Over a Half Million Blog Visits...

One of my biggest blog fans was my late father in Law Bill Cooney. He urged me to monetize the blog with ads so I could make money off of it. Bill was a retired school teacher and I was honored he thought the writing was that good and apparently other people think so too because this year my blog has surpassed a half million visits.   

When Bill suggested this I was all pure and everything and at the time the internet was a different place but now after 3257 posts and seeing online influencers make obscene amounts of money in a month I almost think, Why Not Me?

This blog app does offer placing ads and with the clicks of readers the traffic will pay money. My wife says don't do it, you don't need to. Maybe after I'm gone the kids will do it and the legacy money will pay my great grandchildren's college expenses. Of course I'm assuming that college as we know it will still exist and not be free. 

Maybe no one will click the ads, whatever they might be, because the online world has moved on past blogs to TicTok, Substack and other things I don't know about or even use. 

What do you think? Give me the clicks, man!  

 

 

Time for the Big Screen Give Away Contest...

 If you are a long time reader of this blog you remember how we financed those early days on the internet. I'm talking about those days before all the millions of dollars, before Drum and Tuba Christmas was so profitable and all the ways that the rich people we became make money that ya'll don't even know about. 

So it's time we take a step back in time to those days when you could send in $39,000 and we would enter you in a drawing for a big screen TV. Let's do that now. I'll leave a link to my Venmo at the bottom of this page. Send the money and you are entered. 

I guess my first TV was a service award 12 inch black and white that my dad got from his employer which he gave to me and severed me well until I was a full grown man and them my dad got in on a deal at the savings and loan where if you opened an account you got a 15 inch color portable, remember color portables? He also gave this to me. My dad did not need these TVs because he had one of those Curtis Mathis serious furniture wooden models which took four large sweating men to deliver and had about 4 working parts that the repair man carried on his truck. If the set had operating problems the repair man came to your house and just replaced which ever part was found faulty. With four parts it was not hard.

Later when I had kids and needed an automatic baby sitter I bought one of those little sets like your boss uses to play the safety video on at work with the built in VCR. I think it was color. The kids watched it till the drool pooled in their laps. I was a terrible parent, not because of the drool but because I never gave any of them a TV. 

So apparently TVs got bigger, hey what ever happened to the miniaturization of the future, and no one fixed them anymore and they threw them out like a cigarette during a burn ban on the side of the road and actually I'm doing a public service if I pick them up and give them away. 

A few years ago the kids did give us a TV. You know how it is when your parents are so embarrassing. It was not too big, maybe 24 or 30 inches. I did have to add a sound bar to hear it well because, well, Fender amps and so far I have not needed to give it away or throw it out on the side of the road. I usually watch it one to two hours most nights. I do wonder what I was doing with that time in all those years before when I was unknowingly under TVed.

Enter for a big screen by scanning the thing below. Probably the first one to put in $39,000, which is a significant number because the first math problem my drummer learned to work was 13x3000. She just took to it, IDK. 

      

Those Blog Visits Are Totaling Up...

I had been building and selling cigar box guitars and a musician friend asked about them and I said, "check out my blog, there's pictures of some I've made," and gave him a business card with the address. Now a days it would be that picture of a thing that probably has a name but I don't know it that you scan with your phone to be taken right to the site but when my friend heard the word "blog" he said "you don't say bad things about ____ on there do you" and named the sitting president. He went on to say he would not be able to read it if I had said bad things. 

I guess I had not said anything bad about _____ because he bought a cigar box guitar.  His reaction made me see that apparently some folks think a negative thing at the use of the word blog. I'm the same way when someone mentions their podcast. I've never been able to get past the first 30 minutes of a podcast where they talk about how great it is they are having a podcast. 

Technically I guess the reading comprehension required for a blog is a lot more exhausting that the listening of a podcast so I guess it is of note that in the almost 18 years of blog operation I have going on I will probably hit 2000,000 page visits sometime next month. I thank all of those that took the time.              

Of course the last couple of blog posts have had only 3 visits so the success is based on the ever popular posts Another Guitar Story  and the Girls on the Beach Blog Post. There's also a blog posts that involves an ex son in law that's had 540 visits for some unknown reason but we won't link that here. 

