beautiful, funny, sad & true

Today I was supposed to record with IrishBand, but Singer was sick and losing his voice, so he had to cancel.  That left me with a couple of hours to kill before our band meeting tonight, so I took the opportunity to enjoy this beautiful fall day and went for a hike in Macleay Park.

I thought about taking my camera, because after a few months out of the habit, I’ve started taking it everywhere with me again.  The reason I didn’t today is because I didn’t want to carry it on the hike, and I’ve taken it to Macleay before, and while the park is supremely beautiful, the pictures have never been compelling.  So I left it at home, much to my later dismay.

When I arrived at the park, there was a guy who was practicing his sword and staff skills, which was surprisingly cool to watch.  I’ve never been into it myself, but I’m fascinated with all that SCA stuff.  There was a guy I knew in Yakima who used to make his own huge swords and armor and everything, and go out into Randall Park and practice fighting.  He was a little too into it, as a matter of fact, and he was a little bit scary.   The guy I saw today just looked cool, and was doing parries and lunges.  He was just finishing up as I was walking by, though.

I hiked a mile or so up the trail, to the dilapidated Stone House, and when I got there, a family was shooting a movie with their little digital video camera.  I sat on a log and watched them for about twenty minutes, while they filmed the last few scenes.  They were in full costume; the princess, the witch, the adventurer, the sorcerer, and the two ghouls.  I arrived just in time to see the ghouls and the witch get killed by two different spells, like this:  “Abracadabra is what I say, and I want you to go away!”  The little princess was about four years old, and when she yelled, “Save me!  Save me!  Save me!” I have to admit that it was pretty dang cute.  The best part, however, was watching the dad be a director for the kids.  It seemed like he had some sort of video experience, or at least he was acting as if he did.  It was really a fun thing to see.  I had my phone with me, so I was able to take a couple of pictures, but they both suck.

See what I mean?  Oh, how I wish I had brought my camera.  I learned my lesson, that’s for sure.  After they finished filming, I thanked the guy for letting us all hang out and watch them (because a handful of other people joined me on the log), and asked him if this film had a name.  “Indiana Johnson and the Princess in Peril,” he replied.  Sounds awesome, and hopefully it’ll be coming soon to a YouTube near you.   Let’s keep our eyes open.

Tonight is a meeting with IrishBand, followed by a happy hour at Kell’s, where they have an open Irish music jam session that Singer and I have been to see a time or two before, and it’s really great.  It would be fun to bring my cello down there sometime, but space is at such a premium in there, and the cello would make it pretty cramped.  There are lots of violinists, and mandolinists, and flutists, and even an accordionist who played for a little while.  Cello would totally rule with a group like that.  Who knows, I may bring it in at some point.

Anyway. . .signing off.

I love accents, and I kinda always have.  I also love to learn how to mimic them, and I kinda always have.  When I was a kid, I used to think that someday I would grow out of this tendency, but so far it’s still with me, and thank gawd for that.  My favorite accents to do are two of the most difficult ones.  Liverpudlian (from Liverpool, England), otherwise known as the Beatles’ accent,  with its sing-songy inflections and cadences and hard G’s on the ends of words (like ‘everythinG’) took quite a while and many repeated viewings of A Hard Day’s Night in order to master it.

My newest favorite is Australian, which I could never figure out until I listened to a book on tape, and found to my eternal delight that since it was an Australian story, they used an Australian actor to read it.  Brilliant!  Finally I had the chance to really hone in on the details of the accent, and realized that it’s all in the vowels.  They change, halfway through, as you flatten out the back of your tongue.  In fact, the phrase ‘change halfway through’ is the phrase that I used to lapse into the accent, and it’s now the phrase I use to explain to people how to hear it.

I told you that story to tell you this one.  The other night, I had just gotten home from seeing Ponyo with LJ (we both were lukewarm about it; it’s meant more for kids than many of his others are) and my building mates were standing in the street talking as I parked my car.  They were going to the Sandy Hut, and they invited me to join them.  We jumped in Flutist’s car and off we went.  While there, Cellist and his girlfriend have a favorite video game they like to play, so when it was free, they got up to play, and that left Flutist and me by ourselves.

