beautiful, funny, sad and true

Every once in a while, there are days that are really great, and yesterday was certainly one of them.

I woke up at ten and met GuitaristDavid and FlutistSusan, so they could take me out to breakfast in exchange for the impromptu photo shoot I did for them yesterday afternoon (which was also fun, by the way) to promote the holiday-music group they’re forming.  And boy, did they choose an amazing place.  I think yesterday was quite possibly the best breakfast of my entire life.  If I had known what was in store for me, I would’ve brought my camera, for sure.

They took me to Roux, which is a French-by-way-of-New-Orleans style restaurant.  I had a sort of scramble, which consisted of smoked trout, potatoes, onions, creme fraiche, with poached eggs and dill leaves on top.  It was unbelievably good.  Susan had oyster and bacon benedict, and David had a chicken-and-biscuits with gravy.  We all exchanged samples, and each dish was amazing.  After we got home, I think we all collapsed in food coma for a while.

After coming out of said food coma, I was ready to go on a little day trip, so I called J to see if she was up for a trip.  She was, so I picked her up and we drove to Astoria for a few hours.  We went to the top of the hill that overlooks the entire peninsula, to check out the views and to see the Astoria Column.  Here are some pics:

We walked around for a long time, admiring the views and trying to pick some of the blackberries that were growing along the edge of the hill.  The good berries within reach had already been taken, so we stumbled down to try and pick some others, but it was to no avail; not to mention that the ones we found were bitter and unripened.  So we gave that up pretty quickly.  We left the Column behind and drove around in the hills, exploring the pretty little town.  Every turn brought a new exclamation of ‘oh my god. . .look at that!’ from at least one of us.  The views are breathtaking, and some of the houses are too.

By that time, we were ready for dinner, so we drove downtown to the waterfront to find something to eat.  One of the businesses had some murals painted on the back.  I love the way they’ve incorporated the actual windows and hinges into the murals.  It adds a nice touch of realism.

The first few places we tried to go were either closed for business or were too expensive, so we ended up at the Wet Dog brewery.  Not the greatest place in town, but it was decent enough, and the grilled albacore salad was really good.

We got in the car and went back to the hills to explore more of the town.  We came to a road that had a perfect view of the bridge, just in time to see a barge motoring underneath, presumably on its way out to sea.

We continued along the high road, and came to a wooded area with no houses, and saw a deer feasting on the leaves that were growing the side of the road.  We drove as slowly and quietly as we could, considering that we were in my noisy Honda, and he didn’t seem particularly fazed by our presence, so we were able to get a few pictures.

My right foot slipped just then, and I accidentally pushed the accelerator and revved the engine a little bit, which startled the deer and made him decide to slowly disappear into the bushes.  I apologized to him for startling him (I’m pretty sure he understood English) and we drove away.  We wanted to get back to Portland at a decent hour, so we wound our way back down the steep, curvy roads of Astoria and made our way back to the highway for the rest of the uneventful trip home.  We made really good time, too, and were home by 8:30.

It was just a great day.  Days like that are so fun and relaxing.  Susan and David are so great and so inspiring.  Roux is so amazing and delicious.  Astoria is so fun and so picturesque.  J is so fun and hilarious, in her low-key way.  And me?  I’m so looking forward to having many more days like that in the future.

Hello and welcome to the first installment of Todd’s Favorite Songs, or something like that.  I haven’t quite decided on a real name for this open-ended project yet, but I wanted to get started on it. This one is called “Knock Yourself Out”, and it’s by Jon Brion, from the soundtrack to the movie “I Heart Huckabees”, with a little help from his friends (and two of the movie’s stars) Jason Schwartzman and Mark Wahlberg.

I’ve been a fan of Jon’s ever since he was a member of Jellyfish and The Grays, but these days he’s more well-known for his production work with Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann, as well as the movie soundtracks he’s created.

Jon is my personal musical hero, and I learned how to be a producer by studying his work.  I learned how to make a song sound intimate, or lush, or sarcastic, or poppy, or melodramatic, or ‘retro’, or minimalistic.  I learned how to think about ’space’, and distance, and the three-dimensionality of recording.  I also learned about how to manipulate musical space, meaning when to play a certain instrument and when to leave room for something else to happen.  I learned how let a song breathe.  I learned how to strip it down to its barest elements, if that’s what the song seems to call for.  I learned how to really interact with a vocalist.  I learned how to decipher whatever the most important thing about a song is, and how to highlight and showcase it.

