faraway cows

Okay, sure--these cows do seem kinda close.

But I was alluding to a song my friend Dale Kutyna wrote some years back. It's a slow gliding kind of thing entitled, well, "Faraway Cows". Pretty & mysterious in a majestic way, like these cows.

return of the Cashmere Jungle Lords

Yes, again with the Cashmere Jungle Lords, live at the Strawberry Street Festival in Richmond VA, 12 May 2007.



The band shots above are stills from the video I shot that day.

The numerous front man photos below are not meant to enforce rock 'n' roll hierarchies so much as to:

A. give maximum pics to CJL fans who happen by

B. provide aid & comfort to southpaw guitarists everywhere (Dom, the guy below, is one such)

C. brighten the day of Gretsch guitar fans--right-handed, left-handed or ambidextrous

red 'shrooms at night

Actually, it was more like late afternoon on a cloudy day.




My interest here is more of the "whoa, kewl--take a picture" variety.

A naturalist might know if these gnawed looking mushrooms were dined on by the slugs, a passing mower blade or something else.

(Folks like to bad mouth Wikipedia, but word there is slugs do eat fungus. Your gastropods may vary.)




Criss crossed by clover stems and pine needles, red 'shrooms abide. More of the micro gnome's-eye view:













Young slugs in love--must be spring.

last steak sandwich pt. 2

As per usual, you can't trust my so-called facts. But spell it anyway you want, change comes as a vanishing world makes way.

Pictured above is the Tasty Treat (Tastee Treet?) in Wakefield, VA, now under new management and closed for remodeling.

The new owners may be anxious to remake the old into something fresh yet familiar. A steak sandwich and a milkshake in some cool flavor like butterscotch may yet await future patrons. Or not. I'll have to check by & see next time I'm around.

Today it's a open question.

Everything there is fresh white paint, emptied space, almost nothing old remaining. Nowhere on premises is the funky old neon sign that read "EAT".

And I know that, along with Angelo's Restaurant, the Tastee Freez drive-in in Smithfield is gone. The Tasty Treat drive-in in Surry (no relation to the one in Wakefield) is long long gone, now a pizza parlor with an addition built onto it. The Sammy & Nick's on Mercury Blvd. in Hampton is closed (the marquee says to check out their restaurant in Williamsburg).

I don't live in Hampton Roads anymore or get around enough to know what's what. But if there's no Sammy & Nick's in Williamsburg, I only know of Monty's Penguin on Warwick Blvd. in Newport News to get that fun, simple, tasty steak sandwich.

Not really the stuff of true loss & mourning, it's a subtle touch of it as small familiar things slip away.

Here's hoping the new owners have something old in store for us.


Last steak sandwich . . . pt. 1:
http://uberkayness.blogspot.com/2007/05/last-steak-sandwich-in-north-america.html

Cashmere Jungle Lords live in Richmond VA

With my trusty digital point-and-shoot, I shot the above video of the Cashmere Jungle Lords performing "Apache" last Saturday, May 12th. An old fan of the band and a college buddy of the front man, I caught their show at the Strawberry Street Festival in the Fan district of Richmond.

Forgive the hand coming into frame--that's me trying to shield the camera from drizzle. It was my first video of a live band (or pretty much anything else). So please enjoy the content if not the form.

UPDATE: for those not so inclined towards video, there are still pictures of the band here:

http://uberkayness.blogspot.com/2007/05/return-of-cashmere-jungle-lords.html

last steak sandwich in North America

As always, I'm hazy on the details. Sometime in April, Angelo's closed.





Back in 1976, it opened in Smithfield VA as the Holland Haus and sported decorative windmill blades. That lasted a couple of years. I forget the next incarnation or how long it ran before the restaurant became Angelo's.






My mom and her friends & family ate there often. Her 80th birthday party was held there some years back.






My sister and I both loved the steak sandwich with the big serving of fries. Great fries that I lack words to describe.





Oddly enough, not just those great fries, but a once more widely available, simple but good steak sandwich is fading from view. Places of a certain old school niche--like a Tastee Freez drive-in or 70's vintage Greek-American steak restaurant--served that basic steak sandwich with lettuce & tomato, mayo optional. Places like Angelo's that are slipping away.




Sometimes, you can just make a meal at home. Cook something up just the way you want it.

Sometimes, you want what you want to be waiting somewhere else.

Without Angelo's, and with fewer and fewer places like it kicking around, what may be waiting is the last steak sandwich in N. America.

mayshroom

Alternate title: 'shroom with a view.




This big guy was found growing on a stump yesterday, but I only got around to photographing it today. As most lawns hereabouts have yet to be mowed for the first time, this hearty specimen has grown up fast.

















Here are some other mushrooms, also found yesterday growing on another stump. They were already past their prime by the time I returned with a camera.

2 signs & a cat

Couple of weeks back, I was in Lowell, MA with my wife. She had a painting in a group show opening in the Brush Art Gallery. Nearby there were these cool old signs:








Gotta love the missing "F" in Haffner and the neon mule ("IT KICKS"). And the vines on brick behind the Broadloom sign.

