beautiful, funny, sad & true

My head hurts from laughing so hard.

Just got home from rehearsal for the plays. I say ‘plays’ because in about a month, we’re going to be having a night of six short plays, for your pleasure.

I say ‘we’ because I will actually be playing accordion and piano (and maybe cello or something) as incidental music between the acts, actual music for one of the actual plays, and I’m actually playing the actual accordion in one of the actual plays (in which I even have an actual speaking line!).

I say ‘pleasure’ because that is the feeling you will be overwhelmed by if you come to see this show. Allow me to elucidate.

There are six plays in this particular show:

One–written by a member of the reading group–involves a writer’s struggle to create; one explores the nature of how much information is too much to share with a new love; one is a touching story of a father and a son; one–written by another member of the reading group–explores the nature of predator and prey, and involves both goldfish and marijuana; one is the story of the hijinks that ensue when staunchly feminist Amazon women encounter a handsome male ‘diplomat’ in the jungle; and the play I’m in is the story of a girl who wears a coat that’s made out of meat.

If all of this doesn’t sound enticing to you, then gawd help you. I’m honored and thrilled to be a part of this production. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that this is Theatah At Its Finest. The show will be on April 12th, and costs a mere ten dollars. Contact me by any means necessary if you’d like to come. If you leave a comment here on BFST, I’ll have your e-mail address.

And now I’m home, eating dinner and enjoying what I like to call a Crash Day, where I stay home and completely unwind after an insanely busy couple of weeks of work, rehearsals, gigs, and socializing. Special thanks to Maddy for making the trek down from Seattle to come to the awesome Stephanie gig last night, and for bringing me some DVD’s of a show I’ve been wanting to see for a year.

And now it’s time to start watching said DVD’s of said show. The Crash begins now.

Oh, and hey. . .here’s the first actual incarnation of OneYearAgo!

Tonight two great things happened, and two funny things also happened.

Great Thing #1: Had the first rehearsal for the play that will be performed in April, in which I prominently play the accordion, and may end up even speaking a line. Yes, it’s true. I almost took a few pictures, but I figured it was too early in the process, and it would’ve been too disruptive. We all met in an empty loft-type space (and by loft I mean 1980’s, gray-carpeted loft-type space) to start blocking, and moving around, and trying music, and getting a feel for what works and what doesn’t. Total blast. This production is going to be hilarious and awe-inspiring.

Great Thing #2: The original post-rehearsal plan was to meet at Yoko’s, but as we were driving in our caravan over there, we found out that they weren’t seating people anymore, so we went to Dot’s instead. At first I was disappointed, but once Lindsey and I got our black bean quesadilla, suddenly the clouds parted and the metaphorical sun shone through, and I forgot all about Yoko’s. Yum.

Funny thing #1: As Tossed In (my new favorite nickname for T. Austin) and I walked out the door, he kinda lost his balance on the ramp outside the door. I did fine. Number of drinks he had: zero. Number of drinks I had: two. We continued on, in the direction of our respective vehicles, and when it was time to go our separate ways, we gave each other a hug like we always do. This time was different, though, in that I got an errant knee to the groin in the process. Again; number of drinks he had: zero. Hilarious, and also painful.

Funny thing #2: The second I parked my car in front of my apartment building, Astor Piazzolla (FlutistSusan’s white cat) ran over and jumped up onto the hood of my car, and looked in at me through the windshield. I hadn’t even been there long enough to turn the engine off yet, and he was right there to say hello.

And now it’s time to go to bed.

I’ve been feeling really good lately.

Lots of good musical things happening, including two amazing recording projects and one play production in which I’ll be playing the accordion at least, but probably some other things as well. It promises to be a great time.

Been laying low these last few days, to recuperate from the busy and exhausting weekend. I’ve also been planning the next installment of the 80’s hard rock blog thingy I’m working on, for fun.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone this week, too. Lots of planning, and talking, and re-connecting, for some reason. It always seems to happen at the same time.

I had a funny thing happen a couple of days ago, which reminded me of something funny that happened twenty years ago. Someone on my street owns a really nice old Mustang. I’m not much of a muscle car guy–I’m more of a ’60’s and ’70’s European guy (the BMW 2002 is my favorite car)–but I always appreciate a nice car that someone has loved and restored.

So. I parked behind this particular Mustang the other night when I got home late, and the street was unusually full of cars. Blame it on my sleepiness from the Daylight Savings Time adjustment, blame it on whatever you want, but when I went to go to work in the morning, I found out the hard way that I had left my car in first instead of in reverse, like I usually do. So I went forward when I expected to go backward, and I sorta almost hit the Mustang. I DIDN’T, but I’m just saying it was close.

