beautiful, funny, sad & true

And now, finally, here’s the entry describing IrishBand’s trip to Port Townsend earlier this month.  As you may or may not know, the other two guys in the band are PT natives, so each trip back is loaded with memories and emotions for them, and new memories and good times for me.

We drove up there early on Saturday morning, the plan being to arrive early enough that we could meet up with friends, eat pizza, and wander around town to look in the shops and see the sights.  The Plan quickly seemed to evaporate, however, as phone calls went unanswered and shops weren’t open.  We did manage to connect with Dan and Julie, who grew up in PT but lived in Portland until recently.  We visited them at the extremely unusual house they’re renting, which is also a place that Singer lived a few years back.  I wanted to take pictures of everything, but I thought better of it because it was our friends’ place.  Maybe next time I will.  We’re planning to go up to PT more regularly.

So after that, we were a bit at a loss as to what to do next.  We’d already explored the town, and most of the shops were closed, so when in Rome, you do as the Romans do on a slow Saturday afternoon. . .which in Rome means that you see the sculptures and ruins and art, but in Port Townsend it means that you’re probably going to end up at a bar, which is what we did.  Singer, Singer’sGirlfriend and I killed a bit of time in there until Violinist arrived in town.  We also spent a good bit of time in a bookstore after that.  Incidentally, that’s where I picked up a copy of Invisible Man, which I wrote about in this entry.  We ate at the amazing Waterfront Pizza, and that’s about when Violinist arrived.  He suggested that we drive out to the lighthouse and watch the sunset, which was beginning to look like it could be a very memorable one.  We locked our instruments in a closet at the venue, and then loaded ourselves into the car and headed up the hill along the winding streets of the town.

Here are some pictures of our evening at the beach.  You can click on them to make them larger.

The tide happened to be high while we were there, and the waves were crashing against the rocks, sometimes splashing clear up next to the lighthouse.  I wasn’t able to capture any of the huge ones on video, unfortunately, but this will give you at least a sense of what it was like.

Ahhhhh. . .so nice.  I could watch that all day.

From there, we went back to the venue to set up and eat dinner.  They provided us with pizza, salad and as many drinks as we wanted, within reason.  Nice place, that Sirens, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  Their sound system, however, leaves a bit to be desired.  We started to set up, and were told that they don’t have any microphones anymore.  Luckily I had brought one, and we managed to scrounge up a toy one from the back room, so all was not lost, but it certainly sounded much worse than usual.  In fact, about two-thirds of the way through the show, after struggling with the PA the entire time, we said a collective ‘screw it’, and decided to pretend that it was 1885 or something, and just play acoustically and have fun.  We walked with our instruments and played in various parts of the bar, including the hallway, and then went back to the stage for the rest of the set.  There was some floor space near the front, so two people took the opportunity to do some wild Irish dancing around the room, which made for a fun ending to an otherwise problematic show.  We left around one a.m. and stayed out at Violinist’s parents’ house, like we did last time.  They were excellent hosts, as usual, and they made an amazing breakfast for all of us. . .hearty pancakes with raspberry sauce, applesauce on the side, veggie sausage, and all the coffee and tea we could handle.

Incidentally, I learned that not only was the movie Snow Falling on Cedars filmed in Port Townsend (among other places), but also that a couple friends of the group were extras in the film.  They played Japanese-American kids (because that’s what they were at the time; they’re all growed up now, and are Japanese-American adults) who were walking onto the boat as it was leaving to take the families to the internment camps during World War II.  I loved the book, and thought the movie was just okay, but I put it on my InternetFlicks queue to see what there is to see of PT and our friends.

The next morning was a special annual event in Port Townsend called the Kinetic Race.  It’s not really a race as much as a chance for people to show off their ingenuity.  The ‘kinetics’ are these odd contraptions that are somewhere between bicycles, kayaks, boats, and cars.  They have to be built along a set of guidelines.  They must be human-powered (no motors of any kind), and they have to be able to travel on the street, in the water, on sand, and through mud.  Our little group congregated right along the waterfront, sitting or standing on the rocks, to watch the street-to-water portion of the event.

The vehicles were absolutely ingenious.  Here are pictures of most of them.  Like before, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

The Art-Not-Fear trio (Fear-Not-Art?  Not-Fear-Art?  Fear-Art-Not?) was struck by tragedy when Not capsized on the other size of the pier, and the driver/captain had to be rescued by the sheriff.  The guy wasn’t hurt, luckily, but the kinetic looked a bit worse for wear when we saw it on the shore later.  Incidentally, the picture of the Cadillac sticking out of the water, with “Fear Art” being the obvious caption, was just too priceless not to capture.

