Sex and the Gold-Top Les Paul

Sex at my house is not a normal event.

Don’t run; I promise not to get into any gory details.

It was just such a great line I had to use it.

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All sorts of interesting things tend to happen coincident with and around sex.

I’m in the bedroom and notice my wife picking up the remote control.  Since I do not operate by remote control (doesn’t she wish), I got a little put off that she was turning the tv on.  This lasted right up until I heard what was going on.

Rest assured that when I hear the words “1953 Gibson Les Paul” I sit up and take notice, as it were.  My wife had turned on the PBS affiliate and it was running Antiques Road Show.  Some lady popped by with her excellent condition 1953 Gibson gold-top Les Paul and matching amplifier.

The appraiser fellow, as I remember it, was from Massachusetts Music.  He went over all the features of the guitar and how they related to the dating of the guitar.  It was in pretty spectacular condition, with a good condition original case and still-functioning amp.

Surprisingly, the amp did not really ad much to the value.  The appraiser stated that if it were a Fender amp, it would have been worth more.  I figured that since he bought the guitar and amp at the same time, the package would be worth more but that’s why I’m not a dealer.

Just before the guy reveals the Final Figure<tm>, my wife says, “Twenty Thousand.”  Half a second later the dealer says the same thing.  My wife is jumping up and down, asking (the universe?) does she know her vintage guitars or what.

I don’t have a single issue with this.

She brings up `the gold-top that got away’ many years ago.  She told me to buy it and I didn’t.  I never heard the end of it, obviously.

Very shortly thereafter we were engrossed in the other reason we were upstairs.  Well, when I say engrossed, my wife was engrossed.  I was attempting to be engrossed but wildly distracted by Marshall, the apparent executive boss of the house and part-time cocker spaniel.

Marshall likes attention, in that wonderfully neurotic that cockers do everything.  Neurosis is probably in the breed standard.  I haven’t checked but it seems to have come with the three black rescue cockers we have adopted over the years.  Pathological separation anxiety resulting in the need to be under an arm or in contact at all times.  (If I were a doggy shrink.)  My first cocker (Joe Cocker) was actually medicated (puppy prozac) for this but he was way beyond meds.

As I have explained previously, Marshall is not only neurotic, he’s a very rare example of the breed: a smart cocker.

Marshall figured out that if he wasn’t going to get any attention, he’d extract his fun elsewhere; namely his mommy’s priceless collection of stuffed Eeyores.  The moment it becomes apparent that mommy and daddy aren’t going to be paying one hundred percent of their attention to him, he figures No Problem - I’ll just find a nice Eeyore and disembowel him.  That will show them not to pay attention to me.

So I’m attempting to pay attention to the important task at hand, so to speak, and the other eye is following Marshall, making sure he’s not shredding anything important.

Before you ask, shutting him out of the room would provide another attention-robbing stimulus: barking and/or squeaking and howling; another cocker neurosis.

Still, it’s probably better than what Satan (the cat) is up to.  He is probably downstairs the whole time, shredding important insurance information and the deed to the house.

Do I sound bitter?  I’m not.

I’m not anything but amused that, as I approch dinner time, tonight’s television show is discussing ritual disembowelment in Mayan civilization.  Usually the television would wait until I was actually eating before this came on….