incongruous

Beginning with my walk home from the Metro on Friday afternoon a few things have struck me as out-of-sorts. Not a global warming out-of-sorts, more a feeling of seeing things in a big city and not registering that whatever you're seeing is just strange. What triggered this was an older gentleman crossing my path, walking with the help of a cane, and carrying a unicycle. What my mind does for the remainder of my 15-minute walk home is attempt to sort out whether or not a unicycle would be useful for transportation in a city. It is any faster than walking? It certainly isn't any faster than a dead run, so if you're planning on using it to flee a scene (any scene), you've come up with a bad plan. Can you put it on the bike rack on the front of the bus? Can you enter the center car doors on the Metro? Now that I think about it, I don't think it's faster than walking. So, what I have left is that the gentleman is either a long-time, and now retired, circus performer who carries around a unicyle in order that people know he was a circus performer; or, it was one of the things one grabs at an estate sale or flea market because you can't imagine why you wouldn't. "Hey, a unicycle - always wanted to give one of those a go." This, or course, reminded me of the weekend in Reno when I almost bought a huge set of beautiful oars that were for sale in the antique/flea market down on the river. I have no idea why I was so enthralled with them but I figured there might be a day when having a paddle (I know, it was an oar...stick with me) might come in handy. You know the old saying, up shit creek and all, so I envisioned them in some kind of cross mount on my red wall in Nevada. Some weird symbolism I imagined. That was back when I started the blog stuff and they led me tot he title of The Paddle because The Oar didn't have any kind of ring-a-ding to it. Any other ideas on the guy toting the unicyle would be appreciated.

The second thing I noticed this weekend was an old Red Barn or Dairy Queen structure here in Arlington that went under years ago and has been turned into a chicken place (food chicken, not chicken yard). It's called Super Pollo. I love that. I'll let everyone come up with their own version of Super Pollo.


The Eleven had Sue over for dinner last night and then we headed to Iota for the Tarbox Ramblers and Silos show. After our last aborted attempt to get into a Saturday night show I made sure we got there early enough to secure a place in the house. Yes, I fell back into my thinking that any show I was interested in would be a packed house by 8pm. Yes, we walked in and there were only three other people in the joint, one of whom was Walter Salas-Humera (singer, guitarist, writer, and producer of 20 years of Silos music). We got three stools at the bar and we (mostly me) spent a while discussing the music biz. My comments limited to completely inane and useless statements based on a wannabe bar band member. He's exactly the kind of laid-back guy I expected, and it's amazing to think about how many miles he's seen on the touring circuit of America. The Ramblers were great, as usual, and have apparently incorporated the drummer from These United States who filled in last visit after some 'incident' with the normal drummer. I don't know if he tours full time with them or just sits in when they visit the D.C. area. We stayed for a part of the Silos show but he's not writing the same kind of stuff that hooked me in the late 80s and early 90s. It's certainly louder, with a heavier rock sound, but it doesn't suit me quite as well. But, like any band that I have an attachment with, I'm glad they're still playing, still making a living, and still enjoying themselves; where and what my tastes might be doesn't matter so much in the end.

We hailed a cab to get home after X was shocked, SHOCKED!, that one would have to wait 20 minutes for the next Metro. I felt very cosmo taking a cab home.

Love to all.

T.