Posts filed under 'deer in the headlights (concert commentary)'
June 22nd, 2008
Way back when, we used to carp about taxes being wasted on stuff like parks and libraries and museums. The damn government! Now – at least on Camano – we taxpayers volunteer to weed and paint, plant and build. Damn government for not doin it themselves!
But at least we can’t say too much taxpayer money was thrown around here at Cama Beach. Mostly, we got free slave labor. Ours. Everybody from Friends of Camano State Park, Beach Watchers, Wooden Boat, the Stanwood Area Historical Society, Shore Stewards, Cama Quilters, Waste Wise, Backyard Wildlife Habitat, Cama Beach Furniture Builders and probably half a dozen more who will never come to another band concert cause we forgot to mention them. Damn that band!
But nobody sez damn those volunteers. I know a lot of times we overlook these folks, what they do, how much of a difference they make to the quality of life here on Backwash Camano. Truth is, they make all the difference. They don’t stand around blamin government — they help make it better.
You ask me — and I know you didn’t – they’re the real reason we’re all here today and I for one want to say thank and the Band wants to say thank you and I guess you unsung heroes ought to know you’re why most of us chose to live here and not Smokey Point.
June 22nd, 2008
I’ve never been to the opening of a new state park. I bet nobody else has either. And I suspect this will be the ONLY one most of us ever get to attend. Oh, we opened up that little jewel South End Park a year or so ago, but 3 picnic tables and the only grill that wasn’t stolen really don’t count much as a park, I guess. We put some sculpture in, but it was stolen and the rest got mistake for junk and hauled to the transfer station. Maybe that’s why Cama won’t let cars come down —- just an easy access for park thieves.
Cama Beach has a few advantages over OUR park. Got tribal history, got the old resort, got the boathouse and Wooden Boats, got a fair to middlin view and a few more acres than we do. Got bathrooms, I notice. We still have to use the woods. We got two garbage cans. But people prefer the woods, judging by my litter patrols.
It’s a pretty special day for all of us here on Camano. Even more special for us South Enders. This should take some of the pressure off OUR park. Thin out the weekend mobs. And provide more dumpsters for South End trash…
June 1st, 2008
Now I got buddies who read in the paper how a glass or two of red wine a day is good for the heart. They figure they want to live forever like most of us Americans — I guess hoping plastic surgery or cryogenic restoration will make some huge advances before terminal ugliness sets in at 150 and they look like those Halloween pumpkins left out til Thanksgiving.
Course, MY buddies aren’t sophisticated connosieurs like you all. They figure, I think, they can build strong hearts on a single Saturday night. I tell em, boys, you got to moderate that geriatric strategy. The way I do. Take a total volume and divide by 7 and you got an FDA recommended daily intake. And that’s something Geno and Tom could add to the labellin. Right below the warning about getting pregnant while operating heavy equipment. Just a thought. For the Heart Wise.
June 1st, 2008
I got to tell you folks some of us here in the Band came up north here to Camano Cellars to see if we could glean or steal some vintnering secrets to help us with our own winery: South End Forifieds. We’re pretty much a boutique industry. Catering to a niche market. What we lack in quantity, we make up in gravity, real high gravity. About 20% by volume.
And what we lack in quality, we make up for in chemistry. Nothing but the finest additives Monsanto and Dow make. Better Living thru Chemistry, sure. Better Drinking thru Chemistry, even better.
Any damn fool can make a good wine if you got good grapes and good yeasts and expensive barrels of burnt oak. Don’t need a fancy PhD in wino-ology from UC-Davis, you got all that. But try making a fine Zin from road spray blackberries aged in old blue poly drums washed in on the beach after a storm. There’s an artform! There’s a challenge! There’s the South End Fortifieds meeting Camano’s epicurean needs.
So go ahead. Sniff and gargle a bit. The Cellar’s got plenty of merlots today. But when times get tough and the economy goes to Hades in a handtruck, when gas costs more per gallon than Sauvignon One and the government starts mixing it into their ethanol blends, remember: We’ll be there for you. South End Fortifieds. Wine for the Tough Times. Engineered with your pocketbook in mind…..
May 28th, 2008
One of the joys of playing for a mature audience like yourselves is knowing that most of you remember when these songs were Top 40 hits around the wagon train campfires when you first came out here to the Wild Wild West. I had a disc jockey for the KSER radio station ask me recently: did we write these songs?
Considerin they were written a hundred or two hundred years ago, it worried me. How old do we LOOK??
I guess it just proves my parents’ point: Rock and Roll rots the brain. At least of the disc jockeys who play it day in and day out. Well, here’s an old standard for you younguns out there raised on Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley and no, we didn’t write it…..
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