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!

. . .until I heard them mentioned as a headline story on NPR. The demogogic, “WindStorm ’06!!!” local news is one thing, but national news is different.

I mean, sure, a handful of people died, or got lost in the mountains, and our airport had to turn away a few flights, and the power’s still out in some parts of the state (which, incidentally, is why I’m here right now instead of recording up in Welches). . .but, hunh. Now that I think about it, I guess it was that bad after all.

I had a few people write or call, hoping everything was okay over here. Yes, everything’s fine.

When it was in full effect, I was at Trader Joe’s coming home from an hour-and-a-half drive to K-mart–which would normally take about twenty minutes–to get a car headlight (it’s way too long and uninteresting to tell that frustrating story).
In fact, I want to take a minute to talk about the traffic situation in Portland. There are only two main north-south freeways in Portland. At rush hour, there’s only one way east out of the city, and one way west too. If anything happens to one of them, and something almost always does, traffic is difficult and slow. If something happens to more than one of them, the town comes to a standstill, and everybody’s screwed. That night, something happened on every single one. Dead stop pretty much everywhere.

But I digress. :)

I was at Trader Joe’s, and the checker asked how it was going, and I said, “It’s inSANE out there. Wind and rain and traffic is nightmarish.”

She said, “I know! I heard that the power’s out in a bunch of places.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, all down through Lloyd Center and Broadway, it’s been out for a while now.”

“Oh great, that’s where I live!”

We finished up, she wished me good luck, and I headed home, down Sandy and onto Broadway. When I got to about 28th, something felt different, and as I got closer, I noticed that all the lights were out in a huge section of town. It wasn’t just Lloyd Center, it was the entire Lloyd *district*. At 20th Avenue, the traffic lights were out, and it was dark as far as you could see. I wanted to take a picture, cause it was so eerie, but traffic was too crazy, and I just wanted to get home and crash. (note to self: If I really wanted to get a good picture during a power outage, Mt. Tabor would be a great vantage point. )

I turned onto 15th, and power on my side of 15th was out, but the other side (where my friend Alyssa lives) was on. I pulled up and parked on 13th, and saw the flash of what looked like a downed power line at the end of the street. Kelly called and I told her what was happening. She asked, “Do you want to come over?” “I would LOVE to come over, but I don’t even want to THINK about driving any more tonight.” I texted Alyssa and hung out at her place for a little bit, and after maybe a half hour got a text from Susan saying that the power in our building was back on. I decided to go home and crash, since I was exhausted anyway and not very sociable, and A was feeling kinda crappy too.

Just walking home, there were tons of tree branches down, and the power crews were out and about. Lots of sirens everywhere too. I hardly slept at all that night with the wind (even though it sounded beautiful) and the sirens and all.

That was my night, but for lots of people it’s still not over. I heard yesterday that a hundred thousand people in the Portland metro area were still without power. I hope everything’s OK where you are!

* * *

p.s. – “taking a picture of a power outage” reminded me of a time when I was looking through a friend’s photo album and came across a completely black picture. I asked, jokingly, “What’s this, lens cap?” “Nope,” I was told, “that’s San Francisco, taken from Twin Peaks, during the rolling blackouts of the 90’s.”

It was stunning, in a way you wouldn’t expect.

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.