beautiful, funny, sad & true

My friend and I went to see the movie Tell No One tonight.  It was a really good murder mystery, clear up until the ending, when it suddenly turned into a Scooby Doo episode.  One of the characters started doing that thing where he points a gun at the main character and starts talking at him and revealing everything.  You know; ‘I did it.  It was ME.  That’s right, ME.  I’m gonna spell out exactly how and why I did it, too, because I love the sound of my own voice.’  Yawn.

The real event of the night happened after we left, and I turned my phone back on.  I had a text message waiting for me, saying that the community access TV station in Yakima had just played a concert video of my old band.  And by ‘old’ I mean twenty years old.   The person who texted me was another member of the band, who lives here in the Portland area now.  I called him right away, and we laughed about the whole thing.  Turns out that his brother, who still lives in Yakima, saw the video and called my bandmate to tell him about it.  I’m amazed that the station even has any of those old tapes anymore, let alone still plays them.  Pretty hilarious, although we WERE described as a ‘juggernaut’, and ‘Central Washington’s rockin’ machine.’  So there.

This is another one of those times when I wish I had a way to get videos onto my computer, because I’d love to be able to share some of that stuff with you, but I have no way to copy VHS tapes to video files.   Argh.  Well, I may not be able to share that particular video, but I can share a picture from our very first show.  I was about seventeen in this picture, working on Mullet Number One.

You’re welcome.

I really wish I still had that guitar, by the way.  That was my first one, and it turned out to be pretty decent, although I didn’t know it at the time.  One of my friends joined the Navy and bought it from me.  That was the idea, anyway, because he never did send me the check.  Thanks, David Lowry.  Two hundred bucks down the crapper.   Hope you had a good time with my guitar.

Actually, y’know what?  I should probably go easy on him.  For all I know, he always meant to send the money, but got deployed overseas and lost my address or something.   It’s all water under the metaphorical bridge, anyway, but it would sure be great to get an out-of-the-blue check for two hundred dollars one of these days, especially with times being the way they are.

There’ll be plenty more to come on this subject, because this is the twentieth anniversary of our band’s rise to the heights, and our plunge to the depths.  Okay, I may be exaggerating just a little bit, but I CAN promise that there are good stories to come about the band.

I was going to say ‘stay tuned’, but A) that’s cheesy, and B) that’s the name of one of our songs, the lyrics for which were written by my high school Spanish teacher, who had some music written and actually asked me if we’d be interested in collaborating on a song with him.  We agreed, because he was the cool teacher, and the group of us created a pretty dang catchy song.  In retrospect, it’s very reminiscent of Bon Jovi.  We played it twice; once at a school assembly, and once at one of our regular shows, too, which was a lame ‘battle of the bands’ with a forgettable rival band, which I’m gonna go ahead and say that we won, even though it wasn’t a big deal at all, but this is my blog, dang it, and history is told by the winners, as Howard Zinn would say.

Wow.  Nothing like using Howard Zinn to bolster the reputation of the band you were in twenty years ago.  If HZ was dead, I’m sure he’d be rolling over in his grave right about now.

As I promised, here are my favorite pictures from this past year, in no particular order.

The landscape between Utah and Idaho is vast, and seems quintessentially American somehow.

This picture was taken outside the studio when we were mixing Andrea’s CD.  There had been a freak snowstorm overnight, and we all woke up to this beautiful scene. Amazingly, the snow was all gone by the afternoon.  We finished mixing the songs, and then I drove back to Portland and went on a great first date.  That was a good day.

Andrea had just read and been inspired by the book Blue Like Jazz, and she wanted to take a little hike around the campus of the college here in town in which the book is set. Though it has changed in the decades since the book was written, this was and still is a beautiful place to hike and explore.

This is one of my favorite locations to take pictures.  It’s an abandoned cannery town along the Columbia river. Sorry about the small size.

When Breanna and Justin and I were on tour in Reno, Justin was getting his CD mixed in Portland, and the guy would send Justin mixes via e-mail, for him either to approve or to request some small changes. After our show, he and Bre were listening to the final mixes, so I left and walked around for an hour, and took about a million pictures of the city at night.  Came back and listened for a while, and when they went to bed, our host and I stayed up talking for another hour and a half afterwards. That was my favorite day (and night) of the tour.

ViolinistKarlee, me, Breanna and Justin on our tour, after our show in Redding.  This picture just puts a smile on my face every time I see it.  Karlee is such a lil thug.

This is my car, all loaded up with instruments to go to the studio and record my parts for Andrea’s CD.  I’m always amazed at just how much stuff this car can carry, despite its diminutive size.

ChefDave, in an instantly classic pose.  I love the way the light is gleaming off the knife.  Incidentally, you owe to it yourself to eat at the Sego Lily Cafe in Bountiful, Utah, by the way, next time you’re there.  Dave’s food is phenomenal.

