If Paul Hogan taught us anything about survival in the outback or on the city streets, he certainly demonstrated that the ability to discern a knife from other, less useful and possibly extraneous objects is crucial.  

Sure you laugh now, until you find yourself trapped in a canyon by a bloodthirsty koala and all you have going for you is an under-ripe piece of tropical fruit.

This stuff may seem elemental, but you'd be surprised how many Americans, Europeans and even Asians find it difficult to distinguish weaponry from footwear. 

I know.  I was thrown when I first saw it too.  Absolutely gob-smacked.  All this time I could have mistakenly had a prominent American cleric strapped to my waist.

This entry was provided as a public service.  Please, before traveling anywhere, be sure you know how to recognize a knife from a member of the mustelid family. No matter how cute it is, it will do you no good in defending yourself from kerchief-wearing eighties street toughs.  

All right then, we can all rest soundly tonight.  You're welcome. 

Special thanks to those of you who corrected my taxonomy of the ferret.  

Two weeks in Australia and one in New Zealand.  Damned little time for such an undertaking, but work - God love it - affords us damned little time to do otherwise.  But I want to write about it, because Jane and I took a leisurely pace, instead of covering the continent we dug deep into a few selected bits of Victoria and New South Wales, getting to know them and the fine people who populate them a bit better than the coast-to-coast Cook's Tour would allow.  

So I'll take a few entries to describe the place, since there is so much to describe.  If pictures speak volumes then I'm in trouble, because Jane took over two thousand of 'em.  I'll try to be concise, and I hope you enjoy the ride. Cheers.

I may be a bit hard to reach for the next three weeks.  My beloved Jane and I will be touring Australia And New Zealand as a gift to each other for our twentieth wedding anniversary. Australia's a country I grew to love in a very short time.  Here's a country that has had as many troubles, as many challenges, as many heroes as my own, but they seem to have figured out what they are in the present moment with a grace and canny spirit that reminds me of the country I grew up in, good, bad and otherwise.  

By the way, their health system works pretty damned well.

I'll be visiting New Zealand for the first time, but I'm terribly excited after having had my introduction to the Maori people on the island of Rarotonga.  See, traveling for me has a way of stretching my mind and my will, my perceptions of how good or bad my own life is, and it builds in me the sort of planetary patriotism that inhabits my favorite travelers, from Darwin to Ben Franklin to Mark Twain to Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux.  Life is too short, or perhaps too long, and the world is to small, or perhaps too big, to harbor a provincial conceit that passes as love of country.  Don't doubt that I love my country, but I also love that it's a big, wild, amazing world out there if one is willing to leave the home block and look around.  

So I'll report back when I return.  I think I'll be disengaging from the online world for the duration of the trip, looking out, rather than looking in.  But Jane has her cameras and I my notebook, and we'll be landing with a hearty appetite.

Cheers.

-kwm

So  

This week, Thursday to be exact, our alarmingly successful Rifftrax Live show from August 19 will be rebroadcast across the country.  This makes me very happy for many reasons.  First, There are an impressive amount of people who have written or twitted to me expressing their disappointment at missing the live show, I'm happy that it will be piped out once again, and although it won't be live this time, it will be real-time, and hopefully will capture all the flavor of that night, which for me was the most fun I could imagine with my clothes on. 

Second, and since I had so much damn fun doing it from the stage, it'll be an interesting experiment to sit in the audience and watch it with the mobb.  It does however give rise to some nearly metaphysical quandaries:  I'll be sitting in an audience watching a big-screen high-definition screening of my cohorts and me, playing to an audience watching us on a stage some weeks ago, while thousands (thank you so much) watched us from movie theaters, including the one in which I'll be sitting.  There's something freakily Stargate-y about it, although I won't be able to reach in and change the past, meaning my handful of badly flubbed lines, But I'll be tempted.  I'll also experience a weirdness of seeing myself perform, something I don't much like to do, except as part of a critical, note-taking function, in which case my face generally isn't blown up to the size of a Prius and my voice blasted out in Dolby 7.1.  I'm bound to cringe more than I did at Halloween 2.   

But I'm willing to let that self-conscious bullshit go.  I'll be sitting with you folks, the good guys.  What we Riffers do is essentially to be a professional Groundling, an audience member busting through the fourth wall from the wrong side, storming through the front door to take over.  We're on your side, you're on ours.  the invective is aimed at the screen.  So I'll be in good company, and I'll try not to cringe at myself too much.

