Johnny Limón and the Southern Cyclones
A tried and true method to land easy laughs is to keep in mind the phrase “that’s a great band name.” That phrase, deployed any time an unusual or silly phrase comes up, usually delivers the goods.
With that in mind, I submit the band name Johnny Limón and the Southern Cyclones. No, I didn’t come up with the name because I want to start a Bossa Nova band. Or because I went to ancestry.com and discovered I’m Latin instead of Irish. (Someone as pale as me could never be Latin without some serious pigment mutations.)
I just started with cyclone and worked backwards. As for Limón? Limón = Lemon, chosen because it rhymes with cyclone.
And why southern cyclone? Because southern cyclones spin clockwise, while northern ones spin counter-clockwise. Thus ends my interminably long article exposition, 100+ words of setting up why I’m writing this: my guitar pick spins clockwise in my hand when I play.
Apologies to the SEO gods. If SEO were a religion, an incredibly long and boring exposition like the one above would earn me a very harsh penance indeed. (Several hours of listening to Nickelback, for example.)
Anyway, why am I writing this again? Oh yeah, because that infuriating item known as a guitar pick keeps spinning in my hand when I try to play guitar. And it spins clockwise, which adds to my annoyance, as it forces me to add the adjective of “southern” to my article title.
Why is this happening? In my ongoing on-again/off-again, will-they/won’t-they relationship with guitar, I don’t remember having a problem with the pick rotating in my fingers while I’m playing a song. I’m not sure why it’s happening, but it’s very distracting and annoying.
And I don’t know about you, but I get very annoyed when I have to deal with things that are very annoying.
So what’s a man to do in this situation? Go to google, obviously. Turns out I’m not alone in combating the cyclone effect. There are many DIY (that’s Do It Yourself for the acronymically challenged) videos to address this issue, including one where a man augmented his pick with a drill press. I think I’ll avoid doing something that’s likely to end with me losing a body part.
Instead, I’ll do what white-collar workers do best and buy something to fix my problems. Enter Star Picks and Monster Grips. (“Wow, what a great band name!” See how easy it is to use that phrase?)
Both of these items are cheap ways to combat cyclone fingers, and more importantly, involve no labor on my part. Like I said, I’m an accountant. Excel does all my labor.
The holes in the star picks are supposed to prevent spinning be allowing some finger flesh to fill the hole, which anchors the pick. The Monster Grips have some adhesive on them. They add some stickiness to the pick, which also should prevent it from spinning. Yay physics!
I look forward to seeing if these products can solve my problem. Let this article be entered into the record so that if I become a famous guitarist I can get an endorsement deal.
If these don’t work, I’m sure I can employ the American Way and buy something else to solve my problems. But if nothing else works I can just become one of these guitarists who give it the finger.