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last night i tuned in the retro cocktail hour for dinner music. as i was making this post, i did a quick search to check the last time i wrote about my favorite space age bachelor pad music show– it was about this same time last year! i guess my life has cycles & patterns like everyone else. the playlist i listened to had a crime jazz theme. here’s a 3 minute peek into that seedy underworld.

i went w/christy to the johnson county museum after work today. admission was free, and her son ben pretended to wait on me at the kidscape diner. it’s a cool looking retro counter with fake fast food & cooking utensils. i asked him for more mustard on my  plastic burger, and when he squeezed the bottle, a little piece of yellow rope came out.

i discovered salvador dali & surreal art in high school, but it really made an impact on me in college. one late afternoon i was getting drowsy in the freshman dorms. at the same time i was looking through a book of salvador dali’s art & listening to iron butterfly’s 17 minute song, in a gadda da vida. my friend ron made the observation, “dave, you’re either going to go insane, or solve all the world’s problems.” the jury is still out on which one happened. in the meantime, here’s something we can all enjoy– the surrealist compliment generator. if you click on the link, you’ll see such things as:
“Your entrance is ever a segue to endless lands of derision.”
“His majesty’s caravan is as compelling as your temper.”
“You ever remind me of the enigma of postage not sent.”
“Your soul contains all that is found in insects, pigs and vermin.”

last sunday mom texted this pic and asked “what does this look like to you? besides the potato it is?” it was a group text so one person said:
i see an eye and a mouth
then i wrote:
“jenny says it’s a whale, but i think it looks like a dead bird’s head”
the day before mom sent the potato/whale/bird pic, i found a book & record that reached out from the past–…and fresh from their tour of american waterfronts, here’s the wellingtons!

yesterday i posted a bowling score math challenge to see if anyone else could remember how to figure out strikes and spares in a bowling game. personally i had to go to the desert and contact harrison ford, my spirit guide. first of all you have to know: when a strike is bowled, the bowler is awarded the score of 10 (for knocking down all ten pins), plus he gets to add the total of his next two rolls to that frame. AND THEN for a spare, the bowler gets the 10, plus the total number of pins knocked down on the next roll only. soooo with that bit of information, here are the correct scores in green–and for those poor saps who don’t have an atari 2600 bowling cartridge to check your math, here is a link you can use.

bowling in the 21st century means that no one has to figure out how to add the bonus pins for strikes and spares. in today’s bowling alley the numbers are up on a screen. a computer program keeps score & figures out the bonus pins. well i remember a time before computers ruled the world. someone HAD to know that weird bowling math when a strike or a spare was rolled. a few nights ago i threw caution to the wind, cleared my head, and revisited bowling score math. it took some googling, and a bowling score sheet that i printed from here. by the 8th game on my atari 2600– i figured it out! ok… can you tally the score in the frames below?

sometimes at homer’s, a customer will order a drink, and go straight to the bathroom… and sometimes it takes awhile for the customer to re-emerge. if his drink is made before he comes out of the bathroom, the barista will call out his drink (or his name) a few times before moving on to another task. yesterday i decided that the bathroom-goer needs a code name to let others know his whereabouts. he will now be referred to as john boy. we won’t actually call out “john boy!” but if a co-worker asks me “where is that guy? doesn’t he know his drink is ready?” i’ll just say “oh that drink? that’s for john boy.” if it’s a girl, she’ll be called loo lou.

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.