Twins
I went to the gym today.
And as I attempted to get my limber, pale, body back into the shape it was in when I wasn’t eating fast food 6 nights a week, and the intervals between when my heart would reach a “real” elevated BPM were much shorter, I though about the many interactions I’ve had with twins recently.
Two come to mind:
1) There were two girls at the last show of the Cartel tour that were twins. They walked up and both got pictures with me and the rest of the band (This isn’t the first set of twins to do this, just the last ones I can remember). I made a quick joke, something to the effect of “Hey we could save time and just take a picture with one of you, and you can BOTH use it!”. Pretty sure I was the only one that chuckled.
2) My Dad, being the helpful husband he is, decided to do my Mom a favor and dress up as Santa for her elementary choir’s performance at a local Christmas parade last weekend. As he was handing out candy canes to my Mom’s students, he was informed by another man that his chair awaited, and that he was late for his appearance.
What had happened was, there was supposed to be ANOTHER St. Nick appearing officially for the parade. And the guy who was supposed to be the OTHER Santa, was running quite late. Of course my Dad wasn’t going to say he wasn’t the right Jolly Fellow in front of the children, so he played along. Meanwhile, my sister played Santa’s Little Helper and held the candy cane basket, very confused.
As the interim Santa was being a good sport, the other guy for the job showed up.
You can imagine the dilemma on the toddlers faces.
As the two Santa’s approached each other, a set of twin boys walked up to the “late” Santa, and both posed individually for pictures. Then, when it was time for the two Santa’s to switch, my Dad stood up and yelled, “Well hey, it’s my twin brother! Glad you could make it!” and they gave each other a jolly old hug, filled with the “Holiday Spirit”.
THEN, the aforementioned twin boys asked the other Santa (Dad) for pictures as well! What?!! Four Santa pictures in all?
(Cut back to me doing an inclined abdominal crunch with a medicine ball)
I started thinking, what are the pro’s and cons of being a twin?
PRO: You can share clothes easy.
CON: Mom and Dad will likely buy you the exact SAME clothes (possibly with slightly different colors. To make it fun.), so sharing makes no difference.
PRO: If one twin happens to be more successful or gains some sort of notoriety, the other could reap the benefits! Example you ask? Vin Diesel. He has a twin brother. His twin could TOTALLY get laid telling girls he’s the real deal.
CON: Paparrazzi. And, apparently Vin Diesel is gay, which could be problematic when your the non-gay Diesel trying to pick up chicks in LA.
PRO: Pulling funny pranks on people by not letting them know you have a twin.
CON: The other twin could try and pull a fast one on your boy/girlfriend by sleeping with them, unbeknownst to them.
Thats about all I can think of at the moment. But please, leave some other so I may compile and write a book.
It’s on my bucket list.
Happy Holidays
JAKE
29 years ago today John Lennon was shot and killed in front of his apartment building, The Dakota.
(via joshterry)
And the award for most covered song of the year goes to……..
11.16 Steve Jordan
This dude has changed the way I look at, and hear, the drums.
“A quarter note is not one single hit, but a space of time”
YA DIG???
Innards
Original handle
The goods
So my Dad sent me a picture a few weeks ago, asking me if I wanted him to buy this Vox Super Berkeley III at an estate sale for $15 dollars.
After MUCH deliberation (about .65 seconds), I replied “Yes. If you don’t I’ll disown the entire family and sue you for all your money by saying you domestically abused me as a child even though it isn’t true.”
So now that I’m home, I have devoted most of my thoughts into how to make this beast into an amazing rig for playing around Boise.
Its a 60’s era amp, about 35 watts with two channels (Normal and Brilliant), a full spring reverb and tremelo.
It even has an old school “Tuning E” switch on the back to get yourself a tuning note. Apparently, this type of amp was used in the recording sessions for the Beatles “Helter Skelter” sessions.
Tonight, I took it apart and cleaned the pots to get rid of a very annoying hum. I got ALL up in that amp. I took it completely apart. There are lots of screws in very hard to reach places, which made it rather difficult. But the hum was very much reduced, making it a now usable amp! All I need to do is build a speaker cabinet for it. I’m hoping to acquire an Avatar Helatone 12”, and some nice looking exotic woods to make this a true Frankenstein mofo.
Once I’m done I’ll post some video/audio to complete the experience for you.
JAKE
A bit crude of an advertisement, but I think it gets the point across.
If you’re in Boise, please come! Im gonna have a blast. Wheather you’re there or not.
But you should totally come.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Charlie Hunter, doing the hymn “A Closer Walk With Thee”.
For those playing at home, he is playing a Guitar/Bass. Three strings of bass on top and four strings of guitar on bottom. He plays the bass lines while comping chords, soloing, and playing the melody. Sometimes all four at once. Its amazing to me how he does all this while still making everything so soulful!
Photo credit Lauren Cohen. What I like about this is that I am in the moment of switching my pickup selector from an OFF setting to ON in order to keep my guitar form making noise while I play keys. It always seems to be an interesting task to me, even though it takes all of a split second, I usually tend to screw it up somehow.
