Monthly Archives: April 2020

The next guest on THE EPILOGUE CABIN said she was grounded most of her teen years. Melissa West talked about her memories of Seneca and about how she looks at life now. She also brought up some stories from high school that were clear to her but cloudy to me– and then she went on a rant because she wasn’t one of the first guests on the show.

Nostrils flared. Birds flew. All of a sudden the air was filled with the sounds of monkey screeches, lions roaring, and a Tarzan yodel. My neighbors were probably wondering how Kitch could make all those sounds while hanging on my jungle gym yesterday… at least that’s what I imagined would happen after he texted me and asked if he could drop by and swing on my monkey bars.

Sometimes I feel like a hunter/gatherer when I leave the house and say “I’m going out for provisions!” There’s something primal that stirs in me… like a caveman who is going to kill a woolly mammoth… or a Hopi tribesman praying to a rain god for a good corn harvest– but who am I kidding? My provisions don’t include animal hides or a tribal dance. I just need enough protein, dairy, roughage, and audio enhancements to get through the week.

Yep. You read that right. Those are live fish on the back of a motorcycle. This was the 2020 grand prize winner of a photo contest in Smithsonian magazine. Before we owned a washer I used to strap down an army duffel bag full of dirty laundry and ride 150 miles to my mom’s house. This guy in Hanoi has way more balance than I ever did. According to the article in Smithsonian “sights like this will soon be a thing of the past: Hanoi is planning to ban motorbikes by 2030 to cut down on traffic and pollution.” The photographer, Jon Enoch, says his next project will be in India where he will capture images of “cotton candy sellers on the beaches of Mumbai.”

3 years ago this is how I promoted BEEP GOES THE WEASEL at Salon Kitch. My facebook post read like this: “tomorrow night @ 6pm we’ll return to the scene of the crime (Salon Kitch) for Beep Goes The Weasel — carrots will be crushed! mangoes will be mashed! we’ll beep until we hear sirens AND THEN WE’LL BEEP SOME MORE!!!!” No matter what I did, I never got too weird for Kitch.

It was better than Bugs Bunny on a Saturday morning. Yesterday when I woke up I saw that Ian Mull had recorded one of my songs late Friday night. It was one of the songs I played with Chris (Ian’s dad) when we called ourselves The Subs between 2007-2011. My oldest niece, Molly, lived in the Czech Republic years ago. She sent us emails describing her time there and eventually I wrote a song about it. No one has covered my material and then posted it on facebook and instagram. Ian’s the first. I was blown away. You can click here to see him play and sing Molly Writes a Letter. You can click below to hear the original.

Nancy Adamson is the latest guest on THE EPILOGUE CABIN. In this episode we’ll find out why she used to put mentholatum up her nose, how she learned to pop a shoulder back into place, and why she started baking fruitcakes!

The kid in the middle must have gone to Surf City where there’s “two swingin’ honeys for every guy, and all you gotta do is just wink your eye.” I found this on gotweird’s instagram page. The actual caption says: “A young visitor to Hyde Park, with two life-size dolls, ca. 1938.” So many questions are going through my head right now… Did the boy have real friends? Who is the shadowy photobombing figure behind them? How are the girl dolls standing upright? Why doesn’t he have boy dolls?

I’ve watched every episode of M*A*S*H a million times. My family gathered around the TV for the show’s finale in 1983. Even though we all said “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” 37 years ago, it’s still easy to get sucked into watching an occasional rerun. Back in October I found MASH Matters, a podcast that dives deeper into old memories, and a few weeks ago I found every episode of MASH on archive.org with an odd subtraction– no laugh track. It’s a very different experience to watch those old shows without hearing canned laughter. Taking away the expected audience response actually adds something new, and sometimes jarring.

Last night Jenny’s family set up a video conference call on Zoom. It was like Hollywood Squares. Originally I wasn’t going to be part of the call, but then Jenny got another Zoom call that she had to take, so I sat in. I took a screenshot to capture the moment. The family that zooms together, stays together.