Category Archives: Uncategorized

Today the world. Tomorrow a paper route.

It was a good night for a walk.  It was a BETTER night for gelato!  We walked around the neighborhood last night and found The Flying Cow– that’s when we went over the moon!  I had a Key Lime gelato and Jenny had Pistacchio.  Mine was so good I went back for Toasted Coconut… that’s when my double chin started to grow back.  This place also reminds me of the baby blanket that Mom made me where the dish ran away with the spoon.

It looks just like it did on TV, right down to the dart board on the door.  I found out yesterday that there is a replica of The Swamp from M*A*S*H in Topeka!  The next time I’m in Topeka, I’m putting on my cowboy hat & bathrobe so I can feel at home at the Museum of the Kansas National Guard.  Until then I’ll just have to take a virtual tour while I sip some gin at home.  Big thanks to Jeff & Ryan, the hosts of MASH Matters for including this in their latest podcast!

In space no one can you hear you pluck… but if you’re lucky there’s an illustrator with a full color palette who will capture the cool weirdness of it all.  While surfing YouTube videos, this image of a twangy astronaut and the description of “Haunting Space Banjo” pulled me in another direction.  Timbr Zeal is an artist I can sink my ears into.

Sweep, Blow-out, Walkaway… GAMMON!  The last term is used when someone wins a game of Backgammon by “bearing off” all of their pieces, utterly defeating the opponent who has not been able to remove a single piece.  If you achieve this type of victory, you can hold your head up high and say “I won by a GAMMON!”  Don’t be surprised if you get quizzical looks, though.  I’m not sure the phrase ever really caught on.

It catches food with it’s own snot, it’s swollen in the middle, and it’s name sounds like an insult… ladies & gentlemen meet THE PIG BUTT WORM!

Of course he’s wearing a green jumpsuit– He’s Eco Elvis! The man who would be king is an impersonator on a mission to save the earth. Matt Riggs is an “edutainer” that changed the lyrics to Elvis’ hits to make them eco-friendly, and he “Can’t Help Recycling It All” for you.  A big Elvis “Thank ya very much” to Chris Mull for snapping this photo!

Lookeba, it sounds like an indigenous tribal name– but it’s not.  It is a town in Oklahoma named after three white men: Lowe, Kelley, and Baker– it’s also where my family lived for a few years in the late 70′s.  This was our house that we built between just outside of town.  My brother-in-law asked for the address so he could drive by it on his way home from New Orleans recently.  Not much has changed.  The big cedar tree out front is gone, and so is my dad’s short bed Chevy truck, but I can still hear him practicing his scales on the trumpet.

The internet was a weird and wacky place when we first found it.  Where did all these things come from?  Who was making it possible?  How did we get from the top to the bottom 43 years ago?  We scrolled!  The arrows were pointing the wrong way at first– but we still scrolled, doggone it!  If you want to relive the retro magic of scrolling in the early years just click here and scroll like there’s no tomorrow– only yesterday!

I always think of this scene from The Last Picture Show when I walk out onto the spillway at Lake Olathe.  Ben Johnson’s character reminisces about the past at a remote fishing tank, and I am reflective and nostalgic around a similar spot at the spillway.