Friday Night Videos

The Wife and I have discussed Prince on several occasions. "Genius" is a term grossly over-used, but I don't think anything other than "musical genius" does justice to Prince's immeasurable talent. Had he lived in the 1700s or 1800s, he'd be known today as a composer comparable to the likes of Mozart. The 20th century figure I'd compare him to most would be Duke Ellington. Prince was always pushing musical boundaries, fusing different styles and flexing his creative muscles in weird and original ways. Funk, jazz, pop, rock, R&B, soul, classical... just about the only genre he didn't regularly utilize was country, and I'm not 100 percent sure on that one. Was he a flake? Erratic? Eccentric? An egomaniac? Sure. It's hard to tell where the performance ended and the real man began. He produced brilliant work, and he produced a lot of crap. That's the thing--he failed musically many, many times, but he never stopped. He constantly tried new things, and many efforts fell flat but those that worked were hailed as visionary. He was so prolific that he got into a huge blow-up with his record label, Warners, because they only wanted to release one album a year and Prince wanted to do something like three a year. Nuts. It's rumored that Prince has more than a thousand unreleased songs in his Paisley Park vault--not outtakes or demos or rejects or alternative mixes, but actual finished, polished, fully-produced songs just waiting to be released whenever the Purple One deemed it time to do so. The only other artist who left a comparable legacy is (as far as I know) Frank Zappa, who left behind enough material for a dozen or more albums at the time of his death, the last of which was finally released just a couple years ago. I expect we'll be getting new Prince material for decades to come.

In 1988, I managed to get ahold of a bootleg copy of Prince's legendary Black Album, which was pulled from distribution right at the point of release because of a weird dream he had. That tape was a prized possession for years, until a friend's tape player chewed it up in early 1994. To say I was upset was an understatement. It was a damn cool album. I mean, any album that starts off with "Le Grind" can't go wrong. Fortunately, an official version of that album actually made it to market later that year, so I was able to replace the lost take with a more durable CD. That doesn't mean much, other than the fact that for a few years I was the cool guy who had a mythical album nobody else could get--at least as far as Prince fans were concerned.

Alas, Prince has fiercely fought to keep his music and videos offline, almost as hard as he's fought to keep Weird Al from parodying any of his songs. Therefore there are no official Prince videos to feature on Friday Night Videos. The only one I can find is "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from the George Harrison tribute at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2004, featuring Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, Tom Petty and a bunch of other folks. Prince upstages them all with a blistering solo that reminded everyone that no matter how great a performer, singer and songwriter he may be, he was still a much better guitarist than almost anyone gave him credit for.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

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And so it begins...

I've made no secret that the hardest thing for me about selling our old house (apart from the memories left behind) was parting with my office. I built floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in there, my small approximation of the spectacular formal libraries one always saw in those Agatha Christie-style whodunit films from decades past. I began it about two years after we'd moved in, in May of 2005 and finished it in November of 2005. Unfortunately, all of my meticulously-photographed stages of progress were hosted by a former internet provider that stopped offering residential service a decade ago, so it would appear all of those photos are lost. Here's one we took when we first put the house on the market at the end of 2014 to give you a frame of reference:

I'd never attempted a project of that scale, so my learning curve was a steep one riddled with trail-and-error (mostly error). The new office, however, is half again as big as my old one with ceilings about 16 inches taller. It's not exactly build-a-photo-studio challenging, but it's no day at the park, either. With the completion of my workbench the other day, I saw no reason to delay any further. Last year, sometime after I finished The Wife's photo studio, I closed in the large entry to the former dining room, which is designated my office. Over the past 10 months or so I've been purchasing cabinetry here and there with which to build my bookcase upon, so as to not break the bank all at once. I started with an unfinished corner cabinet on clearance from McCoy's--spruce, I think. Then I picked up unfinished horizontal, double cabinets from Home Depot when they were on sale--these are oak. As happened back in 2005, I ran into some logistical problems. The cabinetry I'd planned on using wouldn't fit in the space I had available, and the pieces I did need had been discontinued. Great. Scrounging the internet, I found some building supply clearance outlets in the DFW area that had two narrow, vertical cabinets just the right size for me. It was a hassle and shipping costs more than made up for any savings I realized by getting discontinued cabinets, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

