DiscussMormonism.com

Tune Your God Damn Piano

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Date: 2010-02-12, 4:52PM EST

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For Christ's sake people, just let me tune your god damn piano, do the both of us a favor. I'm the best in the whole god damn city, I swear to Christ. You can ask any one of my clients at any given time, email me and ask me for a list. I'll make that idiot SING. Hell, you pay me a little extra and I'll make YOU sing too. Na i'm kidding, that's a little joke there. Nothing sexual, just piano tuning. Email me and I'll come the “F” over, tune your damned piano, take your money, then be on my merry old motherfuckin way.
You want the shitfuckin thing tuned? Fine. Call me. I'll tune it. Done. Just like that.

All of Manhattan or Brooklyn. Don't damned call me if you're in Queens or Hoboken.

$80 for grand and upright pianos
$100 for spinet upright pianos (because they are way goddamn harder)

You stole my freakin' cameras

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Date: 2010-02-22, 1:02PM EST

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Hi,

Last night you stole two of my cameras outside Angelica's Kitchen on 2nd Avenue and 12th street.

I figured you'd try to sell them here, unless thieves are photo enthusiasts. You might make an honest living taking photos of crap you stole, hell that might make a great Gallery Title, "The crap I Stole: Reflections on Urban Living in The 21st Century". You might even get into Francesca Woodman-style self-portraits that you could take with my stolen cameras, make them real artistic, with a shallow depth of field, that's what you can afford (or I guess, can't afford because you are a damn thief) when you have a 50mm prime lens attached to the Canon A-1 (that's the black one that you stole) that opens up to a 1.4. “F” yeah, I'm giving you photography lessons, so at least you can shoot right, I mean what the hell were you gonna do with two cameras that no one wants anyway-- don't try to sell it to some Midwestern tourists in Times Square, man, don't sell it in Times Square in general. It's a 35mm film camera, who the hell wants to pay fro processing now that you can take a picture with your cell phone? Why didn't you steal my cell phone instead? The camera on it is a piece of crap, and you would be making much more money off that, and I hate my phone so you'd be doing me a favor.

In your grubby hands you have a Canon AE-1-- that's the silver one with a zoom lens on it. You can set it to automatic exposure so you wouldn't have to figure out metering or f-stops. Also you can really impress some chicks with the blue-jeans denim strap that comes with it, because you will look like Peter Parker in the sense that you will resemble a nerdy high school photographer from the late 70s. You should really do yourself a favor and get some polyester pants. You will not impress anyone else, however, because it's just about the most basic student camera Canon's ever made.

And that A-1? It doesn't belong to me, so double Screw you for stealing my camera and stealing my friend's camera. He got that for $10 from his friend's mom on Long Island, so don't expect to sell it for any more, unless you're selling it to other assholes like yourself. It's got a squeaky shutter and might not take anything past 1/125 (that's the shutter speed, you moron, it means the shutter is open for 1/125 of a second, to refresh your memory), unless you wanna get real artsy and overexpose everything.

Finally, there are some miscellaneous crap in there:

a Firewire 800 Cable - this will not be much of use to you

Camera Logs - like you'd even understand them

a half-read secondhand copy of Albert Camus' The Plague - Listen, you dick. I was 110 pages into that and until I buy another secondhand copy of that book I'll never find out what happened to Dr. Rieux and the rest of the people in Oran. Maybe you could skim through it and summarize what I missed in a book report. I dunno, man, maybe you're in the middle of an existential crisis, that's why you're stealing crap, right? to assert your existence or whatever. well, you should read that book. you might get a kick out of it. just don't use it for kindling for your garbage-can fire under the 59th street bridge.

Three rolls of shot film - This is what I'm pissed off about the most. I took some pictures over the weekend with those cameras and they're still loaded with film. I hope you didn't open them in daylight like an idiot, not knowing that the little cardboard square that said "Ektachrome 64" under the viewfinder meant that it's LOADED, you “F”. There are shot rolls of Portra 800, 50D, and 1600 in there (film speeds-- the higher the number, the more sensitive the film, you jackass) that are pretty important to me, and would have absolutely no use to you. If you could do me a favor and drop those off at Forum Photo on Waverly and Washington Square East-- ask for George (I will not ask him to punch you in the mouth), or just drop it off under the name "Jerk McAllister". You can even shoot the rest of the rolls in those cameras and I will pay for matte prints with a white border for you, so you can show your thief buddies all your photographic skills. I can already picture the great canted angles and center-framing you're cooking up while looking for someone to take those cameras off you so you can get your next heroin fix.

Keep the freakin' cameras if you want. They were cheap. They'll come and go and to be honest they were kind of on their last legs. I just want the freakin' film. You can even keep the leather case, I'm not sure if it's real leather anyway. You're probably not up for this but I might as well ask, there might be some sort of Robin Hood-like pity in your burglar heart.

Of course, I'm perfectly aware that you might have just been a Good Samaritan and returned it to a police station or you're looking for clues around the the case to determine who it might belong to. If this is the case, then you can disregard all that mean crap and I hope you email me about getting it back. I'll even throw you a couple of bucks and buy you lunch. But I'm also perfectly aware that if this was the case it would be raining gumdrops from marshmallow clouds and we'd all be singing showtunes. So, more likely than not, you stole it, and now you're trying to sell it on craigslist.

So Screw you.

Found: Shirt, Bra, Thong and Vomit

Jersey Girl wrote:$80 for grand and upright pianos
$100 for spinet upright pianos (because they are way goddamn harder)

liz3564 wrote:

Jersey Girl wrote:$80 for grand and upright pianos
$100 for spinet upright pianos (because they are way goddamn harder)

Actually, that's a really good price! I need my baby grand tuned. I wish this guy was in NC instead of NY. LOL

SOS: The American Piano Industry




Times are tough across the board. The current economic downturn has had a negative effect on most people I know. But it seems to be particularly severe in the musical instrument industry. The music industry had its biggest decline ever in 2009.

Consider these facts:

* Hardest hit was the piano business which went from $392,647,000 in sales in 2005 to $136,697,000 in 2009.
* Grand piano sales in the USA in 2009 were down 46.06% across the board compared to 2008 sales.
* On top of that, piano sales in the previous 3 years declined by over 50%
A couple of crazy but true statistics:
* Total production of vertical pianos made in the USA in 2007 was 6,935. Last year it was 425!
* Only 1,255 grand pianos were produced in the US in 2009.
* Only 300 Korean grand pianos were sold in the US last year.

The music industry at large had its largest decline in memory in 2009 down 17.2% for all categories combined from $7.1 billion in 2008 to $5.1 billion in 2009.

The piano business went from $392,647,000 in 2005 to $136,697,000 in 2009.

This actually could be good news for some people. Why? Well it's certainly not good news if you are in the industry. But if you are looking to invest is a high quality grand piano, new or used, right now might be the best opportunity you will ever have.

Robert Laughlin
http://blog.pianofun.com/