Pronger-Ball

I remember the old "Pronger-Ball" T-shirts being sold in such astute periodicals as The National Lampoon. It has a cute cartoon of a virus complete with smile and googly eyes, and "I'd Rather Wear It Than Have It" in the same goofy font used by Radio Shack for their "Fun With Electronics" mini-magazine. I guess if I found some old National Lampoons I might find the old artwork ...

So things are pretty shut down. Traffic last night was like Sunday late morning. I have to make a mail or FedEx run (or both) just about daily so I'm getting out there.

I've been getting my practice in too, and the double buzz is almost completely gone and high C's are getting easier. I'm hacking away on my latest exercise, #47 in Clarke's Elementary Studies, which is just a weird tune. Thank goodness for "Trumpeter's Stuff" on YouTube which has all these exercise books played out, so students like me can hear how it's supposed to go.

I get discouraged by how many good players there are out there, and at what a high level even high schoolers in Texas are playing, but then I remind myself that the busking standard is really low. I mean, really, really, low. Street Musician Daniel talked about a trumpeter who "looks like an astronaut or a test pilot" simply because he's neat and clean and gets regular hair cuts, and cleans up playing things like "Eentsy-Weentsy Spider" for the families with kids. It's been a few years and he probably owns a house now.

Ken was over a couple of days ago and I told him about this, about how busking could well prove to be a very solid living in New Orleans and even here, if things go really badly, I could still do some work like the packing/shipping to pay for my living here, and go out and busk for my living money. If things got that bad, Ken would be here working more. I'd just make the loft into more of my "inner sanctum" and we'd get along fine. We have for years.

I stayed in bed late and finished the Louis Armstrong book. It's quite good and puts in details that are not in other books I've read about him. It was written in 1980 or 1981, and is another example of how the latest stuff is more dumbed-down than older stuff.

During a pandemic is not an ideal time to be out busking, so I guess I'm off of it for another month.