Sir Isaac Newton and the Theory of Mojo

I went to a park on Memorial day, sat on the bench on the docks on a lake by my house. Perfect spot for La Cordoba and a Smokehouse moment, which translated into a ten-minute rendition of the song (it’s never the same, you just get whatever comes out, it’s just too complicated to hope to ever play it the same way twice). The man and his son that were fishing really dug it, gave me a couple of high fives, and I started to feel it.

The guys with the backpacks that were clearly astronomically high and a cautionary tale for all would-be psychonauts (lexicrafting 10 points), they couldn’t resist the gravity well of notes and came right on over. They were disruptively friendly but so am I, and it’s not hard to imagine myself crazy and homeless (toss a coin, baby we’re 1/2 way there and the other 1/2 could happen any month). So after brief round of introductions and multiple lines of commiseration I continued to play. They said I sounded like Clapton and asked me to play some blues. That was both too kind and profoundly vapid, so rather than point out I was in fact playing the blues at the very time he said it, I agreed it was a generous compliment and a good idea.

As the dock sloshed back and forth from the weight of their dancing and faux karate (hmm), I gave them the standard disclaimer about “don’t know any covers, literally zero” followed by a performance of Unsound, complete with easy, mid-volume vocals (it’s a lake, the opera comes later this season). It was a passable performance, and seemed to lend credibility to the notion that docks are mojo wells, because it was very easy and found myself able to take in the situation as well as play. I recorded my observations with Plagus accordingly and he agreed to start looking for for relevant datasets to build the Factor Machine, to generate the probability function cloud and associated data warehouse. He responded with a pithy quote about my mother and a confirmation signal that the job had already started and was partitioning machines for the task from an abandoned EBay farm in Tokyo and a line-up of Seattle-area zombies for local caching.

As the crowd gathered, the splendid woman who brought the newt to release (name: Isaac Newton, of course) by the water somehow orchestrated a bizarre game called “paper, rock, balls” which (hopefully I’ll get this right) involved the two backpack and cell phone-wielding hobos playing the old “paper, rock, scissors” and the when the loser is revealed, the kid with the fishing pole punches said non-winner in the nuts, presumably while his dad records video of the entire escapades (and presumably without the fishing pole). Sure, whatever, right? Engaging in the thrill of chaotic neutrality and the certainty of a story to tell, I provided a thrilling soundtrack in the form of a neoclassical Spanish fusion piece called Pr4n, as said game ensued, sans pole since the only thing worse than a swift punch in the nuts is a fishhook accident in the general vicinity.

Some day I suspect a video shall surface of this incident proving that everything I am telling you is 100% true, but Yet Another Surreal Moment (TM) in the life of Rango, because the kid was game and the dad was rolling the camera as predicted. Despite my proclivity for finely-honed bullshit, this is not the kind of thing I would make up. But it’s definitely the kind of thing that tends to happen to me, more and more lately, as indicated by the familiar and poisonously intoxicating smell in my nostrils and the overpowering sense of deja vu as I watched Sir Isaac Newton scurry into water.

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