Back when I started writing this blog my father in law, the late Bill Cooney urged me to monetize the blog with ads. I could link to the type of perch jig I use when I'm out in the canoe and while I'm at it the type of canoe and so on on Amazon and if you clicked the link I'd get .0002 of a cent or something like that. At the time I was pure, a writer who wrote. 

Now I think "well what if everyone of those 200,000 visits had scanned that thing I don't know the name of that I have started putting at the end of the blog when I think about it and donated a dollar it would have been a nice chunk of change." I mean not life changing money because after all in my life I've bought a house, about a dozen or so cars, several outboard motors, put all my kids that wanted it through college, put myself through college, visited at least half the states and at least 8 foreign countries, saved up a couple of retirement 401ks that are speculated to last me till I'm 90 years old gone and done what I wanted and ate pretty much what I pleased. $200,000 I'm here to tell you isn't what it used to be and wouldn't cover all that. 

What it would do would maybe put me in Gibson guitar territory. Which I don't know that I really need at this point because I mostly play at backyard fish fries using my old Student Princes and somehow I don't think all that would be as much fun with expensive guitars. There's always a guy going to sit down where you lay it and Student Princes are pretty rugged.  

I have been paid a little now and then to write someone a blog and I certainly sold cigar box guitars through the blog and I play my best when I'm singing for my supper so I guess I've done all right.

Thanks for reading and here's this thing I don't know the name of. Someone actually left an anonymous comment on the blog about how much they enjoyed it "but couldn't justify leaving me any money" whatever that means. At least I got some blog material from the visit and the comment. 

    

      

 

The Last Good Year...

 The year 2019 certainly had some ups and downs. All years do. Then 2020 came along, which kind of like 2019 had ups and downs also. One feature of 2020 was the stay at home efforts to contain Covid 19. Notice I did not say it was a down because worse things can happen. Now I have tested positive for Covid and am quarantined at home with a mild case. A friend, also positive described it as "stuck inside this Covid jail cell." All this stay at home time has led to excess TV watching which I have had enough of and I think that is the worst thing about all this. The kids gave us the TV we own for Christmas in 2016. I think that was the last good year and I am trying to feature what I was doing with my time before I had TV and these on demand channels. 

We tried to prevent TV from becoming the center of things when the family was young and I always liked musician Frank Zappa's take on the subject. When the kids were little we had no cable, no rabbit ears and only DVD movies that had been mostly taped by Cathy's mom, Linda to watch. It was classic material and they watched it a million times but if I came in to find them on the TV I let them finish their show and hustled them on to more active endeavors. It usually meant endeavors I would be involved in but most people would call that old school good parenting but don't get too excited. There was certainly some old school bad parenting that went along with this but you try your best. Like I said, there are ups and downs to each year. 

I did not realize how different thigs were in our household till Morgan became old enough he started spending the night out with friends. One day he said, "You are not like other dads." I said, "How so? What do they do?" He replied "Sit in a chair watching sports." 

After the kids all left home me and Cathy kind of struggled along with one of those little TV sets with a VCR built in. It was the kind of thing found in your work place that they make you watch a sensitivity training instructional video on after you have said mean things to another human. We cobbled a DVD to it and were happy as clams watching the occasional movie mailed to our house from Netflix. 

All this changed in 2016 when the kids gave us a modest sized unit and fitted with the stuff to get Amazon, Netflix, PBS, YouTube and a little news all on demand. Since then we have watched a goodly portion of TV which has increased with stay at home and now a real quarantine situation. 

What was I doing before this? Maybe aging and the slowing of a busy life has lead to falling into the TV trap. I have at least 11 more days of quarantine to go. Can somebody tell me how many shows to go before I'm well?   

     

Catfish Report...

2020 is a hard year to be a blog writer. Everybody else got that election commentary, Covid 19, conspiracy theory and death of music icons news all staked out. I'll choose to die on the hill of catfish blogging. Hopefully that will keep me making the $39,000 this blog pays every month. We all know what the world needs now is one more picture of Cathy with a catfish.    

Cathy's brother Matt came up and fished with us. 

That's a $10 fish at HEB. Cats were about 26' deep on the edges of deeper water. 

