Attack of the 50 Foot Blog – Page 36

Learning to Walk Across the Street in Vietnam

The traffic on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City was one of the most fascinating things I saw during my recent trip to Vietnam. I took more pictures and video of the traffic that I did of anything else. The first thing that you notice is the number of motorcycles and scooters. They are everywhere. They weaved in and out of traffic and around the van we rode in. We were told that the middle class had about a seven year period of growth in this part of the country and that the bicycles had been replaced by scooters. We were also told that the taxes on cars were extremely high, effectively tripling the cost of a car. This was intentional on the part of the government to try and discourage people from buying cars. The streets could not accommodate more cars. They were putting in subway systems to try to help.

Writing 25 Year Ago

I’m writing this a day after the 30th anniversary of marrying my wife, Andrea. A little over five years ago, our anniversary was approaching and I came up with the idea of writing a song in recognition of our anniversary. I started with the idea of just describing some of the things that were normal at that time with wedding ceremonies. I soon moved to describing the fact that a lot of people thought that we were perfectly suited for one another. I think the part of the song that everyone enjoys the most are where I talk about our insecurity about the relationship over the years. Most “love songs” aren’t honest enough to go there. I tried to wrap up the song saying that we were just as foolish as we were when we got married.

Elvis Week 2015

“Excuse me, can I get a picture of your backsides?” I have to admit that this was an unusual request, even for Elvis week. You might expect that the reaction would be to call for the cops or at least a good slap in the face. But the four women to whom I made the request turned around to look at me and the turned to let be get a picture of the backs of their matching shirts.

The shirts matched in style but the backs identified which generation each member of this family of Elvis fans was from. A unique idea that I had never seen in my years at Graceland. After that, I asked if I could get a picture of the fronts of their shirts. While I was getting this picture, they told me there were two other women in their group somewhere. I said I would try to get a picture of them if I ran into them.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Fifth Beatle

I’m not old enough to have been in the group The Beatles but I am old enough to remember them when they were still together. I was almost 2 years old when they arrived in the U.S. for the first time. I was 8 years old when Paul McCartney announced he was leaving the group. Meet the Beatles is one of my all-time favorite albums. They were a large part of the soundtrack of my youth.

As I learned more about the Beatles as a teenager in the 1970’s, I often heard people referred to as “The Fifth Beatle”. There are many articles on the internet that discuss who qualifies as a potential fifth Beatle. This is my list. I don’t claim that it is all inclusive. It has the ones that I feel are most noteworthy and my personal favorites.

Summer Jobs – More Snakes

When I talk about my college summer job experience and tell people that I crawled under houses for a pest control company, they usually assume that I encountered a lot of snakes. In all three years, I only saw one snake and I wrote about that in my previous post. I got to a point where I wasn’t really concerned about snakes because I never saw them. I didn’t like mice and rats because they scamper. When they would scamper, it would scare me and I would jump. You don’t need to jump when you are crawling under a house. You will almost always bang your head on a floor joist. I hurt myself sever times because of scampering rodents.

Summer Jobs – Looking For Snakes

When I was in college, my summers were spent working for a pest control company. The majority of this time was spent underneath houses. You would think with that much time under houses I might have seen a lot of snakes. There was only one time that I actually saw a snake. That was a time that my boss sent me on a job actually hunting for a snake.

The house where he sent me to was located in a part of town where we rarely went. The people who lived in these houses were the lowest of low income people. The houses were old and small. They would have been considered poorly constructed when they were built. They were more concerned about putting any food on the table instead of whether or not there might be a few bugs in the house. Things would have to be pretty bad for a family living in this house to even consider calling a pest control company. The family who lived in this particular house had called our company because they had seen a snake poking its head up between the boards in the floor of the house. I would say that was bad enough.

Summer Jobs – Bugs

When I was in high school, summers were filled with sun and fun. Many hours were spent in and around the pool. When I was in college, I worked for a pest control company during the summer for three years. I traded the poolside for the cab of a pickup truck and the crawlspace of many houses around West Tennessee. Three years at any job will yield many stories. This is one of them.

The owner of the company sent me on a job one day that he said would be a tough one. He said there would be a lot of bugs and I wouldn’t be able to get them all but not to be discouraged. It didn’t bother me because I would be doing a pest control service which at that time meant I would be going inside instead of a termite service which was always outside and beneath houses. This job would be cleaner and cooler than most of the jobs I went on.

More Thoughts on Talent Shows

In my last post, I talked about my fondness for talent contests. The appeal of a talent show is twofold. I appreciate the hard work that it takes for anyone to get up and put yourself out there for potential ridicule. I am not a professional musician. My music releases are for the most part glorified vanity projects. Anyone can do with their music exactly what I am doing for nearly next to nothing. I know there are many people more talented that I am who are unwilling to release their music because they don’t think their music is good enough. Anyone who is willing to perform live for other people deserves at least a little respect. And the encouragement we can give a budding talent may be just the thing they need to get them to the next level.

Newspaper Article

The following is the text of an article about me in the April 18, 2015 issue of The Jackson Sun:

“Art Wheeler always tries to find an interesting perspective for the songs he writes. A member of Grace United Methodist Church, he writes, performs and records both religious and non-religious songs.

“As far as religious music … I try to take familiar stories from the Bible and do a little different perspective on some of those stories,” Wheeler said.

He said he often takes the perspective of a member of the crowd who just happened to be there. His song “Water to Wine” tells the story of someone following Jesus around and witnessing miracles. His song about the book of Job tells the story from the perspective of the devil.

Talent Show Rules

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to help judge a talent show. I enjoy watching talent contests, especially when there is a possibility that some of the contestants may not be very good. I enjoy watching American Idol during the audition episodes because this is when you get to see a lot of people who have a false sense of confidence about their musical ability. Watching these train wrecks can be very entertaining. Beauty pageants with a talent component have the same appeal for me. It is unfortunate for these beautiful young women that they have to come up with some sort of talent to participate in these competitions. Many sing that should never sing. More of them should try ventriloquism. Bad ventriloquists are more tolerable than bad singers. There isn’t that much difference between a good and bad ventriloquist.

Anyway, this is the second talent show I’ve been asked to judge in the last few years. The previous talent show had younger children than this one. This contest had older kids and promised the possibility of moving on to bigger competitions. This was more serious business. I was possibly the oldest judge in the bunch but my music and entertainment credentials were the least among the bunch. I was with music educators, professional musicians and performers that I respected. I’m just some hack singer/songwriter that one of the organizers could count on when they needed a male among the judges.

As the contest began, I made a mental list of rules for myself. These rules were intended to help me be a better judge and help keep me from hurting the feelings of any young person in the competition. Here are my rules: