Free TV stand

Here are some pictures, and measurements.  It is yours free, long as you come and get it.  Nothing wrong with it, we just simply changed it out for aesthetic reasons.  All the necessary bolts and screws are included.  It's a flat screen TV stand/entertainment center.

it is 3 layers of black colored glass, though in the pics we only have the top two in.  Behind it, centered, is a spine of sorts, that holds your TV.  It comes with braces and screws to attach to your TV.  Then, the TV just hangs in place by gravity.  It should fit all TVs and all TV sizes, as the screw holes in the back of each TV are a universal design.

also cool is the tube 'spine' is hollow.  It is designed to fun all the cords and cables through... so it is a very clean look in the end.  Here are some pics with, and without, our crap on it.  It is now dissembled and ready to go.  The brand?  I have no idea where we got it.

the top shelf is 20" off the ground.  Not sure if you can tell from pics, but it tapers back.  Ours sits in a corner, so we love the design.

toward the very front, it is 50" wide

at the back, it is only 34" wide

shoot me a text.  303.901. 5235  > First come first served.  We live up on Rampart Rd off 186

Let me tell you about this picture, it's not how it looks!

I love this picture. I think this is objectively a great photograph.  We took this last week (Oct 2019) in Cusco, Peru.  I just feel it needs some explaining.  If I step outside myself (no, I didn’t do any Ayahuasca… which would have had that experience)… here is how the picture looks to me.

Come here weirdo native people, please. I know you are on your way to work, to likely toil somewhere that involves you taking home 50 pounds of bananas on your head.   Please, though, indulge me and the wifey with a picture.  I think your lowly poor hobbled existence is just adorable.  It will show all my friends back home how in touch we became with local culture.  I will tell our friends made up back stories about us all, and how we promised to keep in touch.

That, to me, is how all of these types of pictures look.  In a word… exploitative.

Doesn’t it?

Well, there was exploitation involved, but we were kinda more the victims.  Allow me to explain.  “No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.” – Inigo Montoya... who kinda looks Peruvian.

These ladies are full time tourist picture be-inners.  See, Peruvians in the city don’t dress like this.  They dress like you.  We did see ladies who genuinely dressed like this, but not on stoops in the city.  It was in drives through the countryside.

We were talking down the incredibly and brutally steep streets of Cusco looking at touristy is you can:  four white people wandering around with big ass backpacks. 

how steep?  That steep.  Not exactly 'to code'

I looked over and saw them on the stoop and made eye contact, because it was such an adorable site.  I nudge the wifey, and she looks over.  These astute capitalists ran over and literally handed my wife that… lamb?  “we take picture together?”, may have been their only English.  But, I did really want a picture like this, and I didn’t want to exploit the locals.  I even thought about sneaking a photo to try and capture a genuine moment, but took the high road.

Before we know it, we are sitting their with these wonderful ladies taking out picture taken.  “10 Soles?”.  Sole is the Peruvian dollar, and they were 3 to our dollar.  So, 10 soles is about $3.  Absolutely worth it.  I would have paid that just to take a picture of them, not to mention with them.  After the great photo, we give them 10 soles (do I capitalize the S there for currency?  Don’t know.  They say “20 soles!”.  I explain that is all I have (wifey and I both speak Spanish).  They start chasing us down the street yelling “20 soles.”  Obviously, we gave them an extra ten soles.  They made $7 in about 4 minutes.  Well done, ladies.  Happy to share the wealth.  As we walked around more, we saw several groups like this, sitting and being adorable with baby llamas and alpacas making themselves available for tourist photos.

Again, TOTALLY worth it to get that photo above.

For the record, I did sneak a photo of a genuine adorable real life Peruvian moment.  See this pic below. 

