My friend B and I are sitting in his gray Mazda pickup truck in the parking lot of my old apartment building in northeast Portland.  The two of us are getting ready to go somewhere.  It’s twilight; the sun has gone down, and the sky is still light, but it’s quickly darkening and a few bright stars are clearly visible.

He turns and looks out the rear window at the bed of his truck, and at the smallish grassy area just beyond the parking lot, on the edge of the hillside.  “I wish those guys wouldn’t do that,” B says.  “I wish they wouldn’t leave their outdoor gas burners on all night.  I’ve talked to them about it before, but they keep doing it.”  I turn and look then.  The back of his truck is completely blackened and burned away, and the tailgate is missing.  He always backs into the parking spot, because the front of the truck is where the engine is, thereby making the front much more important, and it probably won’t run anymore if it gets burned the way the back of the truck is.

“Look,” I say, facing to our left and pointing in the direction of downtown.  “Look at all the buildings that are on fire.”

“You’ve never said that before,” he says.

“I know,” I say, nonchalantly.  “I thought maybe I had, but then I realized I hadn’t.”  We look at the burning buildings, multiple blocks apart from each other, from downtown clear out to my neighborhood, all burning in the same way.  I point out the buildings and count them.  “How many are there?  Let’s see. . .three. . .four. . .five. . .six?  It looks like they’re all along Broadway [Street].”

Suddenly I notice some flames flickering at the tops of the bamboo trees next to the parking lot, and the little sandwich board sign advertising ‘apartment for rent’ is burning too.  “Look at that!” I say.  “It’s getting closer now.  We should tell somebody about this.”

We sit in silence and watch the flames for an incredibly uncomfortable amount of time.

* * * * *

My alarm clock went off just then, and I almost had a heart attack.

While writing this, I was struck by the way we decided, ‘We should tell somebody about this,’ and then just sat and watched for such a long time.  It had an almost Waiting-For-Godot aspect about it; in fact the entire dream sorta did.

VLADIMIR:  We can still part, if you think it would be better.

ESTRAGON:   It’s not worthwhile now.
Silence.

VLADIMIR:   No, it’s not worthwhile now.
Silence.

ESTRAGON:   Well, shall we go?

VLADIMIR:   Yes, let’s go.
They do not move.

After over a year of the black template, it was time for a change around here.

I finally stumbled across a new template that I liked, after much searching.  I don’t like everything about it (specifically some of the fonts; I’m trying to figure out how to change them) and I had to change the header to keep it from changing away from the color bar to other images.  The original also has a biplane, a night sky, and a Japanese rising sun, all of which have exactly nothing to do with this blog, so they’re gone now.

Nice to see a brighter, happier version of BFST, I have to admit.  I loved the old design, but in these dark times I wanted something a bit more cheerful.  Just one more example of my ‘Out With Crappy Old 2008, Cause Here Comes 2009!’ ethos.

I also took the opportunity to check in on Twitter and see if they’ve made any changes too.  Turns out they have, as you may have noticed.  I went for the Flash version this time.  Let me know if you have difficulty seeing it.  Actually, y’know what?  I take that back.  Just go download a newer version of Flash, would you?  Sheesh.

I volunteered to go in to work for a couple of hours of overtime this afternoon, which I almost never do.  Some people live to work, and others work to live.  I’m definitely in the latter category, but this time I thought a couple hours here and there would be a good idea to improve my reputation around the office a little.

Came across a new blog today, thanks to Twitter, that I really enjoy.  It’s called the list of now, and I’m adding it to my blogroll, but I also wanted to share it with you publicly and give her a little ‘shout out’ or whatever the kids these days are calling them.

OneYearAgo

Incidentally, I just realized that BFST has been around long enough that I can start doing TwoYearsAgo now.  Cool.

Riding my bike home from work at night:  check.
Riding without lights of any kind:  check.
Riding without a helmet:  check.
Riding home at night, without lights or helmet, while wearing a black hoodie:  check.
Riding home at night, no lights or helmet, with said black hoodie, carrying a bag of groceries:  check.

Yup, I’m officially an idiot.

In other news, IrishBand is doing a write-in interview for MessengerGodAlternativeNewspaper.  I need to somehow get enough energy tonight to whip up some compelling, insightful, and hopefully witty and intelligent answers to their questions, many of which are political in nature, rather than just musical, so they’re not ones I can just answer automatically.

First of all, dinner.  I’m going to attempt stuffed bell peppers, but I only have energy for chips and salsa.  Perhaps some chips and salsa while I’m making the stuffed peppers.  Hmmm. . .I like the sound of that.

My friend and I went to see the movie Tell No One tonight.  It was a really good murder mystery, clear up until the ending, when it suddenly turned into a Scooby Doo episode.  One of the characters started doing that thing where he points a gun at the main character and starts talking at him and revealing everything.  You know; ‘I did it.  It was ME.  That’s right, ME.  I’m gonna spell out exactly how and why I did it, too, because I love the sound of my own voice.’  Yawn.