But some mistakes are there to be learned from. In 2005, I picked up a polyurethane stain that looked great in the store, but turned out to be pretty darn ugly when applied. I ended up having to sand everything down, which was an unpleasant experience. I was never able to get the issue resolved to my satisfaction. Also, back then, The Wife and I were wary about dark woods and stains, since our house didn't have an over-abundance of window light. I eventually went with a golden oak stain, which is the default neutral wood color for all subdivision construction. So this time around, I wanted to avoid that cheap look and go with a deeper, richer, warmer wood color. We really loved the flooring at the old house, but since that has naturally been discontinued, I found another type of laminate that is very similar and set out to try and come up with a stain that would come close to matching it. I picked up one can each of Minwax and Rustoleum's Dark Walnut stain, because they both looked great in the store. But remembering my folly with the cherry wood stain before, I experimented on pine plywood first. It's a good thing I did:

The big board on the right was my initial test subject. The Minwax, on the bottom, looked like black ink spread over white wood, imparting impressive grain texture but zero underlying color. The Rustoleum, on top, boasts of incorporating advanced nano-sized pigments for better penetration. What it did was give me brown wood. Chocolate brown. Gunshoe brown. Buster Brown. Crayola brown. Neither looked like the in-store samples. Neither was acceptable. What I needed, I realized, was a layered approach. I needed the raw wood to already have a deeper base color so that the dark walnut stain could just focus on accenting the grain. Since the Rustoleum was super-thick and not so easy to work with (and I didn't like the brown color anyway) I picked up a can of Minwax's lighter "Special Walnut." Using another scrap of pine (middle, above) I stained it with Special Walnut, then after a three-hour break, went over it again with Dark Walnut. The result was very much closer to what I wanted. There's a lot of glare in the image above, but the image below shows the color match between the pine and floor sample much better. In reality, the color difference isn't even this noticeable--the mixed flourescent and flash of the garage really did a number on the white balance in these photos.

Encouraged, I removed all the doors from my accumulated cabinets. Seeing as how oak and spruce differ from pine, the stain could still turn out to be a mistake, so I made the strategic decision to stain the insides of the doors first, just in case.

To hedge my bets even further, I broke down and bought a can of pre-stain treatment, which is supposed to prevent blotches from forming and ensure an even coat of stain. That's never been a big problem for me, but I'm trying to up my game on this one. The pre-stain went on easily and gave it a familiar honey oak hue. The instructions said to wipe off any excess after 10 minutes, but the rag I ran over the wood came away clean.

The next step was to apply the Special Walnut. Using a foam brush, I applied the stuff and was a little worried at first, as it appeared much darker than I expected. Uh-oh. After five minutes I wiped a section of one door and found that the wood hadn't absorbed very much--it was still quite light, so I left the remaining stain on the others for 15 minutes before wiping. It looked quite nice. Were I not going for a specific look, I might've stopped right there. As it was, I set the doors aside for a three-to-four hour dry.

Next up... hoo boy. Remember how I said the first bit of cabinetry I got was a corner piece made of spruce? Yeah, well, this bad boy is already becoming a pain in the ass. For the first time I realized that it does not have molding on the front of the door--it's simply flat, so visually it stands out quite obviously from the other cabinets. I'm not sure what I will do about that--I may get some boards and try to router out an approximation of the trim for it. Will have to think on that. Of more immediate concern, though, is the fact that spruce doesn't really want to take the stain, even after I sanded the surface to remove accumulated grime (it'd been a display model, after all). The grain's not differentiating as much with the spruce as with the oak, so I have a strong suspicion this one's going to give me trouble this entire build.

