Tommy Angelo

Dear Readership: I wrote this around 1992.

THE SAVE

Darryl sees the table that his leg is about to bump into but his leg bumps into the table anyway. Crash. Woops. Sorry. He’s thinking damn, what are they doing with those stupid skinny wine glasses in here in the first place? Used to be real country people in this bar. The music that was so country, you could track it in the house. Not this teeniebop crap they make in Nashville now. And as if that wasn’t enough, now they’re drinking out of goddamn wine glasses. It deserved to break. Has no business in here.

He maneuvers onto a barstool. All it takes is a glance and a nod to order a shot of house scotch. “Here ya go, Darryl,” says the bartender. “How goes it?”

“Been better.”

Robbie the singer ends the set on a crowd-pleaser. He bounces down from the stage with the pride of a smoothly dismounted gymnast. Straight to the bar, he stands behind Darryl. A glance, a nod, and a beer is on the way. “Here ya go, Robbie. Great set guy!”

“Thanks man! Feel good look good play good!”

Darryl turns his head just far enough to leer back at Robbie. Robbie gives Darryl his best smile as usual. This time, Darryl accepts the invite.

“My brother and me had a band,” says Darryl.

“Really?”

“Yes really. Damn tight band too. We were supposed to open up for George Jones this one time, except George didn’t show up. My brother wrote a song about the whole mess. The crowd was going damn near riot crazy. The song is called, ‘George You Done Us Wrong.’ Kickass little number. You’d probably like it. Then my brother all a sudden up and leaves the band. Moved to Nashville he did, figuring on maybe getting rich writing songs, so he said. Ha! A year later he kills himself. Too bad he couldn’t write a song about that. Might have been a hit. Dumbass. His timing never was for shit.”

“Uh …”

“Don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I see some of him in you I guess. But it wasn’t all that bad for my little brother. Lotta laughs, like this one time, you wouldn’t believe it, we’re all partying hard with one of Willie Nelson’s roadies, and they start betting on darts, and …”

Robbie’s senses inadvertently drift away. He’s looking at Darryl, but he sees the people just beyond. He hears Darryl, but he’s listening to the jukebox.

“… and next thing you know, Willie Nelson’s roadie is using that very same dart to clean coffee grounds out of his teeth. Never seen nothing like it in all my days.”

“You don’t say,” says Robbie.

Robbie sees Marty the bass player approaching. Their eyes meet. Robbie’s eyes roll toward Darryl, then back to Marty, then at the ceiling. Marty gets the message. He walks up to Robbie and says, “Hey Robbie, sorry to butt in, but we need to check the ohmage on the new monitor amp before the next set.”

Darryl knows what’s on a stage. He knows about amps and ohms and he knows that Marty is full of shit. Darryl also knows about rescuing fellow bandmates from babbling drunks. He remembers, and he grins, and his voice drops a few pitches when he says, “Just one second, boys.”

Robbie and Marty stop.

“I’ve heard you play before and I just want to say that ya’ll play pretty good.” He looks at Robbie. “And your singing’s okay too, I mean, for a kid.” Darryl smiles so the other two do too.

“Thanks, old man!”

“Now go on, git. Make some noise.”

The boys gesture a hasty goodbye and walk away while Darryl finishes, “Just remember that the music is always way bigger than you are. You’ll be alright.”

“Medding” is a word I made up while working on my new book. I needed it to fill a vacancy in my vocabulary. I was missing a catch-all term that included every imaginable awareness-type activity. I’ve been using the term medding for a while now, and test-driving it on other medders, who then start using it right away as if they’d been using it all along. That tells me that this really is a useful word.

MEDDING the noun: Many things are medding. Meditation is medding. Yoga is medding. Medding includes every act of mindfulness, such as mindful standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. And mindful eating and drinking. And mindful hearing and listening. And mindful stopping. And of course it includes any attention you put on your breathing, such as following the ins and outs, or counting, or altering, or belly breathing, or just noticing. Watching your own thoughts and feelings come and go is medding. Basically, any type of intentional coming back to or remaining in the present by way of paying attention to what is observable in the herenow is medding.

MEDDING the verb: It means to do any of that stuff in the previous paragraph.