Looking off to the 147 bridge about 3 or 4 miles away. 

Lake is almost 4' low so I took some photos of one of our spring spots we call the "horseshoe." There is a long finger of land running out that the taller cypress trees on the left are on. We tie the front of the boat to the cypress in the left center foreground and cast to the cypress on the right. Lots of fish to 10 pounds come of of this hole in March and April till the lily pads start to come. They are probably still around just hard to fish because of the pads which with be gone soon with the cold weather.   

Final count 45 fish. We fried a bunch and had the Zamora boys out. Matt took the rest home. All the catfish we have caught have ended up being eaten this year. I have traded some cats for vegetables and I have entertained the thought could I trade catfish for services. Would you wash my car for 4 pounds of catfish?  

 

Time to Give Away a Big Screen...

Well if you are a pretty new blog reader you may not have got in on a big screen give away. It's kind of like those public radio or TV fundraisers. It's what keeps us on the air. We have not had to have one in a while since the last one raised $39,000.  I know that's a surprising figure to some but you know how expenses are. They go up just like the green fees on a golf course that Trump just bought. 

The donor of our latest big screen prize wishes to remain anonymous. That's what it seems to me because while on a bike ride this evening on a shady cool deserted East Texas dirt road I found it sitting there all alone, owner no where in sight. 

Now you must admit that's a pretty ugly appliance. In an age of flat screens it wore out a welcome long ago. I'd dump it also, just in the proper place which I note is at the City of Lufkin Recycle Center where there is a little tin garage for TVs, computers and other electronic gadgets that folks like this donor have grown weary of. 

In case you are wondering about the orientation of the photo I am sitting on my bike (of course, a helmet mom) and the TV is upside down in the ditch. Somehow as I stand here the whole of modern life parades past me in a mind movie newsreel upside down just like the TV and it all seems like it is a reflection of what things have come to be. Everybody's hair is messed up because they are upside down and I can see up all the women's dresses. It's some kind of holy allegory of life that a poet greater than me might grasp but all I can do is check my back pocket for a comb and avert my eyes from types of underwear I did not even know existed. 

So if you send me some money or better yet just give it to me when you see me and I'll enter you in this contest. If you want to check out the prize just drive past my road and take the second left. Be looking down and to the left. I left it there and you may wonder why I don't pick it up. That's not my role here is this newsreel. There is a Samaritan somewhere and he's gonna think something different about this big screen.  

Click the label links below and find out more about our history with the big screen.  .  

   

A Few Jam Photos From the Past Few Weeks...

Ok so just face it. If you are a musician you know there are days that the world was not beating down your door to hear your music. I been having a day like there more often than not lately. There is only one thing to do. Gather up your friends and jam. Here are some photos from fish frys, camping and church over the past few weeks. 

Morgan, Danny and Mike jam

Mary and Runt join us on the garage stage at the fish fry. 

This photo is a bit blurry but with a little bit of the treatment it looks ok. I like it cause it shows lots of people getting into the act. 

Another Blurry one but does not look to bad with a bit of treatment. 

Snarling the blues. 

Cathy and her dad jam on a camping trip. 

The smoke in the photo is coming off the banjo. 

This is a combined group from several St. Patrick's choirs that came together to play for Father Gavin's 25th anniversary of his ordination Mass.  

Thanks for this photo. I like it a lot. 

Oh yeah during all this I did sell a cigar box guitar. If I remember I try to take a photo with customers for publicity purposes but this person assured me they were very private and did not want their photo all over the internets. That's nice they told me. Been a lot of ugly scenes where I have taken people's photos, put it on the blog and made them famous only to have them angry at me when they find out there is a $39,000 fee for me performing services like that. we avoided something like there in this situation by having all lines of communication open. Thanks for the purchase! 

Thanks to everybody for jamming! 

Have Not Given Away a Big Screen in a While...

So it's that time again. Got to keep the old blog up and running so we give away a big screen. In case you want to know the history of giving away a big screen just click on the little tag thing and you can see where we have been and what we have done. I mean that is the definition of history all wrapped up nice and neat like in a TV Guide or something. 

