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this is joshua. he’s 13 years old, and i’m giving him guitar lessons every other week. last sunday i was teaching him a blues riff from a muddy waters song. it’s one of the few things i know. joshua comes from an artistic family, so it’s pretty easy to be his guitar teacher.

james palmer was my roommate when i attended MNU. we dived in the same dumpsters, stole shower heads from other dorms, and avoided our freshman hazing by dismantling the lock on our door. recently jenny & i got an invitation to his daughter’s high school graduation reception, so we went. dana palmer is an amazing artist, and ironically she is getting a full ride art scholarship at the same college where her dad and i broke more rules than we followed. i can’t remember what medium she used, but the pic above is by dana. i told her it looked like a cross between bing crosby and tom waits. she had no idea who i was talking about.

motel mancini returned to the river market early this morning playing the hits… and the misses. it was 54 degrees when we started so we layered and tried to stay in the sun. a friendly tipper (matt) took this photo of us. he offered to use his polaroid, but i asked him to use my smartphone so we could have a digital pic for the blog. we’re going back tomorrow with reinforcements (clay).

this is what it looked and sounded like when beep goes the weasel was at salon kitch a couple of months ago. we were having technical difficulties with the veggies so we gave them the night off. we’ll be back there on may 20 with guitars, veggies, theremin, a voice transformer, and anything else that can fit in the back of my jeep.

a recent mortified podcast revealed one girl’s secret crush on… the high school janitor! here’s a couple of minutes of rachel goldberg reading from her 2003 diary. if you wanna hear the whole 25 minute episode you can click here, but brace yourself for graphic teenage obscenities.

…or “whatcha gonna watch?” my answer would be cleanin’ up the town, a ghostbusters documentary scheduled for july 16 (early birthday present for me!). i found out about this on the retroist, one of my many online time travel “go to” destinations.

hey! guess what? three of my music outlets are getting powered up this month! friday the 13th beep goes the weasel will tempt fate at briarwood elementary. the goal is to have every kid playing with food by dinner time! a big thanks to nicole emanuel @ IUAH (where i rent studio space) for setting up this gig. then on the 14th and 15th around 8am the acoustic goodness that is motel mancini will rear its woody head at the river market. this time we’re dragging clay vinyard and his new acoustic bass into the fracas! also on the 14th, wailin’ wall is scheduled to play 1-3pm for the overland park police department… go figure. finally beep goes the weasel returns to salon kitch on the 20th. the beeping starts @ 6pm and doesn’t stop until someone passes out.

jenny went to iowa for a couple of days so i had some free time to drive around kansas city last night with chris. ok now when i write a sentence like that, and then post a pic from the blues brothers, my imagination can sorta go off the deep end. (cue the peter gunn theme) chris had turned into a hermit for an unnatural period of time. no one had seen him for days. i sent him a text that said “we gotta go see the penguin.” at first he said “no way,” but when when i showed up at his house 15 minutes later, he was standing in his driveway like an ex-con waiting for a bus. we promptly got lost in the west bottoms, played chicken with a semi, and found a back entrance to a former speakeasy. there was a creepy red light inside the entry way, and it seemed like a place where drug deals could go sour. i noticed some train tracks nearby and asked chris “how often do the trains go by?” he answered “so often you won’t even notice it.” then we drove to town topic, and ordered four fried chickens and a coke.

a few hours ago i heard that prince died this morning. he was 57. i never saw him in concert, but he created more original music than anyone else that i heard in the 1980′s. this afternoon i started recording two radio stations that i knew would be playing his music nonstop (they are still playing it as i write this). here are some memories i have of prince: a radio announcer once said he resembled little richard, but in appearance only since his music sounded NOTHING like “long tall sally,” and then there was that time that i saw tom geeding dance to a prince song– delirious. when i worked for a few months at mighty melt in joplin, there was a PA system that we used to call out orders, and we’d say stuff like “number 34 your maxi melt and broccoli spud is ready,” but when there were no customers we would get on that same PA system and start singing when doves cry.

chris and i went back to the river market last saturday to play acoustic tunes under the name motel mancini. we didn’t have a sign, but we needed a name when we started playing this particular gig last year. the third guy in the pic above isn’t in our band, but he’s a regular performer at the river market. his name is roy, and he plays at least four instruments at the same time. saturday we also reunited with dan the banjo player, and he introduced us to cindy the violinist.