beautiful, funny, sad & true

In my quest for material to use in my 80’s Röck Blög series, I came across a funny web site about the ten ‘eightiest’ movies, called The Decade of Rad.

Here’s a sample, from the description of “Over The Top”. You know, the movie in which Sylvester Stallone is the arm wrestler:

This is THE arm wrestling movie. In the ‘80s, movie executives didn’t make a film about every single possible subject matter, but it wasn’t due to a lack of trying. “Gentlemen, have we done a picture about lawn darts yet? How about. . .C. Thomas Howell leads a group of teen lawn darters to save a. . .wildlife refuge. No, a salad bar. Speaking of bars, what if a robot entered the Olympics as a pole vaulter? Why am I phrasing that as a question? Make it happen.”

For the purpose of continuity with my 80’s Röck theme–and though the article conveniently fails to mention it–the theme song from this movie is the first time Eddie Van Halen and Sammy Hagar collaborated on a recording. How 80’s is THAT?

It seems that I’m not alone; these last couple of weeks have been extremely strange and emotional for almost everyone. Unfortunately, the things that have been happening are not subjects that are appropriate for me to write about here, especially not with a certain someone slithering around. Family issues, friend issues, money issues…all seem to be par for the course at the same time. I suppose you know what they say about rain.

Let’s hope the worst is over.

Here’s a short list of some statistics for the week, though. It certainly ain’t all bad, either, by any stretch of the imagination:

• number of distressing phone calls from close friends in tears: 3
• number of best-in-my-whole-life drum recording sessions: 2
  
• number of cockroaches seen in my building: 1
• number of cockroaches seen in my apartment: ZERO
• number of days home sick from work last week: 2
• number of excellent Wes Anderson movies seen in the theater: 1
• number of excellent new anime’s I’ve watched online, for free: 4
• number of nights in which I got fewer than three hours of sleep: 3
• number of interesting and deep phone conversations, today alone: 3
• number of hilarious conversations today involving Hitler’s love life: 1

Clearly, if I’m able to incorporate Hitler–let alone his love life–back into my humor lexicon, I’m starting to feel like my usual self. I mean (with all due respect), the subjects of brain cancer and full-blown AIDS can almost always provide good fodder for comedy, but I generally have to be feeling at my tippy top in order to find humor in Hitler.

So. Moving on.

I’ve finally been feeling like writing again lately, and by that I mean writing about real and important subjects. Six months or so ago, I was poking around online, trying to find out information about all my old favorite guitarists and bands from the 80’s. I spent many hours sitting here alone, laughing out loud at the ridiculous clothes and videos, and of course, the music. But at the same time, it was a little more complicated than that, because I could still see and hear what I liked about them back in the day. Ever since that night, I’ve had the thought in the back of my mind that it would be fun to write a series of blog entries about some of those people and what my thoughts about them were, both then and now. Naturally, I would put up whatever videos I could find, so that you too could get in on the fun.

I’ve also needed to create a music-related e-mail list for a while now, so that people who are interested can keep up with my gigging and recording schedule, and this seems like the perfect time to do it.

But definitely check back here for the Eighties Röck Blög or whatever I end up calling it. I think that’ll be a fun project.

Starting tomorrow, one of my New Year’s resolutions is coming true.

It’s the private one, so don’t expect me to elaborate too much, but I will say that it’s a big one, and that it’s something I’ve done before, and that it changed my life dramatically. Now if I could only get the puddle of water off the floor of my car, I’d be very happy indeed.

I never did shake off that dream yesterday. I came home, watched “Boogie Nights”, and then called my brother’s wife. Both of their kids were asleep, so we were able to talk for about an hour, which was really nice. We haven’t had that kind of luxury for quite a while.

When I did finally go to sleep, I had another dream–too short to warrant an entire entry of its own–in which BoringFish and I were together, and we decided to get married. (“Not right now, but–y’know–in the future.“) Isn’t that funny? Two dreams about the same person, two nights in a row.

This afternoon was rehearsal with Susie Blue and GuitaristJason. I played accordion and cello. We have a few shows coming up in January and February–at great venues like the Doug Fir and Mississippi Studios–and it’s been ages since we played together. Sounded great and felt great, and I’m really excited for this round of gigs.

Tonight is SSF’s birthday party. A bunch of us are going to get sushi at her favorite sushi restaurant, Kappaya, and then we’re going bowling. It promises to be a blast.

I’ll keep you posted as some of the other resolutions are met. Right now, though, I’d better ‘motor’ (remember the movie Heathers?) if I’m gonna make it to the sushi place on time.

Yesterday was just. . .a great day. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been able to say that.

