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last weekend jenny & i drove to lincoln for joe’s 90th birthday. joe is marijo’s neighbor. he lives two yards away, and even though he’s not related by blood, he IS family. joe celebrates with us at the reunions, mourns with us at the funerals, and is there for all points in between. there were over a hundred party-goers at the whitehall mansion for joe’s shindig. we ate lunch, told stories, sang songs, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

let’s be honest. even when the star trek crew claimed to “go boldly where no man has gone before,” kirk and his gang still managed to go back in time every once in awhile. city on the edge of forever is an episode where they take turns jumping through a glowing portal. the first jump was an accident & they mess up time as we know it, so of course they have to go back and fix things. the 80′s satellite radio that i’m currently borrowing is my own portal to the past, but i can only leap through it in my dreams.

today is my sister’s birthday. she is pretty busy with her immediate family so i don’t know if i will get a chance to talk to her tonight. at least i can write down some cool memories that we share… like the time we were so bored on a roadtrip that we were reading the label on a vaseline jar out loud. that resulted in a goofy little song we made up about hemorrhoids– even though we didn’t know the meaning of the word… or the time we sold a cup of lemonade and dad’s velvet bullfighter painting for a dollar at our little sidewalk stand. the one above sold for $36 on etsy. sorry dad… or the time we accidentally discovered a morgue in the basement of a hospital. to this day i’m more careful when i push elevator buttons. happy birthday sis!

“saturday march 24, 1984…” these are the first words heard in the breakfast club, a movie that spoke to me as a teenager, and still speaks to me today. christy reminded me that today’s date was the same one spoken in the opening lines of the movie. here’s the audio. here’s the transcript:
“Saturday, March 24, 1984. ShermerHigh School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062. Dear Mr. Vernon…we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was that we did wrong, what we did was wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write this essay telling you who we think we are, what do you care? You see us as you want to see us…in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athelete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at seven o’clock this morning. We were brainwashed.”

so what does a hard boiled cop like joe friday have in common with a faceless 8-bit guy like pitfall harry? they share a very recognizable bit of music. i probably wouldn’t have known about  it if it weren’t for the atari 2600 game by game podcast. i personally own a stack of atari cartridges. the last count was 82 i think, and i wanted to hear the show that covered pitfall. when the host (ferg) revealed the dragnet/pitfall connection it was like seeing something for the first time that had been hiding in plain sight for decades. a good riff is a good riff, and it was common for video games from the 80′s to do this type of thing. i felt the same way when i realized the music in spy hunter was actually the peter gunn theme.
**ferg, if you’re reading this, i hope you don’t mind the way i edited the clip from your show. thanks again for your dedication to the atari 2600!

beep goes the weasel is coming back to salon kitch to turn music fans into music players april 21st and may 19th! on both nights the fun starts @ 6pm. it’s kind of ironic though. every time i think folks are losing interest, or shows are slowing down– somebody asks for another one! when the radio stations wouldn’t return my calls & the culinary center stopped giving us free veggies, i thought “well this is it.” but then kitch and penny asked “when can you play at the salon again?” beep goes the weasel is the show that refuses to die, like paul newman in cool hand luke (above).

jenny & i were in the grocery store today when we heard this song that tracey ullman recorded in 1983. we looked at each other, and cracked up as it played inside price chopper. we’ve seen the music video: tracey ullman plays the part of an exhausted housewife who is shopping for groceries (see above) right before she runs away with paul mccartney.

this only makes symmetrical sense, but now that it’s one day after st. patrick’s day, i’ll write about what we did the night before. this is jenny, me, jim, and mom at murray’s tables and tap. behind us are mike and cameron from flannigan’s right hook. they played some awesome tunes like you’ve got to hide your love away, folsom prison blues, and the theme song from tv’s king of the hill. the warmer than usual weather this year has been surreal.

jenny’s cousin, jessica, invited us to an improv showcase that she performed in tuesday night. it was really cool. after an audience member suggested a skating rink for a location, jessica’s improv group (pictured above) pretended to skate on stage. they took turns, and went into an unrehearsed sketch about open dating situations, a birthday party gone wrong, and drunk flirty nursing home residents.

last week i blogged about the trio plus, a recent purchase i made that can add drums and bass to my music. it’s ironic, but i always use new technology like this to go back in time and see how retro i can make it sound (or look). here is something i recorded the day after trio plus came in the mail. i guess i was channeling my memories of cereal and cartoon fueled saturday mornings with my sister.