ANDREW AND THE PRETTY PUNCHERS will be playing a pre-thanksgiving show on wednesday, november 26 at the oregon express on 5th street in dayton's oregon district.
the show is FREE.
the music will commence at around 9:30 with solo act Levi Weaver of nashville.
the PRETTY PUNCHERS will take the stage at about 10:30. but they will immediately bring it back, and probably start playing at about 11:00.
[swamp dogg (pictured) will not be playing]
hey there,
i noticed that mitch mitchell (above, left), the drummer for the jimi hendrix experience, passed away yesterday at the age of 61. bassist noel redding died back in 2003.
i believe that makes the jimi hendrix experience the first band from the 60s to be completely gone.
they were perhaps the only group ever to release a debut LP ("are you experienced") that was so freaking good that some folks still think it's a greatest hits album.
i remember one afternoon back in '67 or '68 walking with my friend and neighbor dave baker down to a garage in the 600 block of saint nicholas to pick up papers for dave's newspaper route. the delivery truck was late that day and so everyone was sitting around just talking.
this one guy named jerry wonderly, who was kind of cool but also kind of odd, was going on and on about this record album that he had just bought. he said there was this black guy who played guitar with just a drummer and a bass player, and that the guy was really amazing. jerry said it was called "heavy" or "psychedelic" music.
i remember a couple of us said that it was hard to imagine a black guy playing rock and roll music - especially lead guitar.
of course a few years later everyone knew who jimi hendrix was and it was no longer difficult to imagine a black guy playing rock and roll guitar.
by that point the difficulty was trying to figure out how in god's name he played it the way that he did..
(lower two photos by peggy longacre)
Hello,
Welcome to the first of what I hope to be many blog posts about my body.
[Hey! Wait! Where'd everybody go?!]
In photo #1 above you will see me standing on a diving board. This photo was taken in 1974 during a trip to myrtle beach with my friend Dave. Neither one of us had a car but Dave's parents let us use their very cool two-tone (green and white) 1958 Chevy Impala. Actually his dad did not like the idea, but Dave's mom talked him into it.
In addition to this, Dave's mom secretly placed two cases of beer in the trunk of the car for us. We didn't know it was there until we loaded our suitcases at about 5 a.m. on the day of our departure.
Dave's mom was very cool.
But about that first photo . . . yes, that is yours truly "gettin' out of hand" at a Myrtle Beach hotel swimming pool party hosted by Dave and me and attended by . . . well - Dave and me.
The photo is actually a "still" taken from one of our series of 8mm films titled "Girls Gone" that we unsuccessfully marketed for a brief time in the mid-70s. Of course it wasn't until later that Snoop Doggy Dog took our original idea, added "Wild" to the end of the title, then added actual live women, and . . . well - the rest is cinematic history.
But nevertheless there I am "gettin' crazed" standing on the diving board while *at the exact same time* holding a can of beer in my hand. Actually, given my fear of water, posing for this spontaneous photo was no small feat.
And speaking of "no small feat" . . . about that body of mine.
I would like you to focus on the middle area of photo number #2. If you look very closely you will see a cavernous area, almost pot hole-like, that somewhat resembles a human chest.
That in fact is *my* chest.
Photos #3 and #4 don't really reveal anything additional about my chest. I mainly included them because I thought that I looked pretty hot.
There is actually a name for my rather oddly shaped, hollowed-out chest. It is called "pectus excavatum." It means that my chest is sunken when it should be either flat or slightly protruding.
Nowadays, babies born with this condition can have it corrected immediately. It sounds pretty horrible, but since a baby's bones are fairly malleable, their chests can be reformed by hand, or at least without having to break and re-set anything. I guess they just ram two fingers down the newborn's windpipe and then press out.
[Just kidding on that last part]
But unfortunately that was not the way newly hatched bundles 'o joy were treated back on April 24, 1954.
I was breathing, I cried, and so I was good to go - "sunken chest" be damned.
