beautiful, funny, sad & true

These pictures are from a MySpace blog entry in November. It was the day that Dirty Martini played at the Sunset Tavern in Seattle. Before we left, I drove around taking pictures like crazy, ’cause it was so beautiful. In the order they were taken:

1. A very pretty day in Portland, looking toward downtown by way of the Fremont Bridge and the industrial Swan Island area.

2. Underneath the Fremont Bridge. I like this one particularly.

3. Ballard Avenue in Seattle, right next to the club DM played. It seems to be a very bustling, and still slightly seedy, up-and-coming neighborhood.

4. Also Ballard Avenue, a little bit later, when it really started getting busy.

This one could have been taken in the 1950s, when you see it in black and white.

You may or may not know that in October we filmed a Dirty Martini music video. Well, you can now watch it here.

I’m the guy in the red suspenders, who’s in the video for about six seconds because I had to work the day they filmed the guys’ solo shots. Bummed? Me? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh YES.

But it looks amazing and the song’s great too. I play keyboards, piano, and electric guitar in the song, by the way.

Enjoy!

Here are some pictures from a day trip to Astoria, Oregon just after Thanksgiving. I had played a gig in Seaside, Oregon, the night before, and instead of going back to Portland via the direct route, we (my girlfriend and I) decided to do some more sightseeing instead. We’d both been to Seaside a million times, but for some reason it had been ages since either of us had been to Astoria. Off we went.

Astoria is probably most famous for being used as the location for the movie The Goonies, back in the 80’s. These days, it’s really just a little tourist town. It’s right at the mouth of the Columbia River, where it meets the Pacific Ocean, so the weather is notoriously strange. That, combined with the hills and beautiful colors, makes for some tremendous and seemingly unlimited picture opportunities.

These houses are just about the first things you see when you enter Astoria from the south. They’re not in a particularly nice area of town (in fact, none of Astoria is particularly ‘nice’), but I was struck right away by their matching colors and symmetry.

For this one, we got almost-but-not-quite-all the way to the top of the hill, but we couldn’t see a ‘public’ way up any further, so we drove up a bunch of private roads and driveways. :) Sure glad we did, too, because this picture made it all worthwhile:

Everyone–meet Kelly. Kelly–meet everyone. :)

After a cold, gray, rainy morning of picture taking on the waterfront, we’d just had lunch and coffee, and were feeling good, so we decided to explore the town a little more. The sun started to come out, and the light changed, so we went back down to the waterfront and get pictures of the bridge in this new light. I had already taken a bunch of pictures, when suddenly a double rainbow started to appear. “V. exciting,” as Bridget Jones would say. This one’s really a once-in-a-lifetime shot:

Can’t wait to go back. I like the idea of going to the Washington side of the river and exploring up there, and maybe coming back over the Astoria bridge. Only problem with that is we’d have to come back over the Astoria bridge, which reallyreallyreally freaks me out, ’cause it’s like four miles long. Whether or not I’m up for that will depend on what the weather’s like.

Either way, there will be lots more good opportunities for pictures, and for fun with friends.