A yellow umbrella.

My patio umbrella is exactly the right size. The bar-style table that rests underneath is a circumfrence that allows for just enough coverage that on rainy nights like tonight I can go out, barefoot, onto the porch, and have a cigarette, without wetting my shoulders, or really getting my feet wet. I can walk out the back door and to the shelter of the vinyl yellow thrift store ($9) umbrella and it will shelter me from the storm for the duration of one Winston Light.

It’s relatively cold tonight here in Atlanta, and raining. I’ve spent my night delivering a CD demo of a friend’s band to the friend of that friend, with a stop at the Chik-Fil-A in between- a guy that doesn’t seem to understand men hugging by his response to my approach on the front porch of his MTV Cribs style home.

A cordial glass of wine was shared and then a tour of this $400 thousand or so McMansion in a nondescript neighborhood, but still “inside the loop” as we like to say here, culminating in a 30 minute observation of the proprietors prowess at playing Grand Theft Auto on his Playstation 2.

The house is in the process of having a severl thousand dollar sound system installed. One in which every room will have speakers and separate volume controls, all installed on barter by some guys he (did I mention he’s a lawyer) is defending in a drug possession case. The reason for delivering the CD is that this guys is someone who “knows” some folks in the industry and the friend, who this guy is a friend of, thinks that this may help us out in the long run. The other reason is so we could listen to the CD, or CD-R, as it really is on the “big system”. Otherwise I would have mailed the thing.

Upon arriving and being greeted with the awkward hug, we went into to awkward greetings from some other folks in the house. (They always seem to be hanging around on Cribs as well.) We then placed the CD-R into the DVD player as it was the only piece of electronics he had hooked to the new system. it wouldn’t play. Despite some negotiation and elbowing the thing a la Sir Arthur Fonzarelli, the thing still would not play. We left it for a moment and got back to the wine and some conversation, and then the proprietor of McMansion took the CD into a neighboring room, where there was a alarm clock radio capable of playing CDs, and he inserted the CD, pressed play and turned the thing to 11. Needless to say this was not the finest performance that I had ever heard of the band on the CD. In fact, I can’t imagine any CD sounding good under such circumstances save early Napalm Death records (which to be honest, will sound the same on any system at any volume).

We listened for a couple of songs and then al present were obviously a little uninterested with the recording, especially played in the way it was. I said my pleasnt good-byes etc. and got in my car to head back home.

Upon arriving, I was immediately at ease in my little place, roughly one quarter the size of the lawyer’s home. My house does not have speakers throughout, nor volume controls. It does have a CD player, and a DVD player as a matter of fact. I have a couch with a broken leg propped up on copies of Communication Arts (yuppie cinder blocks), and I do have $9 yellow vinyl patio umbrella on my back porch that is just the right size. And that is where I headed.