For those who have already seen it, and those who may miss it again, fear not.  This live theatrical streaming is a really cool technology, and it allows us to do something rather wonderful, which is to bring the fun of a live riff to a whole lot of people, not only in big cities but also in small towns, in nearly every state in the country, and reach people who otherwise would never get a chance without considerable travel and expense.  And we can do it at a price doesn't sting that much.

We'd like to do it again soon, and I really hope we do.  Being up on that stage, cracking wise at Tor Johnson and Dudley Manlove and a host of black-and-white stewardesses, peeking out at the audience joining in the goofiness, I then would glance at those huge cameras in the back of the room and feel a connection with my wife Jane and her parents watching in Minnesota, My sister Kass in Madison, Brother Brian in Illinois, friends in about fifteen states, fans who had written in from nearly every state, including Hawaii; and it may have been the most thrilling moment I've ever had on a stage.  it felt so huge and yet so intimate, a goofy evening with friends, just joking and riffing and singing and acting like an occasional zombie.  

That thrill came from you folks being there.  I'm most grateful.  Thanks to all of you.  Keep watching.

-kwm

Photograph by Jeremy Beckham

The Hell you say?  Live?  Nationwide?  How can that be?  The details are here and here, but to sum up, we'll be performing onstage live from the Belcourt Theater in wonderful Nashville.  The show will be simulcast to more than 433 theaters coast to coast.  There's a fair chance that one of these theaters is near you.  

It's going to be fun.  We're going to lambaste Ed Wood's astonishing Plan Nine from Outer Space, a movie that has become the 1812 Overture of movie badness.  We're also going to premiere an all-new riff of a delightful short film to whet your appetite.  Internet superstar Veronica Belmont will be Master of Ceremonies, and our special musical guest is 21-Century Troubadour Jonathan Coulton.  There will actually be prizes.

We've been wanting to do this kind of thing for a long time, to bring our goofy brand of funny to as many places as we could without killing ourselves or limiting ourselves to big metropolitan areas.  We're hoping you'll come, the ticket prices are pretty cheap, the riff is damn funny, and seeing it in a crowd, live, with a live crowd and some good friends, may well make you giddy.

Thanks to Jeremy Beckham for the photo above.  Very classy, Jeremy.

We also took pleasure in writing essays not for a publisher, editor or agent's perusal but for our own satisfaction.  So because I'm feeling chuffed, I'll reprint the story that got me the most reaction and the most press, positive and negative.  The missing illustration referred to in the story was a of Larry, posed much loike Lee Harvey Oswald, with a copy of the Bill of Rights in one hand and a leaf-blower in the other.  

-kwm

* * *

YOUR LOYAL AMERICAN LEAF-BLOWING PAL

The following series of letters appeared over eighteen months in a Minneapolis newspaper's weekly gardening advice column "Ask Dan the Gardener."

April 24^th

Hey Dan:

Thanks for great column on leaf blowers. I took your advice and got the biggest one I could find-- the Yard Monster Magnum with the big Tecumseh 5-horse motor. I used it to blow-rake the yard and it worked like a charm (I have almost half an acre!). And man is it powerful. Half my leaves ended up clear over to my neighbors yard! Sorry neighbors. I’m sure they won’t mind.

Thanks a bunch!
Larry in Bloomington

***

May 15^th

Hey Dan:

I am in love with my leaf blower. I have some advice for all your leaf-blowing readers: take the wadding out of the muffler to increase the horsepower and send those leaves to smithereens. Sure it’s a little louder, but with all that power, I’ll get my work done faster. I use it every morning before I go to work, to blow-sweep the driveway and the walks, and also it keeps my yard neat as a pin.

Keep blowing!
Larry in Bloomington

***

June 9th

Hey Dan:

I just want to tell your readers a few uses for their leaf blowers they might not of thought of. I use it blow-sweep my garage, it sure beats a broom! And here’s a new one; you can use it to blow-brush all the twigs off your roof after storms. And the vacuum attachment lets me get every little leaf and twig out of the flowerbeds. My ex-wife told me she likes how the yard looks neat as a pin. Who knows, maybe I can win her back. (Just kidding honey, don’t call the lawyer!)

