TROOSTWOOD HARVEST MOON SPECTACLE + THE OUTHOUSE: THE FILM

SquidsKC played a little bit at the Troostwood Harvest Moon Spectacle, with Dave Saab subbing in for Boojie.  We have a pretty magical neighborhood. 

Scot Sperry also played some great resonator guitar blues.  The kids did a section of Hamilton (nailed it) and a scene from Shakespeare.  Young and old alike put on a great talent show.

*****

I'm really looking forward to this on Saturday.

SUMMER WINDING DOWN WITH TEN TRILLION HOURS OF FREE MUSIC

 

I have been in solo mode for a few days and that means pulling out weird Henry Kaiser records, playing them loud, eating frozen pizza, and assuring the dogs their mom will be back.  As I read up on HK in the process, I discovered this awesome album of jams with The Mermen and downloaded it right away.  I'll make a complementary effort to purchase something from their catalogs on Itunes or what have ya.

DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

The dog days of summer are upon us, and good times were had sourcing canine vehicles and watercraft at The Troostwood Garage Sale.

Here is a song called "Sci Fi Runaway" by KC band The New Babbons that has been permanently lodged in my head since I heard them perform it Friday at our recordBar show:

GRASS, STONE, AND MISSOURI PEA GRAVEL

This used to be a humpy slope draining right into our basement. The kind of yard you'd pass out in at a college party and wake up covered in bug bites, most likely alone. 

Then it was a raw dirt site with a new wall by Jason Nace and Lime Green Masonry and lots of sticks and rocks.  

Then I laid in supplies from the Grass Pad and lucked out with a really wet Spring (and was diligent about watering when it was dry).  Flagstone from House of Rocks in small batches every pay day have got the path moving but we could still use a ton more for the patio and finishing the walking paths.

It's starting to look pretty sharp, and the patio is kind of made for a house concert, but watch out for the volunteer chard, beets, and turnips. #Troostwood

POTENTIAL SLOW FILM DAY

Winslow Homer: The Wittling Boy

If I leave the house today, I kind of feel like seeing a slow art movie.  I hope there is one in town.  Maybe something about a postman in rural Ukraine who wittles.  A lot of the footage wood feature wittling, or preparations for wittling, or procurement of supplies needed for wittling: a stool, a knife, a chunk of wood, a pack of cigarettes or a plug of tobacco, and if there is not a chair on the porch, a chair.

Television is so good, at this point, that I watch a lot more serial television than I do films.  They are easier to ritualize with dinner or bedtime or whatever.  We are currently watching Bloodline on Netflix, a show that seems to have come out along with Daredevil and House of Cards Season 3, but is better than both of those shows, though less hyped.  The screws are tightening and in some ways it is excruciating to watch but as a show about secrets in families, it is spot on. 

My buddy Mark Facebooked me a link that asks who should play Dave Robicheaux and Cletus Purcell in a potential James Lee Burke series.  I think that it should be Kyle Chandler from Bloodline/Friday Night Lights, and Domenick Lombardozzi (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Daredevil).  

It's still so weird to me that Tommy Lee Jones was cast as Robicheaux in a film that left out Cletus Purcell.  Tommy Lee Jones was great, but that is like a World Series with only one team.  How could that idea have flown for even one second?  Hollywood is strange.  Would my pitch fly for a film about a Ukrainian wittler?  

It may not be the Seine, and it may be somewhat of a sewer, but living just up the hill from Brush Creek and the campus of the Kaufmann Center is a Troostwood neighbhorhood bonus.  This is the view from the bridge on Troost, where we saw a heron amongst the geese.  The creek must be running high from the incredible storm last night.
Another bonus: you can't smell Gate's BBQ when walking in Paris.

My next show with SquidsKC:

A WALK

When we lived in Old Hyde Park, on Baltimore, we were pretty close to Westport and a lot of other things and I miss that, but we have some pretty good walks in Troostwood too.  My current favorite is up and over 51st through UMKC and down the hill past the little campus restaurant district and back up to Main, where I take a right and head down to the library.  We are actually close to a lot of things, it just takes a few more steps.  This walk takes you past The Peanut, Andre's, Osteria Il Centro, a small post office, and Spin Pizza.  The Plaza Library is a great destination.

On Saturdays or Sundays I like to stop at Crow Coffee on the way back and read whatever I have checked out or renewed.  Living life online so much of the time, I enjoy a good on-foot library book renewal.  Next I will be making my own pencils.  Yesterday I was reading James Lee Burke and a man sat down next to me and read Ross McDonald and drank his coffee.  We had a couple of the bases covered there and a small island of sidewalk cafe culture in a pro-automobile town that just gave Uber the boot. A couple of girlfriends chatted adjacent and one of them said "it's good to be vulnerable--sometimes." 

I'm not too hot on the mediterranean place down the way from Crow.  But the cumin red pepper beef at Tin Lin is really fine, and so is Pizza 51. 

