leftovers

Yesterday was my parent’s 34 th wedding anniversary. They were married on April 19, 1973 and they actually eloped, which I always thought was such an exciting and romantic notion. I fondly remember back in high school when my brother, sister and I joined my folks on an anniversary trip back to Grand Island , Nebraska , where they had honeymooned. In true Devin fashion, about all I really remember from this trip was the mall! And of course my new shirt, which was a thick-striped polo with really bright jewel-tone colors. (I bought the shirt in Hays at KG Mens, but wore it on the trip.) So it’s fitting that last night I whipped up a new musical composition, a song titled “Symbols of Love.” It’s quite a hoot. I based it on a poem of the same title that was written by my grandma about a stuffed toy belonging to my (at the time) baby cousin Brian. It was published in a magazine called REM in 1974 accompanied by a photo of a sleeping boy, clutching a teddy bear. The po...

For as long as I can remember, I've always had an overwhelming sense of Pride and Protectiveness of my hometown, Paradise Kansas . Even as a very young child, I was extremely interested in the history of the town, and I was always saddened by the dwindling population. I dreamed of time-traveling back to the hey-day of the town, imagining what it would have been like back in the early 1900's when pioneers optimistically built their homes, stores and businesses there hoping that the town would blossom into a city. I tried to picture what it was like when my dad was a teenager there, and Paradise had its own high school and the students would drag Main Street on weekend nights or my uncle Ronnie's band would play downtown. By the time I came around, Paradise was little more than "a wide spot in the road," as my mom used to say. There was never much to do there, but I still always found plenty to fascinate me within the modest town limits. Perhaps the most fun acti...

OK I am ready to continue my Twin Peaks blog series. First things first, I need to clear up some errors from my previous blog. After reading it, my mom back in Kansas called me and "let me know" that her and my dad did not, as I said, lose interest in the show after the third episode (which featured the dream sequence). In fact, mom assertains that her and dad did continue to watch every episode in the first season and many in the second season. This is true. I replied that while they did perhaps watch they weren't as interested in it as I was. Obviously that can't be argued, but I guess I should have given my folks more credit. They did follow it more closely than anyone else parents I knew at the time. Now that that's cleared up, let's move on. I've thought about it often over the past 15 year or so, trying to figure out what it was about Twin Peaks that transfixed me so. First of all, I had never been a big "TV" person before Peaks. I...

This is my "Twin Peaks" edition of my How I Fell In Love With: series, but I wanted to give it a different title. "In The Trees" was the title of the Twin Peaks fanzine that I published for several issues back in late 1991 (if memory serves), around the time that the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was released. By that point, I was a certified peaksfreak. I carried my official Twin Peaks residence card, issued by The Twin Peaks Gazette. I lived on Enthwistle but I don't recall my "address." I could talk endlessly about the show and trivia related to it, and often I did (whenever someone would listen). Let's back up though, shall we. April 5, 1990. I was a seventh grader at Paradise Middle School, living on a farm in rural western Kansas. For some reason that night, my dad was eagerly awaiting the premiere of a new television show, which was really odd for my dad. Usually he paid little attention to television unless it was sports or J...