After the requisite drying period, I broke out the Minwax Dark Walnut and applied it with a foam brush. I wiped one spot after 5 minutes, saw that the underneath was still relatively light, so left it on for the entire 15 minutes before wiping away. Jumpin' Jehosaphat, that surely does look pretty! Below, right, is the wood with only the Special Walnut applied, and left is the wood with the Dark Walnut soaking in. The middle piece is the finished product. To say I'm pleased is an understatement. There's a tonal depth to the wood that my single stain applications don't come anywhere close to matching. Hopefully, I'll be able to get the fronts of the doors completed tonight and turn my attention to the cabinets themselves this weekend.

Now Playing: Prince The Black Album
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Tool time!

Some of you may or may not remember a couple of weeks when I realized (and subsequently posted on Facebook) that after 13 years and two homes here in New Braunfels where I undertook quite a few of building and remodeling projects of varying ambition, I didn't actually have a workbench with which to facilitate those various projects. Kind of a d'oh! moment for me. It was a deficiency I needed to rectify, and I did:

This is, to put it mildly, unusual for me. I always have a long queue of jobs that "need to be done" and tend to stick to them on a first-come, first-served basis. But, of course, the workbench would make so many of those easier--not to mention help tidy up the garage--that I jumped it to the head of the line. The Wife even said, as I was cutting lumber that first weekend, "When you said you were going to build a workbench, I didn't realize you meant right now." If you're curious, here is the set of plans I used, with a few minor tweaks of my own. I used a 2x4 as a backstop and made the bench top wider than the plans called for so I could double-layer the overhangs to anchor a vise on one end and a bench grinder on the other (still need to get the grinder, though). The pegboard above just seemed like a necessary addition. The "one-day" project actually took a week to complete construction, doing a little bit every evening, then several more days to apply the polyurethane and let it dry between coats. A word of warning, though--the plan instructions are not very clear in places, so trial-and-error is necessary on occasion. And I don't know what they were smoking when they calculated the cost, but unless you're one of those folks who has a lot of lumber and assorted parts stockpiled, the total cost is going to be closer to $150-200 than the absurdly low $20-100 estimate they cite.

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Friday Night Videos

Okay, there's no denying that Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show was politically incorrect to an amazing degree back in the day, but the group had such a knucklehead charm about it that they still kinda get away with it. Case in point: "Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk." Overall, this was clearly a cheap video to make, but I hope the woman was well paid, because her butt gets more screen time than all of the other elements in the video combined. Has anyone ever done a serious study on the fetishization of women's blue jeans in the late 70s/early 80s? Because goodness, it was big business at the time! I'm guessing that this coincided with the first jeans cut and marketed specifically for women, but that's just based on vague memories that may or may not be accurate. If any social historians want to take up this area of research, this Dr. Hook video is a good place to start.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Merle Haggard.

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Chicken Ranch report no. 63: Order now! Beat the rush!

It's with a degree of sadness that I report my editor and the History Press, Christen Thompson, has accepted another job and is departing the company at the end of the week. All the heavy lifting has been completed on Inside the Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse, so this move shouldn't really impact my book, but still. Christen took over when my acquiring editor departed, and she worked hard to "get" my book and the approach I was taking. She brought some of those misconceptions spread by the film version with her, but soon figured out what I was doing with the Chicken Ranch and zeroed in on my wavelength. We exchanged what seemed like a thousand emails going back and forth on titles, getting deep into the weeds with discussion of SEO, advertising restrictions the title could encounter and the like. When I turned in a final manuscript almost 10,000 words longer than what my contract called for, she didn't demand I cut it but pushed it through the editorial process intact. She inadvertently paid me a huge compliment by saying "few of our books actually are as nuanced" as Inside the Chicken Ranch, which was something I think I really needed to hear at that point of the conversation. While I expect the book to do just fine without her, I'm going to miss having someone on the inside to experience the fruition of this years-long Quixotic quest with. She did a good job, and will be missed.

