Sunday, August 30, 2015
I have always been a huge fan of my fellow welcome columnist, Brooks Judd. His ten items or fewer concept has amused, entertained and challenged over the years with random observations about the world we all inhabit. So today for my fifth Sunday of the month extra welcome column, I am going to shamelessly rip off Brooks’s timeless concept and make it my own. But I’m going to slightly change the concept to ten questions or fewer in order to avoid any potential law suits from my esteemed colleague who is no doubt raking in huge royalties as we speak. (If Al Gore had been this clever, he would have received full credit for the invention of the internet).
So here goes:
1) Why is it that the out of tune string on my mandolin is almost always the A string? Honestly, I have three mandolins and the phenomenon is true for every one of these instruments. When I play in a certain key, I tend to notice if the string tuned to the root key is out of tune, so I would expect to notice the D string out of tune more often since more tunes are in that key. A lot of tunes are in A too, but why is that the string that’s more out of tune than any other, no matter what key? Roger Simonoff has probably explained this anomaly in one of his Bluegrass Breakdown articles. Any of you who might have an answer out there, please fill me in.
2) Why does everything on the planet these days need a bar code? I’m making shrimp creole tonight and, as I peeled off the sticker on my belle pepper, I lamented how that extra step cheapened the experience of what a vegetable is. It’s still something grown in the ground with water and tender care under a warm sun, right? Or is it a processed commodity?
3) Why do we need direct to consumer TV ads to inform us about pharmaceutical products that look so enticing yet are so expensive that our medical plan will never pay for them? And why do these spots always make the obligatory disclaimer about how one of the side effects of their products might be death?
4) What would it be like to have Donald Trump at a Bluegrass festival? Would the Donald “suck all of the oxygen” out of the media frenzy that is there at every Bluegrass festival, leaving no room for the other performers to strut their stuff? I googled Donald on every bluegrass instrument to see if he played anything but I still don’t know. There’s a lot of chaff out there in internet land. Well anyway, I’m not going to stay up nights worried about a big bus pulling up next to my tent and playing loud music all night long any time soon. But maybe after the primaries, the Donald will adopt a new hobby and Bluegrass music will finally get the media attention it deserves.
5) What San Francisco Giants player would you most like to meet? (I know Brooks is a big Giants fan, so i just had to include this little teaser). My choice would be Monte Irvin. I wrote about him in a previous column and I sent him a copy of the article called Eddie. In the article I relived my zest for baseball history and my interracial bond with a fellow baseball nut who was Monte’s biggest fan.
Monte is in his 90’s now but his daughter took dictation from him and wrote me a very nice letter. I am proud to say that I have carried on a correspondence with one of the all time great baseball players over the course of forty years (of course there is one big gap).
6) Why does the CBA need a new web site when the old web site was so great? I have to admit I was skeptical when I first test drove the new web site roll out. Will it be worth it to learn a different navigation process to make my way around a site different from the one I had become so comfortable with over the years? I have to admit, it didn’t take me long to find out why newer is better in this case. Everybody involved in this project did a terrific job bringing it about.
7) Why does “ten items or fewer” always mean fewer? I don’t know about you but when I read one of Brooks’s posts, I always expect the maximum. I have seen as few as four and I can’t tell you how many times I have given the poor guy grief about his incomplete essays.
I could only think of seven myself today but I figure it’s good enough. Brooks, I feel your pain.
