#randy walker

[rainingmusic]

Toni Braxton - You're Makin' Me High 

[makaveli-immortalized]

[killprettymagazine]

Drunken Art Reviews by Mr. Rich

When we're bored we'll throw Mr. Rich a bunch of paintings and stuff from the Juxtapoz website and see what he thinks. He gets no information on the artist or any context, just images. Here's our staff drunk talking contemporary art.

  The town bridge sucks now

“I love what you did with the bridge grandma.” He said with forced enthusiasm. Internally, he wondered if it was time to put grandma in a home. She had become a different person since grandpa had died and it seemed her mind was deteriorating. She took up odd hobbies, like, collecting other people’s grocery receipts and counting the amount of ants she had squished that day. She had started knitting and quilting clothes and blankets for the giants that lived in the mountains nearby and then it took a turn for the worst… forcing it upon the locals.

The truth is out there

Honestly, I’m just wondering what the fudge she is laying on. Some spaceship crash landed out in Iowa and the townspeople have been throwing rocks at it for fun and trying to open it by bashing at it with Louisville Sluggers for the past week. Up and coming photographer, let’s call him “Mr. Hairy Arms”, decides it’d be awesome to take a picture of his -could be hot girlfriend- on top of this thing. Then she starts seizuring and he puts his fingers in her mouth to keep her from biting off her own tongue. The next day a kid finds the camera, but no one around. The sweet couple have vanished. Then Mulder and Scully show up and start arguing about whether or not it it was alien related even though they’re standing right next to an alien space-craft.

Double-Headed Monkey Overlord

Artwork like this has good replay value, unlike every M. Night Shyamalan movie. Once you know the end, what’s the point of watching it again? I digress. You can look at this and see something different every time. Whether it’s the glowing neck hole of the headless horseman or black dude about to smash the brains of a white dude with what looks like a giant hammer. You find something new every time. For me, I revert back to childhood and keep hoping I’ll find Waldo.

Look for the angry rabbit

This really gives me a sense of everything is going to be ok. Jk. It’s creepy. In 2 seconds, the world is going to end and I have no idea why I thought my current girlfriend was worth the effort. Fast forward to 10 years later and I have just died from a shotgun wound to the skull and my essence floats above my bed looking for revenge. That’s this.

  Yeah!

Yeah, skeleton fuck session. Woohoo! I’m instantly horny. All I want to do is bang. Has anyone made a skeleton porn yet? I’m down. Totally would watch 8 hours, at least, of skeleton orgy. And there wouldn’t be that awkwardness if you were watching with your homie. Million dollar idea.

Timing

I’m gonna smoke whenever I want to and if it’s an inconvenience for your pet then so be it. I have goals. Your Marlin doesn’t like when I smoke a cigarette then too bad. I’m an addict. If He/She chooses to strike out, I will deal. I can’t wander this land trying to figure out every little thing that is flammable. I have things to do.

[lsadler-blog]

Keeping the Main Thing, the Main Thing: The men in my life

There are a lot of men in my life—which is actually a problem I’ve learned. There have been a few men in my life that have made me a better person and for that I am grateful. I could not have asked for two better men/people/mentors/leaders to cross my path in life. Let’s meet them…my father, James “Jimmy” Sadler and Randy Walker.

I’m sitting at a Starbucks, so hoping I can make it through this post w/out crying.

Jimmy: Strong, smart, charasmatic, loved by all, fair, honest, outdoorsman, warm, loving, he made me tough and also taught me how to be a woman. He trusted me and he believed in me and knew that I had no limits. He was my father and the first man I loved. He’s never coming back, but lives daily in my heart and in who I am.

I’ve talked endlessly about his death. Cried tears to fill all the swimming pools in South Florida. I’ve been angry at God and with the help of shrinks made my way through four of the five stages of grief. That elusive fifth stage—Acceptance. I’ve been in therapy since 1996. That’s right, 16 years. My therapy sessions should be getting their driver’s license right now. I’m not sure when I actually graduated the fifth stage, but I realized it last week.

