TIRC

I got an email yesterday from my buddy Michael Kaiser (host and producer of the excellent RadiOblivion podcast on GaragePunk.com) that he had a new blog in the works, so I went and checked it out. Looks good so far! Anyway, in his sidebar links he had a link to the Vintage ToonCast, which had this awesome old Betty Boop cartoon featuring Cab Calloway’s “Minne the Moocher”… and, being a big fan of vintage cartoons (and Cab Calloway!), I thought I’d share it with you guys here. Check it out:

Click To Play

This one’s all over the place… new stuff from the likes of Frustration, The Vickroids, Mac Blackout, Jaunita Y Los Feos, old stuff from the Lollipop Shoppe, The Motions, The John Does, Rudy Ray Moore, The Mystic Tide, plus lots in between (Country Teasers, Crime, Dead Moon, Lost Sounds, The Gears, The Weirdos, The Philisteins), and lots more deranged rock’n'roll wildness to help kick-start your weekend. Turn it up!

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I just set up a Personal Fundraising page on Barack Obama’s website. Please join me in supporting his campaign for President of the United States and help me meet my goal of $1,000 by contributing however much you can afford.

Thanks,
kopper

OK, this is just wrong on so many levels. The Associated Press pointed out in a story published today in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that there’s a glaring grammatical error (the missing hyphen in “Show-Me”) and the fact that the Missouri State Department of Revenue refuses to fix it because “that’s how the plate looked when it won an online contest last year” (I suppose if the state’s name had been misspelled that they would have also left that alone, too), but this is all beside the point of the even more glaring fact that this is the ugliest, most embarrassing “design” (if you dare to even call it that) of a license plate in history! From the ugly color gradient to the uninspiring font usage to the boring state outline to the tiny image of the bluebird stuck way down at the bottom… it’s worse than bad. It’s horrible! Maybe if enough of us let them know how much it sucks, they’ll change it? I know, I know… don’t hold your breath.

Way to go, MO!

It’s been a while since I last got a spam comment on the GaragePunk.com blog worthy of reposting here, but this one that came in this morning made me laugh. Of course the links have been removed so as not to give the spammers their just deserts, and the original comment was marked as spam, but here it is for what it’s worth…

I looked at me megan fox naked over carefully, but could. Alan and fast. Alan watched but was still sexy megan fox just ran. We will announce a long cum was that will megan fox boobs help. Alan watched megan fox nude pics but her hand on the metro home, can’t mind.

Actually, I guess that one is more like a short story than haiku…

It’s been almost four months since we had to have Ruby put to sleep, so we began our search for a new dog to add to our family last weekend. Our search didn’t last long… in fact, we found an adorable puppy that we just could not resist adopting on our first Humane Society visit (at the Maryland Heights location). Little was known about this pup except that she had been dropped off by someone on May 27 and was 4 months old (my guess is that she was either a stray or runaway). As far as the Humane Society workers knew, she didn’t even have a name! So they named her Trixie, spayed her and gave her the shots she needed and put her up on the Humane Society’s adoptable pet photos site. I guess they were told that she was a “lab mix,” but looking at her and seeing her behavior, we believe she is a full-blooded black lab (and from the looks of her paws, she’s probably going to end up being pretty big, too). She’s incredible sweet and loving, too. Very well behaved. We think she’ll be a great pet for us and a perfect companion for our son, Miles.

By the way, speaking of Miles, he and I took Trixie on her first walk to McDonald Park a few days ago, and she immediately ran into a large pool of rain water that had collected beneath one of the swing sets there and started splashing around (even sticking her face down in the dirty water):

Yep! That’s a lab, alright. No doubt about it.

Oh, and I also found a great message board online for Labrador Retrievers, too. So far it has been very helpful in answering a few of our questions about the breed. Check it out at Lab-Retriever.net.

I’ve uploaded some photos of our abbreviated trip to Seattle last month. Overall, we had a good time despite the news that my father’s health was deteriorating over the weekend and would pass away on Monday (Memorial Day), forcing us to return to St. Louis a week early.

We stayed with friends in Ballard (a northern neighborhood of Seattle that overlooks Puget Sound) and got to visit some interesting places like the Ballard Locks, Golden Gardens Beach (in Ballard), the Seattle Farmers Market, the Seattle Aquarium (by far Milo’s favorite attraction of the trip!) and, of course, the Space Needle (see pic above). We also had some of the BEST hamburgers we’ve ever eaten at a place called the Lunchbox Laboratory (unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of that… was too enthralled in just how delicious the burger was!). We had some really tasty (and cheap) fish & chips at a couple of different places, too, although we did not get a chance to have a really good seafood dinner like we had hoped we would.