As a young boy I assumed that everyone had a chest that looked like mine, and so I thought nothing of it when I would lie on my back on the floor with my feet pointed towards the television, the back of my head propped up on a pillow, and a little pile of popcorn or potato chips in the hollow of my chest. Occasionally someone would make a comment about my unique snack holder, but I would just shrug and continue snacking and watching TV. I think that I just assumed that was the whole point of the design feature.
My concave chest also served me quite well at bath time. Lying in the same position as described above I would fill my personal reservoir with water for my army men and jeeps. And since it was always cold in our house, and even colder in the tub, my nipples ("command central east and west") served as great destination points for my soldiers as they traversed across "Lake Saint Kevin."
Later I found more utilitarian and romantically advantageous uses for my "pectus excavatum." It served as a fairly cozy bed (and later - a water dish) for a kitten that my first girlfriend and I found at the park behind my parent's house. And this young lady, and others, also found my slight skeletal deformity to be a comfortable place to rest their heads while lying in the grass with me. and for the slightly more petite lasses, it served as a nice forehead receptacle when being hugged or while dancing.
Oddly enough, I did not even know that my chest condition had a medical name until 1979. I was about to enter graduate school and I needed to get a complete physical examination. After the exam I noticed that the doctor had written something at the bottom of the generic form. When I read "pectus excavatum" I was a bit taken aback. I didn't have a clue what that meant or what it was referring to, I just knew that it sounded ominous. I asked the doctor about it and he just pointed and said "sunken chest." I said "oh - ok."
As we were walking out of the exam room I told him that the medical terminology made it sound a little scary - like I was diseased or something. I reminded him that I was starting graduate school in a couple of weeks and if it got out on campus that I had "pectus excavatum" no woman would ever come near me. Just to counter-balance that possibility, I told the doctor that I would slip him a ten spot if he would also write "penis gigantis" on my medical form.
He refused.
I must admit that it was kind of cool to have a medical condition with a name. But it wasn't until some 15 years later that I found out that the condition also came with actual side effects, ones that I had experienced but never associated with the condition.
It was in 1993 that a girlfriend conducted some research regarding my chest and discovered that, not surprisingly (even though it had never been mentioned to me) "pectus excavatum" could have a detrimental effect on lung capacity. Apparently this side effect was prevalant enough that some adults with the condition were having their chests "broken" and reshaped.
My particular "concavity" is more pronounced on my left side, but I've never found any information on whether that may affect the capacity of my heart - to function as a physical organ, that is - not on its capacity to love, which goes on unfettered and uninhibited.
But the information about "stunted lung capacity" instantly turned on a very bright bulb inside my head. Suddenly a lot of things started making sense.
For many years I had participated in sports, and although my efforts were pretty successful, I always had a problem with stamina. I would spend weeks running and doing conditioning exercises - trying to get in shape for basketball - only to find myself out of breath after a few runs up and down the court. My coaches were constantly giving me grief about not being in shape and would make me stay after practice to - you guessed it - run more laps.
But now I know that my problem had nothing to do with conditioning and everything to do with the lack of lung capacity due to a skeletal malformation.
So, to all of those coaches of yesteryear (you know who you are) who ran my sorry ass ragged thinking that I was out of shape, I would like to say:
"Screw you bastards! You coulda killed me!"
Damn that felt good. I'm glad that I finally got that off my chest
OH! HA! HA! . . . I kid.
So this concludes the first in what I hope to be a series of blog posts about my body and all of its unique features and idiosyncrasies.
Please stay tuned for future installments in the "My Body, My Life" series, including these provocative titles:
"Dude?! What's The Deal With Your Ass?" Growing Up With A Horizontal Butt Crack: The Kevin Smith Story
and
"Oops, Sorry About That . . . Um - So I Guess This Probably Means 'No' For Prom Night, Right?" Growing Up With Projectile Acne: The Kevin Smith Story
.