And now, in keeping with one of the great traditions of wordsmithing, I shall use the word medding in a sentence:

“I was doing some medding the other day, at the grocery store, in the cereal aisle, and I noticed that there were many brightly colored boxes.”

That was fun. How about some more…

“It’s good to start with medding in the morning.”

“Poker and medding do mix.”

Which will be in my book, now that I have a word for it.

I went to a golf course yesterday. Been a while. I got a bucket of balls to hit at the driving range. But first, to my favorite place: the practice green.

I love putting around on a putting green, but what I love even more is pitching and chipping. I sat down my bag, I pulled out my trusty wedge, and I dropped one ball on the ground, on the grass, just off the green. I stood stock still and looked around and got grateful for a moment, then I gripped the grip, eyed the ball, swung the club, and “toonk,” I heard the perfect sound. I watched the ball bounce, and spin, and roll, up the hill, bending right, there it goes, and…

You can’t see it from this angle, but my ball is in that hole.

Off to the left where that white spot is, that’s about where I hit my ball from.

I looked up to see who saw, as is customary at times like this. As you can see in this next photograph, the other golfers were all acting like they hadn’t even seen my shot.

But we know what’s in there.

I just had a salt shaker explode. All over the counter, and the floor. Damnable contraption. It’s not really even a salt shaker. It’s a rock salt and peppercorn twisting smasher with two secret Rubixic supply compartments designed to keep Indiana Jones out.

I can imagine the conversation between the engineers and designers who birthed this thing:

DESIGNERS: The main thing is that it be pretty. It’s okay if it’s tricky.

ENGINEERS: You heard ‘em boys! They said make it pretty tricky!

Jolly well done then. You got me. Without a care in the world, I had set out to refill the peppercorn chamber, and your clever design tricked me into twisting something too hard, or maybe the wrong way, which caused the salt compartment to detonate. That was somewhat annoying, but I will say, your invention does look nice, even dismantled.

As I surveyed the spillage, I heard a cruel yet loving voice from the past. It was mom, saying what she said at special moments of klutz like this one:

“Why aren’t you doing that over the sink?”

Dear Steve Jobs,

Because I am a selfless man — a man with no interest in the fame and aggrandizement that would come with coining a brilliant and useful phrase that in itself would drive millions more to worship at the Church of Apple — and because I am a generous man — willing to give away these billion-dollar words with nothing expected from you in return (though I wouldn’t say no to a couple million) — I am going to tell you a story that I think will you want to hear.

I’m a believer. I unthinkingly take my hat off whenever I enter one of your temples, I mean, stores. In my happiest fantasies, I shave with an iRazor, and I drive an iCar.

Kay my wife has had a iPod for a long time but I haven’t messed with it all that much. For me it really started with my iPhone, which Kay gave to me 594 days ago. A few months after that, my PC became very ill and had to be put down. One of your disciples told me now is the time. I stroked my iPhone and I knew it too. I bought a Macbook Pro.

Obviously my life instantly became worth living and you know about all that. (And I don’t even have an iPad yet.) What I’m writing to point out is the commonness of my path. First one sees a friend in rapture. Then one sees why. Then one owns their first Apple product, then another, and soon one sees it all so clearly, the dark past, the bright future, and the perfect now.

Kay still has a PC. It’s starting to shed, and occasionally pee indoors. The vet gives it three months. Kay has already declared that her next computer will be a Mac. Her life will be turned around. It will be made over.

Kay is having an Apple turnover.

Okay Steve, I know I said I wasn’t going to ask for anything in return for serving up this awesome phrase to you. Well, I’ve changed my mind. Remember that razor I was talking about? I was serious about that. What I’m picturing is a really high quality razor, with a movie camera in it, so that I could see everything that I’m doing when I shave, magnified. And you could make it so that if I start humming a song, the razor will automatically find the song in my iTunes library and play it throughout my dwelling, which would be in orbit of course, on the iShuttle. I’ll tell you about that next time.

So long and thanks for all the upgrades,

Tommy Angelo

There’s a lot going on today out there in the world. Just now I was walking toward a one-square-block park that is mostly a grass field. From half a block away, I could see a guy out in the middle of the field doing Tai Chi, which is typically what people do when alone in the middle of a field around here.

