"That Feller Had on a Dress..."

Men wearing dresses has been in the news lately. So has the fact that temps have been over 100 degrees around here for 23 days this summer. I say that a dress is cooler than trousers and for some years now a sarong, a one piece wrap popular in tropical areas of Asia and Africa has been a favored type of dress to wear while lounging about my house. Even though it seems that men with real short hair wearing suits may pass laws against men wearing dresses I may go against the mainstream and wear my sarong to town. It's hot enough, I don't think anyone will bat an eye and anyway that's kind of how I go, different from everyone else. 

Of course men with real short hair and suits have passed laws against heroin use. That does not make me want to go against the law and mass public opinion to sample narcotics because after all like climate change, COVID viruses and more there is science behind the reasons you should not take heroin. As far as I know there are no studies about men wearing sarongs. 

The other day I was driving along a main thoroughfare and I saw a poor woman walking in the 100 degree heat in a black bikini. She was probably in her 30s, the swim suit was on the modest side of this type of wear and she had a nice tan. By all appearances she was very hot and on a directional heading to the corner convenience store where what I imagined to be the only air conditioning she would experience that day lay in cool wait behind heavy glass doors. I say this woman would have been better served by a sarong and if you think I'm picking on women I saw a few men that would have also been well served by wearing a sarong. 

Once while working in the nursing home I had two physical therapy patients. One gentleman got up each day and dressed in button up western shirts, jeans, and leather shoes. The other gentleman preferred a patient gown with a pair of shorts underneath. Despite the differences in dress both men liked a good domino game and when they ended up in the gym together as a build up to more strenuous activities I placed a bedside rolling table with the dominos on them between the two and they happily spent quite a while playing. At the conclusion of the game I rolled the table from between them and Mr. Jeans sighted the other mans patient gown. "That feller's got on a dress!" he exclaimed. When you wear an unconventional garment in public it will take getting used to for some.        

Just so there is no confusion when you see me so you can start getting familiar with the terminology a sarong or sarung is worn wrapped about the waist. A West African word from the Akan language srong or sorong means fastened at the highest point. Memorize this and you will not be ignorant about which one I'm wearing. 

Cathy also has a sarong. She likes it when we are all matchy matchy. Whatever men in suits with real short hair think I like it also.  

 

Latest Two Used Records...

A few weekends ago I managed to hit the downtown Heritage Antiques parking lot flea market. They hold something like this each spring and fall. I have always found good deals here and in the past I've had some very profitable days when I had a booth selling the cigar box guitars I made. The Heritage Antiques people have been good to me. On a quick walk through this day there were plenty of well organized good records to be found and I limited mice elf to only two and I think I was drawn to these through a cosmic connection. 

In the front you see Al Hirt's "Our Man in New Orleans." It's a 1963 release and this seems to be a rerelease from 1976. Al was a New Orleans fixture, playing trumpet on Bourbon St. and at one time being apart owner of the Saints and performing a few Super Bowl halftime shows. This is a recording of all the traditional jazz favorites but it's in kind of a big band style. Amazingly enough you can still buy this on cd or as an mp3 but used records by the big man are a rich vein of cheap record collecting. They made millions, they sound good, are easy to find and usually the previous owner took good care of them. 

On the cover Al is pictured in front of Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop on the corner of Bourbon and St. Phillip. It might be the oldest building in the French Quarter. It's reported to be the most haunted structure in the Quarter and in the 1940s was a place for the bohemian community which included Noel Coward and Tennessee to hang. By the time I first spotted the place in the early 1980s it looked like a joint where a tourist might pay too much for a drink so that day I located my operation a few blocks over to a dark, quiet, mostly empty watering hole whose name long escapes me. I did not see any bohemians there but I did not want to be bothered.   

