April 2008

Country Kansas Singer Songwriter Showcase
Goat Bash Hangover Special
With Lucas Maddy, Ryan Tittsworth, Russell Lovenstein, Blaine Younger
Bobby T’s Bar and Grill
Manhattan, Kansas

GOAT Bash
With Blaine Younger, Lucas Maddy, Ryan Tittsworth, Russell Lovenstein, Shades of Grey
Goat House
Elaine Street, Manhattan

Today I received two copies of Kansas English: The Journal of the Kansas Association of Teachers of English. The twice-yearly-published compendium includes poems, song lyrics and essays from a range of authors in Kansas. This issue featured “Red Dirt Farm” on page 65. Thanks for G to getting it listed and sending me copies.

ATS finished up yesterday. A very successful endeavor, the class generated positive feedback that hopefully will encourage others to take it in the future.

What a show last night was the Counting Crows in Lawrence! I haven’t blown out my voice from yelling in years, but I did last night. My favorite quote was when Adam Duritz said something about getting ready to play an old song, then remarked “at this point, anything before this album is pretty fucking old.” He’s right. The last studio album was 2002’s Hard Candy. It was a great disc, but six years is a long time between fresh material. Sure, they put out a compilation, a live CD and remastered their first CD August and Everything After, but six years is just too long to wait. Maybe that’s why the moved from what is now Verizon Amphitheater, where I last saw them in 2000, to Liberty Hall.

I find myself in the lobby of The Arlington Hotel.

JFK and Al Capone have found themselves here too.

It is creepy nostalgia at its best.

Alright, this is the coolest thing. The elevators here, of which one is still operated by a human, all have clock looking things above them. They turn as the elevator moves marking the floor of the lift. So, essentially, I can sit here in the lobby and tell which floor people go to.

There is nothing as nostalgic as the plumbing. This morning the sink wouldn’t drain, the toilet wouldn’t flush, and the shower wouldn’t turn on all at once. The fire-starter electrical fixtures take a close second. The rooms have 81/2 by 11 dimmer switch plates with knobs proportionally as large. Very dramatic and absurd.

Mineral spirits and a massage might be in my future. This is one place you are supposed to drink the water. They say don’t eat the ice though.

For those of you following my every music whim, the new James McMurtry CD came out today, tax day. Just Us Kids has been previewed for several weeks on myspace and from what I hear, I like. I haven’t gotten around to downloading my copy yet at emusic.com but hope to tomorrow or at least by the time we head back up the hill.

I am beyond jealous of my true heart attending the Counting Crows with Lucas, Aaron, and Diane tomorrow night at Liberty Hall. Who would have ever believed the CC’s would be playing Liberty. With any luck I will get to Little Rock tomorrow night to see Chris Knight.

I would rather see him.

I really want to see the Crows though.

I might stay here.

I will keep you posted.

www.LitTunes.com is translated: http://www.kindsein.com/es/25/7/593/

G

Not many memories of my childhood are clear, but of the few, I can always remember Royals games broadcast on AM radio, Denny Mathews and Fred White, with producer-engineer Don Free (I don’t know how to spell his name, I just always heard it). There was no more peaceful, thank you god for making this earth feeling than to sit in the little room Katie and I shared at the north end of the trailer house, scents of hashbrowns and random dead cow cooking in the muggy bright kitchen floating in, window open, screen up, holding the antenna to the frame to get a good signal.

the royals lost alot back then. it got even worse these last few years, but this year it’s starting to look up. Still, there’s no attachment to the players like before…my imagination is dimmed by the pictures and video and sportscenter highlights (and lowlights). I remember thinking about how Bob Hamelin must be the biggest stud ever, like a left-handed GI Joe. the first time I saw a picture, I was so let down. massive 70’s wirerimmed glasses, cheeks that seemed to house pancakes, and a gut like the Babe himself. pretty comical how i pictured my heros, so perfect. it seems now that the role models i look too are quite the opposite, chronically flawed in some way or another, perfectly human.

but zach Greinke is about to put the mariners away to go 3-0 on the season. Brian Bannister won his 3rd game of the season yesterday…

I like my AM radio.

Or is it Blaine Younger?

It seems our friend Aaron Traffas has been a bit of a blogging machine of late. Maybe he is a Massey and will never quit. If this is the blogging championship, he will surely throw a bearing and spark the field afire, ruining his chances of ever matching the G blog.

I am happy to report I too was watching KU dismantle, uh, Memphis on Monday…in Lawrence…and yes, I was one 45,000 people on Mass Street at midnight. Spectacular. If I had even minimal photo editing skills I would send some grist captured through the lens of my camera that night. I am sure you can YouTube it for hours.

Speaking of that colossal time suck, I spent most of the afternoon working and listening to a Scott Miller show on there. Neat stuff. Check out Scott Miller Studio 865.

“My old man could be your dad’s old man/ he lied about his age so he could fight Japan…”

If you get a chance, check out “The Calm” by a friend of mine down here at www.myspace.com/jivetownjimmy

Sad. Depressing. Beautfiul.

I realize this has turned into a rambling of sorts. Sorry for you linear types out there. For the spastic-random, you should be right with me.