I didn’t give him a second glance, until I got to the sidewalk next to the park and I heard sounds coming at me from the center of the field. I looked up, and I realized that from a distance, animated phone talking and Tai Chi have a lot in common.

In other local news…

The redwood trees look like this right now all over the place:

The dark green parts grew some time ago.

The light green parts grew some time this week.

You would not believe the sheer amount of shit that comes out of my suitcase. The TSA guy at the airport didn’t believe it either. (TSA = Transportation Security Administration)

I’m not talking about obvious travelware such as clothes, a meditation bench, a yoga mat, and a library. I’m talking about the bottom layer of small items in my suitcase that live there year round. I don’t always need all of it, but I always need some of it, and when I need it, I got to have it.

Kay and I were on our way home from a vacation in the far east (South Carolina) when my small rollerboard suitcase containing an astonishing volume and variety of materials – but without any unsightly bulges – went through the scanner. The scanner person called over a couple more scanner persons for a community screen gawk. I’d seen those looks of perplexity before. “He’s one of those,” they were thinking. Either that or they were just admiring my packing job.

The TSA man walked toward me carrying my suitcase. “Is this your bag?”

“Yes.”

“Gather your other belongings and meet me at that table over there. I’m going to need to have a look in this bag.”

“Okay.”

Over at the table, I sat in the chair next to the table and I was told quite plainly by the TSA man to keep my hands to myself. Behind him was a TSA gal, a little off to the side, watching everything intently. I thought she might be teaching or learning.

He unzipped the lid of my suitcase and opened it up. There on top sat a piece of lumber with two other pieces of lumber hinged to it. He moved my meditation bench onto the table. Then he dug his hand to the bottom of the suitcase and went fishing around under my clothes in my precious layer of assorted crap. He came out holding a shiny metal cylinder about the size of a finger. It was my guitar slide. It’s the kind of thing you either know what it is immediately, or you have no clue and never will. He had no clue. He looked at me with one of his eyebrows. I knew if I were to demonstrate my slide in action, using an air-guitar, it would look like I was giving him the finger, except with my pinky finger. I decided to keep my hands and my music to myself.

He went in again. This time he came out with a small metal flashlight. He sat it off to the side with the slide. In again, out again, this time with a smaller flashlight on a metal latch that works great for belt-loop transport.

In, out. A pack of guitar strings.

Then a teacup.

And a deck of cards.

And a dealer button of course.

Next up, a guitar capo. This is a small metal contraption that comes in several different designs, all of which bear no resemblance to each other, and none of which bear any resemblance to anything else on earth. The TSA man held the capo, looked at it, and shook his head. Kay and I secretly chortled at each other.

Next up, a candlestick.

By now the TSA man had moved through the unsurprisable phase, to amused. But of course he was obligated to at least act like he was trying not to show it.

The bench along with all the other extracted items were sitting on the table, next to my suitcase. The man zipped my suitcase shut and lifted it up, taking care to keep it flat which I appreciated given the traumatized condition of the contents. He said he was going to run my suitcase through the scanner again. Which he did.

When he returned to the table with my bag, he looked liked someone carrying bad news that he wished he didn’t. Kay and I noted later that despite our moment of happiness with the TSA man, he was not enjoying this. It must be a very hard job, to poke around in other people’s stuff, while they look on, anxious about being late for a flight, or about having their privacy impaled, in addition to whatever other stressors flyers pack in their mental luggage. In my chair next to the table I was definitely sitting in a place of frequent high anxiety. And this guy has to tell people to sit here.

He sat my suitcase on the table where it had been before. The watcher woman took her position. The TSA man unzipped the top. He opened it up. His hands approached the contents.

I said, “Is there something I could help you find?”

He said, “Yes. Do you have some kind of large cylinder in here?”

This question excited me, since I knew the answer.

“Yes! It’s under the yoga mat, over in the corner, behind the iPod speakers.”

The TSA man reached into my suitcase as instructed and triumphantly brought forth a white plastic Safeway bag that had a 6” x 4” cylindrical 8.8 oz. Illy coffee can in it.

