Piffy Elephant Shirt

Last I checked, two of my ex-trumpet teachers were in the Toledo Symphony, though I didn’t study with either of them in Toledo: Lauraine Carpenter, who is the principal trumpet, and Mel Harsh. At one lesson, I was playing something too fast and Lauraine asked, “What’s the rush? Got a date?”

I was telling her once about an event that another trumpet player and I attended. I said we were dressed casually; Dean was wearing a t-shirt with an elephant on it. “That’s casual,” she agreed.

Another teacher was a very butch lead trumpet player. One time I arrived for my lesson with a copy of People magazine. “I brought the 50 most beautiful people in case we get bored of playing the trumpet.” “Good thinking,” she said without missing a beat.

I had another teacher who played in the San Francisco Symphony and one who played for Hollywood movies and one who played with Frank Sinatra. Last but not least, I had one who canceled our first lesson because he had a sty in his eye. (Is there any other place you can have a sty?) But then he called to say that all was well and he could come, as stuff had squirted out of his eye. He came over and, marveling, told me again the story of his eye draining. I was slightly taken aback, but he turned out to be a really delightful person who wrote a lot of great etudes that I still have a stack of. I used to go hear him play with other musicians. Once he asked if I’d be staying for the second half of a show. I said I would be and he said, “Then I’ll continue to play with verve.”

At our first lesson, he picked up a cup in my kitchen for water. It turned out to be a Pyrex measuring cup, which he hadn’t realized. He joked, “I have to know how much I’m taking in.”

In due time, he and his wife had a little girl. He reported that one day his toddler saw a pea on the floor and said, “What’s that, a bug?”

I played with the Chinatown funeral marching band a handful of times. One of my trumpet teachers was also involved and used to joke, “My, that was a gloomy tune. Let’s go for something a little more upbeat.” Or he’d say, “They said we can play at will. Which one’s Will?”

When I played in a big band at City College of San Francisco, the trombone players were seated in front of the trumpets. It’s doubtful that any of them can hear today. One of them used to turn around and say, “Save some for your fans.”

I sent Sir Dave a link the other day and he wrote back, “Very piffy.”
“Is that good?” I asked.
“Prebly.”

Over the weekend Tom and I saw the movie Proof, and I made pinto beans and brown rice and butter cookies with lemon frosting. This was my first try making cookies with only vegan ingredients—fake butter and egg replacer—and they are excellent.

I had made a classic OO error in deciding to give up Venezuelan chocolate because it’s probably full of pesticides. I found myself eating about five bars a day and finally realized what was happening. I vowed that I will always have Venezuelan chocolate on hand and the panicked consumption stopped.

This morning, which is again rainy, I saw a somewhat hair-raising incident involving a Coca-Cola truck and a cyclist on Market St. The cyclist was traveling east near Third St. The righthand lane is not particularly wide there, so she was, rightly, riding in the center of the lane. The truck driver drove up right behind her and honked his horn. If it had been me in front of that truck, I would have been scared. I followed the truck until it stopped so I could write down the license number and see what the driver looked like. When the driver got out, he saw me writing and asked if there was a problem. I told him that the cyclist had a right to that lane of traffic and that it had appeared to be an act of intimidation when he honked at her. He said the cyclist was riding unsafely, yawing (he didn’t use that word) from one side of the lane to the other, so he was warning her that danger lurked behind. I didn’t see the cyclist doing anything out of the ordinary.

I’m not sure why the driver assumed the cyclist was going to interpret the horn honking right behind her to mean, “I don’t like the way you’re cycling.” After all, it could also mean, “I don’t like the color of your rain pants.” It could mean, “I’m trying to get the lid off my latte and my elbow hit the horn.” But I think it’s usually interpreted to mean, “Get the hell out of my way or I’ll kill you,” and I suspect that is often exactly what it means.