Banjo offering to the spirits of Clinton street.

 circa 1998 I went from being a well known musician in Eugene to an unknown in Ptown. I had a tiny daughter and a roofing job. I needed to get my band Pepto Dizmal rebuilt but I didn't even have a guitar. Eventually i saved enough for a guitar we took busses to Vancouver where the pawnshops live. 

I was crestfallen, the only instrument I could afford was this banjo. I was delighted that before we got back to Portland I had written some music with it.  Eventually I got a guitar and a band again.  Fortunately I still had an unsightly,  drinking problem (everyone likes buying beers for the clowns) so after a gig I drunkenly stepped thru my guitar. Like ya do.

Next day I picked up the banjo again and it was suddenly way more useful than before. We were going from singer songwriters to sideshow/ protest rodeo clown types. The banjo was way better adapted to the clown commando lifestyle. It was loud, friendly yet ominous, non electric, still worked when muddy and was a decent shield in a pinch. It's also handy to play banjo after saying something stupid. One day I heard it fall off my friend's tallbike and knew immediately it was my banjo. That silly thing would sound great falling down steps. I never named it but oddly I did name my dog after this banjo. Named her Banjo. I ended up playing that thing in Pepto Dizmal, The Big Bang Circus, The Alberta Clown House (where I had to learn to strip while playing) protests, punk shows, gladiator events, busking and cabaret. I played it well into Olive and my nightclub act days. It's the thing I have had the longest in the PNW.

 Now that my chapter is changing I feel it's time for this banjo's chapter to change as well. We were recently gifted a guitar that we named Jim. I thought this would be a great time to keep the love going. Operation "Banjo walkabout" I give people stuff directly all the time but this guy needs some clown chaos spinning the wheels of fate. I decided to make it an offering to the Clinton street night spirits. Surly they would know where it needs to go. I know because I'm often a Clinton street night spirit myself. We found a spot where the banjo would be quickly discovered, played one last song "Islands in the street" and said goodbye to my old friend. Someone is gonna find this and have no idea that it's performed in front of like a bajillion people over 20 years or so. 

I stopped writing origin stories on my offerings because people get confused and end up returning those artifacts back to me. "Found your clown bike!"

Watching news about the Fraudit in Arizona.

"Cyber-ninja" lol that stuff must work a treat on those Rubes. The organizers just announced that they found no election fraud. The corporate lefty news talking heads are smiling like "Told ya so" but they are a scam too. It reminds me of my days in the carnival. Before i joined the circus i worked for a carnival. I had a job guessing people's weight. They would laugh at me when i got it wrong. They would win a prize that cost our company about 30 cents while paying me $4 to play. That fraudit didn't need to find anything, they had months to collect donations from their sheeple. Every time they showed a person holding a Lasor pointer to a ballot or said the word "bamboo" money rolled in. The Fraudit scam looks like it was a huge success for the rightwing. Fear, cruelty and self righteousness are like mental fast food, super unhealthy but extremely popular with their base. It was easy to get suckers to donate to the fraudit.

Spending our last week at this wonderful house.

Savoring moments and memories. We packed a lot of living into a few years. Now we are packing boxes to move. We are stoked that the owner's family get to regroup in their house and honored that they let us share their story for three years. The next adventure for us is exciting. No idea what to expect. But we have this last week to enjoy the bungalow. This house and it's humans have been very good to us.

When ya wanna live with Mom and when with Dad?

 We had to sit down with our son before I go into custody mediation. He was asked to write down what he wants his custody schedule to be. He said "I want to stay with you guys during the weekends so we can see family and do stuff together...I also want to stay with you guys during the week because you support me in school and there's always good eats. I wanna hang with Dad during the day because he is always up to something and i want to hang with Olive at night because she has such great conversation." I said "Sounds like you want us to be your parents." Him "Oh Ya think?

" He wrote his wishes for the judge and his last line was "I always want to have the choice of where I live."

bummer music shop expierience

I need to repair my guitar and get another amp but I can't bring myself to spend any money at Trade up. Where did all the friendly, helpful folks go? Every stick of equipment we have had for 15 years came from that place alone. Recently I tried to support this local business but they didn't seem to want my patronage. I went last week they were colossal pricks to me. I think the second person i talked to was being super stern because the other guy was so toxic. The toxic guy literally said ""C'mon hurry the fuck up." as I was walking in. No thanks. I'm not easy to offend but the tools i use for clowning needs to come from good energy.

this guy...August Sylbaris ..TBT 1902 .

He was a laborer in the Caribbean city St. Pierre when the local volcano blew up erasing the town and killing 30,000 people. But August survived. The night before he had been fussin and a feuding in a bar and got locked up for smacking people.

Apparently he was so obnoxious they put him in solitary confinement. An underground ammo locker with stone walls and air vents conveniently facing the opposite direction of the mountain. He was rescued somehow. August later stopped being so aggro and even got a job with the circus telling the tale. I can't imagine how good the story from his perspective would be,

"I was all fightin an shit so they locked me up. Then a few hours later there was a very loud noise."

His cell still exists if you wanna go visit.

My humble Croptober surprise.

