(second block, fourth letter of the prisoners' quadratic tap code...)

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Mon Feb, 20 2006

Nightmare

Jesus...

I'm not feeling well: creeping aches and a slight fever like some kinda flu bug is trying to get the drop on me. I haven't done a damned thing all day today except watch the Daytona 500 and read bits of Vol. IV of Durant. (This, for technical reasons: I'm still not all the way out of Vol. III yet.) So, I was just sitting in the living room reading: De'lympics is on, and I hear the damned ice-dancing commentationalizers scream. I look up to see the Canadian pair of Dubreuil & Lauzon scrambling to their blades, at the very end of their routine. They're trying to smile their way out of something bad, and I have no idea what it is, until NBC goes to the replay.

Holy shit. Holy shit.

Look at the photograph here, if you didn't see it happen.

Marie-France Dubreuil lost her grip on her partner during a spin, and she went flyin'. Not for very long, of course. She landed on her right hip. Like: right on that hip.

This the stuff of my nightmares, ever since 1990, when I broke my right hip in a motorcycle crash. I'm telling you: I can be sitting dead still and quite comfortably, or laying in bed with the lights out and nothing going on except in my head, and the very idea of falling on a hard surface just shoots shivers up my spine. To see something like that is unspeakably awful to me.

Jesus.

She didn't break anything, but that was just horrifying.

Okay, then: back to Byzantium.

Wow.

Feb 20, 06 | 2:11 am
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AxeBites

Various guitars I see floating by, mostly Gibson and mostly eBay.

Early Norlin ES-335 -- 1970, in Walnut ("ES-335TDW"). This is a period-piece look and feel, and arguably the sound as well but that's to cut things very finely. A "classic" 335 would be the original of 1958 in the Sunburst or Natural finish, or the Cherry Red of 1959; the Walnut of 1970 (second year of that finish offering) is not really a "classic" 335. In the history of the Gibson aesthetic, this is analogous to, say, vertically-striped polyester bell-bottoms or Bahama Blue shag carpeting. None of this is to say that they're not cool guitars, and this is a nice one. Excellent photographs.

Chrome hardware, featuring the trapeze tailpiece (like my L-47 and I've always liked it) and ABR-1 bridge with period-typical nylon saddles. Bound rosewood fretboard, with small block markers, and then the crown inlay at the machine head. These would be the T-top Humbuckers. Vintage Nazis would moan that the upper bouts are pointy (the body templates were wearing-out in the factory) and the fourteen-degree machine head with the volute signals a sometimes not-fun era of the line, but these things really do rock or moan or whatever you want a 335-type semi-hollow to do. ...which, of course, is because it really is a 335.


In the months since I've let AxeBites languish all to bleedin' hell, Gibson's Robot Guitar technology has sifted out to other models than the original Les Paul application. I don't know how it's going: I still haven't even seen one of these self-tuners. I don't see piles of them burning on the sides of the highway, nor reverent hangings in display cases over bars, so who knows? This 2008 Robot SG is ready to rock in the Metallic Red. Nickel hardware; it's the stoptail wired for data to send to the tuners, with dual Humbuckers. It's a bound rosewood fretboard, but I really like the single-bound machine head with the crown inlay. That's a real cool old-school look, right there, to set off that crazy-ass color. {nod}