Weird Ohio skies

It smells like 1983 out there today

Maybe it's the pine mulch, but I just had one of those deja-vu moments caused by some scent, and then I realized it wasn't deja-vu so much as memory.

This is from 1985, however:

Happy first day of summer

The Loshak-Taylor Experience

Morgan, Rachel, Harvey and Ridley are in town. 

My giant head could contain all their various other heads with room to spare

Hootenanny

Rachel rests easy with five year old Bob Pollard.  No, Harvey, actually.

Dadaist shenanigans of the kids across the street

The kids across the street adore Rafe, to a girl.  Last night they came over to adulate and they brought with them a bird cage full of rocks:

I chuckled at their seemingly nonsensical gambit.  "I'm on to you guys!" I parried. "This is a takeoff of [Duchamp's] Why Not Sneeze, Rose Selavy?":

Good natured joshing then followed, with Lexi (age 4.5) saying that Tristan Tzara was just as important as Duchamp, Lissa plumping for Hugo Ball  and Leah flatly asserting, to my astonishment, that I was wrong, that Warhol was more important than Duchamp, just for sheer cross-culture breadth of influence!  This made me cross, naturally!

Then a raccoon was noticed up by the attic dormer windows across the street and all was forgiven.



1. The Coming of the Storm

Last night's rock rehearsal was made all the more exciting (as if it needed to be moreso!) by the mother of all thunderstorms. 30K local power users still powerless! etc















Thanks for the mammatocumulus!





















Chris, in from the Bay Area, is awed by the fury of the oncoming Midwestern gullywasher! Bet you wish you hadn't used that spray-on Pam on that grilled cheese back in '93 NOW, huh?




















Mock-up for that autobiography cover art for Through the Storm: The Kelley Deal Story? DONE!














The humble little smack-addled hamlet of D_____ prepares to meet its maker!

Oh, Christ - "The Tudors"

We were deep in a non-stop run of viewing many streaming episodes of The Hills on Netflix. The exquisite self-induced suffering imposed was like none other! Since every blog out there spends at least half its space discussing this withering phenom, I will refrain, except to say that I am making shirts that say TEAM JUSTIN BOBBY.

We get to the end of Season 3, get all psyched to plunge into the silicon-injected shitstorm that must be Season 4, but no! Netflix only had the first three seasons streaming! DAMMIT!

So we have trudged listlessly through the last week, trying to decide what series to plunge into (and we do have Mad Men Season 3 burnt to disc, and all of True Blood, neither of which we have seen; but it's summer and it's hot so we need trash to go with our DLM deli junk at dinner, not quality!).

Many friends (well, two) had talked up The Tudors over the ages. Was it time?

Why, yes.

And what a profound sense of unease the first two episodes caused. J.R. Myers (when I imagine myself doing things, I look like him in the imagining*; will probably end up his sponsor!) as King Henry the 30th or what have you bangs two lovelies in the first thirteen minutes; some big red-haired dork plots against the king, all the while having little tiny eyes like the slow-brained half of Master Blaster with the helmet knocked off; Sam O'Neill tilts his head and looks wry. SO much shitness! I kept waiting for Rachel Ward to roll in!

Oh! And lots of shots of velvet-clad servants honking their heralding horns [alliteration! V. classy, like this show!]! To prove it's England! You know?

We're only two episodes in, but it's love! Not sure of who all the characters are supposed to represent from actual history (the Bride was so annoyed with it [in a good way] that she started mopping the wood floor, leaving me to watch the horror unfold alone, but causing just enough clanking-mop noise to be distracting), but my fave scene was the King and his sort of spiritual adviser (oh, he's supposed to be Thomas More! Ha!) are being ferried along in a boat and old Henry says:

"I read that book you sent me...the one by Machiavelli..."

At this point, the Bride was banging her head against her drawn-up knees, hoping, praying it would stop.

And to think: we have 34 EPISODES TO GO!

* I don't, really.

Bananas!

I guess that per Amazon the game is actually called Bananagrams, but we were all calling it Bananas...this could be the biggest thing out there since Glenn Beck's The Christmas Sweater for all I know, but it's a sort of Scrabble-type game that is indeed the most fast-paced and exciting sport since Uno!

As in some sort of mad 60's dance like the Pony, there are shouted orders to "SPLIT!" and "DUMP!" and "PEEL!" until some lucky wordsmith has completed his pile o' tiles and lets fly with "BANANAS!" A riot then ensues! I call my good-at-games wife an "asshole!" Twins are rent asunder, spewing bile at one another like defeated she-cobras! Baby chickens have tears well up! Visiting pro skateboarders resolve to read more!

I'm not one to tout "sober fun," but a grand time was had by all!

Also: Windom Earle's LP cover FINALLY came together:

AND deer [click to enlarge, though you still can't really see shit]!:

Worlds get mixed - when BB guns are involved