What we do is every now and then our sponsors and handlers let us have a big screen at cost and we have a contest, people send in donations or as some fundraiser call it a pledge and we give away the prize to the lucky winner. This fundraiser way predates the click like or share on facebook and win these cowboy boots thing. A nice median donation of $39,000 will put you right up there in the running to win and keeps this blog on the air. 

Here is a look at this years prizes. It's a special multi prize package and it's packed up shrink wrapped and ready to be shipped to the lucky winner. 

In case you need a better look to make sure they will all fit and match the man cave or where ever here's the other side 

Remember that you need not be present to win, no sales taxes apply due to the fact that it would just be an unfair burden on the sacrifices of my blog readers and supporters, and I'll bring it over to your house myself. Of course I'll stay and watch awhile but I'll try and keep quiet. 

Send your money now and be quick about it. 

Photos From the Weekend...

We cooked fish this weekend. No pictures but if you want to eat fish at my house we are going to have to catch some. Freezer stocks are depleted. There looks to be one package of white bass fillets. It's small, set aside for a 2-4 person dinner blackened or grilled. Due to recent changes in fish consumption advisories on the waters we fish white bass is not recommend for women in child bearing years due to the mercury content. I don't think it's really recommend for anyone but if you are a  person of mature years and are already showing some signs of early onset dementia and generalized physical decline come on down! 

Played a good bit of music this weekend at Annie's party, sitting around the house and at church on Sunday. Most of us with enough experience and decent critical thinking skills to be able to tell the difference in good and bad eventually wind up being able to make some presentable music.  Some people though just have it. We might have one that has it right here. He sure is interested. Warren knows that this is the thing Pop-Pop uses and he is very interested in the things Pop-Pop uses. This photo I made after I gave him his first music lesson which is always sleep with your guitar.

I think I'll use this as an ad for the cigar box guitars I make. "Easy to play, even for a child" or how about "indestructible." Actually after a weekend of abuse it is amazingly still in tune. 

Don't forget that in addition to making the cigar box guitars and frying fish we are adding a new service and it's hair cutting. Here you see what we offer. Mary cuts while Ashley holds the victim I mean customer down. I assure you that the fist customer, Coraline, survived and will probably use this service again.   Price for cutting is $39,000 and proceeds go to the expense required to produce this website and the associated misadventures we feature.  

    

Pretty Easy To Get in on the Santa Act...

It's pretty easy to get in on the Santa thing around here. There's hats, there's suits, there's tubas and more. 

Yesterday me and Mary did the drum and tuba Christmas at the nursing home (surprise, I do have a day job) where I work. I played the tuba and uke and Mary played the bedpan/suitcase drum set. As you know we have a lot going on this year but maybe next year we will try to take this little show on the road. We have about 30 minutes worth of material and I figure we flesh that out with a few Eagles covers, I dance around a little more than I am already doing and charge $39,000 we will be good to go. 

Yesterday after the gig we came home and cut a recording of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. This tune dates to 1833 and the author is unknown.  It's a favorite Christmas song of mine for a couple of reasons. It lends itself very well to a drum break. Then there are of course there is the message. I particularly like the imagery brought forth by the line "to save us all from Satan's power when we had gone astray." And astray we go. I have received the call "ship to shore, Mudbelly we can't see you anymore" a few times myself. Now most of us don't go so far a astray under Satan's power that we kill or rob some one but we do commit the small sins. I am thinking about the small ones where we say bad things about other people or maybe another kind of people or that when we say these things we assume that everyone believes the same and is going to go along with us.  

So that brings us to the  last line of this old Christmas carol "tidings of comfort and joy." Pray for sinners. Hope for conversion. I think we will all be surprised when we enter that place of comfort and joy.   

Happy Birthday Pop...

We take this day to do two important things. We wish Bill Cooney Cathy's dad, a happy birthday. We also unveil the new business card for my little guitar business. The way these two are related is that Bill Cooney is signed on as a celebrity endorser. Here's the card. 

When people pick up our business card they will ask, "who is Bill Cooney?" and I'll say you know the tenor banjo player and if they insist I will take them over to Bill's house to meet him and stuff. The instrument he plays in the photo is one Mudbelly Primitive Instruments and Amps has provided free of charge in exchange for his endorsement. Actually when I provided the instrument I acted like it was a gift and did not mention the work involved in this endorsement and the fact that the fact the paper he signed was not the check at a local restaurant but a contract that pays me 10% of all the money he makes on his gigs. That's the way the music business works.

