So after a miserable night cab driving which had just been capped off when the dispatcher had just sent me 5 miles south for a 5 dollar fare... that's 10 miles @ x miles per gallon equals 35 minutes of time and ... = empty pocket blues so I sit up at the cab stand at 1AM. Real blue and just pissed and disgusted and thinking about 666 today's little adventure and who am I and why am I such a monster? The usual crap plus...What will be my fate on such an ominous day? Anyways I tuned in to KALX the University of California's student Radio and I find myself listening to some stand-up comedy and it's pretty good and I am starting to smile a little bit I guess and well I don't know I guess I was smiling who knows I don't know if I chuckled but somewhere in there this stuff was positively hilarious and I have tears rolling down my cheeks it was Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner from back in the 60's recorded in some nightclub. I sat there without a call for a half hour just in a state I had completely forgotten about and then they played some old Woody Allen and it was hilarious and anyways it did something to my head I had forgot how great it is to laugh really laugh. I finally took a couple more calls the radio station transitioned into some potent Funk and the two young restaurant workers heading home to Mill Valley (wow shocking they were white kids not Mexicans.. maybe its the beginning of the next trend) they dug the Funk and I told them about the Monophonics opening up the great 2006 Music in the Park Series that someone seems to be putting on here in San Anselmo again this summer. They new about the Monophonics and seemed pretty happy that this was going to be going on in the Park... I left them, everybody in a good state. Well Jim the dispatcher sent me to pick up 'The Commander', a regular of ours but I never remember picking him up at such a late hour. It was 2:20 AM when I pulled up in front of his condo in Corte Madera It seemed like he was smiling even from forty yards away he was standing outside his door in his blue naval coat and his USS Coral Sea Navy baseball cap waiting for me. He uses a cane, he's a bit frail he walked around the cab and got in the front seat next to me. The last time I gave him a ride I really enjoyed it I don't know if he recognized me but we said hello and their seemed to be a spark as if he was enjoying this night as much as I was. We said something about the beautiful night he may have said something about stars I was taking him down to Denny's (you know 24 hours) probably a little less than a mile away. I don't know what we were talking about but he came out with such a beautiful line that it kind of shocked me.    'Problems bring Progress.' That kind of stopped me and gave me a bit of a buzz, a jolt, a ridiculous sense of wow! Even though it maybe is not all that profound and I wondered if I was being a little too much my 'Cosmic Charlie' self... I asked him to tell me more. He says that he is an inventor and that's just the way it is. Problems bring Progress. Then he points up to his baseball cap and says..  'The Pinnacle' 'that's the Pinnacle' he repeats and he finishes the thought.......'the brain.'   My shift was over. I turned the cab radio off and asked him some more questions about his naval experience, finally I told him I had to split though we were both primed to talk. I wrapped it up by asking him again if it was 'Problems bring Progress' was the magnificent concept that he had just told me because as I said it back to him it didn't quite have that stellar effect as when he first said it to me. 'That's it' he said 'but don't try too hard, don't try too hard, let it just happen.'        Guy Meyer, Jr.                   June 6, 2006         San Anselmo, California               guy@lifesignsphoto.com