beautiful, funny, sad & true

Yesterday I got a text message from RockShowGirl saying, “I don’t have to work today.  What are you up to?”  (I took the liberty of changing her ‘r u’ to ‘are you’, by the way.  You’re welcome.)  I called her back and we decided that a day trip was just what we needed.  We were originally thinking of going to Astoria, but she called back to say that it was warmer at the beach, so she suggested Oceanside, where I’d never been.  On the way is Cape Meares lighthouse, which I’ve also never seen, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity for some exploring.

First stop was Cape Meares, where you can see the top of the lighthouse from the walking path, which is odd.  We came around the corner and were startled to find that “Oh. . .that’s it right there. Crazy!”  The path takes you right up next to it, and then snakes around so you can enter the site.  The lighthouse turned out to be a cute li’l guy, too, not even forty feet tall.  (Click the pics to view them larger.)

Admission is free, so we climbed clear to the top.  (I know, right?  Can you believe it?  All that way. . .)  I took a few pictures, but the ones from inside the lighthouse structure were much better than the ones I got of the view.  See for yourself.

We didn’t spend too much time there, because we’d been driving for more than two hours over crazy roads paved with potholes, and then hiking around the lighthouse site, so by this time we were both getting really hungry and excited to get to the beach.  We got back in the car and headed the rest of the way to Oceanside, a town perched beautifully but precariously on the edge of a cliff, with one main road and about five hundred residents.  The great thing about going to the Oregon coast on a weekday is that wherever you go you will pretty much have the place to yourself, especially if you are off of the main highway.

Our first stop was Roseanna’s Cafe, where we shared an excellent lunch of clam chowder, salad, and a halibut burger.  We were the only customers for about half of our meal, when another couple arrived.  The place is excellent, and really cute, and I would highly recommend it.  They have lots of seafood and pasta dishes in the $15-20 range that gave us Pavlovian salivation responses while reading their descriptions, but both of us are on a pretty tight budget these days, so we put it on our Places-To-Come-Back-To-In-The-Future list.

Finally, with our bellies full and satisfied, it was time to walk down to the ocean.  The town of Oceanside is perched on a cliff, like I said, and the main beach near the town is run-of-the-mill as far as beaches go.  I mean, it’s pretty and everything, but as a long-time Oregon resident, I have to admit that I’m pretty spoiled.   The pictures I took of that part of the beach weren’t especially exciting either, quite frankly, so here’s a picture of the town instead that I took from there.

For the real beach experience of Oceanside, you walk through this tunnel. . .

. . .which, on the other side of the cliff, guides you onto a beautiful, secluded, rocky (and true–ha ha) beach that still feels very wild and unspoiled by civilization.  We hiked around for an hour or two, climbing on the rocks, exploring caves, and taking pictures until the wind chilled us sufficiently and we decided to head back, but the beach and the town are exquisite, and I recommend a trip there.  Here’s a little pictorial incentive for you.

Then it’s into the tunnel again. . .

. . .and you’re back in the real world of the twenty-first century.  We walked back to the car and took the opportunity to drive up through the hills and explore the rest of the little town.  All the roads except the main street are steep, narrow, serpentine one-lane switchbacks with signs posted saying how motor homes and trailers are not recommended.  The houses are beautiful, almost without exception.  In many of the yards were posted small signs telling us to boycott this certain place that was across the street from the restaurant at which we ate lunch.  A quick Internet search just revealed the reason why:  it’s now a strip club, and it seems that many of the residents are all up in arms about that.  Kinda funny, really.  For the record, I’m not a fan of strip clubs, but I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy.  If I don’t like a place, I won’t boycott it, I’ll just choose not to go there.

But that’s a story for another day.  This is the story of a beautiful place, on a beautiful day, with a great friend.

Love it.

For those of you who either don’t love or haven’t seen many 80’s movies, this picture is a parody of the classic scene from the movie Say Anything, in which John Cusack holds his boom box (back then, however, it would’ve been called a ‘ghetto blaster’) aloft and blasts the song In Your Eyes into the window of his sleeping ex-girlfriend, with the intention of waking her up and winning her back.  Great movie, by the way.  It may look a bit dated by now, but the story is excellent.

In the interest of full disclosure, you can buy the ‘Jesus loves you’ T-shirt here, but be warned.  Most of the shirts on the site are much more R-rated, as well as being less funny and more crass than this particular one is.

