I’m gonna miss ya brother, I really am

Mache always had a fine ride. Cadillacs, Buicks, Mercedes; Mache drove ‘em all.

I have no idea how he managed to afford them. He blew saxophone and did occasional contracting jobs. That’s it.

He was a monster horn man and had performed with B.B. King, Sam Cooke and a host of other luminaries from the worlds of blues, soul and jazz. By the time he started working with my band, The Guinness Brothers, his glory days were long behind him.

Some guys might begrudge trading stadium audiences for roadhouse bars, but not Mache. He played every gig as if it were Carnegie Hall.

In addition to driving nice cars, Mache always dressed to the nines. Whether in a three-piece sharkskin suit or a silk dashiki, Mache looked like he’d stepped off the pages of Essence magazine.

And he didn’t just look cool; Mache was cool. He was the cat we all wanted to be when we grew up.

He wasn’t perfect. He was late to every other show and no amount of yelling, pleading, or docking of his paycheck would change that. After a few years I gave up and hired a second horn player so we’d have at least some brass on stage for the first set.

But back to the cars. Mache drove like a maniac. How he managed to be late for so many gigs when he never drove under 100 mph is a mystery. He must have been doing at least that the night he flew off the road, down a culvert and into somebody’s front yard.

I was driving home from a lakeshore show. Sleet fell from a turbulent sky turning the roads slicker than a hockey rink.

I was putzing along at 25 when Mache’s black Mercedes blew by me in a blur of chrome, his car disappearing into the gloom ahead. I arrived at the next intersection and there was Mache, slumping in the yard by his car, looking for all the world as if he was surprised by its current location.

I pulled over and got out.

“Need some help?” I asked.

“My car went off the road,” he said. “This intersection needs better lighting.”

“Or you need to stop driving like a fighter pilot on crack,” I said.

The car was thoroughly stuck in the damp earth and we were anxious to extract it before police arrived. Mache and police were not a good mix at the best of times.

Just then, three pickup trucks thundered up. Bright lights flooded the area as a dozen good ‘ol boys piled out. They were all at various stages of inebriation and hoping for a cute damsel in distress whom they could rescue and subsequently ply with warm Budweiser.

They were not happy when Mache stepped into the light. In case you didn’t get the message from the Essence and dashiki references, Mache was African American.

But it was too late. They had stopped. They had winches. And it was after all the ‘90s, and even rednecks weren’t entirely immune to the social changes of the 1960s. Grumbling good-naturedly, they hooked the Mercedes to a winch and proceeded to pull the Mercedes’ bumper off. It was at this point Mache began giving the boys holy hell in no uncertain terms.

Now, these guys were big. They were drunk. They were standing in the sleet, getting far more sober than they wanted to be. And they did not appear to be overly affectionate toward people of color, especially people of color who kept calling them impolite names. I considered slipping quietly away while they erected the burning cross on the front lawn, but knew my liberal white guilt would haunt me forever if I did.

Instead, I did my best to shut Mache up and get between him and the local chapter of the David Allan Coe fan club. Eventually, they pulled his Mercedes back onto the pavement and threw the broken bumper in his truck.

They drove off in a cloud of diesel fumes and I felt glad to be alive. Mache took it all in stride. I hopped in my own car and rolled away at a snail’s pace. A minute later the Mercedes shot past me, doing 75 and fish-tailing like mad. Mache lived life on his own terms, terms that didn’t always make sense to everybody else. I guess I can honestly say I loved him.

Mache died Sunday. He played a show in Grand Rapids Saturday night, went home and passed in his sleep. He was a good man, a good friend. I won’t see his like again in my lifetime.

Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com

I can see the future and it has me in it, making a quick buck

I found another part-time job. Since I haven’t been able to track down a full-time job, a bunch of part-time gigs is what I’m left with. But that’s OK; this particular job is actually fun.

I am now—brace yourself—an astrologer. Or astrologist? Astrologian? Since it’s turning a paycheck, I should probably at least research the topic enough that I know what I’m called.

Other than “fraud,” I mean.

Now, if you’re one of those folks who can’t get out of bed in the morning without first checking your horoscope, don’t panic; you’re never going to read my dubious astrological predictions. Not unless you go to Moscow, as in Russia. That’s where my horoscope column is running.

That’s right, I can’t find a writing gig in the United States, but I’m about to become the Next Big Thing in the former Soviet Union. And to think I was once worried these folks were going to drop atomic bombs on me!

I got the job online, by sending in a writing sample to a Russian guy with the cool name of Vladmir Aleksander. In addition to sharing a name with the infamous Balkan ruler credited with starting the Dracula myth, Vlad also publishes an English language newspaper in Moscow. And he’s decided to add an astrological forecast to the paper’s lineup.

