On being or not being a d**k

Ive thought a lot lately about personal growth. Mainly, I think, because for me 55 would be a nice age to able to say you have your shit together. Was it Ericson that had all the phases culminating in a life's philosophy?
What Ive  come up with is this.
Try not to be a dick. Really.
Because short of an exorcism, not much is going to change between now and Thursday.
  It's been interesting is trying to identify the various avenues of being a dick. Or hopefully, just acting LIKE one.
For the male population in general there are some norms
 Theres the bit about not respecting your marriage vows.
Ive never had a problem there. Honestly.
But some guys would point that fact  out, and the fact I state that, as evidence of BEING a dick, not in the "club" , you know?
To that I say theres no difference between the behaviour that one call  infidelity to sterilize it, or the behaviour that leads to some one pointing out one should have kept one's dick in one's pants.
 Now you know Im a little neurotic as well , if you read carefully there.

So maybe thats a bad logical track to follow.

Ok then. Im an only child of middle class Jewish parents from the Boston area ( Newton)
Uh oh.
 Therefore I have some behavior norms Ive really needed to shed , and am still discovering more.

"Without therapy?"

Life is therapy enough

Get over yourself.

Which would be  a completely dickheaded thing to say to somebody else , but its become a bit of a mantra that I say to myself, about myself.

 Ive had some success along the following lines. If im in a good mood, which is normal for me if im not too tired -
 I can get "myself' out of the way completely when dealing with kids .99 percent of the time.
I still get caught by those kids that really lie well, in that they are totally placid whilst pulling your chain. I get angry.
 I can be totally non-responsive to others' dickheaded behavior, male or female.
To respond in kind is just as bad
 Ive learned to recognize when buttons( mine or others) are being pushed that would lead to the anger- dickhead response. Good time to leave the room either way.

Where I fail, is that sometimes my defenses go completely down , and there will be a bad day, or at least a good rant ahead if encounter particularly shmo-like behaviour.

 Im not competitive in the way many guys are, I never played team sports for a coach ( those I knew in high school I really couldnt stand to listen to them talk at all- to me they were boneheads). Im just not of that "club".
 So I had to really change behaviour/ belief systems when it turned out my 2 older daughters were choosing to pursue sports. Thats another days blog, however.
Im now a little  reticent to go on about my kids, and if I find myself doing it I will always turn the conversation to ask about the other persons kids.
Thats the behavior norm in particular I had to change TO.
I still know plenty of people who think they are the first people ever to have a child. Who dont leave room for anything ELSE in the conversation . Dicks.

 Theres plenty of obnoxious parent behavior around. But a short side story is in order here.

        A wedding my band is playing at Stowehof, circa 1987.
Somehow  the grandmother of the bride or maybe groom, obviously identifies me as being jewish,  as                                                                                                       she comes over to me on break and says ( in slight east European accent)
      "You have a nice little band. My son, the Doctor, dabbles in music. So what do you do for a living?"
Slice, dice and horror.
Jews are just better at being ultimately horrible when talking about their kids.
 And boy do they pass it on.

So what precipitated this today?
A great blog by my daughter Emma, and a reminder from my wife that I had left the car a mess, thus being  a dick.

Last evening was the last wedding of the 2011 season for we of the Grippo Funk Band.
Dave (Grippo) and I both are turning 55 shortly. I think it is high time to start getting some of my thoughts, memories and observations of our musical escapades (since 1983!) down and maybe as The Kinks put it, "my politics and theories on religion".

Just kidding there, but that should help set the tone...and they will bleed through anyway Im sure.

So in no particular order I will proceed.

Our band is a highly evolved musical-social unit. We work extremely well together. We are in fact family.
Musically we have had enough time to become completely familiar with each others playing, and can be totally reactive in the moment often group improvising , and at best ,its as good as it gets.
 So losing a member is a very big deal. We haven't had to deal with it for years , and in the past when we did it was usually stemming from some extreme negative that had to be dealt with.

      Not so with our guitarist, David Diamond. Sent to us at 19 years old by master guitarist and teacher Paul Asbell at the start our ten year Monday night run at Red Square in Burlington VT, he became a master himself. Between the two of us, we had mostly intuitively worked out a guitar and piano/organ concept that served the band well , and was part of our sound and creative bed, which is what we thrive on.
Dave. D and his wife are expecting their first kid, and have family in the N.Y.- N.J .area, so Dave got a Masters in accounting,  became a CPA, and moved to New Jersey 2 weeks ago. He let us know in June, and all I could say to him was that he was irreplaceable. And, we love the guy. Its hard.

We have a gifted young man, Max Bronstein -Paritz in the chair now, who is more than up to the challenge. It wont take too long for him to integrate into what is a heavy duty situation for sure.
His first few gigs have also been without our regular drummer , Russ Lawton who is out on tour with Trey Anastasio. Aaron Bellamy is a killer drummer from Boston, but again, how do you come into a situation with 15 years of stuff worked out that we dont even think about at all?

Im off to chauffeur daughter no2 to soccer in Burlington. Plenty of material for the future here.