BUSKING AND WRITING, GIGGING AND MUAY THAI: THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

MY FATHER'S NAVY BAG (WORLD WAR TWO)

Busking.  Writing.  Gigging.  Muay Thai.  These are a few of my favorite things and, like a tourbillion; these favorite things are constantly swirling in my thoughts and behaviors.  I shall explain.

When it comes to busking I’m a projected wild-west waddy, a westward wayfarer on sixty-day summer buskations.  I’ve strummed on more than a few sidewalks in British Columbia major cities, Victoria, Kamloops, Salmon Arm, and Fernie for some examples.  And I’ve been on buskation in The Netherlands and Ireland.  I LOVE BUSKING!

As for my bread and butter jobs, I’ve always in functionary positions, stints teaching high school English, a side-career of teaching university Psychology, and private contract writing treatment reports for clients.  But ... since grade school, I’ve always fancied myself as a writer.  Writing has been my life.   Factoid:  I was an English major for my undergraduate degree.  (My graduate degree is in Psychology.)  Another factoid:  I am unfettered on my keyboard having had a couple of books published: A Wishbone Epistolary (Toronto University Press), The Creek (Amazon).  I contribute to my blog on a weekly basis (you’re reading it), and I’m always writing songs for public performance (pun intended because … I tend to do perform bar gigs … sometimes.

BOOK COVER

Most of my gigging is at the BUSHWAKKER BREWPUB in my home city.  These are my werewolf evenings, out howling until one or two o’clock in the morning, scheduled at the Bushwakker Brewpub four times or five times a year.  Sometimes I perform gigs at other venues … just sometimes though.  And I must state that the only reason I book gigs is too acquire that angst about being on a stage with other band mates, full of compromise over stage time, song choices, practice times, and money contracts.  Busking is so much easier because there is no compromise.

And I would be remiss not mentioning THE GRAND TRUNK TROUBADOURS (the GTT), our community service cover band that has been on the road for thirteen years playing at hospitals and retirement communities for audiences shut-in.

TOMMY, JAY, AND SELF ON THE BUSHWAKKER STAGE

Muay Thai is more than Muay Thai.  To get to Muay Thai has taken, literally, an adult lifetime of long-distance and trail running, a life-time of regimented weight training, a life-time of playing hockey (from pee-wee to midget to juvenile to senior to recreation league to pond), a life of intermittent martial arts (Karate and Muay Thai).  Without this (extensive) exercise background, I doubt, at my present age of 65, I could muster Muay Thai classes.  And I must apologize right now ... I am presenting myself as some Muay Thai master -- I'm not.

MY FIRST READ ON MUAY THAI

Muay Thai definitely helps keep me unflappable, though … I’m still flappable … I still rant on occasion.

Though I grok the benefits of busking, writing, gigging, and Muay Thai, I also have glozed the reality of each of them.  Busking is an endurance test, physically hard, hard work standing and walking while all the time slinging a guitar; good writing is re-writing, re-writing, re-writing; gigging is complicated and frustrating to organize, dealing with guitar slingers such as myself; Muay Thai is both physical and mental practice, practice, practice.  Busking; writing; gigging; Muay Thai; all roll-up-the-sleeves type of work, all filled with scratch-the-head mental angst and rehearsal.

Busking, writing, gigging, and Muay Thai are, not-so-strangely, all about rapport and harmonious relationships.  I, personally and professionally, strive to develop a rapport with everyone I meet.  I mean, really, INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS are EVERYTHING.   Anyone who believes otherwise is a dull-wit.  Factoid:  Corporate America is based on the rapport of interpersonal relationships which is harmony amongst humans.  There is no harmony amongst abstracts.

MY CHAUCERIAN PARADE OF YESTERWEEK …

A true confession:  Sometimes during a Pats hockey game when it’s exceedingly lopsided with the home team winning, and therefore boring, we laugh at Donald Trumpet not having any real friends.  Hmmm …  we shouldn’t laugh, we should feel sorry for him right … but then we’d have to feel sorry for his buddy, Vladimir who thinks he’s a real hockey player (yikes!).  Hmmm … TRUMPET and PUTIN … those two, in their private lives, should hook up and hang out forever.  TRUMPET PUTIN … the international bromance, Two Amigos love so to speak.  Donald Trumpet, don’t you just hate this Hispanic referenceJ … I’m hoping to be the brunt of your latest tweet … this is my blog marketing strategy after reading your revenge rant a couple mornings ago about Vanity Fair, after the magazine gave one of your restaurants a bad review … actually consistent with your revenge rants about Alec Baldwin’s Trump portrayals on Saturday Night Live … you are so hilarious … are you really going to be the next president of the United States of America … Dear reader, as stated above, I still rant on occasion.    

TYLER LEWINGTON AND COLBY WILLIAMS ROLLIN' IN 20, 662 TEDDIES (HERSHEY BEARS)

GATHERING 2600 TEDDIES (REGINA PATS)

SILVER SKATES

(SEE COLBY SAVES CHRISTMAS: THE SILVER SKATES posted December 21, 2014)

CATHY (MY COLLEAGUE AND GRAMMAR EXPERT) AT CHRISTMASTIME

SCARTH STREET AT CHRISTMASTIME

ON SCARTH STREET

 

SCARTH STREET

Meanwhile back on the ice .. the TEDDY BEAR TOSS at hockey games is for a very good cause.  The TEDDY BEAR TOSS is the one Christmastime game in which fans are encouraged to bring teddy bears and toss them onto the ice when their home team scores its first goal.  The teddies are gathered and donated as Xmas presents to children in hospitals and those children who are reliant on charities ...  

JUST ANOTHER REASON 
WHY HOCKEY IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!