Hokum

I pulled out my guitar today for the first time in more than a year. I’m not a guitarist, don’t pretend to be a guitarist, never touched a guitar until I was 25 and pretty much stopped playing by my mid-30s. But I’ve been working on learning some new songs as a vocalist, and unless you want to buy a bunch of CDs and become Karaoke Boy, you need to play a little guitar to help you out in that process.

I owned some nice guitars in my 20s — particularly a sweet Alvarez acoustic-electric that sounded great plugged in — but since my late 20s, I’ve owned this Yamaha FG-335II. I paid $100 used for it in 1989 and it came with its very own crappy cardboard casecase. I have to put extra-light strings on it to stop from cutting my non-calloused fingertips, but the thing has a spectacularly good tone for what it is. It’s made out of cheap wood laminate but it also has some nice binding around the edges and soundhole, and the neck has stayed straight and true over the years.

Because I play so little, I easily forget what a pleasure it is to play this guitar. My chording is so bad now that I’m basically a beginner again, but the guitar still sings to me. There are a lot of memories and good times tied up in this old guitar, and they start to flow out every time I hit something as simple as a G chord. That’s all you can ask out of your axe.

I’m most inspired to do creative things when I feel calm. I don’t feel calm these days. Ever since the whole planet sailed off the map financially, into regions previously unknown, I’ve lost my Zen.

Today the Dow closed down another 100-plus points…a decline so unremarkable that it feels like a gain in light of recent events…but only after swinging back and forth an unfathomable 1,000-plus points in about an hour.

There’s never been a day like today in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. There’s never been a week like this week, either. Ever. And that makes it hard to sit down and write blog posts.

So I hope you’ll excuse the lack of recent entries here. Perhaps the storm will pass soon, and with it, my motivation to write will come back.

When I worked at America Online, the company regularly brought in financial “experts” to offer “advice” to employees, some of whom were freshly minted millionaires thanks to the hypergrowth of AOL stock. The advice these “experts” sometimes offered made my jaw drop.

A mortgage banker from a local company came in and suggested all first-time homebuyers should take out low- (or no-) down-payment, interest-only loans, under the theory that home values appreciate and almost all you do for the first few years of a loan is pay interest, anyway. Stockbrokers came in and suggested AOL stockholders should take a margin line against their holdings and buy yet still again more AOL stocks.

There is a word describing both of these nuggets of expert advice: Stupid. They were stupid ideas then, and in the cold light of the financial days we now are living through, the true stupidity of these actions is even more harshly visible.

After I sat through a few of these sessions, I realized these people weren’t advisers — they were salesmen, and I assume they were were paying the company for the right to pitch their wares. And people listened to them, because if you can’t listen to “experts,” who can you listen to?

I write about this today because the Dow is tanking again, the latest in a series of days when the markets are sucking all the air out of the room. And this is the collapse of the castle of financial contrivances that’s been built over years, even decades. And now, a lot of people are going to suffer, many in ways previously unimaginable.

Including, probably, me. I didn’t buy into this stuff, pay off my credit cards every month, have an emergency fund in cash in the bank, bought far less house than the experts said I “could afford,” contribute the max possible to my 401K and also contribute to a Roth IRA. I made these choices only after years of making many dumb choices, getting scarred for making them and deciding that I had to do better.

So I educated myself, played by the rules, straightened out my finances and married someone who has a similar outlook on money (and more day-to-day financial discipline than me, which I need). And we made some hard decisions.

And now we suspect that we’ll be targeted to pay for the many bailouts that have started and are to come — not to mention the fact that we’re both working in dramatically shrinking industries, making both of our jobs insecure. And I’m bitter about that.

It is only appropriate that the Washington Nationals, whose season began with so much hope and a dramatic first-game win, would end their home season with a rainout.

I was there Thursday for the final bow, even though I doubted from mid-afternoon on that this game would be played. I had to see the new stadium one last time before I bid it goodbye for half a year. The ownership delayed the rainout long enough to milk every dime it could out of fan concessions one last time, giving me a chance to take a final walkaround. Still, by the time the game got called, I was gone and feeling sad.

It is painfully hard for me to believe what has happened in the six months since I first saw the Nats play the O’s in a pre-season game in a brand-new stadium. The team collapsed and became baseball’s worst squad; there was little visible evidence that the fabled Plan was doing anything to improve things; the owners started squabbling with the city; the team failed to sign its first-round draft pick; and the Nats head into the off-season in worse shape than ever.

How did this happen? How could this happen? The Post and the Times have some thoughts about this, and I’m mostly just disgusted.

Washington has such a terrible history in Major League Baseball and it seems inconceivable that we are here again, in last place, adrift, with questions being raised about the ownership and management. This was the Washington squad that was supposed to end the nonsense that the Senators rained down on us, turning away a whole generation of fans from the ballpark. This team was supposed to be different.