This is in Ollantaytambo, one of the gateway cities to Machu Picchu.  The father had a huge blanket set up selling wares to tourist.  This was his child, who likely spends hours a day there with his father.  Like any adorable child, he was bored and started playing a beautiful steel drum they had out for sale.  I can tell you it was a kid just being a kid, and not a kid trained to be adorable for tourists because after I got this shot his dad kinda yelled at him and told him to put the drum down.

my rant on cops vs bikers

This is an aside from my book review of 'Ratsnakes', about an undercover cop.  You can find the book and its review over here.  This was a long winded rant that had nothing to do with the book, but i felt like publishing in anyway   -  Oct 2019


More and more I am seeing things that really really trouble me about the bike gangs... er... gentleman hobbyists?  The stealing and looting and terrorizing and drug dealing... don't much care.  It isn't my business.  What upsets me is the violence towards their women.  These guys beat up their women.  They do it a lot, an for a lot of reasons.  The obvious is insecurity and poor male role models.  It is also to make sure the women 'know their place'.  They do it to impress their needy ass peers.  They do it because the realize after being in the gang for 20 years has gotten them nowhere in life.  I think they went in looking for fun and adventure and camaraderie.  By the time you are 40, though, you being to realize you are just an unemployable douche-bag.  They are disappointed with their station in life and the sacrifices they made for the club.  Lastly, I think the do it because they are totally fucked up and out o their mind on speed and booze every waking moment.

That is my armchair assessment.  It makes it tough for me to to read about.  I can't root for these guys.  As example?  In the late 60s, Hunter S Thompson famously lived and rode with the Hell's Angels.  He was transparent about about writing the book, and was fully accepted into the club.  It was a natural fit, as Hunter was much loser to being an Angel than a journalist.  He loved guns and booze and motorcycles and was at least as crazy as the crew he ran with.  Shortly after, famously, he got kicked out.  Not just asked to leave politely, but nearly beaten to death.  What does this have to do with anything?  Bear with me.  Hunter was stomped because he intervened on a club fight, which is a big no no for an outsider.  This guy was beating up his 'old lady' something fierce.  hunter didn't mind, it wasn't his business.   This Angel was so riled up he starts kicking a dog.  That is when Hunter stepped in.  A dog, and a motorcycle are both higher in the caste system than women are.

Thompson got drunk and stoned with the Angels on the beach, and stuck around when things got ugly — something he avoided while writing the book. An Angel named Junkie George started beating his wife to a pulp on the rocks. When Junkie George laid into his dog as well, Thompson spoke up. That was all it took for several Angels to start pounding on Thompson’s skull and ribs.

I have zero respect for that level of stupidity and misogyny.  I can't root for that, or romanticize and rationalize that behavior.  Of course, cops are notorious for beating their women, too?  Why?  I have a theory, and this is a thoughtful assessment.  For cops, like football players (perhaps the most notorious of spouse beaters) violence works!  Violence solves all problems.  When reasoning doesn't work, be it for a cop, a mobster, or a biker... a swift and thorough beating ends the problem.  I just think maybe violence isn't intended, but it lies closer to the surface than many other solutions.  For football players, I don't even think they try the 'reasoning' stage... they just hit.

the whole thing about beating up women, though... I just to speak my piece.  Let's close this out with a  quote from the Beastie Boys.

“I want to say a little something that’s long overdue
The disrespect to women has got to be through / To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends / I want to offer my love and respect to the end.” 

Here is the book that started the rant.  As I got through the book, I realized this rant was way off  base for the text.  That is why I pulled it from the review.  But it needed saying -

Snakes: Cheating Death by Living A Lie: Inside the Explosive World of ATF's Undercover Agents and How We Changed the Game

Vincent A. Cefalu 

addendum - Hillbilly Elegy

This is a sidebar to my book review on 'Hillbilly Elegy'

My 'review' went a little of course,  so I pulled it aside.

ust started this a couple of days ago, and it is a powerful and beautiful listen.  Read by the author, a wickedly thoughtful and insightful guy.  Saw him on 60 Minutes the other night, and this book was mentioned.  There is a lot to digest here, so for now I will just give you the official blurb.  Will update with my thoughts postmortem in a few days.

In the meantime, in order to maybe better understand the struggles of the poor and downtrodden left behind white folk of Appalachia… I think cultural mensch Paris Hilton has some thoughts on that.***  I believe this was her 3 word review in the New York Times Sunday edition.

*** apparently, this was photoshopped and it spread like a virus.  I don’t care.  It’s funny.  Reading this book shows me that poor white folk down South shouldn’t be our cultural punching bags anymore.  So, let’s pick on Paris, instead.

The poverty rate increased in 12 states. In America, 14.8 percent of the population, or 46.7 million people, were living in poverty in 2014.

