First blog post

Well, I finally did it. I made the blog. I am shouting into a goddamn wind tunnel!

The liberating thing about shouting into a wind tunnel is that you can shout anything you please.

A friend recently lamented that some of our indie CD releases were like more "rain in the ocean". Meaning, difficult to attract attention to one drop, and possibly meaningless.

When I was a child I stood on the edge of a small fishing boat on Lake Oconee and was told "don't piss in the wind." Pissing in the wind is like the evil cousin of "rain in the ocean" - "rain in the ocean" is your existentialist friend who could use some cheering up, maybe a trip to the batting cages. "Pissing in the wind" not only invalidates your purpose, but actually attracts negative attention, covering your clothing with dots of boomeranging urine. Imagine you're standing there in the batting cage, and instead of a baseball, out comes a steaming yellow stream. Or, when you release a CD, and months later the distributor ships back hundreds of unsold, bent, pawed-over copies which threaten to bury you on your front doorstep. I hope this blog is not like that.

Originally I thought about calling this blog "Striped Light" - after one of my favorite Captain Beefheart lyrics. I wanted to use a word in the title that I have a hard time pronouncing, or have had to re-train myself how to pronounce. Ever since a kid, I have said "STRI-pid", using two syllables, sort of like how you say "stupid". I have now re-trained myself to say "stripe'd" in one terse syllable. It's not that I care if you think I sound like a hillbilly, it's that I don't want some minor pronunciation flaw to detract from the great stories I tell. As I regale you, the wind tunnel, with wilde tales of my exploits, keep your ears on the prize, for there is a punch line.

As I kid, for Coupon, I said "kew-pon," while the voice-overs on local TV grocer ads mostly seemed to say "coo-pon." I think my whole family said "kew-pon," as did lots of others. No one way is right, I'm convinced.

To this day when I say "double" people think I'm saying "devil," as in, rhymes with treble. The rub is, I pronounce "trouble" just fine. So - I'm serious - if I am talking to you about a Stevie Ray Vaughan album, I will say "Deble Trouble."

Which brings me to Double Coupon Day. A most exciting day. I can certainly pronounce "day." But before I get to "day" I will come at you like a feral, sideways hillbilly with the DEBLE KEWPON, approaching the automatic doors with ragged envelopes bursting at the seams with my clippings and printouts. I am ready to do this blog. I call that a Bargain. The best. I ever. Had.