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so there’s a movie about a guy named dave who makes a cardboard maze in his living room while his girlfriend is out of town. it was playing at tapcade which is the only place where i can see weird movies, play old video games, and eat street tacos. one of the bartenders told me the movie was “pretty cool.” after playing space invaders, dig dug, galaga, and popeye i went home & watched the trailer. “whoa!” i said to no one in particular & then i downloaded the whole thing from amazon. this movie has a little romance, a lot of comedy, and a bloodthirsty minotaur. the bartender was right.

i got together to jam with a couple of friends wednesday night. chris, clay, and i started playing when we were in our 20′s. a LOT of water has gone under that bridge since then… a lot of performances have been saved and mangled, and a lot of band names have been scrawled on posters. our latest music moniker is motel mancini. we’ve played under that name since 2015 at the river market. a couple of weeks ago someone flashed the bat signal, and we all gathered at the bat cave aka chris’ house. here’s a couple of minutes from our 3 hour jam.

schedules have been cleared, the planets are lining up, law enforcement officials have been paid off, and three amigos are getting ready for a long overdue jam session on wednesday! chris and clay texted me a few days ago, and asked if we could all play in a garage studio that i’m renting. i replied “sure! it doesn’t have air conditioning or a bathroom, but sure!” chris quickly offered his house as an alternate location.

yesterday jenny said “events near me” into her smartphone. it was friday night, and we were looking for something entertaining nearby. we found it! the first annual mission sunflower festival was going on just a few minutes away, and as soon as we arrived we both got a sticker. we also ate kettle corn from a food truck, heard live music from the good sam club band, and we got to hang out w/chrisy mull! i caught a stray frisbee, and threw it back to the kids who were entertaining themselves.

the 2017 solar eclipse came and went much faster than the traffic that followed the astronomical event. the moon was zipping by at 1500 mph while southbound cars on I-635 were moving at a snail’s pace long after the moon’s shadow was gone. my dad asked me to take pictures of the eclipse, but i only took mental notes & decided to draw cartoon illustrations instead. castle northmoor (pictured above) is where i watched the eclipse. it’s a 25 minute drive from my house. i was there about two hours before everything got dark, and for awhile i had the whole thing to myself– that’s when i called my folks & jenny. here are a few highlights:harlan shaver III welcomed us (he was a little drunk), and told everyone stories of how his grandfather, harlan shaver, had built the castle back in the 1980′s. by the time he came up the staircase, a dozen adults and kids had joined me at the top of the castle… including chloé mull and her boyfriend gary!one of the children standing close to us was a little girl who had a voice that should have been coming out of a middle aged woman. it reminded me of froggy from the little rascals. we wondered of she was just a really short adult until she said “someone at my middle school is going to blow a loud horn when the eclipse happens.” we didn’t hear her school horn, but someone on the ground did play the star spangled banner on a trumpet right before it got dark.the sun and moon had been playing peek-a-boo with us while we waited for darkness and crickets, but when it actually happened we were able to take off our protective glasses & see the total eclipse. it was like being with survivors adrift on a lifeboat until someone sees an island and points and says THERE IT IS!!! we only saw it for a few seconds before the clouds rolled back in. it was still cool to be with friends and strangers and share the excitement with everyone.

tomorrow afternoon the moon’s shadow is crossing over america, and throwing a portion of it into total darkness. a lot of curious people (including me) are going to drive to a spot where they can experience that phenomenon. pat rawlings, however, thought beyond the planet, and imagined what the eclipse would look like from the moon almost 30 years ago. the atlantic posted his illustration on their website yesterday,

there is an atari 2600 podcast that i go to for the inside scoop on my favorite retro gaming console– although jenny says that my “inside scoops” are actually “useless details.” oh well. wednesday the host (ferg) posted a show on enduro! this game has improved my driving skills over the years, and it has also helped me get a good night’s sleep.

the first time i heard fire by arthur brown, it was the mid 80′s & i was tuning into classic rock via KCFX. i imagined some crazy eyed costumed singer when the song started, and it turns out i was right. he used to wear a fire helmet and a devil’s head over his crotch… sometimes he even performed naked. arthur brown recorded his #1 song in 1968, and even though the radio doesn’t play it anymore, that hasn’t slowed down the god of hellfire. brown, now in his 70′s, still makes fiery psychedelic scenes. he just released live at high voltage last year.

so i was watching dr. katz again (i know, i know) and one of his patients said that he liked talking to strangers in mid sentences when he was really bored. and i thought– “wait a minute, i used to know a guy like this!” there used to be a guy who came into homer’s daily and do this sort of thing. he needed therapy too.

i can never stop playing with food. this is what happened after jenny cut a slice of bread from a round loaf. the ironic thing is that those pacman pellets are actually game tokens from an arcade. i did this sort of thing once before on st. patrick’s day last year.