It used to pain me to see little girls with their dads. Hear big girls complain about their dads. Wait until you don’t have one anymore, see how that feels. I never wanted to hear about daddy/daughter outings/conversations/etc. I was jealous and it was ugly. All I wanted in my life was my daddy back. To put my hand in his one more time. To snuggle up under his arm and lay on the floor and watch football. To have one more conversation with him. Just one more minute with him.

Last week during Bible study, Madison’s dad called. He wanted to hear all about her interview with Jimmy Johnson and trip to Key Largo. She explained to him that we were in Bible study and asked if she could call him back later. They exchanged “I love yous” and she hung up. I said, out of somewhere deep inside me/resolute,

“That’s so awesome that he wants to hear all about your interview with Coach Johnson. I’m so excited for you two to have that conversation. It makes my heart happy.”

I surprised myself. Who am I? Where did that come from? That was normally a primo moment where I ignored the exchange or felt jealous of such an exchange, became ugly inside, changed the subject. I would long to tell my dad of such an experience.

That was the moment I graduated. The moment I got a little bit stronger and a little bit softer at the same time. Feel free to send cards (with money (I am unemployed)), flowers, etc.

Coach Walk: Strong, kind, tough, warm, loving, smart, energetic, ol’ ball coach, just a great, great man. I want a man to love me like he loved his wife. He trusted me and believed in me. He gave me my start in football. I will forever be grateful for that. I loved that man with all of my heart.

  Coach Walk arrived at Northwestern a few months before I did. He was magnetic and coached with a lot of passion and poise. I was on the women’s basketball detail, but after every road trip, I was the first (if his wife went on the trip) person to great him and welcome him back to Evanston. Fast forward, there is office drama in communications and I’m called into the External AD’s office and told that Coach Walker would like me to handle football that spring and for the upcoming season. I pinched myself. Was this real? It was real. I was determined to work my ass off for this man. He was giving me an opportunity to handle PR for a Big Ten football team. I was a woman. I was young.

Spring ball starts and several players are looking at me and asking why I’m on the sideline. Telling me that I’m a woman and I don’t know anything about football and that women shouldn’t be allowed on the sidelines. I would get fired up! It continued, the taunts, the funny looks. I kept doing what I was doing. Then high school coaches from the area started to show up at spring ball. More looks. These were pure crazy looks of someone perplexed and were only eased at the end of the practice when would run to the huddle and them hearing Coach Walk say, “LT, whatdoya got?”

Spring turned into Fall and here we go, it’s the big time, baby! By this time the players were all comfortable with me and knew I could throw a football, catch a fooball, run a route, knew that I knew what was going on and knew that I could handle the job. I had great relationships with the media members, the players and staff. It also took the guys a few times seeing me in the lockerroom after games to get used to that, but we made it through.

The seasons moved on.

Coach Walker and I grew closer and developed a deeper mutual respect. We watched film together on Sunday mornings in his office. Some of the best moments were just sitting in his office shooting the shit, talking about life, and watching The Weather Channel. He was always open to any ideas we had and participated in most of them with a wonderful eagerness. You probably don’t know that Randy starred in his high school production of Fiddler on the Roof. I know, becuase once after practice he started belting out songs for his wonderful wife, Tammy, and me. He was proud of this dexterity.

My crowning moment was when he asked me what play I wanted in the game package for the upcoming opponent. Excuse me? Huh? So I call something, I don’t remember that one. They don’t run it, but, hey, it was in the game plan. He asked a few more times and I’d give him something based on what I’d seen in that week’s practice or previous games or from another team with similiar personnel or a defense that we could create a matchup problem with. The last time he ever asked me to call a play, I said, “Coach, we need to run a tackle-eligible in this game.” From the press box I see a big boy line up and he’s not in No. 50-79…could this be? Hell yeah, Coach Walk was running MY PLAY! We get the short yards, first down. I don’t know if we won or lost the game, who the player was or even the opponent, I do know that he called my play!

That’s how it was. I was a trusted member of his extended staff. He respected me. He gave me my big chance as a professional in a man’s world, and I wasn’t going to let him down. I worshiped the ground that he walked on. Would have gone to any length for him because Randy Walker was a great man.