The plastic replica of a 1963 Cadillac started out as a crowd favorite, but I’m not sure how many friends they made that day, because they rolled down the ramp so fast that they slammed into the guy in the water in front of them, and he had to use his arms to push himself away from the car.  Which is okay, accidents do happen sometimes, but later on, it seemed to have a bit of difficulty in the water, and it even needed to be towed about halfway through the course.

The one below was my personal favorite of the kinetics, because of its simple, clean, economical design.  It’s also the one that ended up towing the Cadillac.  Just another example of the fact that simplicity is always best.  It went into and out of the water effortlessly. . .

. . .unlike the one below, which seemed overbuilt and awkward.  It took a great deal of shifting things around, both going out and coming in.  It did really well in the water, I have to say, but it sure looked like a lot of wasted energy.

The Magic Bus was far and away the crowd’s favorite, and huge cheers erupted as it rolled down into the water:

I took a video of each kinetic coming back from the water and up the ramp, but that would be ridiculous overkill, so I narrowed it down to two.  The first video shows two of the fastest transitions from water to road (again, due to their excellent design), and the second video shows three or four different people coming in around the same time (including the guy who got hit by the Cadillac), so you can really see what the various kinetics are like in motion.  The second video is a bit long, but it’s definitely worth watching the whole thing.

After about two hours of hanging around and watching the kinetics, we started to get hungry, so we walked back up to Waterfront and had a slice of pizza (third time having pizza in two days!).  By that time, we were all starting to fade out, and we decided to drive back home to Portland.

The trip was a total blast, as usual.  I love PT, and I’m really glad to have the opportunity to spend time there regularly, and to meet so many of the cool people who live there.  I feel like I’m starting to get to know the place by now.

The only bummer about the trip was that the Tyler Street Coffee House is no longer open on Sundays.  I have to go on record and say that this makes no sense to me at all.  It’s the best coffee and pastry shop in town (nay, the WORLD. . .there, I said it) and it’s been a highlight of past visits.  We didn’t make it there last time, so we were very much looking forward to renewing our love for the TSCH.  Alas, it was not to be.  Next time, however, we’re planning to come up on a Friday so that we can partake of the wonderfulness that’s created there.

Just thinking about it already makes me happy.

This week is Banned Books Week, according to the American Library Association, and here’s a list of some of the most popular ones.  I’ve read about half of the books on the list, and among them are some of my favorites, including Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Lord of the Rings, and A Clockwork Orange.

Of particular interest (to me, anyway) was the inclusion of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, thanks in part to my beloved alma mater, the Yakima School District:

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

Excerpts banned in Butler, PA (1975); removed from the high school English reading list in St. Francis, WI (1975). Retained in the Yakima, WA schools (1994) after a five-month dispute over what advanced high school students should read in the classroom. Two parents raised concerns about profanity and images of violence and sexuality in the book and requested that it be removed from the reading list.

Thanks, Yakima.  That must be why we had to suffer through forgettably crappy books like Silas Marner and Billy Budd instead of ‘real’ books that people read everywhere else.  When my English teacher (God rest her soul, assuming that she’s dead) assigned us Silas Marner, she said, “You’re not going to like this book, but that’s what we’re going to read.”

I was the quietest, shyest (shiest?) person in human history back then, but I raised my hand, and she motioned for me to speak.

“I love to read, and there are a lot of books out there.  Isn’t there something else with a similar message that maybe we would enjoy?”

“I’m sure there is, but we’re going to read this.”

That happened in my sophomore year of high school, and that’s the point at which I officially gave up.  Coincidentally enough, I got my first electric guitar not long after that.  I thank GreatSpirit every day that I already loved to read, because the vast majority of the people I knew in Yakima actually hated reading due to the so-called learning environment we had in our schools.  I, on the other hand, had my life saved by books, and it breaks my heart to know that people all over the country are trying at this very moment to deprive kids of that experience.

That being said, I have to go on record and say that a ban is sometimes the best thing that could possibly happen to a creative work, because it creates a controversy, and then people will buy the work just to see what all the fuss is about.  I worked in a record store at the time 2 Live Crew’s Nasty As They Wanna Be came out, and our dusty copies sat on the shelf for months until it got banned, and then we couldn’t order copies fast enough to fulfill the overwhelming demand for it.  Those guys are multi-millionaires by now, but I’m positive that they’d be just another group of obscure hip hop also-ran’s without the ban.

I think Oscar Wilde was correct with his famous line from The Picture of Dorian Gray, “There is only thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is NOT being talked about.”

Suffice it to say that when I write a book, I give you permission to ban it.  In fact, I encourage you to ban it.  I want it to cause so much controversy that I have to go into hiding for years, like Salman Rushdie and J. D. Salinger did.

And now, I have some reading to do.  The first book on my list is Invisible Man.

