Bad things happen to me before I have morning coffee. I am grouchy, I mouth off, I take bets I shouldn't be taking. Today, all three happened at once. I was having a discussion with someone about the daily grind here at Gearwire, and unfortunately (for me) I started bragging about my high-speed capabilities if given the proper amount of coffee. See, I was trying to make a case for the boss giving all of us Gearwire types a company-paid-for Starbucks card, under the guise of an increase in productivity.

"Hell, I could whip out a video for you in under 90 minutes from concept to completion if I just got enough coffee in me. Just you WATCH me go!"

I was confident I could secure us all free, overpriced coffee drinks for the rest of our lives if I could just demomstrate a correlation between coffee and CONTENT.

I got my bluff called right away. I was told to go down to the coffee shop, fuel up on however much I thought I needed to get a complete Gearwire video done from the first frame of video to the final edit, and get to work.

"HAH!" I thought, and said in my best Darth Vader voice, "I have you NOW." Free overpriced lattes, forever, here we come.

I went down to the corner Starbucks and powered up with a tall, five-shot latte, a tall coffee, and a package of chocolate-covered espresso beans. I got the small sizes because I wanted just enough caffeine to blast me through 90 minutes. I'd worry about the inevitable crash later. When I was victorious.

Once the coffee products were all consumed, the clock started ticking. Ninety minutes and counting down.

I flew through an introduction, V-blog style, then, my hands already shaking from the coffee jitters, I took us into the Gearwire gear room, grabbed a Danelectro Tuna Melt Tremolo, and got to work.

The Danelectro Tuna Melt is great. I love this little yellow thing. I'm not what you'd call a traditional guitar player, I know four whole chords. But I played them ALL for the video camea, getting everything from sweet, 50s-era tremolo sounds, to freakish, analog-ity/synth-ity tones from it with all settings in extreme positions. (And in case you're wondering, it's true; too much coffee makes you start talking in Homer Simpson-speak)

Now I know perfectly well that the Danelectro Tuna Melt is a retro pedal, designed to give that 50s tube amp vibe. But it gave off such wonderfully bizarre noises on the extreme settings, that I am seriously thinking of buying three of them to use in series on my old Juno keyboards.

So I played with the Tuna Melt using a Gibson Custom through a Valve King 212, got lots of great sounds, and took a mere 40 minutes to get it all done. I did it all alone, without a camera crew.

But when I flew into the editing room to assemble the video, I learned another 20 minutes into the edit that I had dorked up my audio settings and all the guitar sounds were horrifically distorted beyond use.

I nearly wept. I had been so close to the prize, so very near the eternal fountain of free coffee, only to be thwarted by my own incompetence in not checking the audio levels on the camera before firing away. My body was shaking from the massive intake of coffee, chocolate, and espresso. I should have been jittering with victory, but instead, I was quaking in defeat.

I had to crawl. I had to go back and admit to the powers that be that I had failed. But the fact is, it could have worked. I could easily have gotten the thing done in 90 minutes if I had only stopped and checked my settings. But, you see, I was distracted by the jitters, the hyperactivity, the blast of caffeine going right to my poor damaged brain.

Free coffee was my goal, but in the end, it was the coffee that did me in. What a tale of woe! "Pride goeth before a fall," somebody really old once said. I suppose they were right, at least once.

As for the Danelectro Tuna Melt? I was so pleased with the sounds I got that I plan on re-doing the entire video soon, along with any othe Danelectro product I can find. I must say, I like what I hear.

But before I redo any video, I need some more coffee.