There are lots of abandoned military bunkers outside Port Townsend, Washington, and I could easily spend a weekend just taking pictures of them. I love the way the light interacts and contrasts from room to room.

Ah, beautiful Astoria, Oregon, seen from the highest point in town.  That’s another place that provides an almost endless supply of photographic opportunities.

This picture I didn’t take, but it’s such a classic that it warranted inclusion on the best pictures of the year.  It’s the Cinemagic theater here in Portland, when they were in transition from the movie Hancock to the Dark Knight, and this was the sign change, in progress.

I love looking back over the year in this way. Even though this was a particularly difficult, painful, and challenging year, there were certainly plenty of good times too.

Here’s to a better 2009, though.

It’s been quite a year, I have to say.  Going through and choosing entries was particularly difficult this time around.  I always enjoy looking backwards.  So much has happened this year that it had become a bit of a blur, quite frankly, and it was fun to revisit some of those experiences.  Others, however, weren’t nearly as much fun.  I could have made this entry about twice as long as it is.  There will be another separate entry for the ‘best pictures of 2008’ coming soon.

accordions, Decemberists, and EmeraldCity – This involves a night when I made a noticeable transition from fan to equal participant.

shock – This was one of the worst days of my entire life.

good news and truth – This was the end of said time.

Yakima trip, part one – This was quite possibly the worst Yakima trip ever, in which I lost a friend.

Tinkle – Tinkle is the name of a fictitious product; this entry describes a hilarious parody my friends and I made of sports drink commercials from the early 90’s.

on tour, day 3 – This was one of the best and most memorable days of my entire life.

my dinner with Andre – We read the screenplay in the play-reading group, and there are also some ruminations about why this movie meant so much to me.

‘six-six-five and one fucking half’ – This is a rock ‘n’ roll story from way back in the day.

errrr. . .hi, mom – I have to be honest; I really like this particular entry.

O, the hilarity ensues – ‘Good luck driving around with my dead, pregnant wife!’

please ban more books – The school district in the town in which I grew up turns out to be responsible for upholding a ban on a very famous book.  Glad I left that town.

litany – This was a hilarious repartee my friend and I shared.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for your support throughout this last year.  In case this somehow wasn’t enough for you, here’s the entry for the best entries of 2007.

Have a great new year!

OneYearAgo

Yes, it’s true.  Beautiful, Funny, Sad & True has turned the Terrible Two.

That means that before too long this blog will start teething, vocalizing, screaming, yelling, putting things in its mouth, touching everything, imitating everything I do. . .it’s gonna be tough, but I think we’ll weather the storm.  After all, we have a good track record of working things out.

I just hope that everything will work out in the end, you know?  I want to see it grow into a healthy entity of its own.  I want to know that I gave it everything I knew how to give, and that it learned from me, but that it still made its own decisions, and thrived.  I mean, we all want the best for our offspring, right?  We want to see them turn out to be happy, and successful, and well-adjusted.  We want them to individuate and be self-actualized.  We want them to stand on the shoulders of giants.

We love them.

Gosh, listen to me.  Blathering on like a. . .blathering person.  I feel like a parent who, upon meeting someone for the first time, reaches into his or her wallet to produce picture after picture of their kid, saying, “See?  See?  This is mine!”  Well, what can I say?  I’m proud of this here little thing, dang it.   I’m not gonna lie.  I’ve met some really good new friends through this strange and wonderful medium, and I’d also like to take the opportunity to thank you for being a part of it all.

I’d like to propose a toast; to many more good years to come. Be careful with that champagne. . .

As you know, this is not normally a political blog, but I saw something on CNN today while I was at lunch that completely floored me, and I knew I had to share here too.  My friend and I were in a newly renovated Vietnamese restaurant (it was excellent, by the way; much better than it used to be), in which they now have a flat-screen television mounted on the wall, showing CNN, just like McDonald’s does.  (This restaurant also displays a small bust of Jesus on the wall, right next to the bar, but that’s neither here nor there.)  Normally, I’m fundamentally opposed to televisions in restaurants, because television is ubiquitous already.  Do we really need to be constantly distracted and entertained while we’re attempting to eat and converse with our friends and/or family?

We weren’t even able to hear it, anyway, because they had cheesy Christmas music playing over it.

Having said all that, this ONE TIME I’m actually glad that they had the television in the restaurant, because it allowed me to see this footage:

I haven’t laughed that hard at anything in quite some time, and I’ve certainly never seen anything like it in my entire life.  Apparently, the Arabic translation of what the shoe thrower (who, incidentally, is an Iraqi journalist living and working in Egypt) yelled is, “Here’s a farewell kiss, you dog!”  This guy had the courage to do what it seems that many Iraqis (and, dare I say, many Americans!) would love to have done also.

Here’s one account of the story; here’s another.  Here’s another.

Enjoy!