UPDATE TO THE SUNDAY SOLO/ACOUSTIC SHOW:
it's five bone (i.e. dollars) to get in and the show will start promptly at 8:00 (at least the other "songwriters in the round" shows have started on time)
there will be nine singer/songwriters performing in two groups of 4 and 5 - not sure whether ANDREW & THE HIMSELVES are in group one or two.
.
LATE BREAKING NEWS:
this sunday, november 16, everyone's favorite duo, those masters of three-part harmonies, the ANDREW & THE HIMSELVES quartet, will be performing solo at the canal street tavern as part of the bar's decades old & much fabled "songwriters in the round" series.
the show gets started at about 8:00. i'm not sure about the cover charge but it's probably not more than a few bucks.
the arrangement is pretty cool - kind of in the tradition of the old greenwich village coffeehouse shows back in the early sixties. there are three or four songwriters on stage and they take turns performing about four or five songs each. occasionally they will also intersperse their performances with spontaneous and witty repartee *at no additional charge*. it's really intimate and crap.
for a sample of what you can expect this sunday, check out the acoustic debut of the gorgeous song "shitty teeth" from the "songwriters in the round" debut of ANDREW & THE HIMSELVES at:
http://www.myspace.com/andrewtheprettypunchers
it's the 4th song down on the right.
and by the way . . . wait until you hear the full ANDREW AND THE PRETTY PUNCHERS version of "shitty teeth." in keeping with the scatalogical motif i say: "'shitty teeth' . . . holy crap!"
great stuff indeed!
hopefully it will be coming soon to a CD near you [nudge nudge, wink wink]
but anyway - see you sunday!
[next ANDREW AND THE PRETTY PUNCHERS show: thanksgiving eve, wednesday the 26th, at the oregon express - more info coming soon!] .
my fellow americans,
i wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has expressed their concerns and well wishes as i enter this post-presidential election transition.
the last two months have been a wonderful and heady time but now we must move on as a people, and address the task at hand.
i have a history of transitioning seamlessly from one obsession to the next, and i am fully confident that tradition will once again serve us well.
please rest assured that i have assembled a top-notch group of individuals to serve on my transition team as we begin to assess the many opportunities and obsessions that this great country offers me.
obviously, a return to the private sector as CEO of the 7-year-old eBay juggernaut that we all know as jumbostatz inc. is being considered.
however, i have instructed and encouraged my transition team to view the future as the clean slate that it always is. a clean slate that is an open road full of many opportunities, many obsessions, and many mixed metaphors.
to that end, any and all obsessions are being considered.
these next several weeks are going to be a challenge, not just for me and the transition team, but for all of us. there is no way of getting around that. and even though many see that open road ahead of us as unlit and unknown - full of daunting tasks, detours, and pot holes (although the latter are typically worse after the winter thaw so we should be good to go there) - i see nothing but more opportunities and more obsessions. obsessions to be captured and wrestled to the ground like so much raw meat when your belly is empty.
and so standing here before you today, i promise you that very soon i will once again grab that next obsession, and much like the python when it sees its prey, i will subdue that obsession and bring it to the ground, slowly collapsing its wind pipe and squeezing out every last breath of its life, until it slumps over deathlike at my feet to be methodically devoured until it ceases to be the obsession that it once was.
on that you have my word as an american.
. . . and yet still i hear the relentless grating cackle of your caring but worried voices.
and those voices ask: "but kevin, there have been so many obsessions before. do you think that you can find another one?"
to which i respond . . .
"yes i can"
and those voices ask: "but kevin, you are getting older. can you take the stress of a transition to still another obsession?"
to which i respond . . .
"yes i can"
and those voices ask: "but kevin, can you once again take the loneliness of these solitary, obsessive adventures?"
to which i respond:
"yes i can . . . but only if i know that you are still out there for me, as i am here for you. can we promise each other that?"
to which everyone responds:
"YES WE CAN!!!"
then god bless all of you!
and god bless the united states of america!.
