davidcedillo.com

a couple of weeks ago i went downtown after my tuesday morning shift. i was checking out the kc public library for an art project i wanna do. if i get funding, it will involve an 8-bit phoenix and the star wars theme. later that day i ate lime chicken and dirty rice at YJ’s. i hadn’t been to the crossroads for lunch in awhile. anytime i go there, i’m giving in to an urge to eat at my favorite funky dive, and exist in an alternate reality.

andrew is my newest guitar student. today was our second time to get together. we recapped the last lesson, and he correctly played an E minor chord, a two fingered A chord and the riff to smoke on the water. since the last time i saw him, he also started teaching himself the opening riff to michael jackson’s beat it, and seven nation army by the white stripes. after that i showed him how to play a D, an A minor, and the riff to secret agent man. when he picked up the toy chainsaw, i knew the lesson was over.

woooooo!!! this time next week the latest incarnation of mortified will be on netflix! feb. 14 look for the mortified guide: a series of real people sharing real stories from diaries and journals they wrote while growing up. i’ve been listening to their podcast on getmortified.com for years now & sharing audio bits from time to time. heck, type “mortified” in my search bar (over there to the right between beep goes the video and recent posts), and you can check out past entries that go back to 2015.

after reading tom waits on waits, a book of his interviews, i found some audio that was recorded at KCRW. this little snippet is where waits is talking about reed ghazala, the father of circuit bending (pictured above). the thing he’s describing is an optical theremin, which was the first instrument that i debuted in my 2011-2015 sidewalk noise experiment better known as mondo beep.

if you’re wondering how i found out about the vegetable orchestra, it just came to me. it literally fell in my lap. jarred, one of my old co-workers posted a video on facebook & i watched people play carrots, squash, lettuce heads, and a bunch of other produce. this is music i can really sink my teeth into.

“…let me make you smile!” this is a line from an old song i barely remember. i’m invoking its memory because earlier this week i needed some entertainment. that came in the form of tom waits on tom waits, a book of his interviews in my bathroom. among his former jobs waits tells an interviewer that he worked as “a labor organizer in a maternity ward,” and that he “rotated tires on a miscarriage.” he also sprinkles in things like “did you know there are only two things you can throw out the window of a moving car? water and feathers. everything else you can get in trouble for.”

texting a few nights ago with jenny looked like this:
jenny: i’m at rehab center with space and Mary Jo
me: space?
jenny: BETH, haha
me: tell her that’s my new nickname for her now.

rachel and dana are two responsible college students– but only because they haven’t mapped out a deviancy plan. dana sent me a message & we started chatting on facebook. our short exchange took me back to the nights of cramming for tests & digging through dumpsters… you know… college.

a couple of nights ago, a car zipped past me onto I-35. we were both coming on the freeway. he was behind me, he drove on the shoulder to get past me, and then he was in front of me zig zagging between cars that were already on the interstate. how could somebody have such disregard for rules? how could someone ignore common courtesy? then i remembered a picture of me basically doing the same thing.

what if elvis didn’t die in 1977 & switched places w/an impersonator to avoid the rigors of fame and stardom, and was still alive in a nursing home. what if the king of rock n’ roll was friends with another elderly man down the hall who believed he was really a dyed black JFK– and what if they were both about to battle an ancient soul-sucking mummy. all of this plays out in the 2002 movie bubba ho-tep. this was a movie that i saw, forgot, and then heard about a couple of nights ago when my next door neighbor said “hey dave! bubba ho-tep is on TV tonight!”