beautiful, funny, sad & true

This makes me laugh for so many reasons. . .

1) It’s from Yakima.
2) The creators actually won some sort of award for it.
3) “If you’re over 100, come down anyway and enjoy the beautiful view” of the parking lot,
from a second-story window.
4) They go straight from “Need a dress for homecoming or prom?” to “Want to join the Army?”
Silky smooth.
5) My biggest crack-up is the opening sentence. I’ll let you experience it for yourself.

When I was seventeen/eighteen/nineteen, I was in a band called Iron Horse. I’ve written about them before. Making videos and TV shows was among our favorite hobbies, and since one of the members of the band and one of our close friends worked at various television stations, that was a pretty easy itch to scratch.

Our friend would film us at shows, at rehearsals, out on the town, anything we wanted. He was very good at what he did (he’s even better now, by the way), and he was always up for trying new ideas, or coming up with his own too.

One of the ideas we dreamed up was to make a spoof of all the action-packed sports drink commercials that were all over TV at the time. We thought it would be funny if there was a drink that not only looked like urine, but actually tasted like it as well. And so, Tinkle was born.

The Tinkle commercial starts in slow motion black-and-white, with two guys sweeping a driveway with large push brooms, and the caption “Manual Labor” appears at the bottom of the screen. The guys wipe the sweat from their respective brows and walk toward the cooler, whereupon they find themselves both reaching for the single remaining bottle of a sports drink. The camera pans in tight, and moves from person to person:

Guy 1: “Only one Tinkle left.”

Guy 2: “Play you for it?”

Guy 1: “You’re on!”

Cue music: It’s the strummy guitar part from the Rush song “YYZ.” (It’s the part that starts at 1:42. . .) The scene cuts to the two guys playing maniacal one-on-one basketball, for about twenty seconds, with one of the guys sinking the winning lay-up, punctuated by the last four notes of the song. The voice-over says, “He shoots, he scores!”

The jubilant victor runs over and reaches into the cooler for the bottle of Tinkle and takes a huge swig, only to spit it out in disgust. “This stuff tastes like PISS” is what was actually said, but once we started writing this little scene, we decided that our families would probably see this, and the public, and it also might be funnier if we actually didn’t say ‘piss’. So we came up with the idea that the winner would say the word ‘piss’, but the voice-over would say something different. The catch was that the winner would keep trying to say the word ‘piss’, but he would always be foiled by the voice-over, no matter how many times he tried. So the word we ended up substituting was “WEE WEE.”

Incidentally, that was another huge discussion we had; what to substitute for the word ‘piss’. We came up with all the usual euphemisms, and I even recall the phrase ‘yellow liquid bodily excretion’ (or something similar) being bandied about too. Luckily they were all vetoed, because ‘wee wee’ is really childish and funny.

So here’s the result:

“This stuff tastes like (WEE WEE).” The winner is surprised that his word is censored; he tries saying ‘piss’ again, but ‘WEE WEE’ is what is heard. He tries again. His mouth is clearly visible, saying the word ‘piss’, but ‘WEE WEE’ is heard again. He looks around for the source of the overwhelming voice, and tries again, in vain: ‘(WEE WEE). . .(WEE WEE)’. . .aaaaaand, fade to black.

Caption, in yellow: “TINKLE: For athletes who can’t afford to lose those precious body fluids.”

You see, this is high comedy.

Why did it occur to me to share this?  Well, because the phrase ‘This stuff tastes like (WEE WEE)” randomly popped into my head the other day, and just thinking about it made me laugh hard enough that I sent a text message to Blaine to remind him about it. He laughed hard enough that I thought it was worth noting and sharing here as well.

Ah, if only I had the technology to upload the actual video (which is trapped on antiquated VHS) up here into my blog. I know that it exists, I just don’t own it yet. It will be a good day when I do, however, because it means you’ll get to experience all of this flotsam and jetsam first-hand, without me having to write it all out in script form.

OneYearAgo

Be advised; this will be a very long entry.

