WASTIN' AWAY AGAIN IN HOOVERVILLE

(For free downloads of the Hot Plate! show, please email karlstraub@hotmail.com. He'll respond pret-ty quickly, unless he's in the shower or something. Even that loophole will close soon, as he's looking into a new app that allows extreme entrepreneurs to retain full phone functionality even in the shower.) 

My son was sitting with me in a diner. Pat Buchanan was on TV, looking much more grim than when I'd seen him last. I couldn't hear Buchanan because the sound was off; I couldn't hear Max because he had laryngitis. 

  A kid at a nearby table was more than audible. He had that kind of carrying voice a lot of kids have, sort of like a Fun Size Carol Channing. I knew my son wouldn't get the reference, so I went with the more accessible punchline. "You could hear that kid from space," I said. Ignoring the obvious scientific flaw in my statement, Max pantomimed a big sitcom laugh. (No doubt if I'd been talking to a detail-oriented guy like John Cook, my assertion about space would have been authoritatively parsed at some length, to determine its verisimilitude.) 

AUGUSTA 2017 HIGHLIGHT REEL

(For free downloads of the Hot Plate! show, please email karlstraub@hotmail.com. He'll respond pret-ty quickly, unless he's in the shower or something. Even that loophole will close soon, as he's looking into a new app that allows extreme entrepreneurs to retain full phone functionality even in the shower.) 

Here I present my list of Augusta 2017 highlights, in order to try to create an impressionistic montage of my first year at this wonderful institution. 

  There were funny moments, poignant scenes, and surreal episodes. How could it be otherwise, in a week of collective life at a place and time dedicated to the real spirit of country music? Classic Country Week, which pops up out of the mist each year like Rigadoon, is a truly magical phenomenon for a real country fan. 

My Favorite Song That I Kept Hearing In My Head After It Was Performed: "Walkin, Talkin, Cryin, Barely Beatin' Broken Heart," sung by Emily Miller. 

I tracked down the Justin Tubb original, and good and classic though it was, I actually prefer the driving way Emily does it. (Note: Emily did something that people don't do enough, in my opinion-- she brought something personal to the old material without corrupting what's essential about it. In my opinion, that's what every important country musician has always done.) 

My Favorite Vocal Performance By Someone At A Jam Session: 

  I couldn't tell you the name of the song, or the singer, but at one of the mushroomlike cajun jams that sprouted up everywhere I went (at one point I couldn't remember how to get back to my dorm, and someone said when you hear the Cajun music, turn left), a blonde girl guitarist suddenly belted out some number in Cajun French and put the last hundred singers to shame. Big Joe Turner used to sing while tending bar, no microphone needed; if this girl had been around back then, people would be saying Can you please keep it down, I can't hear Joe Turner. 

My Favorite Student Question In Class: 

  In my How To Practice class, Genie said, Karl, how come at breakfast you were wearing the same clothes you wore at the performance last night? (My answer was drowned out by general hilarity, but the reason is that if I'd taken time to freshen up after my 45 minutes of sleep, I'd have been late for breakfast, and forbidden to enter the dining room. Again.) 

HOT PLATE SUBSCRIBER DOWNLOADS

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  With a free download, you'll be able to scroll back and forth when your friends and neighbors talk over the show and cause you to miss a delightful bon mot, or when you want to hear some section over and over as part of some unholy ritual.

I think I have the technology here to make it downloadable in your choice of slightly compromised but lightweight MP3 or speaker-shakin', phone-chokin' WAV files.

Please email requests to karlstraub@hotmail.com, and I'll carve out time during my conscious hours to send you these magical broadcasts.

UNCLE SANTA

(For free downloads of the Hot Plate! show, please email karlstraub@hotmail.com. He'll respond pret-ty quickly, unless he's in the shower or something. Even that loophole will close soon, as he's looking into a new app that allows extreme entrepreneurs to retain full phone functionality even in the shower.) 

Every time I go to a Chinese restaurant, I drive by numerous yards with giant blow up cartoon characters. For demographic reasons, I suppose, there's a whole stretch of road where this phenomenon plays out, but there is one particular yard that never misses a holiday. If there's a cutesy mythological character associated with an American holiday, this family will have giant blow up cartoon figures that reflect that holiday, grinning colorfully and waving at motorists  

  I'm always driving when I see this stuff, and "fleeting glimpse" accurately describes what I usually get, so I can't really definitively say that what i saw today represents a tipping point of some sort, but I can say this. Today's fleeting glimpse is the first time I've ever seen a cryptic mixture of different holidays. 

  They had Uncle Sam, but also Santa Claus.