On the other hand, I've got some small but significant information to share with you good folks today. For the past seven years, people everywhere I go have asked me "Where can I buy your book?" or "When can I by your book?" or "Dude, do you have a book or not?" Well, now I can answer "Yes!" to all of those, although that answer won't really make much sense for the first two questions. What I'm trying to say is that Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse is now listed on both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com! Pre-orders aren't active at Amazon, but Barnes and Noble will be more than happy to let you reserve a copy. It doesn't seem to be listed with Hastings, Books a Million, Book People or Powell's yet, but I'll keep checking and update when it is.

And, finally, History Press has started initial promotion of my book on the History Press blog! It's actually just a reprint of my blog post here from last week, but it's alerting a wider world to the shenanigans I've wrought. I expect to contribute more posts between now and August.

Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Publication Date: August 1, 2016
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4

And remember, Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available if you just can't wait for August 1 to get here:

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke

Now Playing: Various Artists Best of Bond... James Bond: 50 Years 50 Tracks
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Friday Night Videos

I've posted way, way too many tributes to singers who've died this past year. The latest legend to go is Merle Haggard, who was actually supposed to play here in New Braunfels next week with Willie Nelson. They've played here a couple times in the past, and I kept telling myself I'd catch their show the next time they came through. Now it's too late. Everyone else is talking about his songs "Mama Tried" and "Okie from Muskogee," and while those are great songs, my favorite of his has always been "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink." There's no deeper hidden meanings or twists in the lyrics--it's just a straight-ahead, wallow-in-misery country song about a doomed relationship that makes no apologies for what it is. One has to admire such a strong sense of purpose.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Georgia Satellites.

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Chicken Ranch report no. 62: KTRK-TV

Guess where I spent yesterday morning? La Grange! I swear, I've visited La Grange more times in the past couple years than in all the 18 I spent growing up right down the road in Columbus. They're going to have to make me an honorary La Granger if I keep this up.

Let me back up a little. On Monday, I received an unexpected email from Pooja Lodhia a reporter with KTRK-TV out of Houston. For those of you not familiar with H-Town broadcasting, KTRK is better-known as Channel 13, the former home of the late Marvin Zindler. Yes, the television personality who shut down the Chicken Ranch in 1973. Can you see where this is going?

Pooja explained that she, Steve Campion and a cameraman were putting together a little road trip to do a series of feature stories for the spring. I suspect they were looking for an excuse to get out of Houston and just have a little fun traveling around. They pitched a trip to La Grange to their producers and were approved, so Pooja wanted to know if I could meet them when they arrived in La Grange and talk a little about Marvin Zindler and the Chicken Ranch.

After explaining that I didn't actually live in La Grange, I agreed to meet them in the late morning. Then I did them one better--I got permission from the property owner to give them a tour of the actual Chicken Ranch ruins. Let me tell you, they had a great time seeing what remained of the historic site, learning some of the background of those infamous events that happened before any of them were even born. When they drove up looking for a place to park, I told them "Drive up there a piece, then hang a left at the bluebonnets." Campion exploded in laughter, insisting "That is the most Texas thing I've ever heard anybody say." You can see we started off on the right foot. We talked for close to two hours, and by the time they had to leave to make another interview appointment in Luling, they said a lot of the myths surrounding the place made a lot more sense to them now. They also seemed genuinely enthusiastic about Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch (forthcoming August 1 from the History Press) and said they want to do something with me for broadcast in Houston once the book is out. Which I'm entirely in favor of, since I have a sneaking suspicion this topic will find a ready audience there.

In my time I've dealt with reporters who've been pushy, disorganized, disinterested... you name it. Pooja and Steve were the exact opposite. They were fun and engaging and downright pleasant to spend time with. I believe the technical term is "Good People." They promised to let me know as soon as the segment is scheduled to air, and when I know I will pass that information along here. Even if you're not in the Houston area, the piece should be available online or via the KTRK mobile app. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Publication Date: August 1, 2016
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4

And remember, Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available if you just can't wait for August 1 to get here:

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke

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