Accordion to me

I'm actually going to be playing the accordion on an upcoming recording session. It's for a song or two by my songwriting buddy with whom I've performed and recorded music for about 25 years. I've been a keyboard player my whole life, but this'll be only the second time anyone's actually hired me to play the accordion on a recording session. The other time was for a Cuban singer/songwriter named Wilkins back in the late 90s, and one of those songs actually made it into the movie "American Pie" as source music. The songs I'm going to be playing this time are some older songs I'm already familiar with that we're going to record with new arrangements. My buddy wants a Clifton Chenier-type feel, and since Clifton is dead, I'm going to try to cop Clifton's sound and apply it to these songs. That's my specialty. No actual style of my own, but if you want someone else's style copied and applied to your song, I'm your man. Anyway, I'm pretty excited. The only drawback is that I don't have any place to practice here at home before the session. The only thing more annoying than hearing your neighbor practicing the accordion is........... well, nothing. I may have to go up to the roof of the building or something.

I always wondered what genius at General Motors Pontiac Division came up with the name "Grand Prix" for the Pontiac Grand Prix. Not Gran Prix, not Grand Prize, but Grand Prix. Why not Gran Prize? What's next? Moulin Red?

I was giving some thought to attending my #%&!-year high school class reunion this summer. But then I got to thinking about the last one I went to #%&! years ago. It was like I regressed back to being 17 years old again. The same people pissed me off. The same girls that were cute but unapproachable were still cute but unapproachable. The band nerds were still band nerds. The arrogant jocks were still arrogant jocks. The same guy who used to get drunk and drop trou got drunk and dropped trou. I still felt like a misfit outcast, even though I don't think I necessarily was a misfit outcast back then. Nah, I think I'll pass.

More Neighbors

My next-door neighbor in my apartement building is a guy named Charlie who looks like a cross between Jackie Gleason, Rodney Dangerfield, and Tony Soprano. He's a jazz piano player who went to Julliard, but now he owns and operates an air-conditioning duct cleaning service. Anyway, Charlie has a habit of starting out most of his conversations by saying, "No! No!" As in, "How you doing, Charlie" "No! No! I'm doing okay." Or, "Here's that Vaseline you wanted to borrow, Charlie." "No! No! I just want to use it to put on some cotton to put in my ear because I have his God-awful ear infection." Or, "Man, this marinara sauce your brother Bernie made is unbelievable." "No! No! There's a bunch of it in the freezer if you want to take some home with you." We love Charlie.

My upstairs neighbor is a hooker. She used to be a grifter and con artist who had a fake athletic shoe company that she and her con artist partner used to scam a bunch of people out of a considerable amount of money. That deal finally fell through, and she still has process servers showing up to serve her papers on a regular basis. Now she's dropped all pretense of being anything but a hooker. She has a series of sleazy-looking guys show up at around 10:00 at night or so, and it's immediately to the bedroom and lights out. About 20 minutes later, it's a couple of trips to the bathroom, and then a break for TV or booze or whatever they do, then it's back to the bedroom and lights out again. The guys always sneak out of the building through the back door when they're finally finished at aroud 1:00 a.m. Then the next morning, she's off to the laundromat with the sheets.

One of the apartments on the first floor near ours was vacated in January. It used to be rented by a singer named Jemma Griffith who went on to bigger and better things. Anyway, the building manager, who's from the Ukraine and wonderfully ignorant of much of our pop culture, told us that the new tenant was a Chinese actress with two kids and two dogs. She couldn't remember this actress's name, but it was something like Xian Xiong. Well, this person moved in a couple of weeks ago, and the first thing we noticed was that she wasn't Chinese. I was watching her through our courtyard window as she talked on her cell phone one afternoon, and as I started to get a good look at her, I asked my wife what Lana (the building manager) said the new tenant's name was again. My wife said it was Xian Xiong or something like that. Hmm.... Xian Xiong... Xian Xiong... Then I suddenly realized who it was. She's a former A-list actress who starred in movies with the likes of Kevin Costner, Bill Murray, and Harrison Ford. Then she started to get a reputation for being kind of wack and pulled some off-the-wall stunts and pissed off the powers that be. Then she married someone outside the movie business and moved to New Mexico for about five years or so. Now she's back in Los Angeles trying to revive her once-promising career, but she's no longer A-list. And she's definitely not Chinese. She's still a beautiful woman, though. Xian Xiong... Xian Xiong... Xian Xiong...