Here’s my weekend, in chronological order, with quite a few ‘visual aids’ to help out. As usual, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

I left Portland and turned off at the Historic Columbia River Highway. It’s in the process of being restored and gradually reopened bit by bit, so I always like to see what’s been done since the last time I’ve been through.

This cleared-out tunnel made me very happy.

I’m a big fan of abandoned places, and this road has been a fascination of mine ever since I was a little kid. I’m also fascinated by Sam Hill, who is a very influential and interesting person in his own right, and who is tangentially related to the construction of this road. More on him later.

So I continued along the old road, to the eastern section that I rarely get to, and I was rewarded with a clear day and a stunning view.

Then, on the other side of the summit, a view of the road looping back onto itself, in a similar way to that of Crown Point.

From there, I crossed over to the Washington side of the river, and stopped in for a rest on the lawn at the Maryhill Museum. Remember Sam Hill, who I mentioned earlier? He’s the turn-of-the-century multi-millionaire who built this huge ‘castle’ for his wife Mary, along with the recreation of Stonehenge, and the entire little town of Maryhill.

This place is remote now, but a hundred years ago, it was almost unthinkably remote. Sam’s wife Mary was a Seattle socialite, and she was less than thrilled with the idea of living out in this desert wasteland, so she hardly spent any time there before saying, “Thanks, hon, but let’s go back to Seattle now.” Construction of the mansion was completed after Sam’s death, and it was turned into an art museum soon after. Today it boasts one of the largest collections of Rodin sculptures in the world.

And while we’re on the subject of Maryhill Museum, I should mention the peacocks, because there are tons of them living all around the grounds, and they’re an integral part of any visit, as far as I’m concerned.

I’d never seen an albino peacock before. Its tail was particularly amazing; I couldn’t get enough of it. I was hoping it would display for me, but none of them did. They’re all completely unfazed by people walking, picnicking and driving amongst them, and the alpha male went so far as to challenge my car. He walked straight over to it while I was photographing the albino one, and made it clear who was boss, in no uncertain terms. He strutted clear around the back of it, along the passenger side, and then stopped at the front to stare down my unsuspecting Honda.

It was at this point that I started to wonder just what was going to happen next. This little tough guy could quite easily have climbed or jumped onto the hood, and I wasn’t too excited about that prospect. I also knew better than to physically mess with him (there are signs everywhere warning against doing that), but luckily he just circled around until he found what he determined to be its weak spot; just behind the door on the driver’s side quarter panel. He stalked over and started doing this display with his neck, trying to pick a fight, and then began to peck the side of the car repeatedly. He didn’t seem to be doing any damage, so I knelt down and took a bunch of pictures, trying to capture one of those moments. I was able to get close, but capturing a split-second peck is nearly impossible to do, so here’s the best one.

This picture wasn’t touched up with Photoshop or anything. His coloring is really that vivid and beautiful. I decided that I’d had enough of his pecking, so I walked around behind him and opened the door. He was so intent on winning the battle that he didn’t even notice me walking or opening the door (I even leaned out and took a few more pictures of him through the open window), and he watched in triumph as I drove away.

Next picture stop was just outside of Goldendale, Washington, at this abandoned house, with Mount Adams in the background. This view is different every day, and is also especially beautiful when the fog has rolled in. I was glad to have the view of the mountain, though.

Finally rolled in to Yakima in the mid-afternoon, to go to the rehearsal for Chris and Nicole’s wedding. I was the best man, and I also brought my accordion, in order to provide music for the ceremony, which was simple, but very touching and nice. One of my music teachers from high school was there – an amazing surprise – and it was great to see him. Here are some of the pics from the rehearsal night and from the actual wedding the next day.

You can take the girl out of the 80’s, but apparently you can’t take the 80’s out of the girl.

The reception finished about 7:30 or 8:00, and then I drove home for a bit, before DrummerAdam (who lives in Yakima) called to invite me to the SportsCenter to watch my drummer friend Ty play in a cover band. I hadn’t seen Ty since I moved to Portland, so he was completely blown away to see me there on his turf. Very nice. Got home around one in the morning.

