NP: Deconstruction, Deconstruction (CD)

So, he was disheveled, a bit disoriented, with a taxicab. Makes you wonder why Hussein didn't hide in plain sight as a New York City cabbie. Hi-yo!

See, we had two whole days headstart on the late-night talk shows on this. And we, and by we, I mean I, squandered it with a bad cabbie joke. Don't tell me not to quit my day job, you insensitive bastard.

Anyway, I promised a feel-good story, and a feel-good story you will get. I've been singing and playing guitar and drumming at Vaughan's for just over two years now. Anto, one of the "hosts," is a good guy, but like anyone else, doesn't necessarily open up to people right away. Or to me, anyway. There has been a sort of respect for a while now, since I'm such a regular on Tuesdays, but there was always a weird vibe there. More of the proverbial "begrudging" respect. And that's fine, I don't demand that everybody be my best friend all the time. That would be unreasonable.

But about a month ago, we turned the Vaughan's house band into a real band, and during the rehearsal process, I noticed a change. Tony had mentioned when we were first getting started that Anto wasn't sure we could get things together in time for the gig we had booked, and that he had never heard me play drums. It all sorta clicked in place, as it's happened with Tony, too. In the space of a few weeks, I went from some guy who hacks through 80s tunes on guitar and bangs on a bongo (djembe, actually, but it gets called that often enough), to somebody who really, truly, knows his shit. At least the perception of me, anyway.

That's always a neat transformation, and it happens often enough. I think the quote I always used to get was "I knew you played drums, but I didn't realize you were good." To this day, I'm still not quite sure how to take that (I mean, why do people think I'm going to suck?), so I just take it at face value. Everybody purports to have outside interests or talents, but oftentimes they just dabble. The night of the gig with this new band on Thursday, I was talking to another friend about how long I've survived without full-time employment, and she exclaimed something like "but you're good at other stuff."

Yeah, I'm good at stuff. In time, I will convince more and more people to actually compensate me for being good at stuff. Meanwhile, stay the course.