beautiful, funny, sad and true

The other day I was parking near J’s place, and there was a red four-wheel-drive Jeep parked in front of a black four-door BMW, with just barely enough space for a Honda in between them.  It was tight, but I thought I could do it.  As it turned out, I wouldn’t normally have been able to make it, but for the fact that my car is so ridiculously low, and the Jeep is so ridiculously high.

The bumper of my car slid right underneath the Jeep’s bumper, and I glided into the spot without a scratch.  I had to capture the moment:

This hilarious two-minute video eliminates almost all of the dialogue from The Big Lebowski except for the various incarnations of the F-word. You’ve been warned.

I’m sorry you had to die. The thing is, I tried everything I could to NOT kill you. You were trapped behind the curtain, so I pushed it aside to let you out. I opened my bedroom door and turned on the light in the kitchen, MANY TIMES, to try and lure you out there so that I could shut the door and go to sleep. That tactic worked for your friend or brother or wife or whatever, but not for you. You kept flying into things and making that buzzing, flapping noise with your wings, and that shit kept me awake for hours just as I was drifting off to sleep, three or four times.

The thing you have to know about humans is that they get very irritable when they are deprived of sleep, and the more primeval parts of their brains become more active. When you stopped moving for a couple of seconds, I had already tried those other things, so I had no other choice but to squash you behind the curtain. I must admit that the sound you made when you fell dead on the windowsill was very satisfying to me, because it meant that I would finally be getting some well-deserved rest. Yesterday was very busy for me, you know, and this morning I’m driving to the beach, so I really needed that sleep.

Oh. . .and your friend/brother/wife? I killed him/her this morning. Just thought you should know. He/she was milling around on the counter in the kitchen while I was making breakfast, which is completely unacceptable. That’s another thing about humans; they get very testy regarding the preparation of their food. Some humans even get very fussy with EACH OTHER about the preparation of food. They think that things need to be cut a certain way, or washed a certain way, and many an argument has ensued. We can’t even work in a restaurant unless we’ve paid money and taken a little test to show that we know The Rules. Think about THAT. Well, I mean, think about that in your NEXT LIFE because you’re both dead now.

I’m going to try not to think about you while I’m in Astoria and Cannon Beach. The reason I say that is because I’m very tired, thanks to you, and that’s going to be affecting me all day, and maybe even tomorrow too. Whatever, you know? I’m gonna be having a good time (I think) and the weather is supposed to be beautiful, so I’ll be busy enjoying life, while you two are squashed in a paper towel in my garbage can.

Just remember that I tried hard to save you. It didn’t have to end that way.

OneYearAgo

Okay, so if you’re the kind of person who is bothered by the F-word, or the S-word, or by the mention of Satan, you’ll probably want to stop reading very soon.

For the rest of you, here we go!

Back in the day, when l still lived in Yakima, I was in a hard rock band that will remain nameless. On July 4, 1992 (no, of course I didn’t remember that date; I had to look it up on my guitarist friend’s MySpace page, because he actually has a picture from that show), we played a house party, and a heavy metal band (who will also remain nameless) opened for us. They had only been playing together for a short time, so they only had about six songs in their repertoire. That means they played their six songs, then we played for an hour or so, and then they played their six songs again, for the people who arrived late.

Those of us who were there for both sets got a real treat, because they played everything exactly the same, even down to the between-song banter. My favorite introduction, which I remember so well because I heard it twice, went like this:

“This next song is for all of you who, if you really knew anything about Satan, you’d shit your fucking pants. This song is called. . .’Six-Six-Five and One Fucking Half.’ “

That was the band’s cue to launch into the song’s slow, grinding riff. We had to put our hands over our mouths to stifle our laughter, especially after hearing it told the second time, with even more dramatic flair.

My favorite thing about that band, though, was the fact that the drummer was the only one with a sense of rhythm. If you counted off, ‘One, two, three four’, the bass player and the two guitarists would all come in at different times on the next ‘one.’ The only way they could manage to play together was visually, if those three guys were staring at the drummer. For example, if he would hit a certain cymbal, the rest of the band knew that it was time to play the main riff. When he hit another cymbal, it was time to do the second riff. It was completely bizarre, and funny, and it took quite a while to realize that that’s what they were doing.

I wonder what those guys are doing now. The only one whose name I can recall is the singer. Something tells me that he’s the only member of that group who’s still involved with music.

And what happened to the group I was in, you may ask? Well, you’ll be glad to know that my guitarist friend is very busy these days, living in Seattle, and is booked clear into the New Year. The singer, I have no idea. I’ve looked him up from time to time, but so far it’s been to no avail. He was always a bit of a technophobe, and a suspicious one at that, so I imagine that he’s kept himself off of the usual online places. The drummer actually lives here in Portland and is married, but when he lived in Yakima, he had a kid with a horrible woman who bled him dry and completely devoured his soul. (I say that about very few people, but this woman was a leech, and a despicable human being.) Drummer sold his drums, gave her his car (which she and her drug-addicted boyfriend later wrecked), paid for her to live in an apartment, and even paid for her other daughter’s expenses as well. It just went on and on.

And me? Well, I’m doing all of the stuff I’m doing now, with no looking back, except to recount stories such as these, with a shudder and a huge sigh of relief.

OneYearAgo