What a weird week.  Since the end of April, which was one of the busiest I’ve ever had, my schedule has been blissfully activity-free.  Andrea’s wedding (at which I played cello) was touching and beautiful, and I spent the rest of the weekend lying low.

IrishBand’s singer and I were going to see a movie on Sunday night, but I got a mass text message from one of my actor friends saying that he was performing that night, and that everybody should come down.  I called Singer and said, “New plan for tonight.  We should go see this play.  My friend’s in it, and I have no idea what to expect, but the group wrote it, so I’m sure it’ll be good.”  He agreed, and I drove to his apartment to pick him up.  We went to the venue (not an ‘actual’ theater, but a room in the Eagles’ Lodge) a bit early to scope the place out.  Turned out we were too early, so we sat in the bar, had a couple of drinks and shared a basket of surprisingly delicious fries.  It was funny and a bit strange to be the youngest person there by about thirty years.

The show was inspirred by Busby Berkeley’s productions, and even used old piano music and quoted bits from movies.  It was really entertaining and fun.  My friend described it as a ‘farce’, with elements of burlesque.  There were dancing girls and a woman-pretending-to-be-a-man, and a gay boy, and forbidden love, and my friend, who somehow managed to incorporate bits of all of those elements.  It was great.

From there we walked across the street to the Sapphire Hotel, which is one of my favorite places.  We went there and waited for ActorFriend to join us after he changed his clothes and stuff.  He was meeting a woman friend for what Singer and I thought was a date, but it turned out that they were actually ex’s, and were meeting to catch up on each others’ lives.  They invited us to join them at a table next to theirs, which was better for conversing than our noisy table, so we slid it over and settled in for a great conversation, as well as delicious food and drinks.  I hadn’t seen my friend in quite a few months, and catching up was long overdue.  His friend turned out to be a singer-songwriter, and a very interesting person as well.  Here’s to many more evenings like that one.

Monday and Tuesday I was exhausted and pretty much slept the days away, but yesterday I woke up early and felt great after finally getting a full night’s sleep.  I called my friend J to invite her to the Japanese Garden, which she felt was too expensive, so I suggested the Chinese Garden, which I had a couple of complimentary passes for.  It was an offer she couldn’t refuse.

I hadn’t been there in years, but I used to have a membership there, which is how I got the free tickets.  A couple of months ago, I got a letter in the mail saying, ‘Come back!  Renew your membership’, et cetera, so I took the opportunity to take J, who hadn’t been there before.  Naturally, I brought my camera, and here are some of the results.

In one of the buildings was a chest of drawers with a jar full of numbered sticks on top of it.  The idea was that you shake the jar of sticks, and whichever one comes out first is the one you were meant to have.   Mine was number 23, so I found the drawer marked ’23′ and pulled out a single piece of paper, which read:

In case you’re one of the people who reads BFS&T from a feed or something, it says, “You have made a deep impression on someone dear to you.”  I love stuff like that, as you may already know.

Lovely place, lovely day.  From there, we left the car parked at the Garden and walked to the MAX train to ride downtown to the bank for cash, then walked back up to Old Town to an incredible little Thai cart for a super-cheap dinner, of which I have some left over and will happily finish tonight.  After that, we drove around aimlessly for a while, and I headed up to the Alphabet District in Northwest.  We both felt like walking some more, so I drove us to Macleay Park, where we ditched the car and hiked into the woods.  I took no pictures, because we were having a pretty deep conversation, and I wanted to pay attention to her.   We hiked a mile or so in, to the abandoned Stone House, climbed all over it, then turned back.

We left, exhausted, and I dropped her off at home, because I needed to learn a bunch of songs for tonight’s rehearsal with a new songwriter with whom I’ll be playing accordion occasionally.

That’s why I’ve been so absent from blogging lately; it’s because I’ve been out there living.

Time for Thai food!

This month has been one of the busiest I’ve ever had.  Recording and/or rehearsals wish IrishBand almost every night, and one night Andrea came to visit and rehearse a song she wrote for her wedding, which is happening on Friday.  I’ll be playing cello and her sister will be playing piano.  From there we went to dinner at Por Que No (one of the best and most authentic (and least expensive!) Mexican restaurants in town) and then went to have coffee and play Scrabble at Palio, one of my favorite little coffee shops.

She won, by the way, but it was really close.  330-something to 314.  There will be a rematch, but I’m not sure when, since we won’t have a chance to hang out again before her wedding, and then of course she’ll be going to Canada for another ceremony with her family and then back to Switzerland, where she lives.

A couple more nights of rehearsals followed, and then I headed up to Seattle on Friday to play bass with my friend Brandon’s classic rock band.  Super fun to play and hang out with him again.  In the morning we went to breakfast and then I raced the three hours’ drive home to Portland, in order that I’d be back to set up for the IrishBand show at 4:30.