I have already made $39,000  from this contract. Happy birthday Bill, thanks for the endorsement and be sure and make the gigs on time.  

Blues Jam Saturday Night...

Open Mic Blues Jam this Saturday Night May 4th at The Elegante. All are welcome and admission is free. Music starts about 8pm. The Elegante is right across 1st Street in downtown Lufkin from the Standpipe Coffee House. 

These photos are from a jam a few weeks ago. 






















Had to blur out that one guy. He would not pay the $39,000 fee to appear on this blog.  

The Official Yearly Photo...

 It was a fitting weekend, Epiphany, that we finely got the whole clan together for our Christmas celebration.

If you don't know who is who by now here is the credits for this cast of blog characters. From your left there is Miguel and Mary, Peter and Katherine, behind me is Ali and Morgan, Coraline, Rose, Juan, Warren and the photographer Cathy.

They have cleared out now. Back to various cities, jobs, lives and so ons. I have spent the morning totaling expenses (For tax purposes. The blog is a 503c charity) for the weekend. Looks like if I count wear and tear on duck decoys, guitar strings, piano keys and cajon drums, emotional and structural damages plus groceries it coincidentally comes to $39,000.

It was all worth it. Thanks for coming kids. 

Cold Wet Day on the Lake...

Pretty slim pickins today with Runt joining the mystery cat fisher for a good old fashion butt wetting.

The usual spots failed to pay off, we caught 5 fish. This is no way impacts our supply since we have about 39,000 pounds of frozen fillets stored in the freezer. Runt would have had a better time though if he had 39,000 pounds to take home.

More Jazz Fest...

Here's some people pictures from the Jazz Fest. This is a picture of Pop, Geneva and Cathy just before they enter the nude section of the Jazz Fest. bet you didn't know they had one of those. Cathy and Geneva smile for the camera while Pop is busy taking his shoes off so he can hurry and drop them 'ralls. Note the naked legs in the back ground, I cropped this picture so no faces are seen because they were afraid. Not unusual, after eight years of the Bush administration has made us afraid of almost everything they are scared their mom, their boss, their coworkers or SOs will see their naked pictures on the Internet. And besides, they did not pay the usual $39,000 picture fee for this space. Anyway the real point of all this other than making naked jokes and poking Republicans with a stick is for you to note the turtle shell shaker stick on the ground between Geneva and Cathy.


Here's a some what better picture but you can't see the shell, you have seen it on these pages before and I have taken it to many Jazz fests. Probably 10-15 years old, it's a personal invention, an attempt at wretchedly bad ethnic folk art. For some reason this shaker, I shake it in time to the music, plays any kind of music and sounds better than expected to old fashion dixieland, attracted more attention than ever before at the fest. Lots of people, dozens approached and asked to take a photo and many more probably took a photo of me in action on the sleigh. The crafts people eyed it jealously and the proprietors of the American Indian Booth ask if I minded them using the idea. I said go ahead. People seemed starved for a meager amount of what they thought of as creative, authentic, exciting and so forth, see eight years of Bush administration.

Anyway, I was standing outside the dixieland tent a sawed off guy approaches, kind of greasy looking, smoking a cigar and wearing a pith helmet. Asks how much for the stick. Now this is a moment I have really been waiting for, sell my stuff. He says he's in the music biz, will use it recording. I say well what do you do? He says, used to play the Austin circuit. I say maybe I saw you, I been around. he says it was with a band called "Machine Screw." He takes out a bic pen and taps the turtle shell. He says I'll play it like this if you sell.

Anyway, that's like three strikes at that point, sawed off and greasy cigar smoking, played in a band called "Machine Screw" and taps my turtle with a bic pen. I can't sell. We both cry a little, but I'm faking it.

Keep your eyes open, it's coming to a store near you and you saw it here first.

Even More Baby Shower Pictures...

Good week for photos on the old blog, lots of people paid up their $39,000 which is what it cost to get a picture on here and really helps out with our online operating cost. In this one folks make their way through the buffet line.

Party hats are always welcome around here.
Look out, that little girl bites.