Ever get the sneaky feeling you're being watched?

Ever get the sneaky feeling you're being watched?

 I had that feeling yesterday. In a flip of the script, I detected a cop in the neighbors backyard a few months ago.

 I was sitting just on the other side of the fence. We didn't see one another because we happened to be silent and obscured. Then I smelled him.

 I leaned back looking between the slats and spied a cop standing silently in the yard only a few feet away from me. 

We live in a cologne free house in probably a cologne free neighborhood. That smell stuck out like a party popper. 

Whatever was going on next door was none of my beeswax. 

I still performed my civic duty by covering the cologne smell with my favorite smell. 

I was silent because I was rolling a joint.Yeah I quickly blew my cover. Luckily I wasn't doing anything illegal. 

Still it's awkward.

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I was so excited for our morning gig today.

It's a birthday party for one of our biggest fans...and her daughter (also massive fan.)
Even when those two are the only ones to turn up at our weekly gigs, they keep us as enthused as they. We showed up,
Lil one made the cutest freak out seeing Olive and Dingo at her house!!!!We performed for her friends right in front of two O&D dolls they own. Mom brought me coffee and Olive a Mimosa. The 13 or so other kids didn't know us at all. It was a riot seeing them stare at us in stunned silence as the birthday girl sat front center mouthing the words to everything Olive said.
By the end all the kids were on the O&D train thanks to the kid opening the door for us.
That was amazing. I wish they were all like that.
Now Olive is doing a gig alone making balloons behind a puppet show, I'm crunching video editing skill for a journalism project we are working on for Lisa Loving. When Olive gets here we are doing a dance party.
Our third gig only requires us to bring my guitar (to sing happy birthday at the end) This gig is one where the parents are DJs, They met us at another dance party and wanted us to do the same. Dance. OLive rules at dancing, me notsomuch.
I'm as good at dancing as I am at air traffic control. When I do it, it's immediately clear that I'm not qualified. Luckily Olive dresses me up like a disco ball so maybe I can blind them with sequins.

nightclub gig with kindy rockers, Kindy gig with nigtclub artists...beca...

Doing the nervous Dad thing today.

 We just cooked my daughter breakfast and took her to the airport. She is going for a month in Costa Rica learning white water EMT rescue. 
After that she goes to Montana for Glacier rescue training. She wants to save the world and ecology. I'm so nervous for my kid going out on this big adventure by herself. I
t's been a very emotional morning coming to grips that by baby will be too far away for me to rescue her. Olive was great making sure she had everything she needed and her boyfriend was really cute. 
He get's to stay in her pad while she is gone. 
I'm so grateful to the Facebook friends and family who pitched into her travel gofundme. Thank you so much! Good Luck Robin!!!!!

We often have different ideas of downtime.

seen outside our gig

Outside our gig today at Know Thy Food Cooperative. 
I like doing our show at places that get lots of bike delivery. From farm to bike to grocery.

shut down by the shut down

The rooms here sit empty. The last few guests were very disappointed to come to our state just to discover they places they wanted to visit are closed due to the shut down. My daughter was having a really hard time doing her time sensitive college registration because the shut down shut her out of critical info. This is for nothing since it's a huge scam. Pundits have been interviewing folks who have neutral opinions and rarely mention how stupid the border wall idea is.The Wall was a way 45's handlers reminded him to mention immigration because the moron doesn't read or hold on to information. It just happened to strike a chord in his idiotic followers who needed an easy (yet useless) solution to a complicated problem. If they really were "patriots" they would be tackling automation taking jobs, opioid addiction perpetrated by big pharma, underpaid teachers and over paid congressman and don't forget the oil companies burning the world to the ground while better alternative plans rot in their file cabinets.My Dad sold Exxon a patent to a clean energy vehicle when I was a kid. I still have never seen it.

Tallbike in freezing rain POV.

I love sunny day riding (mostly to watch my wife) but being 10 ft. up in rain and sleet is really exhilarating.
It's also dreamy to warm up at home cuddling while scoring this groovy music together.
I should have named this vid, "How to make a pointlessly big deal about a burrito run"

Format wars!

 You would think that a modern comparison of obsolete, consumer grade equipment would be a waste of space but I love this stuff. It's a tech lesson, a science lesson a marketing a development lesson as well. This particular subject has a nostalgic feel to me not because I was around when this gear was new.
 (Now for the "I can't believe I'm telling on myself part")
It's important to me because it's pFormat wars! art of how us clowns got stories during the"Little Beirut" days of Portland.
Something would go down/kick off on the street or the in a civic building.Eventually whatever it was had it's day in court.
Lots of stuff was always going on so it's a triumph that clowns could easily blend into the comotion and be invisable in plain sight.
At some point all the press would crowd into the courtroom lobbys and hallways to get the scoop.
We were just reporting for our neighborhood and zines but we took it way seriously. We all had laminated press passes with our clown face on them. We used all the tricks we could muster to get in on that press pool info/footage.
If everything was failing, this was my in. I would get close to the most bored looking cameramen and start talking shop. "Hey that's a Beta cam right? Am I right? I read you guys use those somewhere." The guy who was ignoring me before suddenly smiles and is happy to say something like, "Betacam is the format that was used in the professional market, and although it uses the same basic cassettes as your home unit, but it also used components and later digital signals that were entirely unrelated to and incompatible with consumer Beta."
Then I ask. "So what's goin on here Tax stuff?"
 "No A protester was crushed underfoot of some riot horses by the Justice center."
 me: "I don't want to be anywhere near that."
Him: "Right, so stay away from courtroom 6-11b at 2 ockock."
I would do carny stuff like that all the time.
After what I just told you worked so swimmingly I started boning up on cam cam talk. Now I'm actually a fan of this matierial by osmosis.
Later they would still share info with us even though they knew we were shining them.
This was one of the things I don't tell you because it's from the bag of clandestine tricks that are just for us. Well Now you are us.
I'm helping to train street journalists now and I want to impart some trickery if not a notion to not just take the cards you are dealt. Rock on.

I gotta watch what I say.

I gotta watch what I say.
We were in Montevilla park making balloons for some kids. I asked, "Ya want me to make yer Dad a sword too?" They look at each other, "That is our Uncle.
Our Dad got taken by ICE."
The kids came off very brave and articulate. I got to stay my emotions as I hear the matter-of-fact story about how Dad came over years ago. Got a job and family going.
One day the family got a knock at the door that separated everyone. Instead of bringing the guy into Uncle Sam's fold, ICE created many more hardships. 
I pondered: What is the bigger crime?
Later, I saw the kid throwing up gang signs.
Some of the worst gangs on the planet came after primitive policies like everything coming out of Trump's face; all because people prefer voting for cruelty rather than stewardship. 
I found out at our show today that there are a lot of places where children are being detained here in Oregon, detained for being from the wrong country. 
We would love to get in there and help them, to cheer them up.
Sometimes we gotta watch what we say. A couple times kids have freaked out when we do a finger counting song because some kids don't have 10 fingers and in front of us is the first time it has come up.
Our kinna clowns are allllll up in people's strifes. I guess that is why we are here.

made myself a party plate