Paul Wesley

Ha. I had an insurance policy on an SSL console that was about to make a cross-country trip, and I called the insurers just before it left - just to make sure everything was locked in. No response. I then fired off an email that definitely had a “tone” and probably dropped some “totally unprofessional” comments. A couple days later, a woman replied “terribly sorry for how you were inconvenienced” or something like that, and then explained that the office was like ten feet underwater. Turns out they were in New Jersey and this was a few days after Sandy. ——— “Dear Reddit: Am I the asshole…”

Yeah, they make it seem like it’s some deep-in-the-jungle tropical disease, but it’s just a consequence of eating undercooked pork. You could hop on a discount flight to Cancun and get a tapeworm and a toe by 3 o’clock, dude.

Man, I'm impressed and happy for you. Obviously, our stressed-out and isolated modern societies need to get back to having these shared, communal experiences. I've thought of starting something similar in the vein of storytelling - like a "Moth" radio-hour kind of thing, maybe with a musician doing 2 or 3 songs as an icebreaker opening act. Anyway, kudos to you.

Oddly specific

Apparently the laws regarding acting as an unregistered foreign agent either need much more aggressive prosecution or much longer prison sentences or both… and yes, I understand that he’s a legislator and not a lobbyist, but I’m fucking tired of seeing these stories affecting both chambers of Congress, in lobbying firms, and in the executive branch (Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, many others). There doesn’t seem to be enough deterrence from doing treasonous things. I also think presidential pardon powers need a serious overhaul - like if your friends are getting fabulously wealthy from treasonous acts, you don’t get to pardon them.

Yes Yes

Trivial things that make you surly.

Wait a second. Are we talking about *practice?* We talking about PRACTICE, man. We're talking about practice. What are we doing? I'm supposed to be the franchise player, but we talking about PRACTICE?

I have two Strymon pedals and they are especially thirsty for current.

I really like it. To my ears, it sounds like a *slightly* more modern-sounding Vox... i.e. a little more saturation as it breaks up more and more. It breaks up in a way that doesn't feel genre-specific to me. Depending on the settings, I think it could be perfectly at home in an alt-country band (Stapleton/Isbell/etc) or as a heavy Brian May thing. If I had one complaint with it, it's that the EQ often feels a bit light on low mids, although that could also be an accurate reflection of the guitars that I'm using. I haven't recorded with it much, but it occurs to me that the same low mids that I want to bump up with an EQ pedal might be exactly what's carved out by the mix engineer. I could get down to three amps for the rest of my days on earth and be perfectly content: A Laurel Canyon, a Two Rock Studio Pro 35 (which is the ultimate Swiss army amp, IMO), and a Marshall flavor (either a 65Amps Empire or one of those Marshall 20-watt Plexi-voiced heads).

I'm a Vox guy. I have a couple different Vox-style heads including a Matchless Laurel Canyon and a 65Amps London. I also have a China-made AC30 - the 1-speaker version - that has just been gathering dust for the past decade. So I just sold it online, and before the guy came to pick it up, I plugged it in the other night and ran through it just to make sure it was fully functional. It sounded better than I remembered.

I think the head on the right is the bass player's Thunderman.

I just got a targeted ad on social media for a “mini cajon.” And it kind of made me happy, in the sense of “Well, obviously you data-sucking corporate bitches don’t know *everything* about me, now do you?”

Yeah, the "heavy" relic thing seems especially odd. I mean, if you're doing an "artist" model, and you want to copy all the flaws of Malcolm's Gretsch or Eddie's Frankenstrat... I think that's pretty cool. Outside of that... just beating the hell out of a brand new instrument...

I realize I'm a week or so late, but I just saw the Don Lemon interview. What a thin-skinned little baby. I mean, has Elon done an interview in the last year where the smallest bit of pushback or criticism doesn't cause a toddler-esque pouting tantrum? He just defaults back into self-congratulations and canned-answer platitudes about saving free speech. Then he runs off to tweet damage-control messages or to attack the interviewer. He seems utterly incapable of defending his choices (especially around censorship vs enabling racist/offensive content) in any real-time conversations. He should have YEARS of experience articulating a coherent viewpoint around topics that are DEFINITELY going to come up over and over again. Nope.

At worst, Ringo was the second-best instrumentalist in the band. He was way more proficient on his instrument than was George or John. *not counting Billy Preston

A spoon can be a weapon. Why don't we outlaw spoons?

Gary P Nunn at a Save Muny benefit. Criminally under appreciated by the crowd. Pearls before swine in pearls.

Haha. Harmonica players in bar bands… white guys with fedoras and diabeetus… just waiting for a solo. At least hippies keep their digeridoos at home.

Hippies, man. They smell bad and they’re off-the-charts annoying (though some of their political beliefs turn out to be right, which is also annoying).

In 6th grade band, I needed to pick an instrument. About a week before school started, my mother said, 'How about saxophone? You should play saxophone!" I ended up playing alto sax for two years. Ugh. Man, I would trade that for ANYTHING else: cello, violin, drums... even oboe or bassoon would be cooler. I'm surprised no one said "fretless bass," because that's another one that everyone else in the room just has to kind of cringe and pray to God that it stays in the case all day. How about a trio of alto sax, fretless bass, and cajon? They could name themselves something annoying, like "Phish."

If bad breath were an instrument, it would be a cajon.

Cajon