July 15th, 2025. The SPARK w Joseph Friend.

A new-to-me artist kicking off the night at the Takoma Spark – Rugan Lewis will return as our featured artist on December 2nd!

Tonight I dropped by House of Musical Traditions to drop some money (and Mosno’s djembe) before heading over the SPARK. Was very pleased to see some traditional protest music in the front window.

Yes…. I’ll GET TO THE OPEN MIC.

Actually a relatively short night tonight. I don’t really know what to point to. Brutal weather? Life? The Universe? Anything? I went over to my mother’s place first and helped out with a couple of things and have firmly determined that I probably shouldn’t try to go over there before running an event as I was simply EXHAUSTED even rolling into Takoma Park. Construction woes on the way home, I actually nodded off at a stop so I’ve got to be better about that.

Mom sort of surprised me with, as I thought we were wrapping up, vengeance. I know that my childhood was often punctuated by “By the way mom” statements that always involved last-minute requests for black pants or a specific kind of paper or, if she was lucky, simply a permission slip signature – and so I guess she owes me a couple of surprises…

A blood draw over at a Labcorp in Greenbelt SHOULD have been a simple mission, but they only had two people on staff, one of which was checking people in at the front desk (and by “checking in” I mean “pointing to the automated check in kiosk and then walking the less tech savvy through the process of scanning their ID and pressing buttons”) and the other of which was actually somewhere in the back doing labwork.

On the way out of my mom’s neighbourhood I snapped this quick photo. This is sort of the side of my elementary school, which was part of the backwoods path that would lead me over to my highschool girlfriend’s place. I slowed down the car to think it through and revel in the 35 year old memories which, the more I focused on them, the more they flooded back. Intense and summery, the heat of the sun wasn’t brutal back then, and nothing compared to holding hands and talking about the future. We’d walk around the neighbourhood and at the time, mounds of dirt were a little closer to the road (where I was driving hadn’t been built yet) and the sidewalk ended right around here. It spoke to me with Shel Silversteinian poetry as a place to explore and there were streetlights within view so we knew when we had to be home… I remember my girlfriend and I sitting in the privacy of the empty construction site, flirting and tense, and eventually engaging in our first kiss (my first kiss) on a mound of dirt watching the sun go down, knowing we didn’t have much time…

They (didn’t really) surprised us by having no record of my mother’s doctor’s lab request. We’d called earlier and left a message. I asked about that and, with a straight face, the woman said “oh, we don’t have phones”. I asked how you were SUPPOSED to get in touch with them and she said “oh, you just have to come in”.

Figuring that actually flipping out on this idiocy would get me nowhere, we worked out that it was the same request as has been done every three months for the past decade and she could simply copy and paste. At which point I took over the job of walking people through the check-in kiosks so TWO women could be doing labwork.

There’s a beauty to being able to help people like this, but – it probably wasn’t LEGAL. Thank you to the woman who had her two kids with her who, though the woman was clearly mortified, the kids really lit up the room by ballroom dancing unstoppably.

We got through it. I dropped my mother off back home and headed to Takoma Park with… with patience. Firm, steely patience.

Fortunately (for me), it ended up being a relatively short night. Joseph Friend, our feature, is an OLD friend – someone who goes back to the Year of the Rabbit back when I was crazy young, and he was even younger. I’m very flattered by how he talks about me as an influence – and I don’t think he’s even really making that up!

Great performances tonight. I especially enjoyed the New Guy – Rugan Lewis gave me slightly Mountain Goaty vibes and I didn’t want him to slip away so I nabbed him for a December feature slot. I apparently never took a photo of the list so … alas… it might be imperfect.

We do this every Tuesday. Signup before 7. I start at 7. 7112 Willow Avenue in Takoma Park, MD. robsopenmics.ilyaimy.com for more information. For information about the photos and videos and usage thereof, please click here!

Tonight w