In the top 20 poorest states (data linked here), 14 of them are in the ‘bible belt’.   Why do I throw these numbers are you? They weren’t in the book, I researched them to make a point.  Why is no one talking about or fighting for the very very poor (black… or white)? The only leader I remember who really brought of the issue and put it right in our face was presidential candidate John Edwards.  He talked about ‘the two Americas’. Why is no one fighting for them or talking about it? Am going to make a few theories, based on wild and often uninformed observations. These poor folks in the bible belt don’t vote in high numbers.  So many are fully disenfranchised. This means politicians aren’t going ‘to the mattresses’ for them. There is neither money nor opportunity in it. That is how Trump won the election. He brilliantly reached out to this Demographic and somehow convinced them a billionaire slumlord would be their advocate.

“[Hillbilly Elegy] is a beautiful memoir but it is equally a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America….[Vance] offers a compelling explanation for why it’s so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to make it…a riveting book.” (Wall Street Journal)  >March 2019

update – lying in bed last night right after I wrote this, I have an epiphany.  I don’t know shit about real struggle, class warfare, or family abandonment.  That is why i am reading the book.  You should too  It’s quite a ale, and very well written.  I always tell y’all I read these books because I want to walk in mile in their shoes. Having read this book gives me no excuse to pontificate on any of it.   Look at all that high minded pseudo-intellectual garbage up there.  What an asshole I am.  I could just delete it.  I’d rather be honest and d a strike through.  This way, you can see through my crap.  This is what happens why you try and write book reviews at 3 am.

I don’t quote the Times because I read it.  I quote the times because I want you to think I read it.  Plus the NEw York Times carries a little more cultural weight than if I cited Tweaker Bob. who told me the same story

a ranty aside on (the Beatles) Allen Klein

This piece is an attachment to this post on 'what i am reading' about Derek Taylor's book review on my site.  I got a little angry.  Rather than table my beautiful rant, I opted to move it... and so take the high road

Because of my regard for everyone's regard for Derek Taylor, and my hopes it will turn into some kind of Beatles tell all... I will stick with the book.  BONUS - he just got to talking about Allen Klein.   Klein may be the worst person in the history of music management.  Not surprisingly, no one has a single kind word to say about the man beast.  More about that monster here.  I believe there is a book about him, maybe many.  That may be my next read.  People want insight into what made Hitler tick.  People study the musings of the 'Unabomber'.   Remembers the butcher of Cambodia, Pol Pot?  Yeah, Allen Klein goes on that list.

Maybe you wonder why I call Chris Brown the worst person alive, and then say same about Allen Klein?  Only because Allen Klein is dead.  Sorry for that tangent, what are we talking about again?   Oh, the Derek Taylor book.  Just kidding.  Let's pile more shit on Allen Klein.  If you don't have time to read my brief tale linked, just know is bankrupted and robbed the Rolling Stones of their entire catalog,  and broke up the Beatles.   Feb 2019

people think Yoko broke up the Beatles.  Not at all.  However, John sure used her to cause a wedge.  Guess who brought in Allen Klein?  John.

I mean, not just mean, but Machiavellian.  QUICK summary character piece on Allen Klein.  Following the Beatles break up, Klein briefly represented George Harrison.  You only know one George Harrison song, 'My Sweet Lord'.  Stay with me, I SWEAR this is very interesting.  George gets sued because his song sounds too close to 'He's so Fine'.  Klein is representing George here and has an admittedly brilliant idea.  He says to George 'we have fucking BEATLES money, man.  It would literally be cheaper and easier for us to just buy the right to that song rather that litigate this.  In fact, we can buy the whole publishing company.' (obviously, that was paraphrased.  The devil speaks mostly in clicks and hisses.)  George gives him the go ahead to do so.  While Klein goes to research and propose the idea... he goes behind George's back and buy the right's to the catalog himself.  THEN... he takes over the lawsuit and sues George himself.  Dunno how you don't get disbarred for this stuff, but he got away with it.  The suit went on for almost a decade.

OOOH - I did find an Audible book on Allen Klein.  It appears we have a differing perspective on Klein.  Here is the slug-line for the book which I promise to read.  Maybe I am Wrong about him.

Allen Klein
The Man Who Bailed Out the Beatles, Made the Stones, and Transformed Rock & Roll