A View from the Edge: Lou's Kazoos

I often talk about the activities at the resort where we stay for the winter in Arizona. One of the things we enjoy is "Music in the Courtyard". Who wouldn't enjoy sitting outside enjoying the beautiful sunshine, listening to great music, swigging pitchers of beer or margaritas, (hey - it's 5:00 SOMEWHERE). Heck, you don't even HAVE to drink alcohol to have a great time! Just "sitting with my peeps and chilling" as they say, is a great time!

The other day the band, "North Star" was going to perform.

Two out of the three members are residents of our park. They are a very popular band and we knew we had to get to the courtyard early in order to get a table. Although the music didn't start until 3:00, all my friends arrived at 12:30. We ordered lunch from the Cactus Grill located right in the courtyard. It can't get better than that, folks!

After lunch we played a few games of LCR.

Did you ever play it? It's very simple, and even little kids can play. There are three dice. Each die is marked with "L", "C", "R", and black dots. Each person starts out with three disks (which come with the game. We were playing with pennies - could play with higher denominations). Roll the dice - say it comes up with 2 L's and 1 r that means you pay 2 disks or pennies to the person to your left, 1 to your right. If it came up 1 c and two dots, you pay to the center and get to keep two. Anyway, I won't get into all the rules, but that's the basic concept. Easy peasy, right?

Between playing the game and just yapping, the time flew by fast. The courtyard was filled with wall-to-wall people.

Steve is the lead singer and is a very personable guy. He gets along well with the crowd and is very well liked.

People like to get up and line dance,

Dance as couples,

Or in a group.

A little birdie told me that there was going to be two "special" performances that day. My presence was requested to take pictures.

The first "special" was that North Star was going to perform Toby Keith's song, "Red Solo Cup".

Our park provided the red solo cups! Here's our Activities Director passing out the cups.

A volunteer helping to pass out the cups.

And here is the crowd raising their red solo cups.

Let's have a party! Red solo cup! You fill me up!

The second "surprise" of the day was that Lou's Kazoos was doing a "flash mob" - with kazoos. You heard me. When the band took a break, the lead kazoo player walked into the crowd and started playing the opening chords to "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash. Then another player joined him, and another, and so on. Watch the video that I filmed. It was planned that if they received any request - they would play the only other song they knew - Jingle Bells!