The other record is Parliament's Motor Booty Affair. It's a George Clinton project from 1978. This record had two Number #1 Billboard singles come off of it. Bootsy Collins who (linked is part of the show we saw) we saw at Riot Fest a few years ago and his brother Catfish play on the record. The cut out paper doll stand up characters, art work by Overton Loyd are all still intact. I wish I had been into this kind of music when it came out but my shell like ears lumped it in with disco. The disco joints in east Texas usually required nice pants for entry in the late 1970s and as I had had a bad experience with nice pants in the third grade or something the scene was a turn off. This music is really what they call funk and it's good. Later I would learn more about it in New Orleans    

Maybe That's the cosmic connection is that Al is from New Orleans, like on the album cover I only stood outside Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, I learned more about funk there and some years ago we did see George Clinton play live in New Orleans. I swear I wrote a blog post, and everything and had some photos of  had photos of Diaper Man who was still alive at the time. 

Good thing there are records, lots of them and if someone turned up that blog post I would invite you to a quiet bar afew blocks over from somewhere.   

 

Pulled My Pants Up at the Discovery Green Concert...

Discovery Green is a nice little outdoor park in downtown Houston where they have free concerts. It's good people. We meet Morgan, Ali and Anne to see Paul Thorn with Craig Kinsey opening. Coming up is Rodney Crowell. Though we stayed the night a concert here, especially if you like the people is worth a drive down and back in my humble opinion. If you happen to see Paul though keep your pants pulled up. 

I had a Paul Thorn CD and was already familiar with him. They play a lot of his tunes on WWOZ radio out of New Orleans. He's a Mississippi boy raised Pentecostal and his funky southern rock/soul music has a nice raise the church roof feel good on Sunday morning after being bad Saturday night dark old south Gothic vibe.   

He had a really great band including in the following photo a lefty guitarist who played killer slide. One thing I noted was that there were no amps on stage. In this part of the world Texas Headphones, a couple of road battered Fender amps are the weapon of choice for the guitar players in a band. They had some kind of electronic trickery that sound great including the use of sitar like sounds by the lead player. It all sounded great but as my newest amp was made in the early 1980s and has been retubed with 1950s military grade tubes I am kind of in the dark as to how they did this. If it was 1952 and I had to help Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys set up I could go right to work. I could not help these guys.  

The good old Mississippi feel good boy Paul is tempted him to solve the world's problems a bit from his bully pulpit of the stage. He was getting most of it right as far as I was concerned but when he made a crack about things will be a little better when when the young people start pulling up their pants. Paul, that's just a style. When I was in high school I had a pair of bell bottom pants, and they were big bells and they had cuffs. They were a kind of maroon color.  I might have had two pair but I don't remember the color of the other one. I could have worn those to your concert and then where would you have been? What would there have been left to say? As George Harrison once said in a song "All things Must Pass." I don't think George was talking about styles but they do pass away. I don't think they are the cause of the worlds problems or change the way people act. As they say around here, "you can take him out of those sagging pants..." 

Anyway it was good, sound good and I bought his newest cd. It's called too Blessed to be Stressed and I like that title. From the looks of thinks the Paul Thorn Band is getting good gigs so you will see more from them. 

The other band was Craig Kinsey. Though the started with a Woody Guthrie song they quickley switched to a cabaret style mode that included dancers. Cathy liked this band more than Paul. 

They do get extra points for the girl dancers and the horn player. 

Ok. Just like Paul I had my say. Now I'll put on pants, pulling them all the way up. I am an old man in case I said something here that otherwise made you believe different and I wear my trousers pulled way up high. 

Sometimes You Got to be a Big Boy...

And I don't care how stylishly low you have been wearing those trousers you are going to have to be a big boy and pull them up. This is not some middle age old white guy get off my lawn rant about the state of the pants, I am talking metaphysically, metaphorically, universally get a hold of the loops, the belt what ever and hang on.

You did not think things were really going to stay the same did you? Say what, you did not know it was going to be in public? You have a lot to learn.

Pictures From Mary's Rome Trip...

Slow weekend around here, working, cold windy weather, just as well. Let's post vacation pictures.

