beautiful, funny, sad & true

Tonight was the best play-reading group night ever.

The play we read tonight was the one about Leon Theremin, written by one of the members of the group, and I got to play a real theremin. The music and sound effects were very much scripted into this play, in a way that they have not been in the other plays we’ve read. Not in the notation sense, but there were cues like, “Tuning” or “Ether”, or the actors will say, “What’s that sound?” or “Dance, and your body will control the instrument,” and that was my cue to make an appropriate sound happen. Total blast.  I also got the opportunity to read the part of a Soviet bureaucrat, which I’ve said a million times is fun to do.

Saussha came to the reading with me, and she expected to just sit and watch the proceedings, but instead she got asked to read the part of Theremin’s (second?) wife Lavinia, a Jamaican socialite and professional dancer who lived in Russia and New York. Talk about a challenge!  But she pulled it off adeptly, like the total professional that she is.

A good time was had by all.  I know I’ve already mentioned how much I love this group. . .but tonight was the most fun I’ve had yet.

Pretty dang good weekend.

Spent Friday evening with Joan.  We intended to watch a movie, but it took so long to make dinner, and we had such a late start, that she ended up leaving after that.  Saturday I cleaned my apartment and did about a million loads of laundry, then I had a gig with Susie, and we stayed out too late drinking and talking.  Sunday I talked on the phone a lot, and then finally got the new tubes put on my bike.  Went to meet Joan again after all that, and we went to a good, cheap sushi place on Northwest 21st, then decided to go see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  It was a very touching and emotional movie; many people in the audience were sniffling or choked up.  I certainly was.  I can’t wait to read the book, and I highly recommend the movie.

Yesterday I took the day off from work, in order to play accordion on a radio show with Breanna and BassistChris for the Local Music Spotlight show.  As soon as Breanna posts the song on her MySpace page, I’ll post a link to it here for you to check out.

When you first walk into the building, there are five large-screen televisions in the lobby.  I turned to Chris and gestured to them.  “Wow, there sure a a lot of TV’s for a radio station,” and then we both turned around to see the huge sign proclaiming NewsChannel 8, the NBC TV affiliate.

We played two songs, and were done and out of there in about forty-five minutes, with CD in hand.  Apparently the songs will start being played on the air in June, at approximately the same time that the radio station’s compilation CD – on which one of Breanna’s songs will be featured – will be released.  After we were done, we went and had sushi at the same place Joan and I had been to the day before.   That’s how good it was.

I rode my bike to work today, which was the first time I’ve been on a bike in about two years.  It felt great.  That is, it WOULD have felt great if I’d eaten dinner last night, and drunk any water at all, and gotten more than four hours of sleep.  I totally bonked as soon as I got to work, and instantly gulped down three bottles of water before even having to use the bathroom once.  (Don’t you just love my blog?)  Ate a huge chicken burrito for lunch, and kept drinking water for the rest of the day, which made the ride home MUCH easier.  I’m not gonna lie, though.  I’m pathetically and comically lazy and out of shape, ever since I got my car.  But not anymore.  It’s a whole new spring, and time to shake off this lethargic winter.  This experience was a reminder that there’s a right way to exercise, and that I have to plan in advance in order to have enough energy reserves to do what I want my body to do.  Looking forward to a lot more riding!

And much more spring.  After many freezing weeks, it looks like spring is finally going to come, and the weekend is supposed to be hot and beautiful.  I, however, will be in Port Townsend, Washington, to play accordion with Fenbi, the Irish band.  I’m sure it’ll be just as beautiful up there.  Love that town.  The best pastry shop I’ve ever been to in my entire life is there.  Why, that would be the Tyler Street Coffee House; I’m glad you asked.   If I lived in Port Townsend, I’m sure I’d weigh four hundred pounds from eating there all the time.  So f’ing good.

Today at work, a friend surprised me by giving me six CD’s.  They’re almost all by groups I’ve never heard of, too, which makes it even more exciting.

I find myself, again, at a loss of how to tie up all these little loose ends, and come up with a really good name for this entry.

Well, since this was just a plain old good weekend, all around, I suppose that means that the name should be. . .

I got an e-mail the other day from someone I haven’t heard from in about four months. It was nice to hear from her. She wrote me because she saw a web site that reminded her of me, and she wanted to share it. The guy who made the web site is an artist and a photographer, and he had a funny and slightly odd (but honest enough) idea, which was to just ask people for money, directly, so that he can go do things. In return, the person will get a letter, or a photograph, or a smallish gift, or even one of his art works, in exchange for their patronage.

And his scope is broad, too. If you send him a dollar, he’ll ‘sit in silence and think about you’ for one minute, and if you send him $4,444.00, he’ll go to the island of St. Helena and ‘take a picture of the sky and mail it to you from there. Nothing else.’ Some of his ventures are more altruistic than others, and those are the ones that seem to be the most successful. I mean, if most people have an extra four grand lying around, they’ll take themselves to St. Helena, and take a million pictures of everything, but lots of people like the idea of giving away chocolate chip cookies to strangers. I think it was his idea of buying and handing out copies of the Little Prince outside of the Stock Exchange that reminded my friend of me.

What I love about this idea is its simple ingenuity. He’s very honest about what he’s doing. It seems like he’s a slightly lonely but decent guy, who’s stumbled upon an unusual and cool way to reach out to people, and to do his art at the same time.

So I say gawd bless him. I plan to follow up on him, and I’ll even go so far as to post a link to his page in my blogroll, to make it easier for all of us to chart his progress.

Here’s the link to his page.

I woke up this morning with this ancient They Might Be Giants song burning a hole in my skull.

I thought it would make for better (and funnier!) reading, if I would edit it a bit, and then just turn it into a miniature short story.

A woman came up to me and said, “I’d like to poison your mind with wrong ideas that appeal to you, though I am not unkind.” She looked at me; I looked at something written across her scalp, and these are the words that it faintly said, as I tried to call for help:

“There’s only one thing that I know how to do well, and I’ve often been told that you only can do what you know how to do well, and thats be you. Be what you’re like. Be like yourself. And so I’m having a wonderful time, but I’d rather be whistling in the dark.”

A man came up to me and said, “I’d like to change your mind by hitting it with a rock, though I am not unkind.” We laughed at his little joke, and then I happily walked away and hit my head on the wall of the jail, where the two of us live today.

There’s only one thing that I like, and that is whistling in the dark.

Hilarious. If I was any kind of graphic designer, I’d have found a picture of a woman with a shaved head, and Photoshopped that quote around her scalp in Gothic calligraphy. (I know, I know, ‘photoshopped’ isn’t a real verb! It’s called artistic license.) Perhaps that kind of picture manipulation is a skill that you have, and you’d like to take on this little project. Perhaps you’re a tattoo artist, and you will one day be lucky enough to find some woman with a shaved head who would like to have “There’s only one thing I know how to do well. . .”, et cetera, emblazoned on her head forever. You just never know.

After all this, of course, I wanted to know what the phrase ‘whistling in the dark’ really means. A quick search showed that it means “confident that something good will happen when it is not at all likely.”

Hunh.

What a strange morning this is already turning out to be. And now it’s time to eat breakfast and pack for my trip to Seattle.

Speaking of which, through a beautiful example of irony, my brother and his family, who live in Seattle–and whose house I’m staying at–will be in Portland this weekend for a little getaway, so that means I’m going to be up in their town while they’re down here in my town at the same time.

Praise the Lord for the gift of laughter.

Cracked me up; I had to share it.

OneYearAgo