Black-footed African penguin

For the weekend of May 1

With the Going Green Expo, the Mifflin Street block party, and all the great live music in town this weekend, there are a few cool..or unusual..events that may have slipped off your radar screen!

Audubon Art Fair: 9:30-4:30 Saturday at the Warner Park Community Recreation Center. Art from 130 artists, plus food, raffle, and a silent auction.

A Celebration of Vampires and Other Creatures of the Night: 12:30-6:30 Saturday at Ravenworks at Westgate Mall. Vampires in May? Why not? Author Alex Bledsoe reads from Blood Groove, plus tarot card readings and a vampire costume contest at 5:30pm.

Drumming for Hope: 3-7pm Sunday at the Loft at the Goodman Community Center. Drum circle, dance lessons, music from the Tani Diakite & The Malian Blues Band, and you can even meet a Black-footed African Penguin from the Vilas Zoo!  Fundraiser for African Youth Outreach.  Admission $8, kids $4, and kids under 3 free.

Freaky Band Name of the Week: First Communion Afterparty at the UW Memorial Union Terrace Saturday night, 9:30pm. They’re from Minneapolis and are described as garage, psychedelic, shoegaze.  (Shoegaze?) Also on the bill: Alla, DJS Red Dog, FM Predator. Free.

Here are the songs played on Wednesday, April 29

Rhett Miller ” I Need to Know Where I Stand” album title Rhett Miller, Available June 9. Rhett and Old 97’s coming to the Barrymore Theater July 21

Jonatha Brooke w/ Davey knowles of Back Door Slam ” Taste of Danger” album title The Works, available as well on new Back Door Slam album, available June 15

Thenewno2 ” Bluesy” album title You Are Here, available now… Band features George Harrison’s son Dhani

Here are the songs played on Tuesday, April 28

Silversun Pickups ” Panic Switch”, album title Swoon, available now This one ROCKS!

Meat Puppets ” Rotten Shame” album title Sewn Together” available May 12… this band has REBANDED after years and years

Blue October ” Say It”, album title Approaching Normal, available n0w . This is the band that did “Into The Ocean!”

I know.  I know.  You’re sick of hearing about Brett Favre.  Enough already!  However, Favre was given his release by the New York Jets and while he’s officially retired he can come back if he really wants as a free agent.  Packer fans seem to all say they don’t care anymore.  However, what if this happened:

They say the opposite of love is indifference not hate, but could you really be indifferent to this?

Mikey, the orange kitty came into my life in 2000. After the loss of my younger brother to cancer and my mother to a broken heart less than 18 months later, my Dad was bereft in the family home of upstate NY.

I had lived in Madison for years and was anxious to return, so I moved back and shortly after, dad followed. I was always a daddy’s girl, so it was an honor for me to help him through his latter years, which included senile dementia. He never lost his personality, but ended up as a terrible flirt with no ” self-edit” button.
He was a handful. And lonely in his senior residence. So I got him Mikey, named by dad after my late brother Michael.
The first time dad said he was excited to get back home to see the cat, I knew we had done the right thing. Mikey sat on dad’s lap for years being petted and pampered. When he could no longer care for the cat, I brought him home with me. Big Piggy didn’t mind and we were a 2 cat household. 

About 10 days ago we noticed Mikey seemed lethargic and looked like he was losing weight.
End result, fatal liver damage caught too late. I thank the McFarland Animal Hospital.
He went peacefully.
I’m still crying.
RIP you sweet kitty

There’s been a hoot owl howling by my window, now…for what it is it? Six nights in a row. Can’t be good.

Either some one from the other side is trying to contact me, or that Michael Martin Murphey guy is around here someplace.

The song “Wildfire” is permanently etched into my subconscious mind. Not only was it a huge hit back in 1975….in my hometown, it never fell off the charts. That’s because every Sunday morning the local radio station ran a show called “The Mirman Family Hour,” which was sponsored by a local furniture store. (Sing it with me: it’s the family furniture store, where value buys you more…in Stevens Point it’s Mirman’s Family Furniture Store!) The deal was, they got to approve the play list for the show. So ”Wildfire”  aired, seemingly without fail, every Sunday morning, well into the 1980’s!

So every time I hear that song, I think of the Mirman’s Family Hour, and I smell the faint aroma of our Sunday roast beef dinner wafting in from the other room.

I also think of my cousin Maggie, who told my brother John and me back in the day that SHE wrote the song “Wildfire.” We knew in fact that she did not, because we were pretty sure that she didn’t have that grasp of song structure at the age of 12.

So what got me to reminiscing about Michael Murphey and that pony that busted down his stall and got lost in a blizzard?

Turns out the guy lives in Wisconsin now!  He lives in Vernon County, south of La Crosse. I looked it up on a map. There are some cool town names in Vernon County..like Avalanche, Liberty Pole, Victory and Retreat…but I’m not sure where exactly he lives.

My friend Mike Bie, who has a cool website classicwisconsin.com, tracked him down though. Click here to read about what this former Texas cowboy is doing in the boonies of the Badger state.

Sadly, I don’t have any tapes of the old Mirman Family Hour, but I did find this video of Murphey singing his signature song on David Letterman’s show a couple years ago. Enjoy!  And I apologize in advance if the song gets stuck in your head. Really. I’m sorry.

What’s that?
Oh, that?
That’s me bustin’ a move at the Silent Disco.

One of the many activities Bonnaroo has to offer.The world’s freshest wireless dance party. I’ll slip into a pair of Koss Stereophones while live DJs spin late into the warm Bonnaroo nights, keeping it quiet for the tired and the volume turned up for all the night owls.

-posted by Trish

So let’s take yesterday’s video of the environmental activists wailing and crying over trees and take it one step further.

Mike Judge has his slacker youth Beavis and Butthead discovering our hippies in the woods. I love how he can be so timely. Last week they took on Cartman heading to Somalia to be a pirate. But I digress. Here’s today’s video:

After I heard the news about Pontiac being shut down by General Motors,  I thought back to the Firebird I had as a teenager.  It was a 1984 Firebird and it was  pretty cool car.  I remember I cried like a baby when I had to sell it years later.

These days you can go to You Tube for a trip down memory lane so I started to look up old Firebird commercials.  I found one from 1967 that Kitty and I were making fun of on the air.  Here it is:

Kitty and I both thought the commercial was crazy.  However, several astute listeners were sure to call in to tell us that the commercial was referring to other cars including the Mercury Cougar, Ford Mustang and Plymouth Barracuda.  So we were put in our place.  Jonathan and Kitty regret the error!

Here are the songs played on Monday, April 27

Rob Thomas , lead singer/songwriter for Matchbox 20, ” Her Diamonds” album title Cradle Song, Available June 30

Brett Dennen, coming back to open for O.A.R. at the Alliant Energy Center Sept 3, ” Ain’t Gonna Lose You’, another song off Hope for the Hopeless, available now

Ben Harper and The Relentless 7, a new band, although the Innocent Criminals has not broken up, “Fly One Time’ album title White Lies for Dark Times, available May 5