The Campsie Office

The Campsie Office is very popular on zee laptop circuit.. A fave guest: TT of Mecca

Moblogging

See Mick in the kitchen.

See Mick begin moblogging from his phone.

Welcome to 15 minutes from now!

Roots & Heritage Parade

P1120385.JPG
Originally uploaded by mrtoastey.

Once a year, downtown Lexington explodes with afro-groove energy during the Roots & Heritage Festival. The Saturday parade goes right by our street and I'm determined never to miss it as long as I'm in town! Here are some shots from this morning. Great fun. A beautiful day.

Andrea and Scott's wedding and The Wonder That Is Minneapolis!

andrea and scott's wedding
Originally uploaded by mrtoastey.

Finally, folks, I've got pictures up from my marvelous trip to visit much and many in Minneapolis. There's the State Fair, there's the Sculpture Garden, there the wonderful wedding of Scott and Andrea, there's shopping, there's lots!

MY PICTURES: I've put the set up twice, peeps. First, I've got the whole thing up on Flickr, with commentary and room for your comments.

But if you just want to go straight to buyin' some prints, I guess the Kodak Gallery version would be easier (and less fun) for ya.

ALSO: I'm going to go ahead and aggregate some other pix links I've received from people. For instance, Joe's pictures (and here and here), and Mary's pictures.

By the Seat of Her Floral Pants

JIll Louise
Originally uploaded by mrtoastey.

Had the crazy good time in Minneapolis this last weekend, including an amazing trip to the Minnesota State Fair. Here, we see The Jill in her swinging habitat, practicing moves from her trapeze class. How much more fun can it get?

Tales of Evil Suz

Alyssum—who so very rocks—has created a definitive and gruesome portrait of the inner world of dancers gone wrong, gone wild…gone evil. Included in this sobering scenario: members of Rakadu Gypsy Dance, as well as the evil-cap-wearing Rachel Brice.

For a glimpse into this horrific world, click on the cartoon…and brace yourself, gentle viewer.

What'd you say?

What'd you say?
Originally uploaded by mrtoastey.

I can't hear you on account of HOW AWESOME I LOOK.

New clothes on the major cheap from Kuhlman's in Minneapolis.

This page has moved!

This page has moved! Please visit the Trivial Thursdays guest schedule at this new address, www.TrivialThursdays.com

Pal Jamie

Hi friends:

If you're a friend of the one and only Jamie Tittle, aka Tigital, longtime Lexington and Louisville Luminary, please help him in a time of need. Jamie's being treated for Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Today was his last chemo treatment, apparently, and now we're all looking forward to (quoting Jamie, in his own inimitable and probably accurate vernacular) the "rebooting of his immune system."

Please visit Jamie's Caring Bridge site and sign the guest book. I think he gets a kick out of it.

Note: if you have any prob getting to his site from the above link, go here, and type in "jamestittle" and I think it'll (heh -- "tittle," "it'll" heheh) get you there.

Please send Jamie your good thoughts, your prayers, your recursive neural algorithms, your cupcakes, your (fill in the blank).

PS: here's the uncropped picture of Merrill and Jamie at our wedding that I dig. (sorry, Merrill!)

The Experts!

Pal and great comics guy Kenn Minter is finally doin' it with The Experts, which has recently been picked up for wider distribution. I'll let Kenn tell it:

This is an exciting time for myself and penciller-co-creator, Clarence Pruitt. "the Experts #1" has made it into Diamond Distribution's September issue of "Previews." So, if you have any interest in the book or would just like to lend a hand in supporting your fellow, struggling, independent comic book creators... then bug the tar out of your favorite comic book retailer and tell them that they need to check out the September issue of Previews and order as many copies of "the Experts #1" as they can. I know Clarence and I sure would appreciate it.

The Experts web site

Kenn's web site

The Go! Team

The Go! Team
Originally uploaded by mrtoastey.

Wow, The Go! Team!

Todd and I made the trek to see modern music's best hope in Indy, and they were faaaaantastic!!

We both agreed that there seems to be a new work ethic in rock music, and it's about damned time. After all, if you want to be a big rock star, you oughtta be willing to do a little bit more than come out in a wrinkled tshirt and stare at yr. god-damned feet all night.

