Skip to main content

All Stars

There was definitely some Friday night excitement at Home Slyce  Columbia as I entered around 8:30 last night. The place was full and humming with activity. I was lucky to find a seat near the band, thanks to a welcoming group of folks that had one extra chair.

I was there to see the debut of Dog Park All-Stars, a local duo comprised of Mickey Gomez and Aaron Barnett. After reading this promo, how could I not?

Our band debuts ONE WEEK FROM TONIGHT. 

Yes, I am in a band with Aaron Barnett. We both sing and play guitar. One of us can also rock a kazoo like you read about. 

We're called the Dog Park All-Stars, because All Dogs love us and often show up to band practice with various plush squeaky toys. 

Did I mention the part where this is our first official gig? We'll be trading sets with the amazingly talented Artistic Differences. 

Pizza has been medically proven to be an antidote to excessive turkey consumption. I read that on Facebook. 

Also? KAZOO SOLO. 

It's true that I don't normally leave the house for anything that happens after eight pm, but this was different. Mickey is just one of those people who has known precisely when to show up in my life when it was really important. She's just gifted that way. And that made it easy to convince myself to show up on my own to support her new musical venture.

I have a feeling that a lot of other people feel the same way about Mickey, because she had quite the cheering section last night. Well-deserved, I might add, from a musical standpoint. The Dog Park All-Stars were a delight, and I can't wait to hear more from them. In fact, I would have been thrilled if everyone in the place had stopped talking so we could hear them better.

It wasn't that kind of a gig, however. It was a Friday night, come out and have a pizza and some beer and get out of the house and have some fun. It was looking a lot like vibrant night life in Columbia to me. I had a couple of Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale and enjoyed the experience of being in a hometown crowd supporting well-known friends.

Ever the homebody, I left after their first set, so I regret to report that I did not witness the kazoo solo.

Maybe next time.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...