beautiful, funny, sad & true

The night of plays. . .was awesome. Definitely one of the most fun and interesting things I’ve ever been a part of. No pics of the actual play yet, but here’s one of the cast-and-crew ‘after’ party.

The night was so much fun that words actually fail me. I made a new Seattle friend at that party. We’re there in the back left corner (I’m the short one dressed all in black), and I think you can tell by our posture that we’d rather be talking to each other than to the person we were talking with right then.

I washed my car for the first time in ages on Saturday, then today it rained AND I parked under a tree, so it’s already covered with crap again. But even that looks much better than it did before. Hopefully the rainstorms will come again tonight and wash it again for me.

I have a couple more days of down time to enjoy, and a play reading night, and then I’m busy with mixing and gigs and helping friends move and more gigs, and a trip to Yakima for a wedding, and all kinds of other stuff, every day and night for the next two weeks.

I need to learn how to end my blog entries. I’ve learned how to name them, now I just need to learn how to end them, and tie everything together in a nice way. I feel like some of them have been abrupt or left you hanging.

Not this one, though. This one has a neat, tidy little ending, if I do say so myself.

OneYearAgo

Tonight is the play!

Very exciting! Last night I went straight from work to rehearsal, by way of home to grab the cello, accordion and toy piano. Rehearsal was scheduled for 6:00, but since I went the ‘smart’ way this time, instead of the rush-hour freeways, I actually made it there by 5:30. So many people were late or stuck in traffic, however, that we ended up starting at 7:00 instead.

We ran through the entire program twice, stopping occasionally to work out a blocking issue or a scene transition. I’m set up behind the curtain at the back of the stage, and I’m hanging out there pretty much the entire time, rearranging instruments and figuring out what I’m going to play for the upcoming scene. I’m pretty much improvising the music between scenes, but not for the plays that I’m actually in. Those two are pretty loose, but I do tend to play the same thing, because we needed to have everything match.

So we got through with the second run-through at 11:20, and the theater’s alarm goes off at 11:30, so we had to scramble to get clothes changed and get out of there before that happened. I got home about midnight, completely exhausted. Woke up early this morning and instantly had to do two loads of laundry, because all of my good black clothes were dirty.

It’s a sunny and beautiful day in Portland today, so I took the opportunity to wash my poor, dirty little car. It’s actually red again now. If I had more time I’d vacuum it too, but I need to relax, get cleaned up and head out to get set up for the show. I’m really looking forward to it, on its own, but there will also be a ton of friends coming, some of whom I haven’t seen for quite a while, so it promises to be an extra-super-mega-wonderful evening.

Oh yeah. . .there have been lots of people taking pictures throughout the process, so I imagine that I’ll be able to get my hands on some and post them on here before too long.

OneYearAgo

This month is effing crazy.

First twelve days of the month, I have only one day with nothing extracurricular planned. Then I have a few blissful days of nothing–besides work, that is–before the craziness starts in again. From the 16th on, I have only four ‘me’ days.

It’s like, play rehearsal, play rehearsal, gig, play rehearsal, play rehearsal, actual play, nothingnothingnothing, gig, out of town to mix a CD, friend’s birthday, gig, gig, gig, out of town to be best man in friend’s wedding, nothingnothingnothing.

So that’s why I’ve been a little more scarce lately. I’ve been traveling at close to light speed for this whole month.

OneYearAgo

At some point yesterday, the conversation turned to Dumb or Funny Things We Said When We Were Kids.

You know, the old standards like, ‘I know you are, but what am I?’ or ‘Same to YOU but more OF it.’ And who could forget the time-honored older brother classic, ‘Why are you always hitting yourself?’ As an older brother myself, I have to say that no one tells you about that one. It’s not as if there’s a group of Freemasons who roam the streets looking for young boys, and when they find you, they pull you aside and whisper the joke to you. Nope, it just pops into your head one day–as if by divine intervention–and you realize that you alone have just created the newest, funniest joke in the history of jokes. You’re not hitting him, he’s actually doing it to himself. You’re just trying to figure out why, and ‘glean what afflicts him’, as Tom Stoppard would say.

‘I’m rubber and you’re glue; bounces off me and sticks to you’ was another great one, and then later in the evening, as I was thinking about this conversation, I remembered a childrens’ song that seems to be sung slightly differently in different regions of the country. You’ll know it, so I’m not even going to name it, but I’m interested to know if you know a different version of it.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, we all used to sing it this way:

Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts

Mutilated monkey meat

Chopped-up baby parakeet

Lukewarm vomit floatin’ down the street

And me without my spoon (but I’ve got a straw!)

I’ve heard it a bunch of different ways, but as I’m writing this, I can’t remember any of the variations. Maybe you can help me remember some?

Then, of course, there was the infamous F.A.G./M.A.G. scenario, which I’ve already written about. I half-expect that one to turn up in a movie.

When you’re a teenager, all bets are off. You never know WHAT is going to come flying out of your mouth at any given time. My favorite example (and I use the word ‘favorite’ loosely) is when I came home one day to find my brother and his friend were playing a video game; I believe it was Baseball on the Sega Genesis. The score was some ridiculously high number to nothing, and to the person who was losing, I laughed and said, “Man, you’re getting your butt fuckin’ slaughtered.” Both my brother and his friend burst out laughing. They still remember that vividly, by the way, and they like to remind me about it to this day, all these twenty-some years later.

How the heck did I end up telling that?

Well, I guess if you liked that one, then you’ll be glad to know that there are plenty more like it. If you didn’t. . .well. . .there are still plenty more like it.

And I really would like to know if you can remember some other variation of Gopher Guts, and if you remember some of those other dumb phrases that we all thought were so brilliant back in the day.

Oh yeah. . .and here’s one more category I ask you to also be thinking about; Changed Acronyms. For example, when my brother and I would see commercials for TCBY–which stood for “The Country’s Best Yogurt” or something equally innocuous–we’d say, “Too Crusty Butt Yogurt,” and laugh like hyenas. And not just once, either, but multiple times.

So yeah. . .just be thinking about those things, if you would, please. Thank you.

And now I’m going to change my laundry loads, take a nap, and then play the cello for a while, to warm up a bit before the show tonight.

A couple of weeks ago, I made a passing reference to the fact that the BMW 2002 is my favorite car. Since then, this blog has gotten an incredible number of hits from people who are doing Google searches for “BMW 2002”. I mean, it makes sense, but if I’d known how many hits I’d get, I would’ve included that little tidbit a long time ago, along with others like music, sex, the Beatles, Japan, France, Ralph Nader, guitars, Oriental rugs, sushi, Mellotrons, Chamberlins, Haruki Murakami, Jon Brion, cuddling, This American Life, and countless other references to things that I’m interested in.

Who knew that such an innocuous reference would generate so much traffic?

Word to the wise, fellow bloggers. . .word to the wise.