The show was a complete blast.  It featured a pair of dancers, an aerialist, a ukelele player, a sword swallower/fire breather, a martial arts/juggling/comedy group (Nanda; check ‘em out.  They’re the coolest group ever, I promise you.), then IrishBand finished up with a set.  Oh, and then there was dancing for an hour or so after that.  It was a great time.  I’m not even going to attempt to describe everything, cause it would take too long, but my modus operandi is that if people do cool things in front of me while I’m holding a camera, it’s my duty to capture those moments.  Behind the scenes is where the real show always happens, anyway.

After partying for a few hours everything was set up and ready, we went out front and mingled a bit.

This picture is fuzzy (or was it just me?  har har) and terrible as far as quality goes, but at least you can get a sense of what the people and the main room were like that night. . .

. . .and then I handed my camera off to Whit, who took some pictures of the actual event while I climbed upstairs and sat in the balcony with the rest of IrishBand to stay out of sight of the audience and watch the show.

After Nanda were finished, we set up and rocked the house for about an hour.  Oh yeah. . .and then I danced.  Yes, believe it or not, it’s true.  I did some moonwalking (both forwards and backwards. . .dang right!) and a whole bunch of ‘normal’ dancing too.   A good time was had by all.  Those of us who were left at the end of the night had the pleasure of helping clean up the place and empty all of the risers and seats and everything out of it by loading them into trucks, but even that somehow ended up being a good time.

In other news, I’m going to see Yann frickin’ Tiersen (you know, who wrote the frickin’ Amelie soundtrack!) on Wednesday night here in little old frickin’ Portland.  And he’s not even playing at a huge venue, either, but the frickin’ Wonder Ballroom, which has about a 400-person capacity, and where I MYSELF HAVE PLAYED.  I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about this.  I play the accordion because of him.  It’s true.

Le sigh.

Yesterday I got a text message from RockShowGirl saying, “I don’t have to work today.  What are you up to?”  (I took the liberty of changing her ‘r u’ to ‘are you’, by the way.  You’re welcome.)  I called her back and we decided that a day trip was just what we needed.  We were originally thinking of going to Astoria, but she called back to say that it was warmer at the beach, so she suggested Oceanside, where I’d never been.  On the way is Cape Meares lighthouse, which I’ve also never seen, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity for some exploring.

First stop was Cape Meares, where you can see the top of the lighthouse from the walking path, which is odd.  We came around the corner and were startled to find that “Oh. . .that’s it right there. Crazy!”  The path takes you right up next to it, and then snakes around so you can enter the site.  The lighthouse turned out to be a cute li’l guy, too, not even forty feet tall.  (Click the pics to view them larger.)

Admission is free, so we climbed clear to the top.  (I know, right?  Can you believe it?  All that way. . .)  I took a few pictures, but the ones from inside the lighthouse structure were much better than the ones I got of the view.  See for yourself.

We didn’t spend too much time there, because we’d been driving for more than two hours over crazy roads paved with potholes, and then hiking around the lighthouse site, so by this time we were both getting really hungry and excited to get to the beach.  We got back in the car and headed the rest of the way to Oceanside, a town perched beautifully but precariously on the edge of a cliff, with one main road and about five hundred residents.  The great thing about going to the Oregon coast on a weekday is that wherever you go you will pretty much have the place to yourself, especially if you are off of the main highway.

Our first stop was Roseanna’s Cafe, where we shared an excellent lunch of clam chowder, salad, and a halibut burger.  We were the only customers for about half of our meal, when another couple arrived.  The place is excellent, and really cute, and I would highly recommend it.  They have lots of seafood and pasta dishes in the $15-20 range that gave us Pavlovian salivation responses while reading their descriptions, but both of us are on a pretty tight budget these days, so we put it on our Places-To-Come-Back-To-In-The-Future list.

Finally, with our bellies full and satisfied, it was time to walk down to the ocean.  The town of Oceanside is perched on a cliff, like I said, and the main beach near the town is run-of-the-mill as far as beaches go.  I mean, it’s pretty and everything, but as a long-time Oregon resident, I have to admit that I’m pretty spoiled.   The pictures I took of that part of the beach weren’t especially exciting either, quite frankly, so here’s a picture of the town instead that I took from there.

For the real beach experience of Oceanside, you walk through this tunnel. . .

. . .which, on the other side of the cliff, guides you onto a beautiful, secluded, rocky (and true–ha ha) beach that still feels very wild and unspoiled by civilization.  We hiked around for an hour or two, climbing on the rocks, exploring caves, and taking pictures until the wind chilled us sufficiently and we decided to head back, but the beach and the town are exquisite, and I recommend a trip there.  Here’s a little pictorial incentive for you.

