Sit Back, Relax and Enjoy!

With the hectic pace and general busyness of day to day life in this modern world, it is easy to begin to feel like all you seem to do is work, work, work. Going in to the office every day, coming home to take care of your family, and keeping your home and possessions in good working order can all add up to one colossal headache from time to time. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in everything that we need to take care of that we fail to sit back and relax and enjoy it. This is why taking a vacation every now and then is so important for your mental health and overall happiness. A vacation does not need to be an exotic, complicated affair. Even just getting away and out of town for a day or two can really refresh you. Sometimes, something as simple as heading to a nice hotel not far from home is all that is needed to help you truly relax and take it easy for a while. If you own a camper or a recreational vehicle, try taking it someplace within about twenty or thirty miles from home for a night; you will be surprised at how vacation-like that experience can seem. Sometimes, though, you may genuinely feel the need to get far away from home. This is okay too, and more exotic or involved vacations can still be just as relaxing. The key to this type of vacation is planning it perfectly so that all of the details are worked out well in advance. You will want to make the hotel arrangements, flight plans, car rentals, and everything related to your stay totally figured out ahead of time so that when the time comes to go on your vacation, it is smooth sailing. This way, you will truly be able to relax and have fun. You will return home feeling like a new person, and feel more able to handle the daily stress of life and its many demands. During the dreary winter months in colder climates, people can begin to feel depressed. Day after day of cold, gray weather can really take a toll on your overall mood. This is why a vacation to a warm, sunny place is such a great idea during the winter. It can really put the spark back in your life, to head down to Florida or Hawaii for a week or two. Getting some sun and even achieving a nice tan are excellent ways to lift your spirits and relieve a lot of stress. Another great type of vacation is one to a spa resort. This is a place that is entirely centered around pampering you and your guests. At a spa, you can partake in all kinds of relaxing activities, such as massages, facials and special treatments. You can soak in a wonderful hot tub or float in a calming, quiet pool. Usually there is peaceful, tranquil kinds of music playing in the background, which further add to the serenity. No matter what kind you choose, a vacation can really lift your spirits. For more information on vacations, visit http://vacationmicroblog.com and http://holidaymicroblog.com

Willie Sutton is Now Back not as a Bank Robber But as a Modern Day Identity Thief

Several times, using his skill of disguise, dressed in a prison guards uniform utilized two ladders carried across the yard and when a spot light hit him he yelled out, “It’s ok” and continued his escape without incident. Later, Sutton attributed the famous quote of “That’s Where The Money Is” to an inventive reporter embellishing a story. It was surmised that he had stolen around $2,000,000 over his career. Later on accountants would use this theory to focus on high cost areas as a target for savings. It was called the “Willie Sutton Rule” following “where the money is” as its basis. While serving a long prison term after his capture in 1952 and was serving a 105 sentence. With failing health, he was released in 1969 from Attica State Prison and died November 2, 1980 at age 79 in Spring Hill, Florida. His legacy lives on.

Today, Willie Sutton, just arriving fresh out of the time machine, could be sitting in his home perhaps in his underwear with a wry smile that this new game was really better than any bank job. With hands spread between the keyboard and mouse with a bent on “Philsing” and stealing as much money as possible online. A cold one would be close by with a tasty snack. These “bank teller windows” are open 365 days 24 hours a day, their motto might be “We never close”. No more casing future jobs, no need for cleaver disguises, no need to carry a gun, no get away car, no threat of shoot outs, no following opening and closing times of the bank, all that is needed is an Internet connection and a computer. What a country!

There are many modern day “Willie Suttons” out there trying to separate citizens from their hard earned money. It is likewise a “worldwide robbery in progress” from the cafés from New Deli, from the depths of Asia or from anywhere in the world where anyone in cyberspace is a potential target for being fleeced of their money. Scams and consumer alerts go from low tech to major firewall crashing and intervention.

From Dumpster diving looking for your personal information to all sorts of scams. Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the U.S. today. The con artists are skilled at putting together believable scripts and stories that will play well to the unsuspecting pigeon. The mark wakes up only after their bank accounts have been cleaned out or their credit cards maxed out.

