I had a silly thought as I was walking Arran today. Arran, by the way, is feeling pretty good this morning. He actually came to me while I was practicing guitar and asked for a walk. No, it wasn’t because my guitar playing still sucks… I was working on “Mary Had a Little Lamb” today. Yes, I need more practice, but it was actually recognizable, even if it’s not quite in the key Stevie Ray Vaughan did it.
Anyway, when I walk Arran, I typically clear my head. Sometimes I have thoughts that are serious. Sometimes, my thoughts are decidedly silly. Today, was a silly day. I was thinking about an old George Carlin routine in which he tackles idiosyncrasies of the English language. He was talking about people saying things like “I’m getting ON the plane.”
We all know what it means to get ON the plane. But George, who was so clever when it came to language, said, “Fuck you! I’m getting IN the plane. Let the daredevils get ON!”
Yes… a silly thought indeed. I’m not sure why it crept into my head as I was enjoying the cooler temperatures that always seem to appear in Germany at this time of year, as if by magic. In fact, I remember thirteen years ago, Bill and I lived in Virginia and were preparing to move to Germany the first time. One of my friends, an experienced fellow Army wife, said to me, “Better be sure you bring a jacket.” Sure enough, she was right. I wasn’t in Germany a week that first time before I was buying the jacket I neglected to have available.
My friend, whose husband is now a general, has never lived in Germany. I think, thanks to what her husband does, she’s spent most of his career in Virginia. But she’s known enough people who have moved to Germany to know that September in Germany is NOT like September in Virginia. Even if it’s blazing hot in August in Germany, somehow September always seems to usher in refreshing temperatures, glorious late summer days, and some rain. We had a lot of rain yesterday, and Arran still seemed a little “off”, so we stayed in and I watched old episodes of The Brady Bunch. Watching that show always seems to comfort me, somehow.
I happened to catch an episode called “The Private Ear”. In the opening scene, the character Jan Brady, played by Eve Plumb, is in her bedroom, wearing a very short dress. As she does a scene with sister Marcia (Maureen McCormick), she sits on the bed, almost hiking up that super short dress more than it already was. For the first time ever, even though I’ve seen that show repeatedly since about 1978, I noticed that I could plainly see Eve Plumb’s underwear.
I think maybe Arran was picking up on our sadness yesterday, as we were missing Zane. He probably also picked up on the anxiety that comes from realizing that Arran is also mortal and we will someday lose him, too. Today, he’s acting like his old self.
One thing I did notice today on my walk is that I was thinking of music and silly things. I was actually in a pretty good mood. I think it helped that today’s guitar session was relatively productive. I still suck at guitar, but I suck a lot less than I did a couple of months ago. I’m beginning to think I’ll eventually get the hang of playing and maybe even sound good someday.
And I also had a good singing day yesterday… I may have another one today, since Bill went in to work. He’ll work from home tomorrow, since Arran is going to go to the vet to get some shots and have his back checked out. He seems perfectly normal today, but we want to make sure no trouble is brewing. Besides, he’s due for a checkup…
Speaking of checkups, I’m due for one, too. I definitely could use a medical checkup, since I haven’t seen a doctor since 2010. But I need a dental cleaning, too. It’s been too long. Maybe we should find a Wiesbaden dentist. COVID-19 has made travel so much more complicated. It’s not so easy to pop down to Stuttgart to see our dentist there.
This post is really about a lot of nothing. Sorry about that. I’m still working on reading my latest book and hope to finish it soon, so I can at least post a fresh book review instead of a repost. But at least I’m in a pretty good mood for once. I gotta grab for the stars when I can, right?
I’m really not always cranky. It just seems that way most of the time.
What style of guitar-playing are you working on? Are you mostly chording, or venturing into note-playing as well? I find James Taylor’s guitar work rather fascinating. He doesn’t block his chords in conventional patterns used by almost everyone. He came up with his own versions of chords, sometimes with unconventional tuning, in order to better take advantage of bass notes. His picking/plucking is unique as well. My dad showed m the basics of what Taylor does, but I have no talent for guitar, and it’s all lost on me.
The Brady girls’ dresses, as were the dresses of girls on other shows from that era, were ridiculously short and, my mom says, wouldn’t have been allowed at most schools in that era. They’re so skimpy that it must have taken considerable camera skill to avoid showing underwear or whatever they wore under the dresses. I was watching a repeat of “My Three Sons” in which the Fred MacMurray character’s new wife Barbara’s little girl Dodie was on the show. The character was a first-grader. The actress was probably a year or two older than the character she played. Dodie, as played by Dawn Lynn [Garrett], wore a few different dresses in the episode, all of which looked like dresses for babies who still wore bloomers over their diapers. There’s no way a first-grader could have had any freedom of movement at all without almost constantly displaying her underwear. They had her walking rather stiffly to preserve her modesty. My mom said that even though short dresses were the style at the time, six- or seven-year-olds didn’t wear dresses anywhere near THAT short, nor were tweeners or early teens allowed to wear dresses as short as those worn by the Brady girls at school.
I haven’t really developed a style. At this point, I’m just following Fender.com’s lessons. It will be awhile before I can even attempt playing something by James Taylor. I finished the folk and blues paths on Fender.com and am now attempting country. I’m nowhere near mastery, but I have made some progress. I’m actually thinking about buying an electric guitar so I can try it out. Maybe after a little more time.
Poor Susan Olsen was always in dresses that were much too short and showed off her underwear, especially in the early seasons. On a couple of episodes, she wore dresses that were not only too short, but were also obviously too small for her. They had a cheap wardrobe department… The Bradys wore the same clothes over and over again and other people also wore them, both on The Brady Bunch and on other shows like Here’s Lucy.
But do you mostly play chords or melodies?
I play both, but I probably do more chords because they require somewhat less dexterity.