I explained to Vlad up front that I know diddly about astrology. I don’t know if Pices is compatible with Leo or whether either does well when paired off with Taurus. The little I do know about astrology I learned from that Fifth Dimension song Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In, and they don’t really go into too much detail there.

Vlad said he didn’t care.

“But comrade,” I responded, trying to get into the spirit of international relations but coming off like an extra in an old James Bond movie. “How will I be able to write horoscope predictions when I know nothing about astrology?”

“Make something up,” Vlad said. “Pretend you’re writing for Pravda.” (Pravda was the “official” newspaper of the Soviet Union and according to Vladmir, was almost wholly fictional during that time.)

So I made something up. I warned Sagittarians to avoid fried foods, told Capricorns that romance was in store for the evening, admonished Leos to stop being selfish and manipulative (my ex-girlfriend is a Leo and I’m still bitter!), and suggested to Cancers that this might be a good time to quit smoking. (I mean, just consider the name of their astrological sign! Duh!)

Oh, I plan to bone up on astrology, if for no other reason than that my columns will seem more plausible to people who buy into this hooey. But at best, it’s like hiring an atheist to write for the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology.

Still, a paycheck is a paycheck. And if my Russian brethren are willing to fork over the rubles, I’ll don a turban once a week and predict the future.

Don’t blame me. As a Sagittarian, my sense of ethics is somewhat underdeveloped.

Mike Taylor’s book, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com or in eBook format from Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, and other online booksellers.

If this keeps up, I'll know everything or work construction

This is a weird time to be a writer. For one thing, there are only seven people left in the world who remember how to read (if you're reading this you're one of ‘em). Because of this sad fact, most print media from newspapers to books to magazines are being forced to make painful cuts, and by painful cuts, I mean the jobs of schmucks like me.

Granted, this is really only painful to schmucks like me, but still...have a little empathy, man! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find work on a construction crew when your job skills are fast typing and good spelling? These are abilities not necessarily held in high regard by the sort of guys who pound nails for a living.

And those are the guys who are making a living. Some of them, at least.  This is the era of the manly man, the man who is good with his hands, the man who can turn a pile of logs into beautiful kitchen cabinets, then break for lunch before putting up the pole barn.

This economy simply won't support guys like me--artsy fartsy types accustomed to putting in their “hard day's work” from the confines of a cushy, air-conditioned office while complaining about things like ergonomically incorrect office chairs and the horrors of carpal tunnel syndrome. We're useful when everyone has a pocketful of disposable income and time on their hands. People (despite what I said about the seven folks in paragraph one) like to read and be entertained. But let’s be real; when times get hard we’re easy enough to live without.

Now, I know there are unemployed construction workers out there who are just about ready to crush my skull like a Faberge egg (in part, because I'm a man who knows what a Faberge egg is). My buddy Calvin works construction and is pretty good at it, from what I've heard. Even he has been forced to take work that is, for lack of a better term, beneath his skill set.

In other words, things are tough all over. I know this. But I'm a writer, so if it's all the same to you, I'll whine about what I know.

Not that I'm really whining this week. Really. Because I've discovered an untapped market for writers. Really, again. My daughter turned me on to it; it's an online clearing house for writers and people who need writers. Mostly, they need writers to put together lame-o fake blog entries on teen angst and positive reviews of movies nobody would ever want to see. Even I am not desperate enough to take part in that debacle. Unless the money was really good, which it is not.

But I did manage to land an ongoing gig writing 500-word essays on a variety of topics. It ain’t tough. They must be well-written, accurate and—here’s the part I have trouble with--well-researched. However, since my “boss” is in Sri Lanka somewhere and by all indications speaks English only haltingly, I figure the occasional error (like saying a town in Idaho has 4,000 residents instead of 400,000) may go unnoticed. That's my hope anyway, because frankly, research is a drag and takes a lot of time away from my X-Files marathon on Netflix.

In the past week I've written essays on globalization, vacationing in Hawaii, kung-fu, Peruvian exports (more than flute bands and llama wool mittens, as it turns out), the differences between adjectives and adverbs, the Republican Party, technology used in WWII communications, and a piece titled “Whatever Happened to Annette Funicello?”

If this keeps up, in a couple years I'll possess more useless information than Wikipedia. This I plan to parley into a fortune on the game show Jeopardy. If that doesn't work out, maybe I can land a job doing construction with my buddy Calvin.

Mike's new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available online at mtrealitycheck.com. The ebook version is available at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon and other online booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.