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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.

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.