I learned that there are many types of producers out there, and that my particular style is valid, and unusual, and somewhat sought after.  I still have plenty to learn about all of this, but the fact that I’m doing it at all is due in a large part to Jon Brion, and he doesn’t even know it.  Who knows; maybe he’ll stumble upon this entry and see my thank-you letter.

Thanks, Jon.  You’ve been like a virtual older brother to me.  Keep up the amazing work.

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:

Saturday was not Mike P.’s actual birthday, but that was the day he wanted to celebrate it, so what’re you gonna do? You have to follow the birthday boy’s wishes. He started by having a little soiree over at his place, with about ten other people. (Incidentally, the hit of the party was Allanah’s homemade guacamole, and her chocolate ‘Irish’ cake.) From there, he, Allanah, Orion and I went to Tony Starlight’s to see the band 3 Leg Torso.

BassistMichael is a friend of mine, who actually played in Steph’s band for a short time last year. It was great to see him again, and especially to see him play in his natural habitat. He’s really an amazing musician.

It was a totally great evening, and after driving everybody home, I think I got home around 2:30 in the morning. But the weekend wasn’t over yet. . .not by a long shot.

Last week was super busy, so now I finally have a spare moment to sit, and process, and also to get you up to speed.

Wednesday night was the first play-reading group we’ve had since Tossed In tossed in the towel on leading the group. A handful of us have been persistent about keeping the group going, and after about two months, we finally managed to make it happen. We read the script for the movie My Dinner With Andre.

It was an amazing evening. A few of us were die-hard fans of the movie, and knew our favorite parts almost by heart, and a few of us had never seen or heard of the movie, so it made for a particularly interesting discussion. I really should say ‘discussions’, because we stopped many times along the way to switch to different readers, and to discuss the section that we’d just finished reading.

A couple of us had our favorite sections that we really wanted to read. I read Andre’s section about the Little Prince and about how New York is the new model for concentration camps, and Matt read Wally’s introduction, his argument near the end, and his ending monologue. We all discussed different ideas for staging this work as a play, and the various ways we could bring the various scenes to life, while still retaining the feel of a dinner. It was an amazing evening, and a passionate discussion all the way around.

Afterwards, Matt, Lindsay and I went to Squeez for a drink. I really should say ‘another drink’, because we’d already had plenty at the reading. We shared some quesadillas and continued the discussion about the play and about various other things.

Matt was too shy to want his picture taken that night. I tried to surreptitiously snap a picture of him and Lindsay while they were at the bar ordering, but the picture didn’t come out. Not that these did especially well, but the other ones are even worse, I promise you. I love the colors inside Squeez. It’s just a really cool, comfortable place to meet with your friends.

Oh, and for the record, I’m lucky enough to have found a very special copy of the script for MDWA. . .it was autographed in 1982, by both Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, AND it’s inscribed to someone here in Portland. A bunch of years ago, I went looking for the script, and finally found it at HugestBookseller. I decided to wait, however, and felt that another one would turn up, despite the fact that I had already been fruitlessly searching for it for years. No matter, I had a hunch.

The next day I went to Powell’s (even though I’d checked there countless times before) and sure enough, I was rewarded with this:

Talk about synchronicity. . .which fits in perfectly with the themes of the script, too. The autograph picture I left at higher resolution, so you can read what they wrote. I love it.

I first saw the movie when I lived in Yakima, at the age of twenty-four, and was mesmerized by it. I instantly went and tried to find out as much as I could about both of the guys, and all of the references they made to actors, directors, books, plays. . .everything. Jerzy Grotowski, The Master and Maragarita, The Little Prince, I couldn’t wait to understand what they were talking about. For the record, not one of my friends shared my enthusiasm for this movie. I raved about it, and even made a few people watch it, but they got bored and gave up after a few minutes. (I think this has something to do with the adage, ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.’)

Anyway, it’s one of my all-time favorites, and it also introduced me to the Little Prince, which to this day I re-read every year or two, and I’ve probably had to buy ten or twelve copies of it over the years, because I’ve loaned so many out and never gotten them back. That’s okay, in this instance, because the story is so beautiful that I want everyone to read it, and I hope that they get as much out of it as I have.

And I have my friends Wally and Andre to thank for it.