Larry in Bloomington

***

July 6th

Hey Dan:

Say here’s a novel use for your leaf blowers out there: on Independence Day, remember how it was all hot and not windy? Well I just turned my leaf-blower on the flag and left it on all day, with Old Glory waving proudly. When I got home from the family picnic, the blower was still running, thanks to the Yard Monster’s extra big capacity gas tank.

Also, I’m wondering if you know if there is a social group or association of people who use there leaf blowers. Maybe I’ll start one and you can be a charter member.

Blowing Away,
Larry in Bloomington

***

August 2^nd

Hey Dan:

On these really hot days, I like to blow rake in the evening, near dinnertime, when all the neighbors are out for barbecues and what-not. They stand and wave, and yell hello and other things. but I can’t hear them with the ear plugs in, so I just wave back. I’m sure they love the way my yard looks.

(The following was omitted by the editor)

By the way, You are member number two in my new Blow-Buddies Social club. I’m member number one and president of course. You’ll be getting your first newsletter soon! Do you or anybody at the paper know how the internet works?

Keep On Blowin'!
Larry in Bloomington

***

October 25^th

Dear Dan The Gardener:

I need some helpful advice. I’m the guy who wrote you about how much I love to use my leaf blower. Well I have been getting some complaints from our neighbors about how loud it is. Especially the old guy across the road (his yard looks like hell, by the way) and he even says he wants to get up a petition to outlaw leaf-blowers in our neighborhood. Wow! Can he do this? I think it’s a violation of my civil rights. Nobody complains when there’s loud parades and fireworks and things, so why should they complain about the leaf blower?

So here’s what I decided to do. I thought I’d do him a favor and blow-sweep his yard as a surprise. Cause maybe he’d be delighted when he saw how neat and everything his yard looks after it. So I went over real early on Sunday and blew all the leaves out of his yard. It was a mess Dan, especially the shrubs near his bedroom window. Chuck full of leaves. Suddenly he comes out screaming and says he’s gonna call the police. Wow! I think people just don’t know how to be good neighbors anymore.

Larry in Bloomington

***

December 28^th

Dear Dan:

It’s your pal with the great leaf blower again! I have another great way to use your leaf blower I hope you can pass along. When there’s just a bit of snow on the ground, you can actually blow-shovel your driveway and sidewalks! You have to do it a lot, every hour or so, but I think I might throw away my shovel! Wow! I was out blow-shovelling all Christmas Eve, with the lights and all and snow all around. It’s beautiful.

Happy New Blowing Year!
Larry in Bloomington

***

April 5^th

Dear Dan:

Wow!I have to write you about my new leaf blower!It’s the Yard Monster Pro Series Turbo blaster, the big back-pack style like the pro’s use, with a full ten horsepower 4-cycle water-cooled Briggs and Stratton engine. It’s the biggest one they make! I took off the muffler to increase performance of course, and now I can knock squirrels out of the trees! As for those pesky neighbors whining about the sound and the dust, let ’em howl, heck, they’re noisier than my leaf blower! HA!

By the way, I have a turbocharger off my old boat that fits my leaf blower, and it'll boost the horsepower up to maybe 30! Wow!

“Blown Away” in Bloomington,
Larry

***

May 10th

Dear Dan:

I’m surprised to read your reply to my letter. I thought you’d be on my side on the leaf-blower issue. Why should I “show restraint” in my blow-gardening? It’s my property, and I’m not hurting anyone. I’m enjoying my personal liberties just as much as those kids who play the rap music so loud you can hear it ten feet away or more! I thought you would be the kind who cares about government running our lives. I guess you don’t like your yard as neat as a pin.

Happy Flag Day!
Larry in Bloomington

***

CASE FILE #33:018 Lawrence Gerard Stone
(The following unpublished letters were forwarded to Bloomington Metro Detective Unit from the newspaper’s editor.)

Exhibit 33:018A received June 14^th

Dear Mr. Dan the Gardener:

You didn't publish my last letter. You have to help me take a stand against these bastards who are trying to ruin my summer. Three times the police have been over here harassing me now. I think my ex is sending them cause she wants to ruin my chances at getting custody. Well screw her. It won't happen.

Now my neighbors are leaving letters and petitions from the so-called "neighborhood association" saying they're gonna get alawyerto stop me from using my leaf blower. Can you believe this (deleted)? Sorry about saying (deleted), but I have every right to run my leaf blower just like my Jet Ski and my snowmobile. These are rights and they aren't alieable by the cops or anybody. You have to write a column defending me. COME ON!!

