Here’s something you’ve probably never seen: a jazzy version of Bobby Troup’s “Route 66″ that features a lute.

The hot picking is by Peter Autschbach, and the singing is by Lucy Wende.

I don’t subscribe to the notion that all publicity is good publicity. Exhibit A is a story out of Tracy, Calif., in which the town’s Veterans Park being built was changed from a promised patriotic theme to a Route 66 theme.

Here’s the initial story from the Tracy Press. Here’s a follow-up from a local CBS affiliate. It seems the park’s theme was changed for reasons no one seems to know — except that the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.

I don’t think hardly anyone would think that Route 66 is unpatriotic. However, if the local government pledges to residents a specific patriotic theme, give it to them. A Route 66 connection such as this isn’t needed if there are hurt feelings and broken promises.

The curious thing is that Tracy is in northern California — hundreds of miles from the Mother Road. So there’s no local connection to Route 66 whatsoever.

I received an e-mail from Phil Yeh, creator of the newly published “Dinosaurs Across Route 66″ comic book. It looks like he’s doing more than just publishing a salute to the Mother Road. Yeh said:

I am planning to cover much of old Route 66 from January to April in 2008 and would love to paint a mural and do some events in Tulsa as well.  I have already sent off a packet of material about our work to the librarian in Oklahoma City. Will Rogers is one of my heroes and he is featured in the book as well as Woody Guthrie (another great hero of mine) — I am very very interested in coming back to Oklahoma in March as I head up to Chicago, the city of my birth.

If you can mention that we speak in schools, libraries, and community centers to people from 5 to 105 — that would be wonderful.  I also paint murals on buses, trucks, bookmobiles, billboards, etc and portable sheets of foamcore in public spaces all over the world and we very much would love to come back to Oklahoma in ‘08 and do some more murals.

Yeh’s Web site is here. If you want Yeh to come to your library along Route 66 this spring, contact information is here.

I’ll have more about his comic book when I get it.

The 1971 cult film “Two-Lane Blacktop,” which starred a young James Taylor and was shot in several spots on Route 66, was released a few days ago as a two-disc set by the Criterion Collection.

Amazon.com has it here for $29.99, a discount of about 10 bucks.

Warren Clements of the Toronto Globe and Mail has a good overview of the film. Seeing it a few years ago, I found it tedious and even a bit sleazy — the romantic interest “The Girl” looked like she was barely out of middle school. The car was cool, though.

The film is for Route 66 completists only.

Here’s the film’s original trailer: