Lower the bridge ye varlets!

Mike Zimmer and Kim before the big walk-over.

This past Wednesday (July 23rd) Two Rivers had a little street party to celebrate the opening of the new Madison Street bridge. Maybe 500 or more in attendance with a few hundred at the ribbon cutting and ceremonial walk over the bridge (and it is a fine looking bridge). It was also the first night of our new hours change at Stumpjack (we closed at 4:00, which meant that Kim and I, and Jesse and her friend Bree) could actually attend the event! Yeehaa! How cool is it that this town puts together a celebration with music, food and drink and a ribbon cutting for a bridge opening...and gets a great turnout to boot (but can you believe that a few folks grumbled, before the celebration, about the serving of beer at this thing...good grief! Philistines!). Click here to go to the Flickr page of pics. Jeff Dawson took some for the Lester Library Flickr site too (Jeff has lots of great pictures of stuff going on in the area...well worth viewing his camera work).

Greg Buckley thanking everyone who had a hand in the new bridge.

The tail end of the walk-over.

Kayak flotilla under the bridge.

Hangin' with our amigos in Door County

Last Monday (July 14) Kim and I drove up for an overnight at the cottage of our friends Marty & Lori Suettinger. Actually, it is Marty's aunt's cottage, and it's outside of Sturgeon Bay right on the water. The place is cute, the weather was fantastic, Marty and Lori were great hosts and great cooks, and we had a totally wonderful and relaxing evening. Lori's son Thomas and a couple of his pals were there lighting fireworks in the evening, and Lori's cousin Jessica (I think she was a cousin) and her boyfriend Kyle came over from Sturgeon Bay to hang out for a while too. Great time...thanks Marty and Lori!

Here's a few pics from a disc Marty just dropped off. He takes tons of pics of anything and everything, and here's his own Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetneon/sets/

My wife is a hotty, and smart to boot!

Ok, I am going to break my own blogging protocol and brag a little bit here. My wife, Kim, is awesome. She is easily the "better half" of the partnership, in the sense that she has many more good personality traits than I do in relating to people...things like patience, kindness, empathy, and tactfulness. Generally, even when someone is being a boor and I know that she is inwardly rolling her eyes or thinking "shut up already!" she will be outwardly ever so sweet and mellow to them. I sometimes...oftentimes...wish some of that would rub off on me.
Plus, she's smart. She's a pretty quick learner and a good teacher too. Often I will change a course of action after hearing her opinion on things (and I'm usually smart enough myself to ask for her opinion). I'm often the impetuous one, ready to jump in and get going while she often does things slower and perhaps more thoughtfully. Not that either way is necessarily better or worse than the other (both have advantages and disadvantages), but her council is always well worth listening to and oftentimes worth heeding. Stumpjack is clearly a better business and a better company because of her, and because I listen to her.
Finally, my wife is a babe. Trying not to sound too much like a caveman, but Kim's got it goin' on. She's more beautiful now than she was when she was younger...one of those gals who gets more luscious with age. That's all that I can tastefully say...anymore and this could end up sounding like a Penthouse letter. Yessir, I'm a fortunate fellow. Happy Father's Day to me!

My new fave musicians: Gus and Fin!

Thank you Tina Kugler! Tina posted one of Gus & Fin's videos on her blog, I watched it, loved it, ended up watching all of their vids on youtube (repeatedly), loving each one more than the one before. These guys are simply fantastic! Just pure joyful and funkified fun-ness. (How can you possibly top a guy wearing a fez and playing "Rawhide" on a toy T.V. Pal ukulele? I'll tell you how...when they play it with such excellent musicianship and respect for the song.) It's the kind of stuff you want everyone to see and hear and love too.



And for just plain lounge-vibe-coolness here's "Get Carter," with bongos and other instrumentation. We MUST get these guys to come to the states and play at the Stump sometime.



Go to their youtube site and play all 47 vids...they're all excellent. I'm buying a ukulele because of these guys.

Point Beach with the boys and girls

Last Sunday, June 1st, following Becky Markvart's successful and fun-filled CD release party at Stumpjack, several of us went out to Point Beach State Forest to hang out at one of their permanent cabins that we had rented for the night. Pat and Mike went out ahead of the rest of us to get the fire going while Kim and I cleaned up the shop and Becky and Mike (not to be confused with the other Mike) broke down and loaded up their sound equipment.

We all gathered 'round the fire, drank beer and rum & cokes, smoked a few cigars, and talked smart for a few hours. Dummy that I am I not only neglected to take pictures during Becky's party but also didn't take any at our woodsy powwow. Here are a few taken Tuesday morning.