The kids in both Autovaughn (from Nashville) and The Go! Team seemed to understand that they were expected to get up there and give the audience 1000% of rock star guitar-flinging, bombastic outros, and spastic flailings. All hail, the rebirth of rock attitude.

A few more pix from my camera-phone are here!

Strange statues around the world | haha.nu - interesting findings over the net

I think a great excursion would be to travel around the world, in search of Strange statues. Based on this guy's collection of pix, there seems to be no shortage!

Mull of Kintyre test

So every now and then, about once a year, I find myself humming "Jet" or "Another Day" or even "Mull of Kintyre" and need to dig out Wings Greatest, one of the first LP's that I ever loved on my own, without trying to copy anybody else's opinion.

You know what I mean? Sure, I thought I liked Lynn Anderson or Tony Orlando and Dawn, but really those were just echoes of my parents' record collections. When I got Wings Greatest from Columbia House record club, I came to love nearly every song on it, with the puzzling exception of "Mull of Kintyre," which for a kid of about ten, was bafflingly un-rock. This was compounded by the fact that it is sometimes referred to as an "international hit." Huh?

Anyway, I was having my annual revisitation with Wings Greatest, and in my—ahem—wiser years have come to love "Mull of Kintyre." Still, after all these years, amazingly, I was singing along wondering once again, "what the heck is this about?!" and finally decided to find out. And discovered that it's a kind of love letter to a region of Scotland where McCartney owned a home and a recording studio.

What was more surprising, though, was finding out about the Mull of Kintyre test, a longstanding (though now obsolete) obscenity test in Britain that used the phallic shape of the Mull in determining the relative indecency of movie content. Those wacky Brits!

Blake's bday

Blake's bday
Originally uploaded by mrtoastey.

It's Blake's b-day at cheapside!

The madcap's last laugh

A nice little tribute piece here, noting the death of Syd Barrett, at age 60, the founder and legendary drug casualty behind the original Pink Floyd. As such, he was an architect of the British psychedelic scene, but quickly opted out of stardom, and died a recluse, a casual painter and gardener.

Also, there is a wonderfully in-depth look at Syd's life and impact here.

Syd Barrett, R.I.P.

I've got grill fever!

Did I really just say that?

"I've got 'grill fever'"?

No way. Or so I've long thought. In fact, one could say that my fear of Two Things Domestic has always been:

1. The two-car garage
2. Grilling

"Why the fear of grilling, Mick? It's just the harmless outdoor cooking of some meat!" you might claim.


Oh, sure—it sounds harmless. But it's always been the symbol for me of suburban domestication. And don't tell me about all of you—my friends—that have grills and have thus far avoided this kind of marginalization, because if you do, I'll just say you're exceptional. Me, I didn't want to be part of the grill people. I'd happily go to your backyard barbecue, of course. But now, I have a disturbing invitation to extend:
Come over. We'll cook out. I've got a juicy chicken breast on the rack right now.

Because, if you didn't feel it, there was a 'great disturbance in the Force' yesterday; it was me buying a grill. And just to cross the "t" and dot the "i," it's gi-normous. And while I'm sure there are bigger grills, I was always sure that I'd be content with the classic Webber (the—let's face it—it's the Designers' Grill, if there were such a thing. It's the VW Beetle of the Grill World—a classic.

But let's also face this: I didn't buy a Webber. I bought a gi-normous four-burner shiny shiny suburban gas grill. Outside the back door, it sits regally, cookin' my dinner. Let me justify my self for just a moment: This is an exceptional scratch-and-denter. Come over and I'll show you the signature orange paint where some forklift boy plowed into it after too many diet cokes. Which got me a hundred dollars off retail. Aw, yeah…

And that's where, friends, I'm being swayed, even on this, "the private audition," in advance of our July 4th cookout. (Whoa—did you feel that? Another shuddering disturbance in The Force?" Well, wait—a cookout is a party, ain't it? And I love parties, d'ain't I? It's just the grill party that I've been afraid of.) I mean, that thing is cookin' chicken for me. I'm sitting here writing and it's cooking chicken.

How can a reasonable person really argue with that?

