Deluxe Vaudeville Whizbang

I nearly typed "Whizband," which also would have worked. :)

Once we got past the movie crew setting up for their night shoot (including having craft service a few yards from the auditorium where the band was playing), things went fine. Apparently there is some horror flick being shot in Candler Park right now and the Horizon School is home base. (I will refrain from the jokes, they write themselves, I refuse to shoot fish in a barrel).

For those who made it, it was a hell of a show. It was mostly old friends of the band, some on stage, some not. It was good music and juggling and jokes and some tears and lots of fun.

I'm sorry you missed it. Stay tuned for the next DVO show; you'll probably hear about it here. I appreciate great music and struggling artists and vaudeville and torturing the public ("I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn") so you'll have to endure the occasional commercial here.

In the meantime, go buy a CD:

The Deluxe Vaudeville Orchestra:

Lenny Deluxe: Main Squeeze

DVO vocalist Janet "Bombola" Metzger also has a CD for sale -- and another one coming out very soon, recorded at Atlanta's own Churchill Grounds.

And you can also hear samples of the DVO and the fabulous Lenny Deluxe from the DVO site: http://home.earthlink.net/~deluxevaudeville/media/wtell.mp3

The once and future ending of an era

This evening is the First Annual in what I hope will be a long history of Farewell concerts with one of my favorite bands, The Deluxe Vaudeville Orchestra.

For a lot of years now the DVO has been giving the world good vaudeville and great music. If you're in the Atlanta area you don't want to miss this evening, it will be most special.

The DeLuxe Vaudeville Orchestra (1st Annual) Farewell Concert

Friday, July 28 @ 8PM
Horizons School Theatre, 1900 DeKalb Avenue, in Atlanta

I believe tickets are $10.00. Bring extra money; the DVO will be selling CDs of various kinds, including Lenny Deluxe's accordion solo CD which should be in everyone's collection.

Dress is most deluxe; be fancy as you wanna.

Lenny is following his ladywife to Ghana, that's her latest State Department posting. (Frankly I think this is all an elaborate coverup and she's really a spy but Lenny assures me this is not the case. I'm not convinced.)

Hope to see you there. I'll be the one hollering for "Freebird!" (not really)

Gravitas, baby!

Please click here to see my Congressperson in action:

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/9542031/index.html

Courtesy of WSB-TV.

When I saw this last night (right after Ralph Reed's most satisfying concession speech) my jaw literally dropped.

Maybe I should be glad she doesn't really represent me, after all. I always thought long before she slugged that policeman that they had grounds to arrest her, for taking money under false pretenses if nothing else.

I urge everyone in the 4th District to get up off their rusty dusties on August 8 and vote this idiot out of office. Please, do it for me. Do it for your families. Do it for every talk show that will run that footage and laugh at us in Georgia.

A-B-C

It's election day today in Georgia, and I hope those of you who are Georgia residents get up and exercise one of the few constitutional rights still allowed you.

But don't take it as seriously as Chicago residents where "vote early and often" is the mantra.

I took them up on the early option and voted last week, now I don't have to deal with any of that standing in line polling place stuff, though the news says turnout is expected to be light so sadly things like standing in line will probably not be an issue.

I have never understood why people would not go vote when called upon -- it's our only chance to fight back, really -- and I get a lot of pleasure from standing in the booth with my finger hovering over the button. Sometimes I have these little dialogues about it, payback really is a bitch when my ballot gets cast. "Do I vote for you, incumbent who did fuckall for us? I don't think so. Take THAT!" And I vote for someone else.

I voted on the "A-B-C ticket" this year. That's "Anyone But Cynthia (McKinney)", who has been my nonrepresenting representative in the House on and off for too many years. I hope to have better representation, though Ms. McKinney seems to have her supporters. I don't know why.

Exercise your right to vote whenever you get the chance. If you don't vote you get the government you deserve and you forfeit your right to bitch about it, too.

God's little lanterns

(with apologies to Lord Buckley)

God's little lanterns were twinkling on and off in the heavens.
God's yellow moon was shining down on the cool clear evening.

We have a good sized back yard here, with big old oak trees in the middle of it and lots of greenery of various kinds. Room enough for the dogs to run around and backing into a stand of pines beyond the fence, with that semi-quiet of suburbia; people mowing their lawns, people having cookouts, people shooting up the house next door, you know how it goes.

Sometimes I just take a cup of coffee or a drink to the back deck and sit; it's a good place to be quiet and just be. And that's what I was doing the other night, sitting on the deck and watching the twilight. The lawnmowers and the grill guys were taking a break and I dunno where the shooters were but it was nice and quiet and even a little coolish, a treat after our recent summertime blues.

Twilight deepened and darkened and I saw a firefly, a lightning bug doing circles around the oak trees, twinkling on and off. Reminded me of Lord Buckley, "God's little lanterns twinkling on and off," though he meant stars, it seemed more appropriate to the flashing lovebug. (Though perhaps, like the jitterbug, it plumb evaded me.)

I saw another and another and another and soon the backyard was alight in twinkles and flashes. It was like a lightning bug convention and everybody had their name tag on. Must of been free drinks or something because every lightning bug and his brother was out there. It was as bright and sparkling as the 4th of July, as glittering as Macy's Christmas window, and I was entranced. Watching the light show I felt peace and serenity wrapped around me like a blanket. Whatever else was going on in the world, I was exactly where I was supposed to be and doing what I was supposed to be doing and it was all right and good.

Sat there and watched the show for a long long time. When I finally got up and went to bed I looked out the window and lightning bug love was still happening outside in grand display.

I hope they all got what they came after and achieved their firefly destinies. Like moths, lightning bugs wad their life up into one little roll and then shoot the roll. Perhaps like moths they believe that's what life is for. Thanks for the show, boys.

On the death of the dryer

So the dryer had been making these really awful noises for a few weeks. Snapping and rattling whenever it got fed clothes. . .that we'd go to fold and find still dampish. The dryer would sit there sullen and deliver the goods eventually, but always with a lot of bad attitude along the way. It was like the soul of a NYC taxi driver had become a ghost in the machine.

We're pretty handy people around here; in our time the inhabitants of this house have fixed all manner of things from cars to cats to hot dinners to other people's personal relationships. We were not gonna be bullied by a recalcitrant appliance. And while my mother was distrustful and sure the dryer was, in technical terms, getting ready to shit the bed, some of us still had faith that we could maybe do something else.

So tonight my mother and myself saw to the dryer.

We discovered the backside of the dryer had enough lint in it to make not a dust bunny but DustGodzilla; that monster had to come out. (My brother had already done some of this, but he didn't kill 'em all and of course they breed, all it takes is two lint molecules to rub together and before you know it you're surrounded by the armies of grey felt to the left of you, to the right of you.) We started with a little hand held vacuum and before the evening was out we had pulled out the Hoover and the leaf blower.

We also had to keep pulling our Jack Russell out of the area; apparently he decided his job was to supervise the works as well as bark ferociously at all the tools. He tried to bite the vacuum cleaner and finally had to be dragged away when he started chewing the leaf blower. A team player to the end, he was still barking as he went down the hall.

We also found a penny . . . and a very old NYC subway token. As the dryer has always resided in Georgia this was somewhat of a mystery but may go a long way towards explaining the attitude.

With all the extraneous material removed we plugged the dryer back in and hit the switch.

OOH, sparks!

We got it all stopped before we burned the house down, but it was obvious the dryer had completed its earthly mission. Like all appliances it was born to disappoint someday and sure enough, see see rider, see what you have done.

White Westinghouse, we hardly knew ye.