The real event of the night happened after we left, and I turned my phone back on.  I had a text message waiting for me, saying that the community access TV station in Yakima had just played a concert video of my old band.  And by ‘old’ I mean twenty years old.   The person who texted me was another member of the band, who lives here in the Portland area now.  I called him right away, and we laughed about the whole thing.  Turns out that his brother, who still lives in Yakima, saw the video and called my bandmate to tell him about it.  I’m amazed that the station even has any of those old tapes anymore, let alone still plays them.  Pretty hilarious, although we WERE described as a ‘juggernaut’, and ‘Central Washington’s rockin’ machine.’  So there.

This is another one of those times when I wish I had a way to get videos onto my computer, because I’d love to be able to share some of that stuff with you, but I have no way to copy VHS tapes to video files.   Argh.  Well, I may not be able to share that particular video, but I can share a picture from our very first show.  I was about seventeen in this picture, working on Mullet Number One.

You’re welcome.

I really wish I still had that guitar, by the way.  That was my first one, and it turned out to be pretty decent, although I didn’t know it at the time.  One of my friends joined the Navy and bought it from me.  That was the idea, anyway, because he never did send me the check.  Thanks, David Lowry.  Two hundred bucks down the crapper.   Hope you had a good time with my guitar.

Actually, y’know what?  I should probably go easy on him.  For all I know, he always meant to send the money, but got deployed overseas and lost my address or something.   It’s all water under the metaphorical bridge, anyway, but it would sure be great to get an out-of-the-blue check for two hundred dollars one of these days, especially with times being the way they are.

There’ll be plenty more to come on this subject, because this is the twentieth anniversary of our band’s rise to the heights, and our plunge to the depths.  Okay, I may be exaggerating just a little bit, but I CAN promise that there are good stories to come about the band.

I was going to say ‘stay tuned’, but A) that’s cheesy, and B) that’s the name of one of our songs, the lyrics for which were written by my high school Spanish teacher, who had some music written and actually asked me if we’d be interested in collaborating on a song with him.  We agreed, because he was the cool teacher, and the group of us created a pretty dang catchy song.  In retrospect, it’s very reminiscent of Bon Jovi.  We played it twice; once at a school assembly, and once at one of our regular shows, too, which was a lame ‘battle of the bands’ with a forgettable rival band, which I’m gonna go ahead and say that we won, even though it wasn’t a big deal at all, but this is my blog, dang it, and history is told by the winners, as Howard Zinn would say.

Wow.  Nothing like using Howard Zinn to bolster the reputation of the band you were in twenty years ago.  If HZ was dead, I’m sure he’d be rolling over in his grave right about now.

As I promised, here are my favorite pictures from this past year, in no particular order.

The landscape between Utah and Idaho is vast, and seems quintessentially American somehow.

This picture was taken outside the studio when we were mixing Andrea’s CD.  There had been a freak snowstorm overnight, and we all woke up to this beautiful scene. Amazingly, the snow was all gone by the afternoon.  We finished mixing the songs, and then I drove back to Portland and went on a great first date.  That was a good day.

Andrea had just read and been inspired by the book Blue Like Jazz, and she wanted to take a little hike around the campus of the college here in town in which the book is set. Though it has changed in the decades since the book was written, this was and still is a beautiful place to hike and explore.

This is one of my favorite locations to take pictures.  It’s an abandoned cannery town along the Columbia river. Sorry about the small size.

When Breanna and Justin and I were on tour in Reno, Justin was getting his CD mixed in Portland, and the guy would send Justin mixes via e-mail, for him either to approve or to request some small changes. After our show, he and Bre were listening to the final mixes, so I left and walked around for an hour, and took about a million pictures of the city at night.  Came back and listened for a while, and when they went to bed, our host and I stayed up talking for another hour and a half afterwards. That was my favorite day (and night) of the tour.

ViolinistKarlee, me, Breanna and Justin on our tour, after our show in Redding.  This picture just puts a smile on my face every time I see it.  Karlee is such a lil thug.

This is my car, all loaded up with instruments to go to the studio and record my parts for Andrea’s CD.  I’m always amazed at just how much stuff this car can carry, despite its diminutive size.

ChefDave, in an instantly classic pose.  I love the way the light is gleaming off the knife.  Incidentally, you owe to it yourself to eat at the Sego Lily Cafe in Bountiful, Utah, by the way, next time you’re there.  Dave’s food is phenomenal.

There are lots of abandoned military bunkers outside Port Townsend, Washington, and I could easily spend a weekend just taking pictures of them. I love the way the light interacts and contrasts from room to room.

Ah, beautiful Astoria, Oregon, seen from the highest point in town.  That’s another place that provides an almost endless supply of photographic opportunities.

This picture I didn’t take, but it’s such a classic that it warranted inclusion on the best pictures of the year.  It’s the Cinemagic theater here in Portland, when they were in transition from the movie Hancock to the Dark Knight, and this was the sign change, in progress.

I love looking back over the year in this way. Even though this was a particularly difficult, painful, and challenging year, there were certainly plenty of good times too.

Here’s to a better 2009, though.