Your friend,
Larry in Bloomington

*** 

Exhibit 33:018B received June 16^th

Hey Dan:

Why aren't you printing my letters anymore?! This issue regarding leaf-blowers has become very serious, and I need you to say something and maybe give me the number of your paper's lawyer to help me, since I've been in print and now I'm being harassed. There was an incident, and it wasn't my fault.

Here's how it happened, and again, it wasn't my fault. I was defending myself. I just finished boring out the pistons on my Yard Monster leaf blower and was minding my own business, blow-edging the sidewalk, when a bunch of guys from the neighborhood just came into the yard and tried to take away my leaf blower!! This is crazy and they were going to hurt me, so I turned the blower on them. Let me tell you, the extra horsepower I got from boring out the pistons really helped. It has the stopping power of a 12-gauge, especially when I toss a handful of rocks in front of the high-pressure nozzle. They went running off my personal private property, and I was in the right and very proud to defend myself, and excited that maybe I can make some money by retooling leaf blowers as personal defense weapons. Anyways suddenly the cops showed up at my door and hauled me away on assault charges. Sorry, but this is complete bullshit. I was out in a half-hour.

Dan, you have to help me stand up for the common man. Write an article or a profile of me and help me defend the bill of rights! I enclosed a picture of me with my leaf-blower.

Your Loyal American leaf-blowing pal,
Larry in Bloomington

***

Exhibit 33:018C received June 18th

Hey Gardener:

What the hell is your deal? I get a letter from your guys's lawyer telling me that they can't help me and I should "ease the tone" of my letters to you! What is this (deleted)? I'm just trying to use my leaf blower, and everybody's on my ass! I'm up on assault charges, my job is threatening to fire me, my (deleted) ex is suing for full custody and now she's got a court order that says Im violent. I'm not violent! Im just a guy who likes his yard to be neat as a pin! I raise the value of the neighborhood and those bastards come over here and (deleted) on me! And now you're not gonna help well thats just great. I'll stand up for my own rights. I'm gonna have my own parade right down my block and I'll hold a sign with the Bill of Rights on it and run my leaf-blower full blast. This is America, I can do this.

A disappointed reader in Bloomington

***

Exhibit 33:018D received June 19^th (Delivered by hand to newspaper's front desk)

Dear (deleted):

(deleted) you, you (deleted). You (deleted)completely reversed your position on leaf-blowers so you are (deleted) in the head. I can’t believe you’d say things like that about leaf blowers! They are not “louder than Harley Davidsons” and they are not a “public nuisance. I am not a “polluter” or a “suburban terrorists” You stupid (deleted). I’m a good man who pays his taxes and likes to keep his place neat as a (deleted)pin and I’m not giving up my leaf blower without a fight. Maybe I’ll come up to your (deleted)office and blow-file a few papers for you. By the way I made some buckshot cannisters that’ll keep those (deleted) neighbors out of my hair. As for you, (deleted) you.

***

(The following story appeared in the "Metro/State" section of the paper on June 21st.)

An east Bloomington man was the victim of a grisly murder in his home yesterday. The body of Lawrence Gerard Stone, 41, divorced, an engine repairperson at UniFridge, was found bound and gagged in his garage after numerous complaints from neighbors about a loud noise. Stone was taken to Cedar Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.

Police found Stone on the floor of his open garage. The cause of death was apparently a large gasoline-powered leaf blower, its high-pressure nozzle inserted far into Stone’s rectum, with the motor still operating at full power.

An investigation is planned, though there are few leads. Stone's neighbors described him as a disturbed man with violent tendencies, and yet it seems he always kept his property “neat as a pin.”

***

Occurred in the wild, near frozen pizza display, Cub Foods, Bloomington, MN, 21 May 2009 approx 4:35 PM CDT.

One must try to report these sightings as soon as they occur.  In our local habitat they're becoming quite scarce.  

The boat's name is Tangaroa.  I learned about this tiki during my stays in the Cook Islands.  Among his many traits, Tangaroa protects fisher-folk and those setting out to sea in any event.  Often a tiki of Tangaroa might ride in the canoe as a token of good luck.  You'll find Tangaroa tikis all over the place, in gardens, public parks, in the shops of Ratotonga.  But people off the island don't talk about him too much, possibly because the traditional image has a schlong that reaches to the floor.  I'm serious, it's truly like a third leg. You'll have to find your own images of this, I'll not cater to your prurience, and besides, I already gave you an image of a beer-wielding otter.  

