Goodbye to you

OK — Maybe I should have called him ‘Nosferatu’ after all. And Eraserhead is gone as predicted. And what we have left now are four people with some SERIOUS chops. Usually there’s still somebody I can root against at this point — heck, there’s usually somebody I can root against up to and including the final show — but this year really lacks that person any more. I’d pay money to see these people in concert straight up…and in fact, I might actually do that this year. It’s still Soul Sister No. 1 against The Kid as far as I’m concerned, but you’re not going to hear me whine about any of these folks any more.

It’s crazy world!

My favorite contestant on The Show was just awful — awful — tonight, and my Least Favorite Contestant was good (for the third week in a row, frankly, so I need to stop calling him ‘Nosferatu’ or ‘Ichabod Crane’ and just admit that he’s picked up his game), and I no longer have a clue about what’s going to happen come Execution Night. It’d be a shame to lose The Kid, though. She has big monster huge chops and is just gonna be the star of this bunch, even if she did have her first bad week ever.

The saving grace here is the two-week competition. The Kid was great last week and probably racked up a boatload o’ votes. They get dumped together with this week’s votes,  and thus I suspect she’s still safe. So: Maybe the Church Lady is gone, although she had a good night tonight, and Eraserhead can go out with her. Heck, I don’t know any more — everyone left has serious talent and now we’re really selling off the seed corn. This is when I start to love this show.

Time flies

Got my newsletter in the mail today from the D.C. Blues Society. I’ve been a member since at least 1994 and can remember when this society was flush with volunteers and excitement. Like so many other things involving the blues these days, that’s now gone.

I opened the newsletter and I couldn’t help but notice that half of the titles in the masthead for society officials were without names. There was an announcement that the society was ending its monthly acoustic blues jam at Ellington’s on Eighth because the bar was closing. The electric jam continues at the inconvenient-for-almost-everyone Chick Hall’s in Bladensburg, but I went to that a few months back and it had no energy at all.

I think the end is coming for this society, just like the blues is fading into a small niche musical form like, say, Dixieland. It’s sad, but time moves on. You either move with it or you die in place, and the blues hasn’t been moving forward for some time now.

Reality check

If you live and work in the Washington area, sometimes you need a little reminder of reality. I got that over the weekend in south Texas, where I attended a memorial service for an old friend who died last week.

The reality check came in the form of a discussion a group of women were having after the service. They were comparing and contrasting their Lady Remingtons. I thought it was an odd time to have a discussion about electric razors. They weren’t talking about razors; they were swapping notes on their handguns.

All of the half-dozen women had a weapon or were about to get one. A couple of them had concealed weapons permits (here’s everything you wanted to know about those in Texas, by the way). They talked about trigger pressure, and how often they visited the range, and one of them discussed the closet full of ammo she had (ammo is a lot cheaper if you buy it in bulk, she noted).

If you want to know why gun control in this country is a non-starter, even after the Virginia Tech massacre, you could start with those women. Guns have been a pervasive (and, I might note, safe) part of their lives. Owning a pistol was as natural as breathing to them. Taking away their weapons — some of which had been handed down to family members over generations — would be the equivalent of taking away their history. They’re just not going to stand for that.