Hangin' with the 27 Club

Unfortunately, the famous "27 Club" just claimed a new inductee, and it got me to thinking about its seven main members. The 27 Club is a group of musicians who found overwhelming fame early in life, but whose future was cut short due to their death at the age of 27. It may be a result of my odd fascination in the graves of the famous, or it could be a strange coincidence, but I've seen the final resting place of 4 of the 7 main members of the club. Well, one of them is sort of a stretch, but I'm still going to count it. Here's my list:

Jim Morrison - France has national holidays almost weekly over the summer, and during one of them (Saint Somebody's day) my good friend Bruno and I hopped onto line 3 of the world's best subway and headed to nearly the end of the line. Pere Lachaise cemetery is a fascinating place full of fascinating dead people, including the lead singer of The Doors. The stories behind his death and burial are very interesting and worth a few minutes at Wikipedia, or perhaps a few minutes in Paris. Yet another good reason to go back to France.

Jimi Hendrix - Before I said yes to the job offer in Seattle, I considered how awesome it would be to live in the very city that spawned the world's greatest guitarist. Needless to say, there were very few days between our move to Seattle and our pilgrimage to Jimi's final resting place in Renton, Washington. Don't worry, this shoddy paragraph is only a preview of an upcoming post that will have some tacky title like "Jammin' with Jimi", or "Cold as Love". Our Jimi Hendrix grave experience was pretty groovy and you'll hear all the electric details, in full swirling color, once I finally get around to it.

Kurt Cobain - I'd say Kurt Cobain had more influence on post 80's music than any other person. Western Washington is chuck-full of Cobain history, as he was born and raised in Aberdeen, died just south of Seattle on the coast of Lake Washington, and is currently floating about in ash form through the creeks and rivers of Olympia, Washington. Since we've driven through Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle loads of times over the last two years, I'm considering this 27 Club member as officially visited. One of these days I'll make my way to the house in which he "commit suicide" just so I can say I've been there.

Janis Joplin - Shamefully, I really don't know much about Janis Joplin, except that she died at the age of 27 only 16 days after Jimi Hendrix. Her ashes were scattered from an airplane into the Pacific Ocean, and I've been to the Pacific Ocean, so I'm counting it. It looks like its time to go put a Janis Joplin CD on hold at the library.

My 27 Club grave count will likely stay at four, as I'm not enough of a fan of the remaining members to visit the graves of Brian Jones and Amy Winehouse in England. Sara and I are dreaming of a nice little drive through the South, during which I think it would be cool to stop and see what's left of Robert Johnson in Mississippi. It would be super cool to write a book about famous gravesites. It would be just macabre enough to grab a reader's attention, and historical enough to hook the nerds. Maybe it would end up getting produced into a super famous cable television show, which I would be able to exploit as host in order to get a lot of free trips to the middle of nowhere. At the rate I'm blogging, I could easily get that written by the time I retire.

The American Drum Horse

After we watched Drummer strut about the Arena, Marlan came up into the stands to ask if we wanted to come take a ride on the cart. We didn't hesitate a moment to clean up our Cheetos mess, fish the dirt out of Olivia's mouth, and head out toward the barns. Now, we had previously learned that the small horses at the show are not to be called ponies, rather, they are miniature horses. Turns out that the owners of these tiny equines are a little touchy about semantics, and I can't blame them because when people refer to me as an accountant I get pretty huffy, too (I'm a miniature actuary darn it!). The reason I bring it up is that watching my little Sara trying to get in that wagon made me wonder if I had married a miniature human. Fortunately, Marlan showed her how to hoist herself up there. If there's anything a horseman must be good at, it's hoisting himself up into things.

Zoe and Sara did four or five laps around the horse trailers behind the barns, and during the last couple times around Marlan handed over the reigns, and my girls got to do some pleasure driving of a world champion pinto. Sara says she was pretty nervous, "but fortunately the horse is a lot smarter than me". The pictures don't really show it, but Zoe was having a ball up there, and tried to mimic the whistle noises that Marlan made to get the horse moving. Marlan's been training horses for decades, and he has a very special way of communicating with them. It took a lot of coaxing to get the two of them off that cart. That was super nice of Marlan to let them take a ride and drive the horse, that's the kind of thing a little girl never forgets (and neither do mommies).

