Someone needs to retire!

Last night Manchild and I took kidlet to a concert. Since she's a blues hound we decided to turn her on to blues artists besides Stevie Ray Vaughn or Jimi Hendrix so we took her to hear Johnny Winter. The guy is a great guitarist and has been around for years but the show last night left a lot to be desired.

I knew that he was getting up in years but I was shocked to see that he had to sit during the entire performance. This made it hard to see him playing because we weren't on the front row and the big headed people in front of us blocked our view.

The guitar playing was good but I think that the sound people were whacked out on crack or something. We couldn't hear or understand any of the vocals and the guitar was so loud everything else was drowned out. I'm sorry to say, but it was like listening to a guy who is too old to rock out any more. He looked old, he sounded old and by him sitting the entire time, he was just...old.

We enjoyed the 2 bands that played before Mr. Winter came on but sadly, the main act was a real let down. We ended up leaving early. As we were leaving I noticed that there were quite a few empty seats that prior to his playing were full. I hope the lights were in his eyes so he didn't see people walking out of his show. I guess I'll just have to rely on older recordings of his music since the new stuff leaves me feeling flat.

I'll find another show to take kidlet to so she can experience live blues. She's game - she loves the music scene. And now she knows the difference between a good show and a not very good show. It happens some times.

Rubbing Faces and Dragging Cats

Our little boy kitty, Schwayze is a character. He’s very “talkative” and loving. Now that he’s a teenager, he seems compelled to mark his territory and protect us against intruders. I wrote a while back that I noticed a bunch of his fur floating around my backyard, probably from a scrap with another tomcat.

His forays into the wild (aka my back yard) go something like this:

Hey Schwayze, do you want to go outside?

Brrrrr brrr mew mew mmmmmmm mmmmmmeow

Ok, let’s go! Come on, you can take more than 5 steps outside.

Brrrrr brrr mew mew mmmmmmm mmmmmmeow

Aww look at you rubbing your little cheeks all over the place. Does your scent smell good?

Brrrrr brrr mew mew mmmmmmm mmmmmmeow

I love the way you walk casually then just flop onto the ground and rub your body all over the pebbles. Does it feel good?

Brrrrr brrr mew mew mmmmmmm mmmmmmeow

Ok, well, I’m going to let you wander around for a while. Don’t get into any fights, OK?

Brrrrr brrr mew mew mmmmmmm mmmmmmeow

Once he comes back inside he has to tell me about everything he saw and experienced.

Brrrrr brrr mew mew mmmmmmm mmmmmmeow  Brrrrr brrr mew mew mmmmmmm mmmmmmeow  Brrrrr brrr mew mew mmmmmmm mmmmmmeow

Then, he goes through his rubbing ritual where he rubs his cheeks on every single doorframe, chair, piece of furniture and all of us lowly humans.

His face rubbing reminds me of a cat I used to have named W. W was a strange cat too. He wasn’t as talkative as Schwayze but he had plenty of quirks to keep me amused. One thing he absolutely loved was for me to tie a rope around his mid section then drag him around. We had a rock road leading to our house and the rocks were fairly large. Maybe 2 inches wide or so, and they were white, dusty stones. This meant that when I dragged W, he bumped and lurched over the rocks. All that jolting didn’t seem to faze him one bit. It was almost like he was getting a kitty massage. Petting him afterwards was a dusty affair since he was coated with the stuff.

I’m sure that if someone had seen me dragging W around they would think that I was abusing him but I swear, he loved it. He’d let me drag him as long as I was willing to pull that rope. One time I drug him almost the entire length of the rock road. That amounted to almost ¼ mile! He purred and loved every minute of it. He had other strange quirks but the dragging thing was the strangest.

Cats are cool because they can do or allow really stupid things to happen to them, and they look at you like “WHAT???” They’re too cool for school. The only schooling they do is teaching silly humans how to bend to their will and fulfill their every whim. You’ve got to ask yourself who is really the smarter mind. I think the cat is ahead of us.