I’ll never forget in the early hours of the morning of June 30. My phone kept ringing…first it was Jennifer and then Carrie and then Jennifer again. I didn’t pick up, I didn’t want to deal with what I thought were drunk shennanigans from Chicago. As I’m getting ready later that morning, the phone rings again and it’s Jennifer. I answer because maybe something is wrong. Something was real wrong. She asked me to sit down and then began to tell me that Coach Walker died the night before. She wanted to let me know before I heard it on the news or from someone outside the family.

That will forever go down as one of the saddest days in my life. My coach was gone. The one man that gave me an opportunity to shine on the big stage was gone. I was devastated.

He’s gone, but I often think about him. The car trips to the TV stations, he, Tammy & I eating dinner by the computer for the weekly ESPN.com chats, telling him what he needed to wear, the great hugs (although, I would tell he and other coaches that there were no hugs in football), his life lessons, his stories and “Johnny off the pickle boat” will always make me smile.  

I’m still in touch with some of the amazing men that he groomed on that football field. We are still family. We will always be family because of Randy Walker. We will always be family because Tammy, Abbey and Jamie Walker shared him with us. For this, I am forever grateful. Thank you.

I’m grateful for the following things…

For the realization and completion of the stages of grief.That I have family and friends around me that love me more than I deserve.For Yogi and Al for encouraging me to write (I do a lot more that won’t make the blog for a while).

Awesome read: I’m behind on my reading, so I offer this book that I read a few years ago that has given me great persective. Easy and insightful read. I encourage you to check it out…The Noticer, by Andy Andrews

 And only two times tears started to form and $10 of beverages at Starbucks (don’t ask) another blog post in the books.

[karlblau-blog]

Round-The-World Song Relay Celebration:  for the 24 hours of September 30th 2011 people from all over the world covered a song of mine via an mp3 or video link or they just performed the song out into the world without recording it at all.  This was in celebration for the last day of the Kickstarter fundraiser for KLAPS -- my auto-biographical music label.  

If you click on the picture here, it should take you to the schedule, the tags to the left are the people involved in the music and video.

Thank you everyone for contributing and putting out the word, making this fundraiser such a success.  I'm focusing on 12 new albums to be released on KLAPS here in the coming year.   

[planeandsimple]

Randall Walker, the man that runs the Las Vegas Airport (LAS), needs to get his head checked.

I know, it’s a pretty strong statement. But I had to say it. And now I’ll tell you why I (and many others) feel this way.

If you have traveled to the Las Vegas airport recently, you may have noticed that half of the C-Gates (where Southwest Airlines operates out of) are not being used. These gates are out of commission because they are redoing the tarmac in front of them; and because of this, Southwest Airlines is operating their flights out of the remaining C-Gates as well as most of the B-Gates.

The journey between the C and the B-Gates is not a short one. If you look at a map of the airport, you can see the distance between them. It takes me, an average person, around 15-20 minutes to make it from the far side of the C-Gates to the B-Gates. I can only imagine how long it takes for an elderly person to make that trip.

What you may not know is there is not much available in terms of easy transportation between the gates. If you are walking from the C-Gates to the B-Gates, parts of this walk are uphill. There are two short moving sidewalks (maybe 100 feet each?) right before the B-Gates, but that is it. There is no tram, shuttle, cart, etc. available to passengers to travel between these gates. There is a reason for this:

Southwest Airlines offered to purchase and run a shuttle between the C and B-Gates for their passengers. They presented this to the man that runs the airport, Randall Walker, and he denied their request. There would be no cost to the airport, none whatsoever; and yet he still denied it.

According to the Las Vegas McCarran International Website, their mission is, “To provide excellence in customer service and airport facilities.” I don’t see how they are providing excellent customer service and excellent airport facilities by denying transportation to passengers that are traveling a long distance between gates.

What’s it going to take for Randall Walker to change his mind and allow Southwest to run a shuttle between the gates that they operate? Someone passing out? Someone being injured? What about someone dying? It's only a matter of time before something tragic happens.

So come on Randy, get your head straight and do what’s right for your airport!