While my girls were out trit-trotting through the parking lot, Olivia and I had a good conversation with Linda, the owner of the horses. We learned all about where Drummer came from and what he was bred for. It was absolutely fascinating, and I can't quit reading about drum horses on all the websites I can find! The way I see it, these horses are pretty much British royalty. The drum horse was originally bred for it's very specific ability to carry the heavy steel drums during royal processions in England, including the yearly Trooping of the Colours, and Royal parades. They have to be strong enough to carry the fully-uniformed rider and the giant drums for long distances. They must also have a very good temperament so as not to be spooked while the drums are being played as loudly as possible. Drum horses must also be very well trained so they can respond to the commands of the rider as he guides the horse through the streets using reigns tied to his feet. He can't use his hands to steer the horse because he's playing the drums!

The Queen's Band of the Guards has but a few drum horses among it's ranks, but you'll notice in all the pictures online that they look just like Drummer and Trooper. In the picture above, the rider of the drum horse is holding up his drumsticks in an "X" as a salute as he passes by the Queen. If you click on the picture, it will enbiggen and you can see the reigns tied to the drummer's feet. Linda's horses are the spittin' image of the drum horse in this picture. I'd never heard of such a neat thing as this...a horse specially bred to play music! I think if I had a pair of English drum horses I would name them John Henry and Keith, after my two favorite British drummers. Linda was telling me that there's a pretty big movement now to bring the thoroughbred drum horse to America. In fact, Drummer and Trooper are officially classified as American Drum horses, as their mum is American and their daddy is British. This was accomplished via a method they refer to as "stud in a box". Let's just say that if those Fed-Ex guys new what was in that box, they probably would have asked for hazard pay.

If I had a pair of American drum horses I would have to name them Don and Dusty after Don Henley and Dusty Hill. Those are some good horse names inspired by some good drummers. Notice I'm not naming either of them Phil! If they were mares, they'd be Meg and Karen. What a great Saturday it turned out to be, getting back in touch with our western roots. There's something really special about being around horses. I truly consider it a spiritual occasion whenever I watch horses, and horsemen, do what they do.

Meeting a World Champion

Our little family shuffled off our city-slicker coils today by paying a visit to the Big Six Pinto Show of Western Washington. Sara's blood is one quarter horse wrangler (Quarter Horse?), as her mom was raised by professional race horse raisers. It's really cool to think that Diane (Sara's mom) spent a lot of her youth working with, and playing with, these majestic animals. It was that same blood line that led us to Spanaway, Washington this afternoon to drop in on Sara's uncle Marlan, as he showed his World Champion American Drum Horse. I've always been amazed by horses, and this animal was breathtaking. You could tell he was a World Champion at first glance. Needless to say, Sara has grown tired of my constant requests for a horse of our own.

"But Sara," I say, "it will be an inside horse, and I promise I'll braid his tail every day." To which she replies, "Grrrr".

The people at the horse show were all so friendly. They'd let Zoe and Olivia pet the horses and they'd tell us all about what they'd won and how the horses had behaved. Zoe was a big fan of Fernando, the miniature pinto, who had been brave enough to be shown among his standard-sized counterparts. Fernando was just as friendly as his handlers, but nowhere near as kind-hearted as Marlan's horses, Drummer and Trooper. It seemed to me that Drummer acted differently towards the little girls than he did to myself or Marlan. When we first got to the stalls Sara and I were talking to the people there and then I looked over to see Marlan and Zoe petting Drummer. Before I knew it, Marlan had effortlessly hoisted Zoe up on top of the gentle giant, the whole time Zoe giggled like it was the best day of her little life. My daughter has ridden a World Champion horse!

Eventually it was time to get Drummer ready for his big show, so we made our way back up toward the main arena and set Olivia down to graze in the grass while the tractor drug the chain around inside to smooth out the dirt. We watched as the Showmanship class came in and out of the arena, and both Sara and I were very curious where those girls found jeans the exact same color as their sparkly shirts.

We really enjoyed watching Drummer trot around in the arena with three other horses while the judges made their marks. Marlan's cart was the only one with real wagon wheels, probably because it had to be tall enough to fit comfortably on Drummer. We weren't surprised that Drummer won first place. I felt like he was my horse, which is good since Sara still refuses to get me one of my own (I just asked her again).

Woohoo!

It's my 500th post! I should have some kind of free prize giveaway, but all you're getting is this picture of fireworks, and a cool slug that we found in the Hoh Rain Forest. That should be good enough. Hopefully cyber technology will have advanced far enough by the time I get to the thousandth post that your computer will spit out a celebratory peanut butter cup. Thanks for being my blog friends over the last 500 posts.