Aha! The microfilm must surely be inside!

He shook the can and he heard something that wasn’t coffee. “That’s a scooper,” I said. “And the coffee can is in the plastic bag because the threads on the lid are somewhat stripped so please be careful. And it’s not really Illy coffee inside there. It’s Peets, Italian roast.”

Kay gave me the “Stop talking now” look. Then she gave the TSA guy the old “Let’s get this show on the road” look, which he didn’t see, but he obeyed. Miraculously, he was able to get all my stuff back in my suitcase while only adding two inches to the thickness. And off we went, from sea to shining sea, welcomed home by these:

My cousin Eddie and I went to Yosemite Valley. One day we were walking up the trail that goes to the top of Yosemite Falls and Eddie said something very funny.

Yosemite Falls is the tallest in North America. It has an upper and a lower. Here’s a picture of the back of Eddie’s head as it looks at the bottom of Upper Yosemite Falls. We had already gone up a long way to get here.

The first part of the trail is very steep, with many short switchbacks and lots of rocks. I was walking in front for a long stretch. Now and then we’d encounter others on the trail, going down. After a while, Eddie spoke up to tell me that he had noticed that I looked at the people in the face as they went by, ready to say howdy if they were the howdy types. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t.

Next Eddie shared with me the observations he’d made about the difference between the people in Warren Ohio, and the people in Minnesota where Eddie had recently visited. Ed’s conclusion was that the Minnesotans tend to say hi to strangers, whereas the Warrenians (Warreners? Warrenites? Warrentia?) are more likely to gaze intently at the ground while passing. Both cultures have now passed a tipping point where it feels equally odd, on average, to not say hi in Minnesota as it does to say hi in Ohio.

I pointed out that if he wanted a case in point, he could point to my case. I was a ground gazer when I lived in Ohio, and now, after much walking around in the California walking places, I’ve been helloed at so many time that I transformed into a hello-sayer. I can even initiate. Which I decided to start doing, for Ed’s amusement.

The next couple that came by did not look up as I looked right at them and said “Hi!” But I did startle them into a belated grunt of acknowledgment and a slight stumble.

I turned around to Eddie and said, “I think they were from Ohio.”

We got to the top of the steep ascension and the switchbacks stopped. The trail was now a slowly curving, nearly level piece of cake. Up to now we had been in a heavily wooded area. Suddenly we were clear of the trees, and we were getting our first huge views of the whole valley, from 1200 feet up, cliffside. We stopped in silent reverence for a while, and moved on.

We could see a couple approaching from 30 yards away. We could hear them too, gloppitting along. It was a combination of moaning, groaning, and the messy, clackety sound of poorly packed supplies and uncomfortable clothes.

By the time they were next to me, I was giggling inside, ungraciously. I could feel Eddie behind me doing the same thing.

“Good morning!” I chirped.

Nothing. They didn’t look up. Their sounds remained the same. Right on down the trail they went.

A moment passed, and Eddie said, “I think they were from Michigan.”

Funny post went up today at DeucesCracked.com about The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment. This is in the thread for episode 4 (out of 8).

Post at DeucesCracked.com by RakeFactoryIMO on 3.25.10:

Hmm. I’ve been enjoying the series up until now. I started to watch this video, trying to relax and forget about my sinus infection making me feel miserable by focusing on something else for a while. What does it tell me to do? Focus on my breathing. Grr. I am mindful that I am angry about that. No, it is not helping. Life tilt ensues. I better watch something else for now or I might become the first person to smash my computer because I life tilted while watching a Tommy Angelo video.

Is this right quitting? LOL, haven’t gotten that far. <= somehow that helped

Dear congested,

I think you should try lying on one side until you get one nostril unplugged and then use that one to breathe through. And buy some computer calamity insurance.

Tommy

I remember decades ago hearing about Van Halen’s singer David Lee Roth and his outrageously persnickety demand that there be M&Ms waiting for him backstage at all of his concerts, with all the brown ones removed!