Then it’s into the tunnel again. . .

. . .and you’re back in the real world of the twenty-first century.  We walked back to the car and took the opportunity to drive up through the hills and explore the rest of the little town.  All the roads except the main street are steep, narrow, serpentine one-lane switchbacks with signs posted saying how motor homes and trailers are not recommended.  The houses are beautiful, almost without exception.  In many of the yards were posted small signs telling us to boycott this certain place that was across the street from the restaurant at which we ate lunch.  A quick Internet search just revealed the reason why:  it’s now a strip club, and it seems that many of the residents are all up in arms about that.  Kinda funny, really.  For the record, I’m not a fan of strip clubs, but I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy.  If I don’t like a place, I won’t boycott it, I’ll just choose not to go there.

But that’s a story for another day.  This is the story of a beautiful place, on a beautiful day, with a great friend.

That might be the weirdest title I’ve ever written for a blog entry, but all I ask is that you bear with me on this one.

I got a text message from a friend yesterday that said, “Turn on NPR right now.”  I did, and heard a story about a bunch of bizarre medical conditions that afflict musicians, like that badge-of-honor rash that violinists get on the left side of their necks from rubbing a violin across it for years or decades.

I didn’t hear anything that would have caused my friend to write with such urgency, though, so after the story was over, I wrote back and said, “Caught a bit of it. . .musicians’ ailments.  What’d I miss?”

“Cello scrotum.  You need to hear the whole story.”

“Holy crap!”  I had to find out more.

As it turns out,  an English medical journal back in the 1970′s reported about a condition called ‘guitarist’s nipple’ that is (supposedly) an irritation caused by a guitar rubbing across your chest.  I suppose that’s assuming that you’re not wearing a shirt.  I’ve played guitar for many years, and my nipples are fine and dandy, thank you very much.  (TMI?  NEI?)  My ribs do go in a little bit on one side, where the top of the body of the guitar rests against your chest while you’re sitting down with it.  Oh yeah, and the calluses on my fingers are thick enough that I can touch a hot pan or something for a while and not feel it.  (“Mmmm, what’s that smell?  Smells like bacon.  Oh. . .it’s my finger.”)

So.  Anyway.

Around the time of said nipple affliction, this English doctor and her husband thought it would be funny if they one-upped that condition, so they dreamed up ‘cello scrotum’, which they said was chafing in the scrotal area.  This is, of course, impossible, because when you play the cello, you hold the instrument between your knees, which are spread far apart, which also means that your nether region is getting plenty of air, so there’s no opportunity for chafing.  Not to belabor the point, but. . .

. . .there, you see?  No chafing.  You DO get sore sometimes from sitting on the edge of a chair all the time, but that’s about it.  The cello is one of the most ergonomic instruments out there.

Apparently, though, the myth of scrotal chafing persisted for decades, until another journal mentioned the condition last December, which prompted the doctor to write to the journal and put the matter to rest once and for all.

The money quote of the article was this:   “Perhaps after 34 years, it’s time for us to confess that we invented cello scrotum.”

Here’s a link to the story.

I had a ball writing this entry, by the way, but ultimately I find this subject to be completely nuts.

It’s been quite a year, I have to say.  Going through and choosing entries was particularly difficult this time around.  I always enjoy looking backwards.  So much has happened this year that it had become a bit of a blur, quite frankly, and it was fun to revisit some of those experiences.  Others, however, weren’t nearly as much fun.  I could have made this entry about twice as long as it is.  There will be another separate entry for the ‘best pictures of 2008′ coming soon.

accordions, Decemberists, and EmeraldCity – This involves a night when I made a noticeable transition from fan to equal participant.

shock – This was one of the worst days of my entire life.

good news and truth – This was the end of said time.

Yakima trip, part one – This was quite possibly the worst Yakima trip ever, in which I lost a friend.

Tinkle – Tinkle is the name of a fictitious product; this entry describes a hilarious parody my friends and I made of sports drink commercials from the early 90′s.

on tour, day 3 – This was one of the best and most memorable days of my entire life.

my dinner with Andre – We read the screenplay in the play-reading group, and there are also some ruminations about why this movie meant so much to me.

‘six-six-five and one fucking half’ – This is a rock ‘n’ roll story from way back in the day.

errrr. . .hi, mom – I have to be honest; I really like this particular entry.

O, the hilarity ensues – ‘Good luck driving around with my dead, pregnant wife!’

please ban more books – The school district in the town in which I grew up turns out to be responsible for upholding a ban on a very famous book.  Glad I left that town.

litany – This was a hilarious repartee my friend and I shared.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for your support throughout this last year.  In case this somehow wasn’t enough for you, here’s the entry for the best entries of 2007.

Have a great new year!

OneYearAgo