Two signs done; one cat to go:





I forget if my wife or myself took this picture, but the cat looks Presidential. Or in some way destined to be painted on black velvet, like Elvis or Isaac Hayes circa Black Moses.

years end & begin

Socked with a cold and concerned (if selfishly) about aging loved ones and times gone by, I'm not sufficiently grateful.

Not for my health (such as it is, getting back to normal). Not for being only middle aged (and alive thus far). Not for my wife or family or friends who love me. Not for whatever questionable qualities or abilities I may be said to possess. Not for the basics like food and shelter and clothes to wear.

No, I'm too busy being mopey and sad and wondering where everything's all about to slip away to. Mourning actual family who died (see Del Parrott entry below) and numerous famous people I never met but who nevertheless made my life better.

Ah, hell, let's list some of them:

James Brown (the man who made the latter half of the 20th century far more interesting)

Gerald Ford (one of few public figures my dad & I agreed on)

George W.S. Trow (author of In the Context of No Context)

Grant McLennan (songwriter/co-frontman from the Go-Betweens, a life-changing Aussie band you may or may not care about)

Peter Boyle (actor in too many good movies including Young Frankenstein and Taxi Driver)

Yvonne DeCarlo (as this is not a 2006 recap per se, the actress who played both Moses' wife and Lily Munster can easily ride with this pack)


I know more names will come to mind.

Kind of the point: Thinking of the dead means not communing so much with the living.

Well over the hill am I, if one figures the midway point in one's life as some peak from whence one careens ever downward. But not so far as to be too terribly old. Or for that matter, dead.

We (royally used here to mean "I" and invoked hopefully to mean "all of us") want to love what's lost and hold it close and dear in remembrance. We also want to breathe, to live awhile before we ourselves are lost & found only in another's recollections. Sentiment can weigh upon the simple functions of living.

I love ideas about "real simple" living that inevitably include a photo spread and captions and prices for all this real simple stuff. Real simple in my maudlin year's end/year's beginning sitch may mean remembering just long enough to smile and say goodbye to everyone and everything lost.

When we're done crying, we can all practice:

Smile and say goodbye.

Pea Hicks' Poor Music Project

Details:

http://www.optigan.com/instructions.html

Dunno how current this project is, but the person behind the Optigan site contrived this notion of creating fake homebrew music tapes and planting them in thrift stores. Sounds like a fun idea, if tough to execute.

Kinda reminiscent of Yoko Ono's conceptual pieces. Or my stray notion of Bossy Painting (kind of like commissioning art with ideas, but [ahem] no money).

I modestly propose these titles:

"Xmas at the Ambersons 1973"

"the twins Jake & Janey on their new violins"

"garage door diagnostic pt 2"

"Uncle Paul & Aunt Letitia's hollow pine"

"462 people say hello to Sid, 3 say goodbye"


I'm sure you have your own.

the bright lights of Xmas

Long before that spate of iPod ads with the trailing lights, all sorts of lights in motion were captured as lines in still photos. With the advent of groovin' digital cameras, even the likes of me can indulge in this sort of painting with light.

Above and below, 'tis the season with Xmas lights shot with a moving camera & a long exposure. Feelings of vertigo notwithstanding, it's artsy holiday fun.




Below is more of the same without the Christmas touch.






And while I'm thinking of it, thanks to all of you folks out there with day-glo wise men, NORAD reindeer, trippy inflatable carousels and other brightly lit holiday cheer in your front yard. In one of the cars cruising past your front yard & perhaps stopping to see what you and Thomas Edison hath wrought, it may be me saying: "Hell, yeah--Merry Christmas!"

Indeed, a Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Ramadan/Solstice to you all and a Happy New Year, too.

aforementioned gnarly mushrooms

Here are those gnarly neighbor 'shrooms I mentioned back in the Tarantula-baum entry. Weird fleshy things I wouldn't want to elaborate about in prose 'cept to say: cool, huh?



This was the fungi of mid-November (unseasonably warm weather). By now the weather's still unseasonably warm but the 'shrooms have since dried up some and been mowed over. But kudos to the neighbor for having the presence of mind not to mow them down back in their prime.

Del Parrott, one swell guy I'll miss (1910-2006)

As he was my wife's grandfather, I respectfully called him Dr. Parrott. But really he was Del to everyone.

I could go on about all the good or impressive things the man did. Like getting a degree in optometry in the dark years of the not-so-Great Depression with scarcely a buck to his name. Or being active in his community as a Rotarian or many other such details. But I'm less a biographer (or fact checker) than an old friend.

Del loved two things that I noticed. Photography and his family. I've got reels of his old home movies--of his brother on leave from the service, his parents, his wife and two daughters, his grandkids, a succession of family dogs--to back this up. It's a fact.

And all of us who knew him will be that much better off 'cause he was around.

Thanks, Del.