I can't find a container, caddy, or a cup to contain those candy-coated chocolate morsels. Can you?
Interesting post over at the spraygraphic blog, at least I thought so. Some may have chosen the word obscure over interesting, but I find many obscure things interesting, and this was one. Celebrity patents will never be a Jeopardy category, but why shouldn't celebrities have patents? They might make a great living, but their real dream may be some sort of invention, and who better to be able to combine a little bit of influence and the necessary coin? A good idea would help as well.
Found while perusing t-shirts at spraygraphic. Here's how it went down.
“Oh look, they have a blog. I have a blog, too. Wow! Aren't blogs grand?”
click
“Oh look, they posted about a bizarre Eddie Van Halen-esque doodle. I posted about…something else. Hey, why don't I post about this?”
And here we are.
The Eddie Van Halen sketch sucked me in. Humorous, no? It actually looks like he's playing it like a piano. Was he trying to patent this technique? Because if memory serves me correctly (and this time it does), Jeff Watson (formerly of Night Ranger) had a patented 8-finger technique (at approximately the 2:36 mark), not so unlike what Sketchy Van Halen may be doing in this picture. (Couldn't find a patent of the 8-finger technique, but Watson's own site did not call the technique patented, instead “invented” and “popularized” were used to describe the technique.) I think EVH's technique was different, and he may be using a thumb in the picture, and really who cares. I'm typing this after finishing this post, and by now I'm over it and probably destroying any flow this post once had. I don't care, and I mean that in multiple ways.
I'm going to throw some mp3s here, because I can. I mean I have the ability to do that. Legally, well that's up to a jury of my peers, I suppose. They'll appear soon. I'm kind of on a roll here, and I don't want to stop yet. This was not the post I was looking for tonight. But sometimes any post is a good post, and this is as good as any.
Back to Jeff Watson, I used to read guitar magazines in my youth, and recall reading about his technical skill, and listening to it, too, including his performance on a Tony MacAlpine cassette that was in my collection. But while constructing this post I just discovered I've heard Jeff Watson's work on another album in my collection, Chris Isaak's Forever Blue.
I'm not done. Further digging revealed that Watson also inspired an alternate guitar tuning that Isaak used on arguably his greatest hit, “Wicked Game”. (Actually I don't think even Isaak himself would argue otherwise. But I'm not deleting the 'arguably' there. Mainly because I don't feel like arguing with someone who wants to try and reason that “Somebody's Crying” was a bigger hit. (Yes, I know it was on a Party of Five episode. I once watched television semi-regularly.)
I like Wicked Game a lot, so much that I've dropped the quotation marks. As much as I love parentheses, I am not enthralled with quotation marks. They are an (un)Necessary evil, but that's just me.
This is around the time I lose all interest in posting. I found the above somewhat interesting to write, and perhaps even a bit obscure at times. Now I have to go make sure the links appear where I deem necessary, and then proceed to post with all typos, sentence fragments, and other unproofed grammatical error and inconsistencies intact.
Chris Isaak – Wicked Game
Night Ranger – Don't Tell Me You Love Me, (You Can Still) Rock in America
Tony MacAlpine – The King's Cup