Monthly Archives: August 2018

tara, a bar of soap is the latest guest on everything is alive, the show where inanimate objects answer questions and tell stories. this week tara talks about the fear, apprehension, and indignity she suffers when a child says something bad. it was weird to hear that moment described from her side. previous guests on the show have been a pillow, a lamppost, and a can of generic cola.

bad can be a relative term, or it can just be… BAD. last monday, chloé showed me a picture of some men from the 1970′s dressed in polyester & macramé. she made a caption that read something like: “it was a long time before these guys had girlfriends.” it reminded me of bad album covers i’ve seen over the years. the two i’ve posted here are from a list of 20 on teamjimmyjoe.com. if you wanna see the other 18 click here, but be careful because there are some things you can’t unsee. the one below was in my parents’ collection.

last week i drove out to rich maxwell’s garage in shawnee. we rigged aluminum foil to trigger music and sounds using his marbles & my makey makey. once we put it together, we couldn’t believe how simple the concept was: the marble’s weight pushes two pieces of foil together (each piece of foil is connected to the makey makey), and we get audio! the next thing rich wants to do is trigger sounds & music from star wars!

it costs 25 cents for 8 shots on the sea devil game at papa keno’s, so you better make ‘em count. when one of those torpedoes actually hits a ship, you can hear the explosion & the screen goes red. i met some friends for pizza thursday night, and i didn’t see it until tanner said “what the heck is this?” i turned around from playing galaga & saw him looking at sea devil next to the whack-a-mole. i told him that it was an old analog game from 1970, something that was made before space invaders. the next day i went back with more quarters, and sank 4 ships.

i’m sure it didn’t happen this way– but when i see this picture from the years that jenny & i were volunteer youth leaders, the scene plays out like this:
it all started when someone said, “hey those concrete steps look like the ones that sylvester stallone ran up in Rocky!” then someone asked, “wasn’t that in philadelphia?” one thing led to another & before we knew it we were running up those steps wheezing, coughing & singing Gonna Fly Now.

even though spring is on the other end of the season cycle, a pillow has come to life on a podcast. dennis the pillow is the latest guest on everything is alive, a show where inanimate objects answer questions and tell stories. at the end of last week’s interview, dennis was asked if he could give some expert advice to people who have insomnia. he started lulling us all to sleep with a bedtime story about a magic horse, a twizzlers waterfall, and the aurora borealis. next week’s guest will be tara the bar of soap.

stumbled across this pic a few days ago, and for the life of me, i can’t remember where it was taken. it was originally posted on cousin jessica’s facebook page 3 years ago, but she could only confirm that it was somewhere in des moines. i DO know it was the same day that i purchased that latex horse head.

our niece, chelsea, sent a picture of her twins playing a xylophone a few days ago & said “i think they are ready to play vegetables!” so i drove to their house & we played the wheels on the bus, jingle bells, london bridge, and a bunch of other kid tunes. they eventually lost interest and grabbed the TV remote.

ok, well… there aren’t actually any messages, but you can bet your sweet bippy the following blog post topics will be showing up here in the next few days:
Bacon On A Stick
–we’ll gaze in wide wonder
Bedtime Story From Dennis The Pillow
–just go with it
Antioch Nazarene Teens ’89
–where did the time go?

…alicia, jenny, and christy sat on our front stoop with clover in their hair 11 years ago. i snapped a photo from the front door behind them. when facebook reminded jenny of the event, she re-posted it. ah memories.