I recall thinking, what a dick. This is rockstardom gone too far. How terrible it must be to have to work with or for this creep. Or really to have anything to do with him at all. The thing is, I always liked Van Halen’s music. I was never a huge fan the way I am with some of the other rock bands. But I always listened to their songs when they came on the radio. Even though their lead singer was a prima donna asshole.

Up until yesterday, if you had brought up Van Halen to me, the first thoughts that would have popped into my head were: Great rock band. Spectacular and innovative guitar player. Great drum and bass grooves, and great drum and bass sound. Great singer too, as a singer, but personally, I can’t stand the guy. That final opinion, the one about the singer David Lee Roth, had grown in my mind over the years, without me even realizing it, because of the M&M thing.

Everything changed yesterday in the span of a few sentences. Kay showed me an article by Dan and Chip Heath that was in the March issue of Fast Company. The writers referenced David Lee Roth and the M&M story for their purpose, which was to make a point about businesses. I will reference the M&M story for my purpose, which is to make a point about assumptions. Here is the pertinent part of the Fast Company article:

Consider Van Halen. In its 1980s heyday, the band became notorious for a clause in its touring contract that demanded a bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with all the brown ones removed. The story is true — confirmed by former lead singer David Lee Roth himself — and it became the perfect, appalling symbol of rock-star-diva behavior.

Get ready to reverse your perception. Van Halen did dozens of shows every year, and at each venue, the band would show up with nine 18-wheelers full of gear. Because of the technical complexity, the band’s standard contract with venues was thick and convoluted — Roth, in his inimitable way, said in his autobiography that it read “like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages.” A typical “article” in the contract might say, “There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes.”

Van Halen buried a special clause in the middle of the contract. It was called Article 126. It read, “There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.” So when Roth would arrive at a new venue, he’d walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl. If he saw a brown M&M, he’d demand a line check of the entire production. “Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error,” he wrote. “They didn’t read the contract…. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show.”

In other words, Roth was no diva. He was an operations expert. He couldn’t spend hours every night checking the amperage of each socket. He needed a way to assess quickly whether the stagehands at each venue were paying attention — whether they had read every word of the contract and taken it seriously. In Roth’s world, a brown M&M was the canary in the coal mine.

Today, wanting to verify all of this, and also curious as to why Roth would let the M&M story live and thrive since it painted him ugly, I searched the web, and I found everything I was hoping to find in one paragraph at Wikipedia:

In 1997, Roth wrote a well-received memoir, entitled Crazy From the Heat. The 359-page book was whittled down from over 1,200 pages of monologues, which were recorded and transcribed by a Princeton University graduate who followed Roth around for almost a year. Among the book’s revelations, aside from stories about backyard parties, Van Halen, and catching malaria in Third world jungles, was the infamous “Brown M&Ms” clause written into Van Halen’s early contract riders. The clause was included in contracts not because of ego, but rather to make sure that structural stage specifications in the contract were read thoroughly and were adequately provided. Roth writes of a time when he found brown M&Ms in a bowl and subsequently had a fit. In the press, he was accused of causing US$85,000 worth of damage to the arena. Most of the monetary damages were due to Van Halen’s staging sinking through the floor. Roth writes, “they didn’t bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty-thousand dollars worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&Ms and did $85,000 worth of damage to the backstage area. Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?”

If I had a nickle for every time I have made a wrong assumption about someone that caused me or them suffering, I’d have an incalculable sum, because most of the wrong assumptions I make remain wrong forever because I never find out they are wrong. Or at least that’s what I assume.

Here’s what was particularly wrong about my wrong assumption about David Lee Roth and his M&Ms. One of the traits I most admire in a person, and especially in an artist, is someone who, in the words of the Heath brothers, is an “operations expert.” A detail freak. A geek in expressionist clothing. A minutia man. A preparer. Not surprisingly, I admire these qualities because that’s how I want to be. So for 25 years, I have been scolding Roth in my mind, when actually, I should have been praising him for his admirable priorities, and his clever tactic, but I couldn’t, because one wrong assumption has been in the way.

Bottom line: I heretofore commit to continually recommitting to trying to like hell to not make assumptions about people and their priorities and just take things as they are when they are without adding on my usual heaps of judgments and assumptions and other pain-causing crap.