AKA Columbus Day. I slept in and stayed in. I got up around 4. At least last night I did one of the "vocal warmups" and wanted to do one of the 30-minute "workouts" but felt a bit daunted so I just drank and sang along with a bunch of songs you YouTube. The main thing is to establish the habit of regular vocal practice.
I think the reasoning I explained to Ken last night was sound: I took the DNA test to verify what I was sure was true, that I'm Jewish because Mom was and on back to old Lithuania. The idea was that Trump would get two terms, and eventually they'd get around to finding out who's Jewish. If I went ahead and took the test, and thus had something I could take to Chabad or the Israeli embassy or whatever, and start taking steps to get outta here.
When you're a Jew by being born one, it's a pretty easy decision. Israel will take you in. You might be barely living off of the street but you're a Jew living in Israel and that's what matters. Converting however makes no sense. It's a lot of work, to profess to believe in things I don't believe in, to move to a small country that's in a perpetual state of war. And right now, in whatever records the Fascists are keeping, they might be able to say as so many have, "You're 'something'" but they won't say I'm a Jew and round me up. At least not on the first pass...
Instead I'm that ever-popular thing in Hawaii, a "mix". About 24% of the population there is mixed race, the next-highest state being Alaska at about 7%. It's got to be a large part of why my parents moved to Hawaii. My older sister told me an anecdote about Mom wanting to volunteer for the March Of Dimes and was told she's too dark for them to want her to go door to door. And now that I think about it, while Mom could stay in, we kids were outside playing all the time so this WASPy white guy (Dad) in the nice white town of Costa Mesa, having a bunch of little brown kids running around may have gotten a few side-eyes.
But now I can say that like many in Hawaii, I'm a white/Asian mix, even if the Asian is more West Asian; I think Tatars are considered Turkic/Mongol. But fair enough, it makes me tan. I've even met people here on the mainland who look white but are part Hawaiian, like a guy I used to know who worked in a motorcycle shop in Garden Grove who told me he's part of the Parker family that owns Parker Ranch in Hawaii. So we "Schrodinger's haoles" are out there.
So, besides these thoughts, it's a depressing day. The weather's finally turning cooler and it's getting dark earlier and that's depressing. Making my post office run at 3-4 isn't saving me any traffic craziness so unless I start doing my runs a lot earlier, like maybe 1-2 in the afternoon, they'll be depressing "night time raids".
Although in all fairness I kind of like riding around when it's dark. With my blinky lights on it's easy for drivers to see me, and with their lights on it's easier for me to keep track of them. And businesses are done for the day so it's great for dumpster diving. And making my run at 6PM means it isn't late enough that the zombies are out and active. I've worked out the best routes for avoiding 'em anyway, and I'm friends with a few security guards around here too.
I managed to find and download the .pdf of this old "Frank Sinatra Guide To Popular Singing" which may or may not be useful but at least the price was right. And I did some reading on another hero of mine, Tony Bennett. What a great guy. Grew up poor like me, absent father like me, studied art (was going to become a commercial artist) but also liked music, like me. Got out there singing for tips by age 13 which was not a thing I could do, then served in WWII and what he saw there made him a lifelong "lefty" while the only war I served in was the class war and it's convinced me to be the same.
He studied the "bel canto" type of singing which I'm pretty sure is what the singing teachers teach now. If you want to stress and strain and sound like you're about to shit your pants like rock singers do, well, any training would be counterproductive. And even though I grew up with rock, I never liked that style and it was so prevalent that I thought if I sang, I'd have to sing that way, and that's probably why I got so hung up on playing an instrument instead. I like my rock and roll music, but that "taking a shit" vocal style is most emphatically not for me.
Dear old Tony went through a real dry spell while the rock and roll boom was going on, but he came roaring back because good singing is good singing. I think I'd pay money to go to one of his concerts if this virus thing has died down and he comes through here.
I also looked at the Hawaii Craigslist and rents have really come down since the last time I looked. In four years, part of my plan is to save up enough money that I can pay for a place for 6 months or a year up front and not have to do much of anything for a year. Besides things like get my state ID/drivers license and get established in various ways, I want to be able to just do things like visit the Art Academy and the aquarium, go to the beaches, etc.
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