beautiful, funny, sad & true

J: Are you at a zoo, surrounded by chimpanzees?

me: No, I’m at Lloyd Center [mall in NE Portland], and there are a bunch of screaming kids everywhere. It’s pretty much the same thing.

J: (laughs) That’s hilarious. You should put it in your blog.

You have to love cell phones.

One time I was hiking in the Columbia river gorge, along a dirt road that was covered with leaves. I called my brother to say hello. A couple of minutes into the conversation, my brother asked me, “What are you doing? Are you crunching potato chips right into the phone?”

“No, why?”

“Because it sounds like you’re doing that.”

“No, I’m hiking. Those are leaves.”

“Oh man, that was so loud I couldn’t even hear what you were saying.”

The moral of the story is that I’m not going to buy another Motorola phone. Mine isn’t even a cheap one, but the sound quality is terrible. I don’t recommend them; in fact, I recommend against them. They also make this buzzing sound that never goes away. Almost every single conversation I have goes like this, at some point:

them: “Hey, do you hear that noise?”

me: “Yeah, it’s my phone.”

them: “It’s really annoying. And loud.”

me: “Yeah, I know; everybody tells me that. I hear it too.”

them: “It’s kind of a buzzing sound.”

me: “Yeah, I know. It’s my phone.”

them: “Man, that’s loud. You should go get a new one.”

me: “I know. This one sucks. It was expensive, but it still sucks.”

them: “Wow, that’s really lou–”

me: “Yeah, I know. Can we talk about something else now?”

“It’s not that you are foolish, it’s just that your comments may be perceived as criticism.”

Wow. Instead of “Libra,” it should be called “Todd’s Horoscope.”

Tonight two cool music-related things happened.

The first was that I went to the cast-and-crew screening of the independent film Blue Angel, which Crystin Byrd and I contributed a song to. Crystin and her husband Aram were there too, of course, and it was a great time.

Afterwards, C&A and I walked across the street to FamousIceCreamPlaceNamedAfterTwoGuys to have some ice cream and talk in a place where we could actually hear each other. (The party was in a loud basement bar, and we couldn’t hear a thing anyone said unless they were shouting directly at us.) So we’re sitting and talking, and all of a sudden I hear a familiar-sounding guitar part come over the speakers in the place. It’s my guitar part from “Lost In July” by the Young Immortals! I asked the girl who worked there–who, incidentally, looked like Natalie Portman–if the music was something they brought in. “No, it’s the radio,” she said. “KINK.”

It was an amazing surprise, and a great night for the ol’ musical self-esteem.

I’ve been freezing all day.

I walked to work–not an uncommon occurrence in itself–to find that the heating system at work is still on the proverbial fritz, so the corner of the building that I work in has been unheated for a full week now. It’s like 55 degrees in that corner. Three of us started bringing space heaters, but since I walked today, I forgot to bring mine. Oops. I borrowed a worthless little one from someone, and it at least kept my feet warm, but I had to keep my hoodie’s hood pulled up all day to keep from shivering. Still kinda did, though.

I walked downstairs to go home, and it was pouring rain outside. It still is, as a matter of fact. I stuffed my little bag inside my coat and headed home, shivering and coughing, with my pant legs and hood soaking wet.

I got home to a toasty warm apartment, and found the best postcard in the history of postcards waiting for me. My friend Andrea spent the last month in Switzerland with her Man (‘boy friend’ sounds so junior high), and kept an amazing blog of her trip. I thought I’d seen all the pictures, but boy was I wrong:

She flew in and out of the airport in Paris, so they took the opportunity to do some more sightseeing there. Le Pure Cafe, incidentally, is the little cafe that was featured so prominently in the movie Before Sunset. You probably recognized it too. What a great postcard. Thank you, Andrea! I love it. It put a huge smile on my face, and it brought plenty of warmth to me on an otherwise cold night.

Welcome back!

The more I think about all of this, the angrier I get.