There's an elegant display at the UMKC library on 51st and Rockhill, and I puzzle about how it's made.  At night it is backlit and a finely gradated map of the city glows from it.  I think it is some kind of finely cnc-punched perforated panel with a printed vinyl or acrylic or mesh banner underlayer on the back, but I'm not sure.

Back on our street I ran into the usual gaggle of kids on their bikes and improvised rolling devices.

They quizzed me on my book and why it didn't have pictures.  I said "well, you read the words and make up the pictures in your imagination."  One of them screwed up her face and then looked up at me and said "why do you have so many hairs in your nose?"

AN ILIAD

     One great thing about our new neighborhood is walking a couple doors down, hanging a right up a secret sidewalk, heading up and over Forest Avenue and down another secret sidewalk to Troost, then past The Stowers Institute to the KC Repertory Theatre on the campus of UMKC.  It's a ten minute walk, pretty much a straight shot.  

In December my old pal Mark and I went to A Christmas Carol; last night to An Iliad.  We were given front row seats. Then to Mike's Tavern for discussion. 

BALBOA DISCOVERS THE LOST TROOSTWOOD COMPOST PILE

     Yesterday I exposed a pretty nice compost pile in our back yard and hacked away at three giant fountain grass clumps, untended for probably years.  I am no stranger to untended fountain grass but in middle age I do not hesitate to cut it down to the ground.  My better half would prefer it 90% eradicated.  This is how I feel about any kind of ivy, only100%.  Shooting it with RoundUp is better than having an XBox.
    
     I also located the lawn and leaf recycling center on North Chouteau Drive.  It was kind of a long trip because of the KC Marathon, a traffic jam on 71, and my alternate route all the way down Prospect to Independence Avenue to Chestnutt Trafficway.  But I had a nice sense of adventure getting the recycling center dialed in and still appreciate how much of the city I do not know.  When I drive some of those blocks full of boarded up houses I try to envision how this will change for the better because someday it will.  On Woodland I saw an old theatre with a beat old sheet metal marquee and wondered what bands and movies played there.
  
    Lawn shears, snow shovel, foaming hornet spray for an underground nest--all while flea bombs off-gassed at home--this way my errand-y day.  And of course what errand-y Saturday would be complete without a trip to the carwash?  Always psychedelic.

     Stuck waiting for a train near Knuckleheads in the East Bottoms, I listened to Mose Allison's
Back Country Suite for about the 20th time and read the liner notes, soaking it in after re-discovering it in my cd re-organization and cull. (The Westport library now has our doubles of Sugar, Beach Boys, Flaming Lips, and Son Volt records.)  Witty, intelligent, and narrative with country blues soul, perfect for being stuck by the tracks for half an hour with 9 bags of black walnut yard debris and a gnawing appetite for fried food on a Saturday afternoon.

     For the first time in a long time I have my trombone out on a stand in a music room and I have been playing it for 15 minutes a day trying to get some kind of embouchure back.  The sound comes back, and it is relaxing, like ohming or chanting, just to play long tones.  But attacks are all spitty and florfy after only 5 or ten minutes.  I can't believe I played a whole 25 minute set with Drop A Grand. I don't remember the pain, and don't usually associate low brass with punk rock adrenaline.  Looping back to trombone as a classically trained player who plays self-taught rock and roll has always been really weird.  I immediately assume a strict concert posture even with Steve doing high kicks near my face.  Almost every time I pick up the horn I think of my old KC trombone teacher, Stephanie Bryant, who died this year.

 

BLACK WALNUT ATTACK!

 The next SquidsKC show--as of now--is at recordBAR on 12/13.  Moving on to domestic concerns:

     I swept and raked and shoveled two full bags of black walnuts yesterday and there is already another pile of them in the street and on the sidewalk this morning.  I think that's why our neighbor Cedric was laughing yesterday, on the porch and talking to a friend on the phone, while I scraped walnut slurry off the street. 

     This happened last weekend too.  I did not learn.  Bushels of these greasy little walnut grenades thumping by the minute.  One knocked the rear window wiper blade assembly off of Tracy's Suburu.  Another broke a Tim Boyden found art sculpture--a guitar headstock epoxied to an old paver with the message "don't fret."  

     I haven't been drilled in the skull (resulting in a great idea for a novel) but that is a matter of time.  With more of that on my hands I could lay in the driveway for hours as a martial arts exercise, waiting to catch the black walnut of enlightenment inches from my face.  If you leave these things in your basement for a year they are good to eat, but it is work.

Royals magic has sure been fun, especially hanging with new neighbors.

I had the pleasure of adding backing vocals to an Ed Cole song, for the new album he is working on.  I played some trombone on it last summer and now it is heading toward mixing.  Can't wait to hear this acoustic Ed platter.  Here is one of Ed's old solo records, and of course you already own both The Underlings albums, which will peel the paint off the front porch of your psyche.