I took the day off from work, and slept in until ten-thirty. Around eleven, Breanna and the other two band members came to my place to rehearse. We sounded great and had fun, as per usual, so we drove down to Wilsonville to do the radio show. I was expecting a little pod-cast out of someone’s house, but boy, was I in for a surprise.

It was in a house, it’s true, but once we got inside and went upstairs, we were in a professional radio studio. Couches, chairs, two computers, a satellite uplink, a mixing board, speakers everywhere, and one huge desk. The host, Mitchell, was sixteen years old.

If you didn’t see him, you’d never know that he’s sixteen. He sounds forty. Really deep voice, with complete confidence; he’s a total pro. He told us he’s been doing the show professionally since he was ten. Ten! AND he’s had some of the biggest-name people in country music on his show. It’s not some cheesy little show, either; he’s on XM, and lots of NPR affiliates and commercial stations all across the country. Crazy!

Their house, coincidentally enough, was in the same subdivision of Wilsonville where MostRecentExGirlfriend’s uncle and aunt–who I’m still friends with, and who actually read this blog (Hi, TFG & 9!)–live, so I went over there afterwards. Her uncle was at work, but aunt and I drank tea and talked for almost two hours, and had a tremendous time.

I came home long enough to change my clothes, and then I had to get over to the southeast part of town for one of the play readings. Instead of getting stuck in horrible rush-hour traffic, which is what usually happens, I took a different way, and finally figured out how to avoid all of the busy streets and sneak down through Reed College from the north. Brilliant!

I brought my cello, expecting to play that, but since there was a shortage of guys last night, I actually got invited to read one of the parts. It was SO much fun! The play had excellent dialogue, and it was about three friends who’ve grown up together in Boise. (There were even a few scenes set in a club called Neurolux–where I’ve been and played!–so that was particularly interesting.) One of the friends falls on hard times, and the relationship between the three guys is tested to its core. Very well-written and fun to be a part of. I played the part of the stoner musician. Typecasting, no? Well, minus the stoner part, anyway.

After that, it was time to relax and watch another fine episode of Mushi-shi–one of these days, I’m going to post one of the episodes up here, so you can see it for yourself–and then I went to bed, satisfied from having one of the best days I’ve had in the last few months. I genuinely enjoyed every minute of it.

I am alive and well, just been busy trying to feel better. It’s been an up-and-down few weeks.

This is a month of three different friends’ birthdays–what IS it about Capricorn girls?–and last Friday was the first of them. We went to Lola’s Room for 80’s Night. Even though I’m the worst dancer ever–okay, probably not THE worst, because at least I have a rock-solid sense of rhythm–I love 80’s music, and I had a good time overall. The potential was there for some weirdness, because of whose birthday it was and who showed up as somewhat of a surprise, but it’s been two years now, and we’re all adults, so it was fine.

Shelby and Brian were right behind us in line, which I didn’t even realize until Brian tapped me on the shoulder, so I could turn around and give him a hug. Nice surprise. They were there with a couple of Shelby’s friends, so I took the opportunity to cut a few proverbial rugs with their group too.

Oh, and incidentally, a friend told me of a cool trick to use if you’re not such a hot dancer. If you take your drink out on the floor with you, you don’t have to move around so much. You can just sort of tap your feet and move around a little bit in a rhythmic way, and that’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Yay! This means I can go out dancing all the time now!

Can I just take a second to mention that I was comPLETEly hung over the next day? Cause I was. Oh my GAWD. Saturday morning I felt like I’d been hit by a car. No, wait; I think it might actually have been a train. But I rallied around mid-afternoon, and went to spend a little time with MostRecentExGirlfriend. Met her kitten and also got introduced to her neighbor friend, and then we went to get some coffee and talk for a little while. After that, we went to a bead shop (she did more active looking than I did), and then went to her favorite thrift store down the street to look for some cool clothes. The place was huge and great, and she totally scored an armload of great stuff, while I surprisingly came out empty-handed.

I stayed home the rest of the weekend to drink lots of water and non-fermented fruit juice, and to do some of the things I’ve been neglecting, like dishes and laundry (something like five loads of laundry!). While I was doing all that laundry, I started watching an anime series that was new to me called Mushi-shi. Beautiful, dreamy, dark, spiritual and mythological, it was exactly what I was in the mood for, and I watched ten episodes. (SuperUltraMegaKudos to SSF for telling me about that awesome web site where you can watch so much stuff online for free. MUCH better quality than YouTube or GoogleVideos!)

Don’t think for a second that I’m not going to sit here tonight and not watch a whole bunch more episodes, cause that’s exactly what I plan to do, starting right now.