We all stayed overnight in the cabin (all, that is, except for Mike Zimmy, who wimped out and went home because he said he had to go to work the next day...and he works for the city so you know what a lame excuse that is!). It was a sleepless night because it seemed like every 30 minutes Kim was waking me up to either take her out to the potty or to tell me that I was snoring (yes, woman, I was snoring because I was SLEEPING! emphasis on was).

I did spend a few minutes before hitting the hay to walk down to the beach all by my lonesome to ponder the stars and boat lights on the lake. It was beautifully peaceful and rejuvenating. Few things can help shed the stress and weight of the week like a peaceful, starry night by a lake.

Kim and I went home to get our girls and rented the cabin for one more night for ourselves. We must do this more often.

I did take one picture from Becky's party after everyone had left. This is a hand crafted pen that Mark Chatenka gave Becky as a gift at her party. Click on it to get an enlarged image...check out that beautiful wood grain. I want one too!

Recent pics by Nate that I like

Here's some images from Nate Walkner from the past several days that I really like. Nate is a quite a photographer, as you can see. Click on them to enlarge.

Here's a cool one of Nate's dad, Bill, from outside the shop. I like the curved angles.

This one of Bill I like because Bill's in the middle of talking to the audience. He often has some interesting or humorous intro to his tunes.

Great color and composition in this one of John Will Balsley...plus, with the hair John looks like a young Doc Brown, from Back to the Future.

One of the nicest inside shots of the Stump yet.

Cool outside shot after the gig. The only thing I'd change in this one is that the Stumpjack neon needs to be visible. Shewt, you can see the dentist's sign and he wasn't even there (thanks a lot Jerry!). Might have to do this one over again to get the sign in...but I like the vibe.

A really fine pic of Kim and I...love the lighting and softness of this one. Plus, we both look pretty damn good.

The easy way out.

Blogging advice: When in need of an update but with little time to do anything lengthy one can occasionally turn to the trusty "Top 10" list (or "Top 5" if you're really pressed for time). You don't want to do this too often (unless your blog concept is, in fact, all about Top 10 lists, in which case yeah, it would be a good idea to do Top 10 lists often). In any event, I am short on time today and am thus relying on my own advice with this little cheat. Plus, Top 10's are usually fun and kind of interesting (and if the one you post happens to not be fun or interesting you still come out ahead because they're generally so brief that people forget about how not fun or not interesting they were as soon as they leave your blog). Actually, I just thought of another good bit of blogging advice (I know it's good advice because I'm going to start doing it from now on): Do a Top 10 or Top 5 list once a week, on the same day each week. What a great idea! (I'm sure some blogging expert somewhere has said the same thing before I just thought of it, but so what! It's coming from me now, so you know it's sound wisdom).


Today's TOP 5 (because I am, in fact, pressed for time):

My Top 5 List of Things that Lately Crack Me Up

1.The butts on Tina Kugler's self portraits. They're all monstrously big and gelatinous and dimply and totally hilarious. This morning Kim looked at Tina's latest drawing of herself on her illustration site (Tina Kugler Illustration) and was giggling, I swear, for 20 minutes. But if you want to take the full-on $3 tour of big buttdom you need to go to her post-it theatre site (The Tina Show), where the drawings appear more spontaneous, urgent and frenzied.

2. Flight of the Conchords. Google and find any YouTube video of these guys and you'll end up "wasting" at least an hour watching every short video of them on the list. "When I'm down to my socks you know it's time for business... They're business socks..." Have to thank my pal, Don, for pointing me to these cats (see Don's own weird stream of consciousness at Mind of Seiler).

3. Our friend Amy doing a slightly drunken impersonation (not that she was giving an impersonation of being slightly drunk, but rather that she was actually slightly drunk when giving the impersonation) of her 5 year old boy, Brady, who, when taking his bath, pretends he is Buzz Lightyear by standing, naked, at the edge of the bathtub, arms extended like Superman, and shouts a misunderstood version of Buzz's tagline as only children can misunderstand things, before jumping into the bath water. In Brady's translation, Buzz's "To infinity...and beyond!" has become "Into me! And beyond!"

The other night we went out with Amy and Adam, and Brady's pre-launch pose and declaration became Amy's repeated battlecry with each succeeding chocolate martini.

4. Steve Wolfhard's Monstro-Draw! journal. Wolfhard's drawing is great and his sense of humor is on precisely the same wavelength as my own. Great stuff.

5. Graham Roumieu's Bigfoot books: Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir and In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot. Saw these at B&N on Sunday and had to share with my daughters while in the store. We were all laughing so hard that we made a scene and I think one of us might have pee'd her pants a little. The funniest books I've seen in some time...do yourself a favor and see if your library has copies. Just don't read them while actually in the library or they may ask you to leave for making too much noise.