Back to fishing.  I fish for walleye and bass, and have scant luck.  My spouse Jane fishes for panfish and fills the boat.  This is fine by me, because she also cleans said panfish, which is akin to field-dressing a mouse.  Jane learned this skill from her grandfather Mel, who always had a stead hand and a  knife sharp enough to split protons.  

Jane has taught me that fishing is a serene activity, not an obligation.  In the past I'd be fussing with the boat, changing spots, changing tackle, pursuing wily lunkers, failing at same, casting into trees and cursing like a Mamet character.  Meanwhile Jane sits like the monk, feet on the gunwhale, calmly yanking up bluegill after crappie and securing dinner. It's this attitude that caused me to christen the boat after an icon of a culture that's learned to relax.  I might well have named it after my favorite Italian concept, il dolce far niente - the sweetness of doing nothing.

Here's hoping we all get a chance to do a bit of nothing this summer.

-kwm

At long last - The Rifftones have an album.  Music for Riffing is now available for download in MP3 or CD-ready formats.  Ten songs, all inspired by movies that drove us mad with rage (Except for Jaws, loved Jaws, still do). 

We had a Hell of a good time putting these together.  We hope you like 'em.  If you do, we'll do more.

When I was a kid, I had a strange fixation on the music of the Moody Blues.  Don't worry, I got over it.  I've already apologized for it, many times, and now it's behind me.  But it wasn't the band members or the Edwardian coats, or the earnestly vapid lyrics that attracted me.  It was the sound.  Orchestral yet not, synth-y yet not, coupled with a muted bass line and a jangley acoustic twelve-string, and I loved it. By and large, the band, their music, even their success were framed by a big, clumsy 35- note cabinet keyboard called the Mellotron.

Later (well, in high school), I was fully taken in by the versatility and hard edge of King Crimson.  Eerie, dark and obscure, definitely not pure pop for now people.  But something resonated, that sound, that orchestra from a parallel universe - it was of course the Mellotron.  

The Mellotron is an analog polyphonic audio sample loop-playback keyboard, which is to say that it gets its sound by purely mechanical and electrical means.  No one's and zero's involved.  The cabinet encloses a massive bank of tape loops, grouped by sound - strings, flutes, voices - activated by dialing in a sound bank and pressing a key.  A tape head makes contact with a loop of tape, and off you go.  

Like many fine technologies, it was conceived in a tinkerer's workshop.  In the early sixties, Harry Chamberlin had the insight to hook up a bunch of tape players to a keyboard so it could play "real sounds."  In essence, the first sampling keyboard. he opened a shop in Upland California and battled his way to a prototype.

The thing moved to England, got a brand name and a functional technology, became the Mellotron, but that history history is readily available elsewhere.  I'm talking about the sound, the aural atmosphere that pervaded British pop music for a decade or more - King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Roxy Music, Elton John, the Kinks, Traffic, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream - if you got high to it, it probably involved a Mellotron.  

The sound of the instrument, cheesy as it seems today, is a thread that runs through many styles of pop. And it's not all hoary prog-rock, either.   Think of the Beatles, the song Strawberry Field.  Those flutes?  Mellotron. Brian Jones went nuts on the thing for the Stone's Their Satanic Majesties Request.  and more currently, listen to Richard Thompson's Rumor and Sigh. Elvis Costello's Spike, Like a Rose, and Brutal Youth, decorating them is the Chamberlin, the  Mellotron's first cousin.  REM, Radiohead and Oasis made use of the sound, good or otherwise.  The list of albums, as posted by Mellotron, is over a thousand.

Recently I picked up what will be as close to an actual Mellotron as I'm ever likely to get, a digitally sampled virtual keyboard version called the M-Tron. I'm not much for irony, but there's irony in the thought that the Mellotron, an entirely electro-mechanical device that derived its perfectly unique sound from hissy loops of audio tape, a sound that pervades a generation of pop music, may live on entirely in the digital realm.  

But I won't dwell on the irony, because I'm not much for irony, and it's the inherent cheesiness of the Mellotron that attracts me in the first place.  See, I'm not a musician, I'm a comic writer who likes to make music.  But I got to use the M-tron for the first time on an actual song, with my musical partners The Rifftones.

More on that soon...