So there’s this whole series of videos on [read the following with a Cockney accent] TubeWhatBelongsToYou [okay, now you can go back to your normal voice] called Shreds, and the videos are pure genius.  The person who makes them takes existing videos of a famous musician or band and they overdub the various instruments and vocals based on what’s happening on the screen,  making it sound as crappy and as funny as possible.

Warning:  the videos are highly addictive.

Here’s my personal favorite, which is a Kiss video from the 1970’s.  The real song is “I Was Made For Loving You” (click here to watch the original, but definitely don’t until after you’ve watched the ‘shred’ video).

‘I can’t say philanto-papa. . .Pikachu!’

I could watch these all day, and I know I can, actually, because that’s what a good part of yesterday consisted of; that and then a longish recording session in the evening for IrishBand.

I can NOT believe how busy life has been for these last two weeks.  I had two huge shows, both of which required tons of preparation and rehearsal with the various groups.  The first one was on St. Patrick’s Day with IrishBand. . .

. . .which was a total blast.  We played for four hours that night, with a couple one-hour breaks while another band played in between our sets.  We kept people there, singing and dancing and rockin’ out until 2:00 a.m.   Since then, we had a smaller (but just as fun) show and started doing more recording at my place.  We finished the drum tracks for one song, and started them on a second.

The next huge show after St. P’s Day was the CD release party for Susie Blue, which took place at the new-and-improved Mississippi Studios.  That was already one of my favorite places to play, but now it’s been revamped and enlarged, turning it into quite possibly the best of the medium-sized venues in Portland.

Without getting too far into geek-out territory, after the second song, I looked down to find that the lights on my big keyboard were off.  I had accidentally set the accordion on the power strip switch and turned it off, which meant that I lost all of the good sounds I had loaded into it specifically for that show.  I had a nice little freak-out moment onstage, and told Susie, “I lost power.”  “How long will it take to re-load everything?” she asked.  “It’d take way too long.  I’ll figure something out.”  Luckily I had my tiny Casio (which you can see on top of the big keyboard) there for one song, because I ended up using it on lots of songs.  It totally saved the day, and the show went off without another hitch.  For an eleven-piece band (most of whom were not onstage during the song that was being performed when this picture was taken), that’s quite a feat indeed.

Incidentally, here’s a song from Susie’s new CD called “Fading” on which I play accordion and drums, and also was part of the hand-clapping and cheering.  I play accordion on a bunch of the other songs, as well as piano and Omnichord.  If you’re interested, you can check out our web site, and listen to or buy some songs from CDBaby.

Three days ago, my life got overtaken by a project that a bass player friend of mine called me to fill in for.  There’s a dance group in town called Bodyvox, who created dance interpretations to a bunch of Tom Waits’ songs, with a live band and a handful of opera singers.  The guy who’s playing accordion and electric guitar (as well as saxopohone and slide guitar) can’t make it to the show on Saturday, so my bassist friend, who is the musical director for the show, called me in a panic on Tuesday.  Since then, my life has been thrown into a frenzy of learning songs, as well as attending rehearsals and performances as an understudy of sorts.  The show I’m playing is the matinee show on Saturday afternoon, and I’m feeling confident about it.   I’m listening to the CD as I’m writing this, as a matter of fact.  I’m on the song Hoist That Rag, which features one of my favorite guitarists, Marc Ribot.

Add to that the recording sessions I’ve had at my place recently, both for money and for IrishBand, and you get a very busy Todd.  SO busy, in fact, that this is the first time I’ve had to write anything at all, aside from the occasional link to a video or something.  I almost added a clip from “Girl on the Bridge” an amazing French movie which I watched last night.  It just came out on DVD, which is strange because it’s only about ten years old, and I can’t imagine why its DVD release was held up for such a long time.   Well, what the heck, here’s a link to what is probably the most famous scene.  I love this movie, because it never quite goes in the directions you think it’s going to go.  Very similar to Angel-A.

The song (sung by Marianne Faithfull) is also amazing.  If you’ve ever seen “City of Lost Children”, you may recognize it from the ending credits; that’s the movie for which it was originally written, but it’s since appeared in many others as well.

Well, that’s what’s been going on with me lately.  I know it’s a lot to handle in one blog entry, from songs to pictures to movie links and clips and everything else, but. . .well. . .welcome to my world these days.  I had a lot to share, and it may be another few days before I have another chance to write again, so there’s that.

Hope all in your world is well!