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last week jenny & i figured out a cost effective way to get new smartphones. this is the part where you might look at the image above and ask “did they find a service provider that is still storing voicemails on cassettes? wouldn’t that cost even MORE?” sorry for the confusion. we just switched to another provider. it should come as no surprise that one of the first apps i downloaded was a retro cassette mp3 player. this is how it looks when it is playing.

so after 10 days of looking at a blog post of me and joshua fairman, what do i do? put up another blog post about me and joshua fairman. it feels like something andy kaufman would have done. anyway, here’s a video that josh and i made right after christmas about my choice of footwear.

joshua fairman and i got together late this afternoon to record our version of WHY from jeremy messersmith’s ukulele songbook that i downloaded tuesday. right now there are 16 other cover artists that have contributed videos– but at this point, josh and i are the only ones to cover the song, WHY. the actual audio release is expected next week, and according to jeremy messersmith’s website: “It’s jam-packed with ridiculous songs about kittens, world peace, flying cars and the transformative power of love. Why? Because we all need a ray of sunshine every now and again. Because it’s important to not lose sight of how good things could be. Because the first step to a better world is to imagine a better world.” now you see why i wanted to be a part of this.

three days ago jeremy messersmith emailed me and a bunch of other fans a free download of his latest music– in the form of a songbook for ukuleles! it’s called 11 Obscenely Optimistic Songs For Ukulele: A Micro-Folk Record For The 21st Century And Beyond. his aim is for people to play selections from this new songbook before the actual audio release comes out. loads of ukulele players are uploading their versions of songs like everybody gets a kitten and we can make our dreams come true on youtube, facebook, and twitter. i learned one of the songs earlier today, and plan on posting it tomorrow. it will feature my guitar student joshua fairman on the ukulele.

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).