All I want is a little hope — just a little. Get a middlin’ pitcher in the off-season, find a decent, non-ancient free agent or two, do something to upgrade this sad excuse for a baseball team. Another year like 2008, and I fear the Nats will be the latest Washington baseball squad to death-spiral its way into oblivion.

So, you go to the Redskins game, and it’s a victory (and a good game to boot), and you’re feeling pretty good about that. You drive home and your wife is watching the game on the DVR — she took a nap during the game. You recognize the fan-held sign that shows up on your TV set. You look to the left of the sign — and sure enough, there you are.

When you are forced to watch cable television news all day long — a fate that I face along with most of my colleagues — you can become amazed and fascinated by cable anchors. The selection of smart people, stoneheads, action figures, runway walkers, ego freaks and terrific professionals can boggle the mind a bit.

But Rick Sanchez is in a category all his own.

Sanchez is the Freddy Krueger of cable news. You can think he’s gone — but no! He resurfaces again, ready to pounce in a new time slot, filling his reports with more personal pronouns per square inch than anyone in the business, aggressively using Twitter and social networks, undergoing genuine torture on the air so often that you wonder if he has a little problem, and putting down some of the most…well, special…anchoring you’re likely to see.

His you-can’t-kill-me background is fascinating. In Miami, where he anchored and reported in the 1990s, the local alt-weekly named its “Least Credible News Peronality” award after him after he won it so many times in a row, according to this article. He caught on with MSNBC in Miami and eventually got his own show — and it was savaged by some critics. CNN picked him up and soon he was being tasered and waterboarded and drowned in a car and frozen in the elements, all apparently to show that hey, this stuff hurts. Jon Stewart mocked him in a memorable segment, but Sanchez just kept truckin’.

He caught a temporary gig in prime time at CNN, often doing better in the ratings than predecessor Paula Zahn. Now he’s managed to get his own hour in mid-day, using about half of the time to air his big giant head directly into your living room and about half the time to roll clips while he talks over them. I generally have to mute the TV for my own protection.

I suspect that if Sanchez ever read this last statement, he’d laugh and frankly not care. This is a man who either very, very, very much understands what he’s doing, or he’s got a serious case of savant syndrome.

Either way, he’s not going to change his style, as this treasure trove of YouTube clips clearly shows. You are on your own to react accordingly.

…on my Google map of bars where I’ve played:

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I wake up, stretch, walk to the back door. The dog wakes up, joins me in a stetch, heads to the back door with me. He wants out for his morning constitutional. This is a ritual for us.

I crack open the door…and the dog unexpectedly shifts into Full Jack Russell Crazy Mode, bolting out of the small opening, shooting for the deck.

Suddenly a gray blur jumps off the deck, into the tree, and heads straight up.

Uh oh.

The gray blur is a raccoon. Generations of breeding kick in for the Jack Russell, who circles the tree at top speed and barks and jumps and runs and harasses.

The raccoon is at least 10 feet up. That’s too close for the dog, who is out of his howling mind. He uses the tree as a shield to prevent me from capturing him, as he shatters the morning calm.

It’s 6:30 a.m. I have neighbors. This is not good.

It takes a while, but I finally trick the dog, feigning one way and diving the other, catching him just barely by his back legs as he tries to spring past me and reining him in. He is pissed off, squirming and still barking and snapping at the raccoon even as I wrap him up.

We go inside, where the dog continues to bark and jump 4 feet straight up while refusing to move from the glass back door. He can see the raccoon. The raccoon can see him. This is a standoff.

30 minutes later…same thing.

45 minutes later…same thing. Christ, where is the ‘off’ switch on this dog? I leave for work.

The raccoon was gone when I got home. The dog appeared no worse for wear.

For no reason at all, I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately about my first band, Nun of the Above. I played with the Nuns from 1985 until early 1990, when I left Little Rock. We sucked, but we sucked with originality, and that counted for a lot when you were a garage/punkabilly band in that era.

Actually, we didn’t entirely suck. The lead guitarist would be welcome in almost any band; the second guitarist had an artist’s soul and could write good songs; the bass player was a strong singer and a competent player; the Spinal Tap-ish series of drummers we used all could play some…but me, the keyboard player and the sometimes-third-guitarist constituted the boat-anchor wing of the ensemble.

But we did have fun. And we had great parties. And we got thrown out of a bar or two or five. And I learned how to play with a band.

The Nuns have scattered. Vinnie the guitarist is still in Little Rock; Mike the artistic guy moved to San Francisco for a while, had the horrible misfortune of seeing his sweet wife die of cancer and now lives in northwest Arkansas; Kevin the bass player was in Memphis, last I heard; Dave the keyboard player, who married into money, was a full-time sunset watcher the last time I got an update; and nobody hears from Paco any more.

Some of these guys are approaching 60 now, if they’re not already there. We did things that no 60-year-old is ever going to admit to doing (like perform this Subhumans song at a rape crisis center benefit, for Chrissakes).

We weren’t dangerous, but sometimes we liked to think we were. Now that middle age has removed any doubt about that issue for us, nostalgia is an especially sweet thing.

…and I’m back.