These two seeds managed to wiggle themselves out of joints during the Covid winter. I put them aside. Somehow they survived for months riding a mason jar among paint bottles. I threw them in this attractive pot when it's former inhabitants resigned living. Again I forgot about them. Since it was in the dark this one plant made it's way to the sweet solar nectar by the window. Half dead and super long stemmed it wasn't looking so good. Still it persisted with the white hot passion of a thousand suns (maybe over stating that) I saw it's desire to be, so I put it in the yard where it lay emaciated for a week. One day i walked by and "Lust for life" over here was standing up. I'm delighted to see they filled out. Life will find a way. :)

Our son is very engineerish.

We have always been delighted that he could build complicated things even when he was little. One morning a few days ago I woke to see this.

I thought "What has our Anakin Skywalker built today? Battle droid? Nope. He full-on Jonny 5 disassembled his fan. He told me what all the components do.

I said "Ya wanna plug it in and poke some tweezers around in it?" Thankfully he looked at me and didn't answer...like ya do when people ask dumb, unsafe questions. His non-answer was exactly what i didn't want to hear.

I been a massive fan of Classical antiquity for like...ages.

Currently I'm making ads for our clowning. I'm hoping to get "nothing but net"

like my man Mr. Umbricio Scauro. His fish sauce was famous 2000 years ago. Umbrico was a condiment king. His ads remain in mosaics to this day in the ruins of a city called Pompeii in Canada. So mad promotion props to Mr. Scauro. It took a 100 m.p.h. pyroclastic flow to stop that foo. Good for him. Rock on Umbri!

House hunting fun.

Does this burned out electrical plug look concerning? This place was actually really nice, plenty of room, amazing view. But being really far from our stomping/hunting grounds is a problem. In the livingroom a huge roach crawled out from under a baseboard. Some shrieked, I was into it. I'm a practical man, when i see big bugs it tells me I can own an exotic insect or reptile and have as much free food for them that I can catch. Counting the big bugs as a plus. The much more concerning thing was the compound across the street flying Trump flags among piles of dilapidated vehicles. If we are gonna live far away, we need to be inspired not demoralized when we hit the street. Anyone can be a good neighbor but someone who is ok with racism, superstition and anti vax bs isn't someone we want to count on as a neighbor. We have black, gay, immigrant and other friends who don't need to see that when they visit us. It's a beautiful neighborhood though. We walked around talking to other neighbors. We soon found a lady watering her grass who was happy to talk to us. She told us where everyone eats out, who has kids and what gardening/fruit tree fun is happening. She was very welcoming. We asked her if there are any problems in the neighborhood that we should know about. She quickly turned to look at the Trump house on the corner. "His wife and kids are very nice." We passed on this pad.

 

Fruit trees and tallbikes.

Always a great combination this time of year. I call it "Diarrhea season." Today we passed some yellow plumbs, so good. Olive wasn't as confident about not crashing into the car so I made a few passes to get my old lady sum plumb.

Over-heard out on the grill.

We were tying our horses outside this here Zebra grocery when a color coordinated jogger woman mall-walked by us. She was rocking a headset and having a conversation with Charly Brown's teacher. Quote: "I feel so blessed that I'm in my 30's and I dare say I've accomplished more than our Lord did in his 30s." "Mwah mwah mwah" "I know-I'm on fire." She noticed us looking at each other like we just saw someone attempt to lift a plank they are standing on. "I don't mean spiritually of course." "Mwah mwah mwah"

7 min to close

7 min. to closing time. Olive decided she needed some decaf coffee. We rode our bikes to Freddy's grocery store on Hawthorne. I held her bike as she ran in. She found her coffee in under under a min. I was outside with four other folks who weren't customers. They were homeless and appeared mentally ill. I instantly wanted to help them. Then as I noticed their expressions I started to giggle at my own hubris. Who's to say I'm the sane one. I bet all of us were thinking "I'm the only one here who isn't stark raving mad." People kept rushing up saying "How long? 5 min? I only need a few things" then rushing in. Olive got in self check out but the person ahead of her started fighting with the employees. Every other stand had some kind of chaos going on. People tussling with their own families, arguing with others, posturing and complaining. Olive decided to run to a regular line. Outside a very intense looking man ran up on me and the cart jockeys saying "Tell me that door ain't locked I only need one thing!" I thought he was gonna start throwing haymakers. The employee showed him the open door and he rushed in with his "chewing concrete" expression. Inside Olive's lucks wasn't much better. The person in front of her couldn't get her payment together and was having the clerk run all over the store fetching things so she went back to self check out. I glanced in and noticed her running full boar. I wondered why she would need to be doing that. Across the street one of the homeless people had put her head in someone's shoulder. The person kept looking at me to help in some way. I was trying to help, just not him. She needed it so he can stand there a moment. Then suddenly like animals fleeing a wildfire all these people rushed out the exit. Tons of people in pajamas, agro-folks, dude who walks like Popeye, club people, punks. Then the guy from earlier popped out and i saw why he was so intense. The one thing he needed was a plunger. Now we all know why he was chewing concrete. He marched off into the night to deal with some kinna nightmare. 7 min. to close is a very wild, very entertaining nature documentary. I loved being in the middle of so many colorful dramas. Olive notsomuch. She eventually made it out looking exasperated. "Lets get out of here." I wanna do all our shopping at 7 min. to close. Those closing employees are absolute legends b.t.w. They really earned their pay.