Horsin’ Around

Blur-by week. Or Derby week, I guess. whatever, it was, it was a bucketful, a julip full, an aircraft hanger full of fun. Fun, people! Like it was meant to be had! The kind where there’s not someplace you’ve got to be, not someplace you’d rather be. No business that you gotta take care of real quick or appointments to fit in. That kind of fun.

Much of this must be credited to The Minnesotans, who rallied, sparred, jabbed and parried like only the most exquisite and delectable party people can. How do you write about this? Well, first, I guess, you mention the reunion show by Love Jones, who amazed in spite of their near-brillo-pad roughness. For most bands, not practicing for a $25 a head charity gig would strike a dubious (and sour) chord, but the Louisville laggards (no, they did not appear in Swingers but they were in Since You’ve Been Gone) demonstrated that their “we don’t fucking care what you think” edge was still razer sharp. Jennifer and I agreed that we’d never cut a band this much slack before and had such a great time in the process. Also, if a big loud rock show in an aircraft hanger sounds like a good idea, think again. Still, pour a strong and cheap enough screwdriver, in sufficient quantities and it’s a wonder nobody got arrested on the adjacent runway (Or, as Ben explained: “As good of an idea as it may sound like, do not leave here and decide to drive your car down the runway. Take my word for it. I did it once and … it was pretty cool…“)

One of the weirdest and coolest things of the evening was running into Anessa, a friend from the blogosphere! Wow! Who rock the party, she rock the party! I’m not sure it it was even weirder, but it turned out that we had actually met once before. At The Icehouse.

Much much more fun was had, but this post is already a week late, so another time, alrighty?

But here’s some pictures, which are pretty funny. Especially the ones at Henry’s Ark in Louisville.

iPod vending machine? Just misses the mark.

I have seen the future, in my addled little mind, and it is an MP3 Vending Machine. This link is to a pic of a vending machine selling iPods, which is really rather gauche (yo, rich guy—where y’gonna get some tunes before your flight boards?).

BUT…

An MP3 vending machine, where you could plug in, swipe your credit card, and grab some tunes from say, The Life Aquatic soundtrack before hopping on your plane…

Now, that, my friends, would be superbad.

Looking for Petrol, Darling

This searching for cheap gas can easily become an obsession, especially in our current torn-from-naiveté world of the upward spiral. Lucy’s always had the tic, but now, I’m getting it worse, too. I left the house, this morn and took a minute before walking out the door checked prices like some people check the weather. It’s getting like that, is all I’m sayin…

So on a nearly bone-dry tank, I headed over to the reputed loss leader this shady BP station across town, and as I crested the hill—can it be true?— yes! $2.07 in a $2.24 market! As I pulled up, something wasn’t right. I thought there was a line, but it turned out there was an unmarked cruiser blocking the entrance. And scattered here and there, a half a dozen other cop cars. Nobody in sight. No other cars. Huh?

I couldn’t stand it.

I pulled in this back way and rolled up to the island. As I opened the door, a cop walked out and—with no condescension—said: “Sorry, they’re not open right now.” I’m thinkin’ What? Are they in trouble for selling gas too cheap? II called after him, “Um, so what’s going on?” I’m always reluctant to ask this of cops, for the chance that they’ll get pissy about it, but I couldn’t resist. He looked over his shoulder and tossed back: “There’s an investigation under way.” Damn, that’s all I got!”

But still, isn’t that weird?



Even weirder, I was bummed because I wasn’t going to score the cheap gas and as I pulled out, I looked across the way to this Citgo, tucked off the main road. $2.07!

So I filled ‘er up over there, where it was fairly bustling. I kept wanting to query my fellow gassers…. cheap-gas.com? cheap-gas.com.



Feels like a secret…

The Player Piano—XBox to a by-gone generation?

I know, I know— It’s not true. Certainly, it’s the Atari 2600 thats the XBox to a by-gone generation, but I have my reasons. I just got a shout from cousin Karen, and it brought back a flood of memories of family trips to Evansville, to see the Evans. I never thought that was funny when I was a kid, but now, I love it. The Evans’ from Evansville. Some of my fondest memories are of unsupervised play-time (I don’t know if ‘supervised playtime’ ever even figured into the picture) in the basement, which had that total ‘we’ve finished out our basement into a bar slash TV area slash let’s-put-the-exercise-bike-there-too area,’ look. And did I mention Air Hockey? Yes, yes… and it was one of those heavier tables, wasn’t it? Not the dinky ones.

But off in the corner was my delight: the Player Piano. It was magic, and to me, as captivating as Pac-Man (though maybe not Defender). Well, for short periods anyway. I mean— I guess you can only pump out Sister Golden Hair so many times before your eight-year-old legs are worn out. Sitting on top was a boxful of rolls for the Piano, and we made our way through them on every visit, basicaly looking for songs we’d heard on the radio. I think Bad, Bad Leroy Brown was in there, but mostly I remember the America song.

The thing about Sister Golden Hair was this: The lyrics said “damn.” Which was a cuss word. and we weren’t allowed to say such words. Even, “damn” was definitely on the no-no list. But part of the magic of the player piano was that, not only did it miraculously play assorted songs, right before our eyes (and pumping legs) but that it gave us permission to curse, if only within this very narrow parameter. Also S.G.H. featured the line “I got myself undressed” which tweaked some shadowy pre-adolescent titillation, although now, I see that it was more of a clinical depression kind of thing.

Usually we would play the piano as a group. Me and Christo, and cousins Karen and Becky would combine our resources to operate the big musty barroom upright, with at least one of us leaning on each of the bellows pedals, sometimes using hands instead of feet, just to add to the fun.

And speaking of musty— That smell… no weblog can convey that Wood of the Ages smell that would invisibly roll out when you played it, the way Cold billows out of an open refrigerator. I guess that ‘s what happens when you push modern air though the time machine of a decades-old bellows. It comes out old.

We would gather around this huge thing, this lumbering machine of wood, and we would bring it to life, because we could. The wonder of this to the eight-year-old mind… it was like raising the dead or levitating an object or some other fantastical achievement that normally could only live in my imagination. It was a thrill, however brief, that returned every time we visited Evansville.