The Identity Theft Resource Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting citizens in fighting scams. Some of the scams are summarized below:

Job Scams where you are asked to provide personal information including dates of birth and Social Security numbers. Some enterprising cons posted employment ads to get applicants to share personal information that can be exploited. No job exists-the con is on.

Calls from credit card “Representatives” to verify unusual purchases and to verify your card by sharing the three-digit number code on the back of the card. This conversation follows after a lengthy discussion on avoiding credit card scam. It is the scam. They already have your credit card number from other sources, only now they need the additional key to gate of your money.

“Phisher” scams involving using web page similar to your financial institution or consumer retail store looking (logos and all) for passwords and personal information with Social Security numbers. This could be E-Bay, Best Buys, Discover, AOL, MSN, Earthlink, PayPal, and Bank of America, Providian and other banks such as Wells Fargo.

Sign In Rosters at schools and such where you list your Social Security and other personal information that can be ripped off by any eyeball noting the information.

The famous Nigerian scam asking you to help them move money out of the country with a big reward to the facilitator. This total fraud has fleeced many citizens of their door.

The Canadian/Netherlands Lottery touting that hey “YOU WON”. The new Spanish Lottery is now hot as well. Naturally, you will be asked to post some cash as good faith.

Promises of “Free Credit Reports” can be a scam with bills and such showing up later OR your information is utilized for a fleece job.

Offers of a FREE GIFT will usually lead to costing you as you share your information.

E mailing and forwarding Chain Letters helps the con collect your friends and contacts e-mail addresses to fleece them as well.

Offers to buy a CD on skip tracing someone anywhere is utilized to gather your credit card information that can be later used to rip you off.

Questionnaires are a good device to gather personal information for “Bad Purposes” where Chat rooms for friends is a slick method to gather information on citizens. Won’t you be my “friend”?

Persons in acting as store security scams to catch a bad employee all the while noting the personal information of the target of identity theft.

Charities on the phone, who are skilled at raising money, call and prey on the good nature of the donors. Many times the charities get like 5% or less of monies collected plus your information is used to commit a later Fraud. A “Do Not Call Verification” representative calls to get verify personal information. This is done online or by mail, if ever.

A person gets a call from a “clerk” of the court regarding jury duty while verifying personal information. Again this is a scam. Normally, jury duty is noted by mail.

Additional scams are referred to as:

Disaster relief, FTC Warning Registry, IRS Scam, “Hospital Personnel”, Pay Pal Verification-Phony, Credit Reporting Agencies ploy, Get Out Of Debt e-mail, and any new wrinkle with larceny in the hearts of the perpetrators of Identify Theft Scam.

When conducting online business one must be very careful with personal and private information that can be turned around and used to the perpetrator’s advantage to screw the consumer. It is not limited to just the U.S. as mentioned, it is now a worldwide effort to pull a scam. With the U.S. being heavily wired on the Internet with good financial depth consumers’ are a focused target for exploitation.

Willie Sutton today would have a huge callous on his mouse hand with all the clicks and spaming necessary to separate the mark from their money. The mantra of “That’s where the money is” has shifted to a new paradigm with a focus on identify theft through low tech and high tech means to rob people of their money by various means. The new Willie Suttons of the world is dedicated to this venture and a consumer must be very careful in throwing around personal information. The difference in bank robberies of the past by “Slick Willie” is that in this case consumers credit histories can be destroyed and ruptured requiring years to recover. Families can be destroyed, divorces happen, bankruptcy can ensue and the dark hole of identify theft is entered. It is a destructive force in our country. Better safe guards and protections are needed to solve this sometimes-heartbreaking crime. Breaking through firewalls and setting up shop on personal computers to steal passwords and establish a base to “spam the scam” to other unsuspecting consumers. Awareness and good set of radar antennae are a good first line of defense. It it’s too good to be true…you already know.

Dale Rogers

www.brokencredit.com

Will He Miss Me And Want Me Back If I Ignore Him? Guys And Women Help Me Please!?