Heading to Hot, Hot, Hot Springs tomorrow for a three day writing retreat. I am responsible. Scary.

Better get back to work.

“The reflection keeps me facing the other way.”

G

We had a great day today. Seven students enrolled in the Auction Technology Specialist course put on by the NAA. Some were old friends, some are now new. I’m looking forward to the next three days.

I just ate with John and Sara Grahm. It was the first time I’ve met my newest first cousin once removed, Maggie. Maggie is short for Margrett, and her brother is Will and sister is Ainsley. That’s right, folks, now they just need to have Josiah, Leo, Josh, Donna, Toby, Claudia, Charlie, Amy and Kate to be an Aaron Sorkin tribute family. Better get crackin’, John.

I’m relaxing to HBO, which is kindly airing John Adams for me. Its oratory often resembles Deadwood without the sex and violence. Truly not quite as good, it does serve as the best replacement so far to the ill-fated, canceled series.

Is it me or does Sarah Lacy look like Justine Joli?

I’m on Twitter as atraffas. Follow me, where I go, what I do, and who I know…

Tonight I leave for Kansas City to start teaching the Auction Technology Specialist course tomorrow morning. Robert Mayo and I made a ton of progress on Wednesday whipping the course material into shape. I’m really excited and honored to get to teach this first, innaugural class.

headed to eat with the family
Erica and mom are in town this morning
AXO charity auction tonight
my friend Ron Clark and I are going to have us a time

Now that Moses is dead, can we finally repeal the second commandment?

I wrote this on Tuesday.

Going to Kansas City this morning to work on stuff for the NAA. I spent a ton of time working on the new auction technology specialist course, only to ave the majority of my changes not included in the final version.

It really needs edited. One slide has “Website” and “website” in the same title, while another discusses including “bio’s” on a site.

We went to Wildcat Creek on Sunday after playing golf on the Xbox for three hours to try to play golf in real life. I still haven’t swung my set of Ping irons since I got it last summer. While the course was already closed, we did hit the driving range. I put a hurt on the guy driving the ball sucker truck, as my 100 yard line drive doinked him square in the drivers door. I felt bad, not because I was trying to hit him, but because it was the best shot I had all day.

After the golf, we hit the batting cage. i haven’t swung a bat since I played base ball in high school, and while I today can’t lean over to tie my shoe without horrific pain, doing so felt so good I may go back.

Diane and I watched the Kansas v. Memphis game last night on our new 56″ 1080p HDTV with a standard-definition signal. It made me want to cry, knowing how good the screen could look had we purchased HD cable.

I’m not a fan of commercials. I know that not really anyone is, but I’m pretty good at being immune to any and all forms of direct and indirect product placement. Yesterday on Facebook, however, I got my ass kicked.

Facebook has been experimenting with different kinds of advertising techniques with varying degrees of success and to various amounts of fanfare, ridicule and outright protest from its users. The most ire earned so far has been related to ways they’ve tracked users and based the ads delivered on the data from such tracking. I don’t really mind companies watching what I do, as I gave up on the concept of Internet privacy many years ago. I figure that if someone cares enough about what I’m doing to record it and use the data, I feel just a little bit more important and my head gets a little bit bigger.

I logged in at the suggestion of an email sent by someone at Facebook to tell me that somebody I couldn’t remember added me as his or her friend. Facebook has a view that lists the recent activities of each of your friends, and I often find myself reviewing it since it’s really the only way I can find out anything about my friends with actually talking to them directly. Removing the requirement of human interaction is one of the most staggering modern conveniences.

In any case, I’ve noticed recently that the second or third entry is usually an advertisement. I usually skip right over it, but this time it caught my eye. There, listed right along with friends adding applications and joining groups, was the news that the Counting Crows not only had a new album, but that it was already in stores.

While most of my music purchases are now from Amazon and it’s one-click access to its DRM-free selection, there are some purchases that I want to be able to display prominantly at the top of the cardboard box of CDs that I keep in my tool shed. Reminding myself that I needed to eat an extra helping of cranberries as punishment for not paying closer attention to my favorite band, I quickly left my office and left to find a copy.

After striking out at WalMart among its selection of about 12 artists, I found my prize at Hastings. I was profoundly disappointed at the lack of a jewel case, but that disappointment quickly faded as I inserted into the CD player in my truck the tracks to which I will be listening exclusively for the next six months.

We had one hell of a show last night at O’Brien’s Pit Stop in Norton, Kansas. Our good friend Rex Striggow, previously of the Mad Cows and the Blaine Younger Band and now from the relatively newly-formed Carbon Cowboys, joined Lucas, Dave and me for the show by rocking the green bass. The crowd was fantastic, making us play 45 minutes longer than we planned and yelling “one more song” very loudly in unison about thrice after we finally quit.

I’m sitting at Maddy’s house in Norton. We’re making calls to everyone in the area who might have some alcohol to put in Lucas’s brother’s new racing go-kart. Two fat, grown musicians trying to get a tiny go-kart with a small engine running on gasoline is probably a sight to see, especially when they realize after it’s finally running that the engine is tuned for pure alcohol instead of the gasoline. I don’t know if we’ll get the alcohol in time before we have to head south for Hays, but I’ll grab some pictures if we do.