That reminded me of a time back in 1989 when my friend Blaine and I were going to a school to do some location scouting for one of our band’s videos. He parked his little white Honda behind a really nice, flashy, purple muscle car. We walked across the street from a grade school, and Blaine noticed that he was parked too far away from the curb or something–I don’t remember the details–but for some reason I ended up going back to move his car. Since the road was at a slight incline, I opened the door, leaned in, released the parking brake, and reached my leg in to engage the clutch, so that the car would roll forward slightly. I did it more by feel than by sight, because most stick-shift cars are the same, but after the car had rolled a few feet, I really should have looked instead of relying on my angle-guessing, because I kept pushing on the clutch pedal instead of the brake pedal. This meant that Blaine’s Honda rolled about ten feet and then banged into the back of the pristine muscle car.

It took about one second for the car’s owner to come storming out of his house. He ran out the front door, across the lawn, and right over to the open driver’s side window and pointed at his car, yelling, “Hey! That’s the ’85 Hot Rod champion!!” There wasn’t any damage to Blaine’s Honda, and the only damage to the ’85 Hot Rod Champion was a tiny little crack in one of its two-inch round tail light covers, luckily. No real harm done, so I just apologized profusely, and told him how beautiful we both thought his car was, and the guy let us go on our merry way.

Oh, and a few years ago, when I had my little green Toyota truck, I rear-ended a Camaro when the driver stopped too suddenly–in in the middle of the block!–near the Lloyd Center mall to let some girls cross the street in front of him. Nice. The crash put a little scratch on his bumper, but really smashed up the front of my truck.

Apparently I have more of a problem with muscle cars than I realized; it seems that my subconscious is out to single-handedly destroy them all.

Guess who got a DVD of Metalocalpyse the other night? Thank you, Maddy!

She’s the one who told me about the show, and that I needed to see it. I watched a couple of episodes online, thinking it would be kind of a guilty pleasure, but I got hooked on it and ended up watching every single episode before they got pulled off of WebSiteLikeTV. I’m not going to lie; I love the show. It’s a cartoon about a fictitious heavy metal band called Dethklok. It’s hilarious, and gruesome, and completely brilliant. And now I have the DVD, so I can watch it any time, and share it with friends too. I suppose that by now you’re probably familiar with the function of DVD’s, so maybe that last sentence was superfluous, but enh. . .I stand by my choice. Last night I found used copies of Once and Paris Je T’aime, so that was nice, too, but ohmygosh. Can’t get enough of the trials and tribulations of Dethklok.

Tonight is the play reading group, and tomorrow is a Breanna gig, but what I’m really looking forward to this week is working with Andrea on her CD up in the little town of Welches all weekend. We’re going to attempt to finish all of my instrumental parts. Keep your fingers crossed. Among other things, this will involve loading a ridiculous amount of amps and guitars and keyboards and other things into my little Honda. If it’s really comedic, I’ll be sure to get pictures of it. I wish I had a picture of the back seat of Lara’s car filled with a bunch of my instruments during the Dirty Martini recording sessions. We had to roll down the window, and drive around with the cello case sticking out. That was a classic moment.

The weekend was great, but today I’m struggling a bit to keep my head above the metaphorical waterline. I got some troubling news from a friend yesterday, and some even more troubling second-hand news about another friend today. I’m a bit anxious about all of this, and I hope everything turns out okay with both of them.

Both of the gigs this past weekend were fantastic, and very different from each other. Breanna’s was one of the few where I finally felt really good about my cello playing, after doing it for three and a half years now. Crystin’s was really fun because it just felt like coming home again. Everyone who performed was a close friend who I haven’t seen in months, or sometimes even years. The gig was even at the MississippiPizzaPub, which is where Crystin and the band cut our proverbial teeth, and played more than anywhere else. I’ve probably played there with her at least fifty times. One of my friends from Seattle came to the show, and as a surprise she brought some of my other friends from here to the show as well.

In other news, I spent much of yesterday doing some more research for my 80’s Röck series, which is to say I dinked around online for most of the day while I did a few loads of laundry. I think Yacht Rock has got to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in ages.

I’m looking for a typewriter to use. If you have one, and I can use it, can you please leave me a comment or something? I have an idea for a picture, and it involves the use of a typewriter. Please and thank you!

Had an interesting discussion the other night about introverts vs. extroverts. One guy was saying how he used to be such an extrovert that he couldn’t even relate to introverts. The other guy–who turned out to be a missionary–said that he would never dream of hiring an introvert for a missionary. . .um. . .position. (I swear I didn’t intend to write that!) After thinking about it for a while–I am an introvert, after all–it occurred to me that C.S. Lewis is possibly one of the best-known and best-loved missionaries (of a certain type) of all time, but he certainly wasn’t an extrovert. He just quietly wrote stories and novels that explained his viewpoint, which then sent beautiful ripples throughout the world. So I guess what I’m saying is that there’s room for all types.

Religion–even this tiny bit–is a very rare subject for me to write about here, to be sure. Enjoy it while you can.