6 months ago, and 2 states away, we talked on the phone EVERY night for hours telling each other that we missed the other, him calling over 30 times a day to tell me what was going on with him and etc. Three months ago, he took off of work, rented a car, left at 5:30am, paid for the major things like the rental, the hotel, then the suite in Florida, the gas, the dining and drove 8 hours to Louisiana to come and get me, drove further and stopped in his hometown in Florida to go ahead and take a two day vacation there with me, and hopped back on the road to Atlanta, because I was moving there so we could finally be together. And he’s said that that was one of the things he regrets he did. Those words hurt so much. He said it has set him back financially. That that’s money he doesn’t have now. Four weeks ago, my ex which is 22 started distancing himself from me- no call, no show. A week ago, he “officially” broke up with me. If it makes a difference. I messed up and did the typical thing a girl does when she gets dumped by the man she loves. Persistence. And I’m nervous that that may have made any chance even slimmer.
To make a long story short, it’s been a week since we officially broke up and Saturday was the last time I tried to contact him. I know it’s only Monday, but the days are long and the nights seem even longer. I wonder all day, if he’s thinking about me, or what he could be doing that he won’t call me. I see similar questions on here about will your ex miss you if you don’t contact him. But not only did he want to break up, he didn’t even want to be friends. Even after we officially broke up, I carpooled with him to school last Thursday, and when he picked me up after my classes, he didn’t say a word to me. I told him about what happened in class, and asked why he wouldn’t say anything. He said he didn’t want to say anything and it backfires on him. That it was better to not talk at all. Which brought him to saying he didn’t understand how you could be friends with a girl you used to be with. He wasn’t used to that. One person hates the other. We had sex just about every time he saw me. And that he couldn’t answer my calls or call me if he was seeing someone else at that moment. That it wouldn’t work. I asked him “so basically you don’t want to have anything to do with me” and he nodded slowly and managed to say “yeah”. Of course those words were like knives to my heart. I couldn’t process them. How could the man who was just all over me, guarding me from other men, turn so cold and want to act like I didn’t exist in his life or never did. Usually when we were together he would always ask me if I was going to smoke with him when he got off work, but I would say no. And sit outside on my steps with him anyway. But that day, out of curiosity I asked if we could blow together, and he was like I don’t think so. He said that he only smokes with his friends, and we definitely couldn’t be friends. When he dropped me off at my car, I asked for a hug and he barely touched me. When I stepped down, I asked him if he would come over and we could chill “as friends” he said “We’ll see” (that’s his new answer to everything I ask- and it’s turned out to mean “no”). I told him to just tell me yes or no and he said no, that “now isn’t a good time, maybe next week”. But because I have come to find out he lied to me about many things, I couldn’t take that to heart when I wanted to. He’s said many things the past few weeks that hurt, but he did say he loved me somewhere in the midst when he apologized for treating me the way he did. I’m confused and slowly sinking into a deep hole of depression. I don’t eat anything. Everything reminds me of him. Sometimes no matter where I am, I just burst out in tears and cry not caring who sees me. I don’t sleep in my bed, because he used to lie there next to me. I still have his work shirt and his socks and his movies in my drawer, and a picture frame with four pictures of us from when we had first hooked up in Pensacola beach at the end of May. I know he still has my poem and my thong, my cards, my lock and key necklace and everything else I gave him over time. I wonder if he sees them or ever picks it up to read and think of me. I don’t have any friends here. I’m new. I basically moved to start my life over with him, and now he’s left me high and dry after three or four months.
My question here is do you think that with much needed time of no contact from my end, he will come around? Do you think he will realize what he did? That I was nothing, but a loyal, faithful girlfriend. I feel alone and betrayed, but my heart still craves him. In my gut, I feel like he didn’t mean it, like he misses me too, like he just didn’t know how else to handle whatever his situation was, but to walk away. I still have that hope that he’ll call me one day and ask to meet up and say he wants to try again…

Turning Back the Clock

Tom Leadon and Randall Marsh—two of the original members of Mudcrutch alongside Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and later Benmont Trench—the band’s reunion has been nothing short of a dream. And while the other three members have notched countless sold-out amphitheaters and arenas under their belts, not to mention this past Super Bowl halftime show, as The Heartbreakers, it’s clear Mudcrutch has been revitalizing. We caught up with Campbell, Leadon and Marsh to hear how it was going half way through their first tour in over 30 years.

