My VCR/VHS party - Better Than Vacation Slides

Mrs. Jones and I had friends over to the house last night for a VHS viewing party. Twenty years ago my friend K. and I showed up at the houses of college friends without warning, asked for a tour of their apartment or rental home, stole ice cream and frozen treats from their respective freezers, and let the video tape roll like there was no finite battery life. We called it the tour of homes. Someday I'll make the transfer to DVD. We also watched a tape of this year's NCAA basketball final, you know, with it being a KU crowd and all. There was a request to view my appearance on the millionaire show and after some false modesty and rubber arm twisting I popped that sucker in the machine. We also watched a tape called the egg olympics where a bunch of us bored college graduates and locals shot eggs in the air with a slingshot, then attempted to catch them in a frying pan when they dropped from the sky. Those who were still awake saw highlights of my 1988 spring break trip to Arkansas. That's right, Arkansas. We drove down from Kansas City to see the horses run in Hot Springs, then swung over to Graceland, with hilarious consequences. We didn't research our destinations and got there in time for the Monday no race day at Hot Springs and the Tuesday no Graceland day in the case of Graceland. We viewed several close circuit movies on motel room televisions that trip, some with nudity, and not regular nudeness, I'm talking about 80's nudity. This was well documented. Excuse me if I'm a little weary in the saddle today. I spent half the night rewinding.

Western Civ Final 1984

The closest thing liberal arts students ever came to a Law School exam was the Western Civilization final. One needed to know a long list of thinkers and ideas from Plato to Aldous Huxley to score high. The Western Civ department knew it was a hard test, and they sponsored a balls-out review in dueling lecture-toriums at Wescoe Hall in the middle of KU campus one night a few days before the final exam. 700 sophomores scribbled notes for three hours while TA after TA presented snippets on DesCartes, Niechtze, and St. Thomas Aquinas to name a few.

My friend Shanahan and I sat 30 rows up from the stage with a jam box between us. Shanahan recorded the session on cassette tape so he didn't miss anything. Lecturers went back and forth between the two auditoriums, doing their tight-five on the big minds of history for each group of 350 students, like they do with Blues shows in the Kingston Mines in Chicago. Oh, wait, that's the reverse. The audience moves between two stages there. Never mind.

Some tweed jacket was late starting his set and the crowd in our auditorium grew restless. Shanahan didn't miss the opportunity. He popped in the Talking Heads version of Take Me To the River and turned up the blaster volume. Everybody started groovin' and when I say groovin' imagine a bunch of white kids from the suburbs of Kansas City doin' the flat shoe boogie. I mean, I don't want to overstate it. There was serious head nodding going on, and about the time the vocals kicked in, 60 seconds into the song, Professor wildhair with the notes on Machiavelli showed up. We shut it down, even though we didn't want to, but Shanahan broke the tension in the room, and I didn't care as much about the Western Civ final after that, in fact this story is about the only thing I remember about the evening. I think I got a B.

Sunday Night Show

Kansas City's answer to John Peel, Robert Moore, presents a tribute to The Go-Betweens this starting at 8pm this Sunday night (5/18) at Record Bar in Westport. Hyperopia opens at 8:30. Ghosty, Softee, and Eric Voeks are also on the bill.

Wall of Space Nuts

My daughter and I watched a few Sid and Marty Krofft credit sequences on YouTube and I think the opening song for Far Out Space Nuts sounds a bit like Wall of Voodoo, especially the first half of the song, before the "Step Right Up" verse. The later half sounds like a soft drink commercial, but the first half sounds like Wall of Voodoo. See what you think.

Last Night at the Ballpark

My son played baseball last night and he rapped an RBI single his first time up. Later he belted a double down the line at 3rd base and eventually came around to score. I think his team lost. They don't have a scoreboard. But it was fun to see him hit the ball.

Replacements Sing on British TV

I've been blog slacking this week. In the meantime, enjoy this vintage Replacements performance from 1986:

Philippe Petit

This crazy Frenchman walked across a tightrope strung up between the twin towers of the World Trade Center back in 1974. Everyone in America knew the name of Philippe Petit for a brief time that summer. Now there's a documentary about his amazing feat, a stunt that will never be duplicated for obvious reasons. Looks cool!

Are You Bragging or Complaining?

I watched "I Love the 80s" on VH1 today and it occurred to me that I never saw Dirty Dancing or Footloose.

Weather means more trash

We experienced severe weather here last night. The sirens sounded and Mrs. Jones and I took the kids to the basement to watch the storm coverage. We escaped the damage that littered the metro area this morning. Speaking of litter, a storm surge at the creek brought new litter to the creekside park and I went down there tonight with my pick-up stick, a pair of tongs on a pole. I struck gold immediately when I found a big plastic bucket lodged under a concrete brigde. This made trash collection more efficient. Styrofoam was everywhere tonight and I gathered it up as fast as I could. The parks department stations trash cans at intervals throughout the park and I filled two of them near capacity with my efforts, and yet there was so much I could not reach. My goal is to eradicate the park of trash by the end of the summer.

Every time I search for trash in the park I always find a ball. Sometimes I find a tennis ball. I found a baseball once, and a basketball. I found a softball too, painted neon yellow. I always find a ball.

Iron Eyes Cody

We are fortunate to live near a public park that runs along a creek bed between old Stanley and the Iron Horse golf course. It's built along an abandoned rail right-of-way. It's very wooded and a nice place to walk. There are picnic benches and playgrounds and open fields. One of my projects this summer is to pick up the litter in the park. Why? Iron Eyes Cody has the answer.