You can't, that's how. And so I'm 'coming over.' I mean you're coming over. To my house. To grill out. Even if I get tired and you have to leave, I'm still going to grill out and watch TV. Nobody talks about the joy of grilling out and watching TV. At lunchtime on a weekday. So that, I reckon, is my territory to explore.

Sifting the Pix!

Hi friends and friends and friends: Lucy and I are back from the Honeymoon, we're sifting jillions of pictures and they're accumulating over at Lucy and Mick's World Wide Wed
If you've got something to share, please drop us a line or post your pictures to the Flickr Group I set up for this exact purpose!

Thanks and LOVE to everybody!

come on over!

New posts on Lucy and Mick's Wed Site, folks! It's the Honeymoon update from Belize!

taste of thai bachelor party!

mike and kim
Originally uploaded by mrtoastey.

My pals Mike and Kim are among the diners and others who made it out for a celebration this past weekend. It was my bachelor party! You know I'm getting married, right?

On Sunday!

Myla Pogue, Robert Deniro and a treatise on the benefits of bumming a smoke

I've been meaning for years to tell this, one of my favorite stories. It's not short, but revel, won't you, in the absolute strangeness that can be found by simply bumming a smoke. (Just for the record: I quit smoking nearly a year and a half ago; I never regret that decision, but the fact remains that grabbing a smoke will always be a quintessential social phenomenon, and I do miss that sometimes.)

In the fall of 2001, I did the unlikely and went on a 7NC with some friends. It was a glorious and weird trip that convened in San Juan, Puerto Rico and took us to a variety of islands and escapades. I've told a story about that before, and could tell a million more. But the best story concerns my trip back from that trip.

I flew from San Juan to Atlanta and had a hefty layover there, which was fine with me—I've been an early laptop adopter (laptopter?) and enjoyer of the airport bar life. Give me a stool and a drink and a smoke and I can sit in an airport for really any amount of time. Only problem was, the carton of Marlboros that I'd bought at the duty-free joint in San Juan was—of course—packed away in my stuff.
Waiting for my flight to LaGuardia (I lived in NYC at that time), I decided that a smoke was imperative, but for obvious reasons, didn't want to buy a pack, so I started watching my bar mates for a likely benefactor. Seeing three women chatting jovially at one table—and smoking—I ambled over to bum one. They were plenty nice, and we talked for a minute. I asked where they were going and I've forgotten where the first two said, because the third woman said, in a thick Southern accent: "I'm going to New York to meet Robert Deniro." Which was fascinating, and mildly thrilling in a vague six degrees way that I'm only a little bit awed by.

Her name, she told me was Myla Pogue, from Pensacola, Florida, and little did I know that the rest of my trip would not be at all what I had expected. She was an actress, she said, and she was dating Robert Deniro, who occasionally had her come visit him in New York. I told her that I was going to LaGuardia as well, and she replied that "Bob" was picking her up at the airport and maybe I could MEET him. "Really…" I said, and sat right down and ordered another drink.

We had a couple, in fact, and ended up semi-shambling onto the plane after "LAST CALL, LAST CALL FOR FLIGHT ____" had rang out in the terminal for a little too long. It was a rather late flight, and we weren't due into Brooklyn until 12:45pm. The plane was also only about half full, so when Myla suggested that I sit beside her, I thought "sure, why not for a little while?" I like my private airplane time, but I assumed that I could bail to another row at any point.

Myla was a piece of work. Semi-drunk and much more excited than I had initially realized about her impending rendezvous with "Bob," she was a non-stop stream of blather. After, that is, she jumped up and ran to the bathroom, right as the plane was taking off. When she came back, over the substantial protests of the flight attendents, she was, ah, a little sniffy, if you ask me, and had much to say about her life, how she and DeNiro had met, and—most shocking—what her family thought of him.

And that, kind reader, is where we shall pick up next time.

* (2/10/2009) I've had a number of comments here that run from vindictive to supportive of my story and its centerpiece. It has never been my intention to defame the woman in my story. I just tell true stories from my life. But out of respect for my subject, I've changed her last name and deleted all comments that reference her by last name. I'm sorry that I couldn't just edit the comments, but since that is technically impossible in Blogger, I had to delete some of them. Also, I deleted the hurtful ones that seemed to be somebody grinding an axe, with no reference to my writing.