The Turtles at St. Louis City Museum

If any of you remember my entry on March 9, it was about seeing two tortoises mating on the National Geographic Channel. Well this is the strangest thing. I had two days off from my piano gig and drove to St. Louis, MO where I knocked around for a couple days. It was suggested that I not miss the City Museum, and indeed when I went there I found it great fun. There is an aquarium within the Museum and there are 5 turtles living together. When I came upon them they were decidedly busy with each other as the picture below that I took with my phone will show:One of the cleaning ladies came over next to me and we both watched with fascination as these two pair of turtles had at each other, while a 5th (male) turtle stood just behind the two couples, no doubt waiting his turn. We could hear grunt-like noises coming from them as the shells knocked about and the males' necks strained out of the shells as they came closer and closer to turtle nirvana. As the grunting and knocking got louder, I took this picture:Just for clarity, and since i am nothing if not helpful, I will magnify this picture so you can see the back of the female turtle on the right (bottom):There it is for all to see. THE MONEY SHOT! Notice the drool that the cad has left all over her pretty little back as he...um....fertilizes her eggs. And within 30 seconds of the drool appearing on her back, the male has disappeared, as you can see in the following picture, after riding her hard and putting her away wet. The turtle actually moved faster to get away from his date once he was finished, than he ever did during his carnalities. Some things are universal, yes?

Update from MO

I finished my first week of work in the Midwest. All is well. I like the guys that I work with, with only one exception. We work in a band shell on the nice days and inside a bar on the rainy days. I think the season is beginning to pick up as there were more people this week than the previous weeks from what I hear. The band shell is on a lake and is part of an extensive resort facility in which people on three different levels of balcony's with tables (essentially 3 separate clubs) overlook our performance. The tips are poor but the people are fun and nice and so that makes it worth it to me. I've gotten positive feedback from many of the other players including the entertainment director, so I'm happy about that. There is one guy that by his own admission doesn't even like the gig, but he's been doing it for so long and the money is so good that he is stuck doing it. Onstage he can at times appear as though he is thoroughly annoyed with the audience and there doesn't seem to be any interaction between him and whatever other player is opposite him. I heard that he ran some customers out of the bar with his bad attitude, and he alsonhad some unkind and very nonconstructive criticisms about my playing. That upset me, because I'm the first one to be open to constructive criticism.

On one of my days off I went down to visit my friend that had found Jesus. It was good to see him, and he seemed happy in a religious zealot kind of way. All his greetings including his outgoing phone message involved the Lords blessings and when I left to travel to Kansas City, we had to hold hands as he invoked the Savior's blessing upon my travel. But it was good to see him, and we had a nice day, although he seems to have lost any sense of humor about the foibles of humanity, curse words or gay culture. After we had had lunch, dessert and spent a couple of hours in a basement practice room of a local college waiting out a tornado, he felt compelled to give me his "story" of how he came to Jesus. As distasteful as I find Born-Agains, it had been suggested to me by a very wise man that instead of finding differences, that i might look for the similarities between his experiences with religion and my own spiritual experiences. With that in mind, I heard all of the revelations, and life changes he had experienced and I immediately related to much of what he said. I told him this, and although he didn't say it, I just knew that there was an undercurrent of disbelief that I could possibly have had such profound spiritual experiences without being Christian.

Now my friend has been gay since he first had sexual feelings at 12 years old. He had told me that since he has found Jesus he is no longer gay and has met the woman that he will one day marry. As he described her, it sounded more like a gay man's fag hag than a fiance. They've been very close for a couple of years, but apparently haven't kissed. I asked him if he was sexually and physically attracted to her and he told me that "when the time comes, Jesus will see to it." What do you say to that????

born again

After I found out about the MO gig, I realized I know someone close (2.5 hours away) from the resort that I’ll be working. He used to be one of my closest friends for about a year here in NYC. He is another piano player/singer and also writes beautiful music. Well about 3 years ago he left NYC and found his way back home where he promptly found the Lord and decided that he wasn’t gay anymore. Now he is thick into the morass of having accepted Jesus Christ into his heart as his personal lord and savior, and all that goes with that. I really don’t think we will have much to talk about. I suspect I may scare him because I represent everything that he used to be. And I’m happy…and that may be the scariest thing for him. At best, I expect to find him distasteful and boring. At worst…well, I shudder to go down that path. It continues to boggle my mind at how really intelligent and highly creative people can get caught up in such a cult-like mentality. I’ll write more after I see him, probably sometime this week.

On the road again

I got a call Tuesday from a stranger asking me how fast I could be down in Missouri to take a dueling gig. Apparently the entertainment director in NC recommended me. So tomorrow (Sunday) I will be at a piano on a stage with total strangers playing the (now) 77 rock songs I have memorized. It's a nice arrangement. They are providing all travel, including a car rental while I'm there and accomodations. I'll be performing 4-5 times each week split between two places, one of which is a large outdoor stage on a lake. They tell me that this is the stage they put Willie Nelson on when he's in town. It turns out that one of the guys I made friends with in NC will be working these same venues. I'm really excited. It will be a busy summer.

Window art

My roommate decided to do an art installation on his bedroom window using colored "post it" note paper. The window overlooks the pool deck, so everyone at the pool saw it going up, one 3" square at a time. One the left is the view from inside the room, and on the right is the view from the pool. Pretty cool, right? Now I have bragging rights.

I found myself in many conversations over the past 7 years where I exposed strong opinions about everything from WMD's in Iraq to the manipulation of the American public through the corporately controlled mainstream media and religion. My brother in particular has asked me several times how I know certain things. It is my strong belief that if you rely on any mainstream media outlets, even the seemingly liberal NY Times or a foreign source such as the BBC, you will be fed what the powers that be wish you to hear. So how do I find truly contrarian information? There are many solid, well researched sources where you can access freely that the corporate-run press will not report. (If you are interested, ask me for specifics.) One of the best sources are books and memoirs. Because they are not controlled by the media, per se, the rules are different. The only thing that the publishers care about is, will it sell. Does it spin a good, readable story? And because there is much more room for detail and background in a book, you get a much clearer and nuanced account of whatever is being discussed.

When the book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" came out in 2004 I read it in about 3 days sitting on the floor of a Manhattan Barnes and Noble store. This book was entertaining and very frightening, written as a first-hand account of how the US manipulates and essentially takes over weaker governments using tools such as the IMF and the World Bank. Sounds boring? It isn't, I promise you. It may be the most fascinating work of non-fiction I've read. If you want to know the forces that run the world and why wars are fought read this book, and others like it. The reason I am blogging about this 4 year old book is that the author, John Perkins wrote another title that recently appeared in my local B&N. It's called: The Secret History of the American Empire. If you know what John Perkins has been doing since the early 80's (read the first book), you will know that he is an insider that can do justice to such a grandiose title.

I guess my point is this: so many people have such strong opinions about our government and politics and policy, but rarely do people bother to really dig down to figure out what the story is beyond what is spoon-fed to them. There is great information out there; well researched, well articulated and readily available. Don't come at me with vitriol because you don't agree with me if you've never read! Because chances are that you are being manipulated and you don't even know it. READ!