The weather was a bit cooler (and wetter) than we were hoping for… the first two days especially, which were very cool, damp, and cloudy. The weekend was really nice, though, and the sun was out for both Saturday and Sunday as well as part of Monday (Memorial Day). We had to fight huge, Fair St. Louis-style crowds when we went to the Space Needle, though, as the Northwest Folklife Festival was going on.

Seattle wasn’t all that much bigger than St. Louis, although it’s definitely different. Different food, culture, climate, and scenery. I’d like to go back again soon, especially to finish out our original vacation plans by going to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula and making it down to Oregon… Seaside and Portland as well as Mt. Hood and the Columbia River Gorge. Unfortunately that will have to wait until we can reschedule. Maybe in the Fall…

It’s all about Kicks… SAVAGE KICKS! This latest Kick features more great hard-hitting rock’n'roll courtesy of the Magnetix, Left Arm, Nathaniel Mayer, Kai Ray, The Chosen Few (by request), The Spinns, Andre Williams, The Mighty Hannibal, The Monks, The Mullens, The Reatards, Goodnight Loving, The Country Dark, The Fucking Eagles, Movie Star Junkies, The Goldstars and more! Tune in and get your kicks.

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My dad passed away on Monday May 26, six years to the day that my mom died. He had been living in a nursing home and was under hospice care due to an infection he’d received from having an abscessed tooth that had gone untreated until it was too late. The infection would eventually spread throughout his body and would be his demise.

He was a World War II veteran and had spent most of his time in the service stationed in Greenland, “an awful place” as he put it, where he served as Chief Clerk at the Quatermaster Depot because of his typing, accounting and office skills learned while attending business school in St. Louis. He also had a very keen eye and was an Expert Marksman, able to hit a bullseye with multiple rounds fired from 500 yards away. While he was stationed in Greenland he took to boxing. He really enjoyed this and quickly earned a reputation of a tough fighter. He became so skilled with his fists that soon many GIs coming through his port on their way to Europe wanted to fight him. They’d see him in the mess hall and make comments like, “He doesn’t look so tough.” This usually meant a challenge was being issued and he would have to fight. He never lost a bout.

We will never forget the stories he would share with us about his days in the Army during World War II, or the stories of growing up in and around Manchester, Missouri, back when it was just a small farming town on a dirt road miles from “the big city” of St. Louis. My dad came from a large family that was always there with him, living in and around the Manchester area, but he lost his father (Emil Julius) to pneumonia during the Great Depression, when he was only 10 years old.

His passions for his family, taking us on extended vacations in the family car, history, music (loving everything from country to reggae), reading, camping, baseball, hunting, fishing, nature, planting trees, wildlife and the environment will never be forgotten. He would plant so many trees and shrubs in our yard that it became difficult to play in, and later even more difficult to mow. He read the Bible to me (cover to cover) when I was probably too young to understand what most of it meant, and he would take me for long walks around our Bridgeton neighborhood almost every evening, rain or shine. We would stop and rest on a bench and talk about the Moon and stars in the night sky. These things I will never forget.

He was a recycler (of EVERYTHING… glass, aluminum, tin, cardboard, paper… right down to separating the cellophane envelope windows from the paper and removing staples from pamphlets and magazines) and a backyard composter (not allowing my mother to put any sorts of biodegradable waste in the garbage, but instead using it to fill drainage ruts in our backyard) decades before it was politically correct to do so. And he was extremely meticulous in everything he did, whether it be planting trees at one of our many houses when I was growing up, repairing something, changing a tire or building a birdhouse. If it wasn’t absolutely perfect, he’d start all over.

He was also bullheaded, short-tempered and fiercely independent. He was extremely stubborn, defiantly opinionated and stood up for what he believed in and never backed down to anyone, be them friend or foe. But at the very same time he could be extremely caring, warm, loving and sensitive. I see many of these same character traits in myself. Life is funny like that.

We’ll miss you, Dad.

In case you’re wondering why there have been two lanes of northbound traffic blocked off along Tucker (in front of the Globe Building and the new Washington Ave. Apartments) for months now, here’s why:

The old Illinois Traction Railroad — electric streetcar that connected St. Louis to Springfield, Peoria, Urbana and other Illinois cities via the McKinley Bridge — ended at the Central Terminal (now Globe) Building, with the station in the basement. Florissant Avenue and part of Tucker Boulevard are actually elevated roadways over those tracks. The Illinois Traction line closed in 1953, but the rail line was used for deliveries of paper to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch through 2004. The city inherited maintenance responsibilities in 1953, and has been unable to keep the elevated roadway in good repair. Sections are in such bad shape that Tucker and Florissant are closed between Cass Avenue and Cole Street. The elevated section begins right in front of the Washington Avenue Apartments, where the city has closed outside lanes for safety.

So there you have it! Thanks to Michael Allen at KWMU for the scoop on that mystery.