What was it like hearing the idea of the Mudcrutch reunion not from Tom Petty but from Peter Bogdanovich?

Tom Leadon: Peter had come to Brentwood, TN where I teach music to interview me [for the documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream]. He asked me if I had any Mudcrutch pictures, so I took him into my room and he was saying, “Aww, we’ve seen all these already. You know, Tom mentioned to me the other day that he was thinking of having a Mudcrutch reunion.” I have to say that his words shot through me like a bolt of lightening. … I’ve been practicing everyday for years because I’m a musician but I always had faith that some day I could do something and get my music out there. I told Peter to tell Tom I was up for it. It was about another seven or eight months before I heard from Tom. I’m still just living a dream here. I feel better than if I won the lottery.

Randall Marsh: I was dumbfounded. I just presumed they’d been working on the movie and maybe had a few beers and Peter misconstrued some nostalgic idea. So I didn’t take it that seriously.

Leadon: When he called me, I was driving home from the supermarket and he said, “Hey, this is your old pal Tom Petty,” and I was like, “No… really?” I thought it was one of my friends jerking my chain. He said it again and I said again, “No… really?” I couldn’t hear him very well so I pulled my truck over to the side of the road and we talked for about an hour and it was just great.

I didn’t know that we’d do a whole record, I don’t think any of us did. Tom said he had an equipment warehouse and he’d set up some tape recording equipment and I thought, “Well, maybe we’ll make some demos and maybe something down the line will come out of it.” I was still really excited. I thought we’d get together for two or three days and just have fun, play a little music and then go home. As I got subsequent calls from Tom over the next few months, I found out that he was blocking out two weeks of time, that he had one of the best engineers in the business, and I’m thinking this is starting to sound really good. I was asking him about airline expenses and he said, “Ah, there’ll probably be a record deal somewhere down the line.” And I’m thinking to myself, record deal! And we hadn’t even played a note.

Did you ever expect, after this long—three decades—that this might happen?

Mike Campbell: It was out of the blue. I was pleasantly surprised when he called me and asked me what I thought. I thought, “That’d be really fun to do.” I was also surprised that with The Heartbreakers and all the other activities we’ve got going on—we’d just done the Super Bowl and we were setting up a summer tour—and I was impressed that Tom was so keen to do it, that he wanted to find time to squeeze this in. Obviously Tom didn’t have to do this project; this is something he really wanted to do.

It seems like Mudcrutch offers all of you an opportunity to be free of expectations, both from fans and label executives.

Campbell: It’s so liberating to do a project that has no baggage with it, no expectations. On some level it’s compared to The Heartbreakers but it’s a completely separate band, separate style of music. It’s still the same songwriter and singer but in this band Tom plays bass and that creates a whole different feel and different concept of how the music is going to flow. It’s really exciting to walk out onstage and not play any hits—for me, Ben [Benmont Trench] and Tom, that’s a real revelation. And to still have it go over as well as it has—the audiences are just going nuts—it’s real eye opener for the three of us that we can go out onstage with our original band, play songs they’ve never heard before and have it really work.

What was the first reunion show like in Malibu?

Campbell: It was a different type of pressure than, say, the Super Bowl or some big arena concert because they are right up in front of you and you’re presenting music they’ve never heard before. It was a real nice challenge and it was—and still is—very exciting to get up and play with our old friends. We were pleasantly surprised that people really seemed to respond to the chemistry and honesty of what we were presenting.

Leadon: I had the jitters a little bit. I remember driving over there in the car with Tom and Randall and it was just a magical thing, driving along the water to the gig and having the place sold-out. I just felt like at my age, here I am 55 years old, played guitar for 45 of them and played in a lot bands—and this was the most special band I was ever in, these were the guys I grew up with—so in a sense it was my coming-out party. It just felt like it was time.

