plate of shrimp

This is not a plate of shrimp, or chicken, but a plate of brisket from Frank's. I did think about getting shrimp for a second, so it is still connected to the following.


Friday:
Shintaro Sakamoto, How To Live With a Phantom
Jimmy Cliff, Rebirth
Public Image Ltd., This is What You Want... This is What You Get
Ministry, The Land of Rape and Honey
Butthole Surfers, Hairway to Steven
Slowdive, Souvlaki
Galaxie 500, Today
Felt, The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories

Saturday:
David Crosby, If I Could Only Remember My Name
The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Gilded Palace of Sin

Sunday:
Patti Smith, Just Kids
This thing on NPR about prepared guitarist Janet Feder
Six Organs of Admittance, For Octavio Paz
Sir Richard Bishop, While My Guitar Violently Bleeds

When I was a DJ at KLSU twenty-five years ago, the station's copy of Tom Waits' Rain Dogs had a skip in "Gun Street Girl" where it would go "Shadow fixed the toilet with an old trombone with an old trombone with an old trombone...." and it was the best skip ever. I would play it in the background while I was talking, afraid that it would unskip itself just when I was getting in the groove.



Twenty-five years later, my high school is having their twenty-fifth reunion but I didn't go. Not that I dislike those people or anything, but just didn't.

About twenty-five minutes ago I fixed the toilet. Not with an old trombone but with stuff from Home Depot.

On the way back from Home Depot, we popped into Whole Foods and the young woman at the register asked "Don't you work at KLSU?" which I do - my job is with the department in which KLSU is a part - but it still knocked me back a loop.  I've been thinking about that Rain Dogs loop since my bro Joe Bonomo asked about great records skips of our youth on Facebook and then the toilet broke and so on and I just wanted this weekend to get back on its groove.

I had to skip Super Chikan at Teddy's Juke Joint last night because that's when the toilet presented its brokenness, and I got a roasted chicken at Whole Foods. Coincidence? I bet they had chicken at the reunion. I bet at least one person was at that reunion with whom I watched our collective bootlegged VHS copy of Repo Man over and over and could, in a flash of years, drop right into the "plate of shrimp" scene.



It would probably look a lot like this reenactment. I bet they had shrimp at the reunion. They did at the last one. Like, really good shrimp. Time is nothing but shadows, dude. You guessed it. Time machine. Cue the trombones.