.
I found the patterns were quite easy and came naturally to me. Even though they were the basic and simplest patterns on the banjo, I dreamt of becoming a world-renowned banjo player, a bluegrass musician so famous I would soon marry the most beautiful girl in all of Appalachia.
I still wanted to learn with the picks though, and enlisted the help of my friend Jeremy to grab me some. Jeremy lives on the same street as my nearest guitar store, which closes at 6pm everyday. As I’m usually still working at that time, I asked Jeremy to pop in the store and pick me up some banjo picks, which he could then give me next time we hung out. He did and he did. So soon I started practicing with my banjo picks.
Almost immediately, my hopes of marrying the Helen of Harlan County were greatly diminished. I sucked with the finger picks. They were cumbersome and made me clumsy. Each time I hit a string, I had to do so very delicately, lest the pick fly off my finger. How the hell would I ever be able to fingerpick as quickly as Tony Trischka or Bela Fleck does?
Knowing the my musical virtuosity could not be at fault, I blamed the picks. Jeremy had gotten me some bad picks, so I’d need to go to the guitar store myself and really get in there, try out different picks, see which ones felt comfortable, and get those. I mean, c’mon. Clearly I don’t stink at banjo. It was totally the picks. I’m fucking awesome.
About a week later, I stood in the same local guitar store at which Jeremy originally bought me the picks. It’s a mom-and-pop type store, small in size, with a staff that is actually friendly, as opposed to the megastores with "associates" who are monster assholes and take every opportunity to remind you that they are not only much better at guitar than you, but also know a lot more about guitars than you do. Fucking jerks. Bro, a word of career advice: your band has been touring for 19 years and you haven’t hit it big yet – it might be time to throw in the towel. Just a thought.
Anyway, there I stood in the nice mom-and-pop music store, trying on finger pick after finger pick and to my dismay, they fit exactly like the ones Jeremy got me. Sure, I was able to find a few that were a little more comfortable, but still, trying these on, I had no idea how anyone could play the banjo with them. How the hell could I possibly get used to plucking a string and the pick nearly flying off my finger?
As I grew more frustrated, a gentle hippie salesman appeared before me on the other side of the counter. He asked if he could help me and without looking up I told him that I had just gotten a banjo and was trying to find finger picks that fit me properly. I continued to try on different picks as the two of us stood there in silence, me trying on and tossing back various picks, him looking over me. After a few more seconds of watching me grow frustrated, the gentle hippie said, "Um, you know, you’re putting those on backwards."
Um, oh. I didn’t know that.
Maybe this was the reason I found it so hard to fingerpick the banjo. I was putting the fucking things on backwards.
I am generally a stubborn man, but in few areas does this stubbornness manifest itself as in music. I take so much pride in the fact that I’ve never had a guitar lesson that it has hindered my development; rather than biting the bullet and getting lessons to really get good at the guitar, my playing ability has increased only marginally over the past, say, six or eight years, because I have this "I can do it myself" mentality. I try to stay away from guitar tab sites on the internet because I like figuring things out by ear, even though doing so usually takes hours and possibly days off my life because I get so frustrated and angry in the process (and though my cholesterol is surprisingly low, I have the blood pressure of a 52 year old professional poker player and former drug mule).
So when I got the banjo, I ripped open the box and started playing right away. A friend whose brother played the banjo mentioned to me that banjo-playing was all about fingerpicking patterns, so with no other option I deigned to find some of these on the internet and learned them. When I got the picks from Jeremy, I immediately put them on my fingers in the way I thought they’d fit: the "pick" portion of the finger pick laid on top of my fingertip, thereby essentially extending my fingernail – it looked like I had a fake, metallic fingernails on my fingers. I didn’t think twice about whether this was the way the picks were supposed to go on.
When you play the banjo, your index and middle fingers are plucking in an upward motion against the bottom strings of the banjo. My difficulty arose when each time I struck a sting with my new metallic fingernail, the resistance was so great that the pick would nearly come off my finger. This got old and frustrating. Very quickly.
It never occurred to me that a simple google or google image search might clear up this matter for me. This is the first picture that comes up when you search "finger picks" in google images (this is the correct way to wear the picks – I had them on the opposite way). This is the third. This is also on that first page. It’s pretty much all there.
But because I’m an asshole, I didn’t realize I was going about it all wrong until the gentle hippie showed me the light. Now, playing the banjo is much easier and much more fun, as the picks are not being ripped off my fingers every thirty seconds.
I think there’s a lesson here, something like, "Stop being so stubborn," but whatever. I’ve got to get back to playing the banjo.
(And shut up – I would have figured it out on my own eventually.)