Marsh: I kept telling myself, you take away the fame and celebrity, it’s just another gig, just another band. But before we went on, I was about to wet my pants. [laughs] These guys are so good, such pros, I didn’t want to let anybody down.

“Crystal River” seems to be something special, something a bit different than the rest of the tunes.

Campbell: That song was from the first day we got together and Tom had just barely written it. He just showed us the chords. We were getting use to the room and getting used to playing together again, so it did stretch on a bit because we were just discovering our sound. When we play that song live, it is one of the high points of the show. It seems like the audience is in on the joke—that these guys are really enjoying this and it’s fresh. And even though I haven’t heard this song before, there’s something magical going on that they really connect with. Every night it does that have element of “We’re going to go off in this direction and see where it lands.” It’s very exciting because The Heartbreakers don’t do that much.

The song represents all the elements that were Mudcrutch. Mudcrutch had two worlds that were coming together. One world was Tom Leadon and Tom Petty, who were deeply engrossed in country rock like Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds’ country stuff or The Flying Burrito Brothers. Randall and I were really versed in long improvisations, Grateful Deadish-type feel. Those two worlds are well represented in that song. It’s got a bit of country swing and feel in the verses but the instrumental part tends to take a few liberties, stretch out and come back to that. Those two worlds together is basically what the Mudcrutch sound is.

Does this band sound like the original Mudcrutch?

Campbell: The key here is it’s very true to the original Mudcrutch. The Mudcrutch that got signed to Shelter records and put out a few singles was a different Mudcrutch: Tom Leadon had left, Randall Marsh had left and a few other guys had come in and we’d gotten a little away from that original sound. This band is the original lineup and inspiration of what that band was all about. It sounds just like we did back in the day. When we recorded the album, we made a point of recording it live with no headphones, live vocals, live solos. It’s very, very true.

Leadon: What’s different, though, is that 30 some years later, we’ve all been playing, some of us famously, some of us not so famously. We’ve all been progressing with our music and I feel like we’re all much better players, singers and writers than we were then. When we started Mudcrutch, I wasn’t even 18 yet and by the time I was 20, I’d left the band. We had something special, it just never had a chance to fully develop. That’s something that’s so satisfying with his project. To me it feels like a chance to see what might have been.

Did you go back and listen to the original material when you were all together?

Campbell: That’s another thing that’s interesting: Even though we have the same sound and chemistry that we had back in the day, maybe 80 percent of the songs are freshly written.

Has there been any thought to revisit it or are you letting it lie?

Campbell: We like to leave that alone and move on with newer songs. We did a few covers on the record that were older, that we used to do back in the day, like “Six Days on the Road” and “Lover on the Bayou.” There’s one song on the album that we brought back from the old days that we actually never recorded but used to play at our shows that Tom Leadon wrote, “Queen of the Go Go Girls.”

Leadon: Now that we’re much more mature, better players—and Tom was always a good writer but now he’s a great writer—we come in and do the best song we have at the moment and it’s not going to be a song we wrote 35 years ago. Most of the others are brand-new songs and that’s because Tom is writing better now than he did then. He thought about some of the old songs, he thought, “Nah, that’s the sound of guys learning to play and write.”

One of the bands that Mudcrutch gets compared to a lot is Flying Burrito Brothers and Gram Parsons. I’m curious to hear your respective takes on Parsons.

Campbell: I’ve always thought he was a genius, brilliant and very soulful singer and I always loved his records. It was actually Tom Leadon and Tom Petty who turned me on to him. I just loved his whole trip.

Leadon: Tom and I first heard him, like many people, on Sweetheart of the Rodeo and we were really into that and we actually used to cover some of the tunes he did, like “Empty Bottle, Broken Heart.” We were hip to the fact that he and Chris Hillman started The Flying Brothers. Hillman was someone who my older brother Bernie had been in a band with as teenagers in San Diego before The Byrds, called Scottsville Squirrel Barkers. Chris was the main guy that inspired my brother to move to L.A. to try and make it. So we started listening to the first Flying Burrito album and we just loved it. We were doing Flying Burritos covers and nobody in Florida was doing anything like that. They didn’t understand why these longhaired rock musicians would be playing this truck-stop country music. We just loved it. Gram, for me, was the one that inspired me to sing other than just a few harmony parts I used to do. … So really, the reason Tom Petty and I got into country was my brother’s influence. We’d get these records from the West Coast and the public in general didn’t know about it and then [my brother] joined The Flying Burrito Brothers, which was our favorite band. I was just thrilled. He made a couple of records with them.

