Stories From My Life
Why I don't talk to musicians from local bands I recognize around town
Living in San Francisco I go to a _lot_ of shows featuring local bands or name acts with local bands as openers. Most of them are lame but there are a few I like and try to see as often as possible. Every once in a while I'll see a member of one of those bands standing near me at a concert, in line at the grocery store or just walking down the street. I'm sometimes tempted to just walk up and say hello but I always remember what happaned when I tried that a long time ago: This was the early '80's, I'm living in Sacramento, into True West and had seen them several times. One day I'm at the Tower Records on Broadway and Jozef Becker, the drummer, is standing next to me. Our conversation goes something like this:
Me: "Hey, you're the drummer for True West, I see you every chance I get. You're really good".
Jozef: "X"
M: "Huh?"
J: "I'm the ex drummer for True West. They just kicked me out of the band!"
M: (Well, I was kind of stuck at that point.)
I was sent to Ivrea, Italy a while back for a couple of weeks for work. I ended up hanging about in the computer lab for 10 hours a day the entire time I was there except for 3 non-consecutive days off. The people I worked with were as nice to me as anyone I've ever been with on-site and gave me a lot of very helpful advice on what to do and how to get around on my days off. I don't speak any Italian but they spoke very good English. There were a couple of translation problems though:
- The people I worked with took me out to dinner to a very fancy restaurant when the job was almost over. They were translating the menu for me and he got to an item which he called "smoked hunter". I just said "Huh?" and he said "You know, that animal with the...umm" and starts gesturing at the top of his head. I asked "You mean antlers? That's a deer." and he started laughing. After a while he finally stopped and said "I knew it was one of the words from the title for that movie but I couldn't remember which one."
- I was invited to a party one night and the guy said there would be some American women there so I would have someone to talk to. Before I could respond he held up his hands and said they were all married and the husbands would be there. Not wanting to pass up a chance to talk to any woman at a party I said yes. He picked me up and on the way over said "There won't be a lot of people there who speak English so if you're boring I can bring you back to the hotel." I'm going to give him (and me!) the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant to say "If you're bored...".
My souvenir from Mexico City
I spent a few days in Mexico City on a business trip a while back. I'm a big Lewis Carroll fan and figured a good souvenir for my trip would be Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland in Spanish. I took a walk during lunch and found a book store where I found a nice hardback with good artwork I'd never seen before. I bought it and went back to the office where I showed the receptionist my find. When she saw the price, 100,000 pesos (I think that was around $35 at the time), I thought she was going to pass out.
She held the book to herself and said if I was going to walk around with it I should get a security guard. After she started thumbing through the book she looked up at me and said "Ron, this is in French!!!". It turned out I had walked into a bookstore that specialized in selling French books in Mexico City and I didn't even know the difference. So that's my souvenir from Mexico City, Alice in Wonderland in French.
Outrageous things people have said to me
- While working at a record store someone called asking for a specific song. I told her I wasn't familiar with it and asked what type of music it was. Her answer was "It's people singing with music in the background."
- While calling hotels trying to make a reservation I asked a clerk what the rates are. Her reply was "I'm too busy to tell you how much the rooms are but if you give me your credit card number I'll reserve one for you."
- While trying to explain to a clients system administrator a problem wasn't my fault he told me "I can agree with you technically on what is causing the problem but I'm going to have a hard time selling that to my boss. Could you give me an alternative?"
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