We were sitting and talking, when a girl walked up next to our table to look at the mural that’s on the wall.  (I find it hard to believe that multiple Internet searches were unable to find me a picture of said mural.)  It’s a collage of a bunch of caricatures of famous people from the past, like W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, people like that, and it’s fair to say that it does attract attention and start conversations.  So anyway, the girl.  She stood there looking at the mural, and asked us who this one particular person was supposed to be.  So we all started talking about that, and that’s when Flutist and I noticed that she had an Australian accent.  Turned out that she was traveling with two or three of her guy friends, and they found themselves in Portland for a day or so.  We talked about that, and Flutist has been to Australia a couple of times (has family there, in fact) and she told the girl that I do a great accent.  The girl actually wanted to introduce me to her friends, because it was the best accent she’d heard so far, and she thought it would be funny to make a new Aussie friend in a random bar in a random part of this crazy little city.  She asked how I did it, and I told her about the ‘halfway through’ thing, which Flutist is aware of too, because I’ve told her about it before.

After the discussion of accents (she also wanted to know how to improve her American), she started to tell me and Flutist about an idea for a comedy skit she’d been working on.  She explained it to us, and it was something about two guys who go outside to smoke, and something about getting ‘halfway through’ their cigarettes when hijinks suddenly ensue.  Flutist and I cracked up laughing every time she said ‘halfway through’ so we missed a little bit of what she was trying to tell us.  We did get the gist, however, and it was kind of funny, but she interpreted our outbursts as if we were laughing at the actual joke, so she asked, “So you guys thought it was that funny?  You think it could really go somewhere?”  With a healthy dose of diplomacy, we told her that it was pretty funny, but what actually sent us into hysterics was the fact that she said ‘halfway through’ about four times, and Flutist knows that’s my Australian catch phrase, so to be sitting next to a cute Australian girl who was using that exact phrase was just too perfect.

After about fifteen more minutes, her friends whisked her away and they all left to go elsewhere.  Flutist and I filled in Cellist and his girlfriend, who had returned to our table during the telling of the joke, on the back story and the significance of of the coincidental phrase, and Flutist added, to me, “You charmed the pants off her.”  “I’ve got my moments,” I replied through a wry smile.

The young kid in me, who loved accents but always thought that he would eventually grow out of all this nonsense, was overjoyed and felt completely vindicated by the whole experience.  Funny how life works sometimes.

I just watched this documentary called The Cruise about Tim ‘Speed’ Levitch, who you may know from his animated appearance in the movie Waking Life.

Here’s a clip from one of my favorite scenes of The Cruise, which I can’t embed, unfortunately, but it’s well worth your time to watch it.

I just watched the movie “The Fall”, and I have to say that it’s one of the grandest and most genuinely epic movies I’ve ever seen.  The story itself is excellent, but the cinematography and photography are breathtaking as well, and the locations are all real locations filmed all over the world.

Do yourself a favor and rent this movie.  You’ll be glad you did.

I saw the new Star Trek movie the other day, and totally loved it.  It had a story line that could clearly stand on its own, but still featured enough geek-out material and historical information for old-school (or just plain old!) fans of the original series.

I found myself thinking a couple of things during the movie, though.  They aren’t story spoilers at all, but if you haven’t seen it yet, and you absolutely don’t want to know anything about the movie before you do, then you may want to just skip ahead a couple of paragraphs.  Now then.  I thought that the orange creature from the ice planet didn’t look like it was the kind of creature that would survive in an environment like that.  No fur, no feet even, just spindly little insect legs and a safety-orange body (absolutely zero camouflage in white and gray surroundings) which was seemingly held together by anger alone.  Please.

Also (and this is not Star Trek’s fault, per se, I’ve noticed it in about a billion other movies), I’m tired of the cliché that good guys live and work in bright, pristinely clean buildings and spaceships, and bad guys ooze through space in ramshackle ships that resemble floating sewers on the inside, with steam and water seeping everywhere, and half-destroyed (or half-built, depending on your view of life) landings and walkways that constantly teeter the pedestrians along the edge of bottomless abysses, without so much as a handrail between them and certain death.  WTF?  Just once I would love to see a bad guy who didn’t instantly LOOK like the bad guy, and who didn’t live in a sewer with countless elevated walkways.  Please?  Thank you.

All that being said, the movie was really awesome, and you should totally go see it.  I may see it again once it makes its way into the second-run theaters.

Oh yeah. . .just for the record, the actress who plays Uhura is smokin’ hot.  I’m just saying.