Next morning, my mom’s friend came by to join us for lunch, and during that conversation I was reminded of lots of the things that have always driven me crazy about Yakima, and how empty life can be there. I also kept thinking how much more I enjoy life now, in a way I never did back then. Friends are much better, music is much better, dating is much better, natural surroundings are much better. . .in fact, the only thing I can think of that’s better in Yakima is the Mexican food. There’s some good stuff to be had here in Portland, but you can get the real thing in Yakima.

After lunch, I headed out to meet my college friend GuitaristAl at one of said excellent Mexican restaurants. Since I had eaten at my mom’s house, I stuck to chips and salsa (which were fan-friggin’-tastic, by the way) and talked while Al ate his taco salad. So much fun to see him again. He’s really a great guy.

I drove home to Portland via another scenic route, this time over the switchbacks and hills of Highway 142 – it narrows to one lane for a few miles, with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet on one side – and down along the Klickitat River, to the point where it meets up with the Columbia and I turned back downriver toward home. I stopped to take a picture of one of my favorite spots along the way, which is Cape Horn, Washington, where the road clings precariously to the edge of the high cliff wall. Here’s the view.

This view never gets boring. Not even a little bit.

Finally arrived in Portland at 8:30 p.m., unpacked my clothes and climbed right into bed, where I slept for the next ten hours.

Great weekend. Great times. Great friends. Great memories. I can’t believe it was all compressed into three days.

Trip = awesome

Wedding = awesome

PIctures = awesome

Friends I haven’t seen in at least twelve years = awesome

Way too much to write about in one entry, but the trip was. . .uh. . .awesome.

There will be more to come on this subject.

OneYearAgo

I’m in a town that is not named or known to me, but it looks like the north end of 55th Avenue in Yakima, the street and the town in which I grew up, so we’ll just say it’s that.

I’m walking with two friends around my own age. One is a guy with whom I work in real life, the other is a woman who I don’t know in real life. The two know each other in the dream, though. We’re walking up at the end of the street, where Cascade Avenue meets 55th, and there are two young hoodlum kids walking around near us, trying to associate themselves with us. We try our best to ignore them, and we turn and walk away, down the hill toward the Chestnut end of 55th.

The two kids stay up at the end of the street, which leaves the three of us. I’m a few steps ahead of them, so I stop to let them pass, and the woman asks, “What did you do that for?”

I replied, “Oh, it’s just that I hate to have people walking around behind me, so I usually just let them go around.” [This is true in real life too, actually.]

“Oh, okay.”

We’re keeping an eye on the two kids up the street, and then my companions decide it’s time for them to go home, and they turn and walk in a different direction, away from both me and the kids. I’m now walking alone down the street, and I hear the kids start to yell something to me. They’re trying to get each other fired up and talk themselves into whatever it is they’re intending to do to me. I walk deliberately slowly, to show them that I’m not afraid. I turn and walk into my house.

Inside, the house is nothing like our house on 55th was. It has windows that stretch clear to the floor, with large vertical blinds covering them. The walls are painted black, except where they are white above the windows. It’s very stark and interesting, and also decorated in a very Modern Art style, in a way that our house definitely was not.

From inside, I can hear the two kids yelling things to each other like, “Hey, I think he went into THIS house.” They run from window to window, trying to see in, and I’m quickly trying to turn off lights and close the blinds to make it appear that no one’s home. Too many blinds are open, and that worries me, but the kids don’t seem to notice me, so I go around to the back of the house, where there is a bay window that is rounded instead of angled, with a cobblestone floor. It’s sort of a room that overlooks the gardens in the back yard. I lie down on my right side against the cement wall, and one of the kids comes to the window and puts his face against it. I’m directly beneath him, so he can’t see me. I panic and my panic awakens me.

I’m lying in the same position I was in in the dream, except that I’m on my left side, so it takes me a minute to orient myself and figure out what just happened.