Monday, June 22, 2009

A Couple Of Coincidences

More pictures of the Mermaid Parade will have to wait until tomorrow. I got kind of sidetracked today and I couldn't even tell you how. Oh yeah, leveling Deekaa, my Death Knight, from 75 to 76 took up a good chunk of my time.

But I thought I would pass on a couple of interesting coincidences.

First one; as we were heading out after the Mermaid Parade on Saturday my friend Allen, who was staying overnight in Manhattan, said he might take the subway into Brooklyn on Sunday so we could stop at Montero's on Atlantic Avenue. I said great, I was up for that. We could chat with Pilar who is usually there reading the Sunday papers and drinking her glass of white wine.

Well, Allen got a couple of emails from his kids who wanted to see their daddy for Father's day so he cancelled. The Mysterious Chinese Woman went to a concert with a friend of her's late Sunday afternoon and when she came home we went to Queen for dinner. Who was sitting at the table by the window when we walked in? None other than Pilar with some family members. We chatted a bit and I told her how it must have been destiny that I would see her that day.

Strangest thing, that is the only time I have ever seen Pilar anywhere other than in Montero's.

Second coincidence; my niece Katie just posted a blog about her three-week kayak adventure and mentioned some silly awards that were given out when it was over. One guy got a Surfin' Bird award because he sang the song all the time on the trip.

I posted a comment on her blog telling her that she should let Danny know that her uncle (that would be me) knew Tony Andreason, one of the members of the Trashmen, from Patrick Henry high school in Minneapolis. In fact we both played string bass in the high school orchestra.

Now the Trashmen were a 1960's group and I hadn't heard anything about them for at least thirty years, although I did know that Tony played occasionally in clubs in Minneapolis. Well, just to double check on the spelling of Tony's last name I Googled them. You could have knocked me over with a feather, they are currently touring in Europe.

And, their first stop back in the United States is at Southpaw, a club within walking distance of where I live. Needless to say, I immediately got online and bought tickets for their show.

This was like, when out of the blue, I played a couple of Spider John Koerner albums one night and the next day opened up the free weekend edition of am Today and saw that he was playing the very next weekend at a club that I could walk to. And Spider John is someone I knew from way back in Minneapolis. Then, after seeing him and having a drink with him at the bar next door to where he played, I stopped into Montero's on the way home.

Kind of one of those strange loops.

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