Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Trash Day

Press play and let's meander, shall we?



The song is "Garbage Picker" by Blanche, and we'll get back to it, I swear.

Today was trash day, and it was a particularly windy one. As I stepped out onto the front porch to have my cup of coffee, I noted that someone, blocks away for all I know, had apparently thrown out a large amount of styrofoam packing peanuts, not bothering to secure them very well. They were drifting down to street in the wind. We just finally managed to get past all of the snow from a particularly painful winter, and somebody puts out garbage that replicates it.

Spring seems to have finally arrived - I hope. Monday, we walked downtown for dinner and drinks. It was so nice, and so easy to slip back into the routine. What I wouldn't do to live in a temperate place where it's rarely too hot or too cold to wander or bike to go have some food or a beer.

Last night, at Punk Fitness, that was the prevailing commentary, too - how everyone is so glad that spring appears to be here, and how this was a particularly bad winter for everyone. It was brutally cold, and snowy, and it turned everyone into hermits and recluses. It was not fun, but hopefully it's over, and for a few months we can focus on the things we like.

There are some big projects happening at the Alpharat's nest, it would appear. Hopefully, the next month will see us putting on a new roof (that's needed to happen for a while), and even more hopefully, we will be gutting and replacing the kitchen. TFN and I cook a lot, and for too many years now we have worked with a little galley kitchen that is really poorly laid out. I can handle the galley kitchen if the space is used decently. This one isn't even trying, though.

Back to trash day... I know that when we are gutting the kitchen, a lot of our stuff will be taken to the curb to be gathered up by the scrappers and garbage pickers who patrol the hood on the night before garbage day, and while that may be an appropriate enough reason to include this song, it's only half of the story...

The band performing the song is called Blanche. The singer is a guy named Dan John Miller. He's known for many things in Detroit - not only does he sing for Blanche, but he was also the lead singer for a band called Goober and the Peas, a band in which Jack White was his drummer.

Nationally, Miller is better known for playing the part of Luther Perkins, Johnny Cash's guitarist in I Walk The Line. In the too much information vein, he's also the one who lived in my house before we moved in.

As if that weren't enough of a claim to fame for our little house and our little neighborhood, but the song "Garbage Picker" was written about our neighbors.

So there you go...

3 comments:

Angeline Rose Larimer said...

That's just pretty dang cool.

Speaking of snow & cool, we're supposed to get some on Sunday.
So...join me for a good sob?

fineartist said...

Sobbing vicariously for Ange...

I dig that song, when I was little my mom used to pack us all up and head down to the local college grounds, when the kids would go home, you know? They couldn't get all of the stuff they had acquired over their college terms back into their little cars to head home so they would inevitably pack loads of it in the garbage, and my mom would dig it out, well mostly we dug it out of the garbage and put it back into society. Freegans we were for furniture clothes and whatever.

Lots of cool stuff in garbage sometimes, and sometimes not.

I still pick up loot on the side of the road if I think I know someone can use it, or if I can. I'm not ashamed, too much of a throw away society we live in.

Um my sister put a fridge on her curb a few years back before my brother in law died, and when a young couple came up to get it, the brother in law ran out to the curb and charged them twenty bucks for it. The big old dork.

I want to search for the sun with you.

Jennifer said...

I could probably pass for your neighbors this week -- broken china, empty fastfood cups, empty cigarette boxes (your brand, though, not mine -- should I be suspicious?), and three hundred kazillion cigarette butts (I got roughly half of those picked up already as most were fairly well concentrated in one spot, just off the back porch), and dog shit galore!

I've been working on the shit, too, but it's slow going, as I've become fascinated with the different ways in which each dog decorates his/her poop. Barkley, it seems prefers to use metals, such as aluminum foil (heavy duty, AND Hershey's kiss wrappers), while Zenzi has a preference (still) for socks and undies. Barkley has sparkly poop, but Zenzi's is more colorful. Poop pick-up would go much faster if it weren't so entertaining.

I am SO excited about your kitchen!!! One word of caution (which you may of course choose to ignore): stove.

If you choose to replace your stove, and decide on a ceramic glass cooktop, and you're allowed to choose between black or white, you might want to go with black. I have black (electric) at Zillahenge and white (gas) here. I don't cook half as much as I once did, but I have noticed that white tends to look dirtier faster, and when that starchy water from the spaghetti pot boils over, it's really hard to get the scorched crud completely off.

Finally. I enjoyed seeing your dirty art. (Although, honestly, I was thinking it would be a little bit dirtier, but that's ... my problem :-)) Thank you for sharing.

And don't forget to take before/after pics of your kitchen project!!!

Word Verif: uartz!