Puppets? Or evil on a stick?

Ren Faire rapidly approaches.
My band is playing again this year.
Four shows a day for 8 weekends!

Over the last few years Cynthia has taken to replicating the band in puppet form and putting on shows while we play. Each puppet character is hand made with a hand sewn costume.

This is her from last year with a puppet of herself holding a miniature puppet of me.

This year she has added to her puppet arsenal many supporting characters including members of Istanpitta. EJ the Piper, a devil, an angel and many more on their way. Sometimes, late at night, I can hear them skittering across the hardwood floors laughing and laughing…

Road Trip!

There are maybe 5 or so artists on my “must see at any cost” list.
Right up there at the top is Adrian Belew.

Adrain Belew is a phenomenal guitar player. He has performed with some of my favorite bands and musicians; Frank Zappa, David Bowie, The Talking Heads, King Crimson, The Tom Tom Club, Jean-Michel Jarre, Laurie Anderson and Paul Simon.

I’ve seen him play with King Crimson and with Zappa on the Sheik Yerbouti tour. The last time I saw him was with The Bears at Rockefellers many years ago.

When my band mate and friend Joe told me Adrian had formed the Adrian Belew Trio with Mike Gallaher on bass and Mike Hodges on drums I was quite excited. When we found out he was touring plans were set in motion.

At the time we checked his tour schedule his only date in Texas was at The Granada Theater in Dallas.

Granada Theater

This meant one thing…ROAD TRIP!

Tickets were purchased on line and we got second row center seats. On Sunday Morning Joe and I took off for the show.

The Granada is a great place to see a live show. It’s small, cozy and intimate. Our seats were spectacular.

There was an opening act called Bagg. A local Dallas jam band similar to Moses Guest and Drop Trio here in Houston.

Bagg

They were good. I know they must have been very excited to share that particular stage this night.

But the main attraction was what we were all here to see. It was worth the drive and the wait. Adrian Belew did not disappoint. He played some of his new and older solo work as well as a few very choice King Crimson songs including Three of a Perfect Pair and Thela Hun Ginjeet.

Adrian Belew

After the show Adrian signed autographs, talked to his fans and mugged for the cameras.

Adrian Belew and me

What a great night!

The Five Stages of Properly Pissed

By Bok Tukalo

Stage 1. Cheers!: This is the initial stage where you are out to have a bit of fun and maybe a little mischief. You are enjoying yourself and the world is a plaything; aren’t you the luckiest guy ever, or what? Time to socialize, check out the girls, and laugh at your friends’ wit.

The Knack is probably playing or maybe Beck.

Stage 2. Professor Buzzed: The good cheer is waning and now it is time to stretch your limited intellect and engage in (for you, anyway) deep conversations about things … and stuff. Usually, it is things and stuff you know nothing about or just enough about to sound like a complete ass but does that stop you? No. Not you. You have an opinion and you are going to express it at the very time when you have purposely impared your reasoning capabilities. Odd that alcohol would simultaneously dull your wit and boost your confidence. Perhaps the two are related in some way.

REM or old Dire Straits (Sultans of Swing or Making Movies; not that “Money for Nothing” shit) is playing.

Stage 3. I Love You, Man: You are now unusually fond of everyone. Even those individuals you normally consider to be pricks. You hang on them and incoherently list all the reasons that they are so special to you. If your friends are at any other stage in the properly pissed process, this is when you really start to annoy them; especially Professor Buzzed who is trying to make a point about collective bargaining in a monopolized industry while you have your arm around his neck telling him how cool it was that he didn’t get mad when you fucked his sister. This is also the stage when the designated driver starts thinking that giving up drinking alltogether might not be such a bad idea.

Hank Williams and Marty Robbins are playing and you are looking for the Patsy Cline CD.

Stage 4. Old Yeller: This is when all that fear, anger, jealousy, hurt, humiliation, loss, sadness, loneliness, regret, and all those other emotions real men keep bottled up realizes that the guard took the night off around Stage 3 and bursts out of its jail and grabs the brain reigns. Some exhibit this differently. Alot become destructive and violent. Mindless rage and accusation and frustration. Personally, I get melancholy and sit in a corner, tears in my eyes, telling anyone that will listen about a sweet, innocent little girl I knew in kindergarten that I would hold hands with under the reading table, who by high school had turned to drugs and booze and promiscuity and died in a car crash on the way home from the prom when her drunken boyfriend tried to beat a train to the crossing.

Doesn’t matter what is playing. It means something to you.

Stage 5. Last Call: The Beast has been released. He has done his damage and crawled back into his cell again, spent, and Apathy has taken over. You are incapable of carrying on a conversation now. You understand the words and can form a cogent response, but really, what’s the point? You couldn’t give a rat’s ass if the president of the United States walked up and told you the future of the nation depended on you giving a rat’s ass and pleaded with you to turn over to the proper authorities all your rats’ asses. You see the four aspirin and the bottle of Deja Blue on the nightstand you placed there to blunt the inevitable hangover but cannot muster the concern for your own comfort beyond head-meets-pillow.

Nothing is playing but there is a ringing in your ears and the hated heartbeat is laying down a base line.

Musical time travel

Seeing Beetle at the Big Top last night had the look and feel of what it might have been like to see The Beatles at the Cavern in Liverpool back in the day.

The Knitters put on a fine show at The Continental Club which also hearkened to a bygone musical era.

Gosh, I recall listening to X way back in the early 80’s as I was sowing the seeds of my musical dissidence.

Seriously, thanks!

I want to thank all of you who have taken the time and trouble to send me your goofy chain letters over the past year.

Thank you for making me feel safe, secure, blessed, and wealthy.

Because of your concern…

1… I no longer can drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains.

2… I no longer drink Pepsi or Dr. Pepper since the people who make these products are atheists who refuse to put “Under God” on their cans.

3… I no longer drink anything out of a can because I will get sick from the rat feces and urine.

4… I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.

5… I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS.

6… I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day.

7… I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.

8… I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al Qaeda in disguise.

9… I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don’t support our American troops.

10… I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a stupid number for which I will get the phone bill from hell with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, and Uzbekistan.

11… I no longer eat KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers.

12… I no longer date the opposite sex because they will take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.

13… I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their recipe.

14… I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me and St. Theresa’s novena has granted my every wish.

15… Thanks to all of you, I have learned that God only answers my prayers if I forward an e-mail to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes. (The BIBLE did not mention it works that way!)

17… I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl who is about to die in the hospital (for the 1,387,258th time).

18… I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program.

Yes, I want to thank all of you soooooooo much for looking out for me!I will now return the favor. If you don’t send this e-mail to at least 1200 people in the next 60 seconds, a large bird with diarrhea will crap on your head at 5:00 PM this afternoon. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of my next-door neighbor’s ex-mother-in-law’s 8th husband’s 2nd cousin’s 3rd husband’s ex-wife’s mother’s tennis instructor.

All well that ends well…

I will spare you the gory details of my examination (though I am strongly tempted to scan the pictures and post them). I will say that the preliminary results are positive. Two polyps removed and sent for biopsy. I will have the results in a few days.

The preparations were worse than the procedure. Two days ago I had to cut out fruits and vegetables and yesterday was nothing but clear liquids and the special formula to clean out the pipes.

It’s all over now and I have been resting. Thank the fates for conscious sedation. I don’t remember a thing.