Monthly Archives: December 2015

bryan voell posted this pic on facebook. it has a strange appeal, and he asked for friends to add their poetry and/or music to it. the deadpan facial expressions reminded me of this instrumental that i recorded years ago.

christy found this pic on facebook. every year her family and ours watch randy get bundled up for school, flick put his tongue on a frozen flagpole, and ralphie ask santa for a red ryder BB gun in the 1983 classic: a christmas story. it’s a tradition that has been going on since christy was a teenager living at home. if we get outfits like this for next year’s viewing, our night together may start to resemble a rocky horror picture show… let’s do the time warp again!

last friday @ salon kitch, we hooked up granny smith apples for beep goes the weasel, but they wouldn’t play. kitch scrounged up metallic instruments from his salon and the beeps went on! we recorded some video, said hello to old friends (ian, mia, and tommy pictured above), and met some new people– john, jade, and schuyler (i’m just guessing on that spelling). we had so much jamming that we ran out of time to watch educational film shorts by rifftrax!

i’m putting up fliers to redirect foot traffic off santa fe to salon kitch tonight for beep goes the weasel. last month we jammed with 5 people, tonight’s goal is 6! with any luck pedestrians will hear the sweet sounds of retro synth, and feel like hanging out. afterward we’ll watch educational film shorts by rifftrax that feature puppets, and the repercussions of auto theft.

the best time to hear (or see) an owl @ south lake park right now is around 5pm. jenny & i were walking on the trail, heard an owl, and took this pic. he even did that cool circular head bobbing thing that owls do. three years ago we saw two owls in the same tree!

this is what happened last month when salon kitch teamed up with beep goes the weasel to celebrate local life in overland park: tim played the theremin, john was on the carrots and bananas, and amy used a voice transformer to sing like a robot. and hey guess what? we’re doing it again THIS FRIDAY! the fun starts @ 6pm and goes on until someone calls the cops, then we’ll watch some educational film shorts made by rifftrax.

brothers music is a local record store that opened a couple of months ago where a laundromat used to be. in addition to vinyl LP’s and 45′s they also sell CD’s, cassettes, t-shirts, guitars, and music accessories. the place feels like a handful of laid back musicians pooled their resources, and opened their own shop. last saturday night they booked the acosmists for a gig, and we all watched in amazement as ian mull turned into a voodoo child!

there is a podcast on the atari 2600!!! this means that i am not alone in my 8 bit obsession. actually it’s the tip of the iceberg. thanks to ferg (the host) i’ve found a slew of other retro game related podcasts!

space patrol was a radio show that aired over 60 years ago. the space patrol space-o-phone was something you could get if you mailed in an instant ralston (cereal?) box top along with twenty five cents. hey, it included secret briefing sheets and you could use it to talk even if you were 50 feet away! the space patrol merchandise department also made a mono-view outer space helmet that was “a whole foot high!”

another thing we did over the thanksgiving weekend was head to the mall in joplin. i hadn’t been to northpark mall in a few years, but i was still able to find my way around. the layout is mostly the same even though most of the shops i frequented are long gone. my niece sara and i took these pictures of each other in the teen section of sears even though we didn’t buy the blondie t-shirt– hence the title of this post. the last time i posted something about sara, she was holding a fish.