I'd like to have a vacation right now and I would pick some where warm. You know how you get all set for summer when that spring sun begins to shine. When you got the flip flops and shorts out then you get a little cool front and it seems a set back in progress.
Yeah, I'd like to sit in the warm sun somewhere.
I won't lose my head over working this weekend though.

Your Complete Attention Please...

Used to when all else failed there was always the cleaners. When you could not do it yourself, they were the professionals. Take it to them. That's why I was surprised to find this sticker on my black suit jacket and trousers on their return from an institution I had previously held so sacred.

"Stains and discolorations...have been carefully examined." They like to do that, don't let them fool you.

..."matter has received our attention..." Wait a minute, first it was stains, now they have matter?

"...consistent with safety." Brings to mind hard hats, escape capsules and floation suits.

Fishing With Pop and Geneva...

There pictures are from yesterdays trip. Mary scored first with an unusual catch. She hung a rod and reel and pulled it up. This is in one of the river edge places we have caught a lot of fish at through the winter except with the south wind we are on the opposite side of the stump than usual. Stopped up with sand a little lavage with the water hose and a good soaking with Liquid Wrench (gratuitous product placement) and it casts just fine. Line is a bit tangled so some of my favorite brand (Cajun Line) and it should work well and be soon pressed into service. Reel was a Shakespeare spin cast, heavy duty, we have several like this that have held up well to the rigors of cat fishing.

Pop really pulled his share on the way to 23 keepers. Note Geneva's foot in the back ground. She wore hair protection for her new perm and I saw no reason to picture that apparatus here and possible embarrass my favorite mother in law unless she caught a real big catfish or lost her trousers in the lake or something like that.







Conditions were choppy and water levels low. Here's Captain Carl at the command center.

A disturbing development on the swimming in our bellies department is that I have been sneezing my head off while cooking fish lately. Started at the last big fish fry.Last night I had a frying skillet going, a blackened fish skillet and a pot boiling some gulf shrimp provided by Pop and Geneva. Lots of smoking spices. The sneezing stopped after I finished eating. Maybe next time I won't blacken fish to see how it goes, a science experiment, take away an event and see if the results are the same.

Trapped...

We own a mouse trap that catches them live. With the arrival of cool weather I heard suspicious digging in the walls. Somebody was setting up a nice winter retreat. Could not have that, the no vacancy sign is out folks so I baited up this trap with a peanut butter cracker and the next day it had a prisoner. See, if you get in the trap, you can have all the peanut butter you want because one thing is for sure, you can't get out.

Doing the human thing (hey we are voting for Obama after all) we loaded up the trap in the back of the pickup (some mice are big) and drove to a near by dirt road. Not too far, (small carbon foot print) and tried to get a picture as we opeaned the trap.
He/she what ever did not exactly stand still so I only got a picture of the butt.

This mouse hit the ground in the middle of an East Texas sand dirt road, jumped the ditch and went straight into a small hole at the base of tree, right between two roots. It was almost like he knew that hole was there. I doubt that a glance at the tree base by human eyes would have noted this hole, but once he drew attention to it, it was easily seen.

The best comparison I can draw, kind of an allegory of life so to speak is like when you enter a public building and you are about to poop your trousers. A kind of sixth sense kicks in as quickly enter the building, a glance about sends information from eyes to brain that is hard to exactly qualify, over there it says, turn right, past the women's there it is, just in time. It rarely fails us because we all know how embarrassing it is to poop trousers publicly.

Only 3 more times...

Do I drive to Kilgore. It's almost over. I might even just drive two times. I could make Cathy drive me up there to walk across the stage.

Anyway the drive got to really be a drag yesterday. I was so bored I stopped and talked to a man in a black and white car. Well, he did most of the talking. No, it's none of your business what he said.

I also got my cap and gown yesterday. I'll have to take it back, they left the pants out of the package. Should be an easy fix. I'll talk to them today.

Let me see how many test can I take this month? I need to renew CPR, take defensive driving, oh yeah, the National Board Exam for Physical Therapists Assistants! I almost forgot about that one!