When I moved to LA in ‘73—I was the first to leave Mudcrutch and I was living with my brother—I met Gram there at some nightclubs with Clarence White and people like that. He was just my hero. Bernie played on his last album, Grievous Angel, and took me to the sessions so I got to hang out with Gram and I got to meet Emmylou [Harris] and they became close friends. It was just such a tragedy when he died. I saw the destructive side of him as well. I hung out with him enough to see that. I felt that he was a genius but a flawed genius. He was a wonderful person. … Ultimately he didn’t take care of himself, he destroyed himself and… it’s not a good thing he did there. We could still have Gram today if he didn’t do that… I just don’t understand why people do things like that to themselves but we’re lucky we had him when we did. His vision of putting together rock, country, gospel and R&B for this cosmic American music that he talked about, it really affected a lot of the music that came after that.

Mike, what is it like playing with Tom on bass after so long and working with the other Tom on guitar? Do you sense that it might make the Heartbreakers’ dynamic fresh in some ways?

Campbell: Tom played bass back in the day with Mudcrutch—when I met him, he was the bass player and he was always great at the bass. All the years with The Heartbreakers, he’s played guitar, which he’s also great on. He writes his songs on the guitar. I know Tom was really keen to play the bass again and I know he practiced it really hard for this project because he wanted to make sure he could carry his end. I think playing the bass and making this record live, I think it was an eye-opener for Tom to sing live and play the bass, it really connected him with how he started out in bands. I think it’s liberated him and made him enjoy music in a way that he hasn’t in many years. I am hopeful that some of that energy and awakening will spillover into stuff we do in the future.

What does the future hold for Mudcrutch?

Campbell: The whole project started as a whim and then it became a record and now it’s become some gigs. Every step along the way it’s been so enjoyable and so positive and received so well, I can’t see any reason for it not to continue. It’s just a matter of finding time to do it. We’re as happy as a musician can be playing these gigs. Something this fun you couldn’t just put it down and not keeping going.

I Just Got Back From Key West…?

It was soo amazing! I live in Orlando but Key West is FLORIDA! I went to Sloppy Joe’s of course, Irish Kevin’s, The Bull, etc etc. It was so much fun. Who else has been or lives there? Tell me some more places to go next time and some cheaper places to stay? We stayed in the Key Lime hotel which was pretty nice but I want to go soon and don’t have as much money to spend… thanks :]

Back To Our Roots: The Great Migration South

NPR Radio -From April 2006

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“never Going Back” Pop Rock Alternative Jam Band James Graff @heamuusika Vortsjärv Eesti

Never Going Back – Pop, Rock, Alternative, Jam Band Original, Unsigned Music Video by James Graff JAM BAND is a term that refers to bands, albums, festivals, etc., that relate directly or indirectl…

Back to the Basics is the Key to Riches in Real Estate

Divorced With One Child & Family Hates Ex-husband, Back Together And Expecting Again. How To Break The News?

This is extremely difficult as I’m looking for a way to break the news to my family as they all HATE my ex-husband due to a not so nice divorce. We have been seeing each other again for almost 9 months after being apart since our son was only a few months old. My ex-husband lives in the Florida Keys and I currently live in NY. I have a great job that I’m nervous about giving up since there is not much for employment in the Florida Keys unless I want to work in a shop in KeyWest or in a hotel/Bed & Breakfast.. He is begging me daily to quit my job and move down there, offering to pay my bills off. He would like me to due this sooner than later since we are expecting another child in September.. I am so confused and looking for some suggestions. My parents in which I am very close with KNOW that we are seeing each other again ,but cringe every time I mention his name and maybe movie back to florida, especially since my son is there only grandchild. Help!

Florida Will Bounce Back!