OneYearAgo

Saturday I got up early to drive to tiny little Welches, Oregon to see my friend Andrea play and to hang out with my recording friend Jim.  (He and I produced Andrea’s CD.)  Since she’s living in Europe now, we’ll take any chances we can get to hang out with her.  Jim and I talked over breakfast, and she arrived while we were finishing up.  Huge hugs all around.

She played her set and sounded awesome.  There were a few songs that were new to me.  One in particular (which I don’t remember the name of, but I do remember that it was in E minor!) was especially stellar.  At the end of her set, I stood up and clapped, and then motioned with my arms for everyone else to stand up and join me, and we all gave her a nice, big ovation.  It was a great way to welcome her home and send her off again, all at the same time.

Tonight she and I got together for dinner at Queen of Sheba, one of the better Ethiopian restaurants in town.  Portland is known for, among other things, being a very ‘white’ town (to put it kindly), but for some reason we have a plethora of Ethiopian restaurants here.  In fact, another new one just opened up recently, and it’s not even very far from where I live.  Must. . .investigate. . .

After we were done with dinner, she asked if we could drive down to EliteHippieCollege.  She had just finished reading a book called ‘Blue Like Jazz’, the author of which had gone to that college, and had written movingly about a park with a little bridge.  She wanted to find it.  I said, “Let’s go.”

We drove all over and found nothing until we went around to the back side of the campus, and sure enough, we came to a large, forested area, replete with two bridges.  We parked the car and walked across one of them, and found a slightly overgrown path to walk down along the pond at the bottom of the ravine.  We ended up here:

The picture quality isn’t the greatest because it was starting to get dark, which meant that my poor little camera was trying to compensate, and it was hard for me to hold it still while the shutter was open.  (Have I mentioned how much I want a better camera?  And a tripod?)  But the place was beautiful, the conversation was great, and the mosquitoes weren’t too bloodthirsty.

It really started to get dark quickly, so we headed back up the forested path.  We stopped under the bridge to take more pictures, and here’s the best one:

It was just. . .an excellent evening.  I don’t want to trivialize it any further by reducing it to mere language.

OneYearAgo

Late last night, one of my friends sent me an e-mail containing a link to a WebSiteLikeTV video of pictures that were taken at my high school reunion, which happened about a month ago.  Naturally, I gave it a miss, because it’s a well-established fact by now that I hated both high school and the town I grew up in. I have no nostalgia for that time of my life at all.  I think if I could have it surgically excised from my head, I’d sign up for that procedure before you could finish saying, ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.’

Based on the pictures from the event, it looks as if about thirty people attended the reunion, out of a graduating class of around four hundred.  Normally for something like this, I would post a link to the video so that you could experience it too, but believe me when I tell you that in this case I’m doing you a favor by not including it.  I recognized about five people, and only one or maybe two would have been nice to chat with for a while. 

Everyone went bar hopping on both Friday and Saturday night, and then had a picnic in the park on Sunday, which involved all their kids and families, and sounded pretty awful.  Most, it seems, married others from the class and stayed in town.  If that had been my fate, I have no doubt that I would not be alive today.  I feel very fortunate to have escaped Yakima’s event horizon.

[shudder]

Moving on.

In other news, I got a call from my friend Jim, whose studio I’ve been planning to use for both new recording projects starting this month, to tell me that the golf course outside his place is being completely torn up, redesigned, and then rebuilt.  Construction started Monday and will last until spring.  The crews, with their huge earth movers, will be working approximately ten hours per day, six days a week.  This leaves only Sundays for recording purposes.  This is not the end of the world, or the end of either project, but it sure puts a cramp on our collective style.

Work has been extremely stressful this week.  Thank gawd for the play-reading group tonight, a gig with IrishBand tomorrow night, and a gig down in Salem with Breanna ‘n’ Justin on Friday night.   And remember Andrea, who moved to Switzerland right after we finished her CD?  She’s in town this week and next, so I’m going to go see her play a show on Saturday, and hopefully make some time to get some Ethiopian food while she’s here.

Our apartment building is getting a new heating system this week.  The good news is that the people whose apartments are freezing in the winter will no longer have to freeze, the people whose apartments are boiling will no longer have to boil, and the fuel tank which runs out of fuel on the coldest nights of the year will no longer have to be filled.  The bad news is that we’ll each have to pay for our own heat, which we haven’t had to do thus far.  I know; I know.  I shouldn’t complain about that, because we have such a good thing going here.  But it will be a tremendous improvement over the antiquated boiler and heating system.  I’ll miss the central fan, though.  I sure hope they keep that around for the summers.

Hmm.  How to end this entry. . .

Well, here you go. Since we were talking about YouTube (no, I’m not going to include the reunion), here’s a funny video about an Australian oil tanker crash.