Here’s what my anonymous stalker wrote, the first time he wrote to me:

I swear to god, dude. You should have an MP3 of Depeche Mode’s “Somebody” playing on a loop in the background whenever someone visits your blog. Clearly, that’s the theme song to your life. In other words: You’re pathetic.

Okay, fine, that’s nice. I deleted that and didn’t think twice about it. He responded by re-posting the same thing right away, and I deleted it again. He posted it a third time, apparently to make sure I wouldn’t miss his point, with a couple of new paragraphs added:

You might believe that your “sensitive lonely whiner” routine will get you laid by women who feel sorry for you, but it won’t. Instead, it pretty much guarantees that you will spend the rest of your life alone. “I want someone to spoon with at night.” *wretch*

Since then, it hasn’t gotten any better. He spent the entire weekend reading through as much of my blog as possible, making snide comments everywhere he went–you can see most of them for yourself (although I did delete some because they’re not worth repeating)–and he even went so far as to create a Blogger profile impersonating mine, which at my request he did take down, although he threatened to put it back up if I continued to moderate my comments. Well, whatever. It’s my blog, so we’re going to play by my rules.

I hope that he’s a teenage kid or something; if he is, I can forgive this type of behavior. If he’s an adult who clearly should know better, then I find this utterly reprehensible. (Although he does know that Depeche Mode song–I do not–so that makes me think he’s an adult, quite possibly near my own age.) All this being said, here are the rules for this blog.

* * * *

1) I’m now moderating all comments. I hate to do it, but it’s become necessary.

2) If someone wants to post something–positive or negative–I’m going to read it and THEN decide what to do with it. I am fair. If I feel that a negative comment has value, even if I don’t like it, I’ll usually approve it. If I feel that it’s just a shitty little ad hominem attack against me, then it ain’t gonna make the cut.

3) As the name implies, this blog is about beauty, humor, occasional melancholy, and above all, honesty. Those are my favorite characteristics in people, in stories, in music, in art, in life…in everything. These are the things that this blog was based upon. People who are generally hostile to these concepts will not enjoy BFS&T very much. Heck, even people who espouse these concepts may not enjoy BFS&T very much. And y’know what? I’m okay with that.

4) I don’t write about politics or current events. I don’t write about religion or ethics. I usually don’t write about economic or sexual or social or racial issues, but sometimes I do. It’s not that I don’t care about these things–on the contrary–it’s just that there are thousands of people who can do that much more eloquently than I ever will, and I choose to read them instead. What I do write about is life, and the struggles and successes I and the people I care about face and deal with along the way. And, of course, a little bit of inspiration for good measure. Oh yeah, and I guess I do write about guitars and cellos and stuff a lot too.

5) It is hereby the policy of this blog not to negotiate with terrorists.

* * * *

The problem, as I see it, is that this person and I are very similar; so much so as to completely repel each other. (Ever see the movie “I Heart Huckabees”?) His issues are very likely the same as my own, or maybe it’s that we’re two sides of the same coin. To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he’s dealing with big stuff in his own life right now too–in which case I can certainly empathize because I’ve been there many times myself–but maybe he doesn’t have the creative outlets or the insightful friends that I do, so his feelings end up getting expressed by this inappropriate and ultimately impotent rage. I mean, come on. Making a mock-profile of me? That’s not something an adult human being with any kind of healthy self-respect would ever dream of doing. This person may say that he despises me, yet he also seems to want to be me somehow, simultaneously.

After having some time to think, I’ve decided that there are going to be two mottos that set the tone for this entry. One is the famous adage, ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,’ and the other is Oscar Wilde’s funny-and-true saying, ‘The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’

And now I have bigger and better things to attend to, such as a hospitalized ex-girlfriend and a cello-and-xylophone recording session. And some genuine friends who I care about, and who care about me in return. And hopefully even a nice dinner tonight, too.

In short, I have a real life, of which–for the most part–I am proud.