beautiful, funny, sad & true

Just the other day, I got the invitation from my high school for my graduating class’s twentieth anniversary reunion, which is happening a month from now.  A month?  You’ve got to be kidding me.  I need much longer than that to prepare myself for that kind of trauma.  I laughed like a hyena as I crumpled up the invitation and threw it in the recycling bin.  I immediately posted a message on Twitter saying, “Got my high school reunion invitation today. Is there a polite way to say, ‘F Off, I Hated High School?’ “

The next day, I e-mailed one of my friends from back then who lives down in Newport (Oregon) now, and who tracked me down on MySpace last summer after seeing one of my gigs on TV.  I asked if he’ll be going to the reunion.  The short answer is that he will not be.  He mentioned a few people who he’d been in contact with lately, and who he wasn’t excited to see, and they were all names of people who had either bullied, ignored, or insulted me back in the day.  You see, in high school, I was a quiet, shy, kinda nerdy guy (I know, it’s hard to believe) and most people didn’t talk to me.  The ones who did talk to me usually did so in a mocking way.  The precious few who were my actual friends are some of the people I’m still in contact with today.  A handful of them I’m very close to.  There are about ten people I’d like to see, out of my graduating class of four hundred, but the rest I couldn’t care less about.  I’m not nostalgic for high school at all.  College had its moments, and its close friendships (some of which I still maintain), but I have to admit that I’m really enjoying life now much more than ever before.  Even with the extremely painful things that have happened recently, I feel alive now in a way that I never used to.  I was a shell of a person back then, and I feel like I had nothing to offer anyone.  If I were to go to a reunion now, it would just be too freakin’ weird, with people trying to talk to me as if we were friends, or trying to feign interest in my life in the interim.

Not to mention the fact that I don’t go by my middle name anymore, like I did back then, so I’d have to tell THAT story about four hundred times.  No thank you; I’ll pass.

I remember one person who I ran into when I still lived in Yakima and worked at the video store.  She walked in the door and instantly recognized me.  “Oh my gosh!  Hey [my middle name], how are you?”  She told me her name, which I recognized too.  She looked great, and had been a cheerleader all through high school, but she also played the flute, which is how I had known her.  We talked for a few minutes about the usual pleasantries, and then she said, “What’s your last name again?  I want to say [my last name], but you’d kill me.”  The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I replied, “Well it IS [my last name], and why would I want to kill you for that?”  She sputtered, “Uhhh . .ababah. . .I gotta go.  Good to see you!” waved over her shoulder, and ran out the door.  I just stood there, dumbstruck and fuming.

In other news, this trip down Memory Lane has got me thinking about someone completely different; my girlfriend from my college years.  She comes up in conversation every once in a while, and every time she does, the people who knew me then say things like, “You sure loved her a lot.”   And it’s true.  Ours was a complicated relationship that lasted for about five years, and we split up for good when I moved to Portland and she moved to Seattle.  We talked on the phone a few times after that, but then the trajectories of our lives took over, and we haven’t talked since.  She’s the one I’ve wondered about more than any other, and I’ve even looked her up occasionally online.  I’ve had the feeling that her life hasn’t gone in the way that she expected it would, and that she’s not happy about it.  What I’ve found recently is that she’s not married, she’s still living in the Seattle metropolitan area, she’s still singing both jazz and classical music, and she’s still working for a video game company.  She was doing all of those things the last time I talked to her.  I haven’t tried to e-mail her or contact her in any way.  I wouldn’t know where to begin, really, other than to say that I’ve thought about her a lot over the years, and that I really hope she’s well, and that I would love to talk to her sometime and see what she’s done with herself.

Man, life is weird, but I suppose I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This makes me laugh for so many reasons. . .

1) It’s from Yakima.
2) The creators actually won some sort of award for it.
3) “If you’re over 100, come down anyway and enjoy the beautiful view” of the parking lot,
from a second-story window.
4) They go straight from “Need a dress for homecoming or prom?” to “Want to join the Army?”
Silky smooth.
5) My biggest crack-up is the opening sentence. I’ll let you experience it for yourself.

This past week was one of the best and most memorable of my whole life. I had the opportunity to tour with Breanna and Justin through the American West, and let me just take a minute to say that it was a total blast.

The cast of characters:

Breanna

Justin

and me. :)

Breanna and I both took hundreds of pictures on this trip. After I get done with the entries for the individual days, I’ll post another entry called ‘Best Pictures of the Tour’ or something. But you’ll find that out for yourself soon enough, I suppose.

So here we are, van packed, ready to hit the road.

Somehow it became our ‘thing’ to pose for every group picture twice; one in which we pose normally and the other in which we pose ‘gangsta’. Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong with us either, but it did make for some funny pictures.

One other thing that’s important to know about Breanna and Justin is that after a year of friendship, they recently started dating. This, by the way, is awesome and gets my full blessing.

Okay, so on with the story. We started the tour in Eugene, Oregon, at a pizza place with a cosmic theme. We shared the evening with a duo from Los Angeles called Homesick Elephant.

They were really great, and super nice people as well. Their music was very influenced by Simon and Garfunkel, in a good way. One of their songs is entitled “Ghost of Philadelphia”, which is actually a phrase that Justin had randomly said earlier in the day, so we both kinda perked up and looked at each other when they sang that line in the song, as if to say, ‘Did they just say that? That’s so weird.’

One of the waiters had a very funny and effeminate way of inhaling through his teeth while he was thinking of something to say.

For example, when we asked him about good places to explore, he answered, “Well. . .sssssss. . .try going downtown–” which Justin and I immediately adopted and incorporated into our own speech patterns for the rest of the trip. The three of us walked all over downtown, and went shopping for clothes at Buffalo Exchange, but somehow we ended up empty-handed.

There were two guys in the audience who kept making me laugh. One guy was drunk by 5:30, while we were arriving and setting up. He came in to have some pizza and sober up, but he kept having difficulty sitting up straight, while dealing with his duffel bag at the same time, so I kept trying to surreptitiously take a picture of him. Here’s the only one that actually came out:

There was another guy who sat right up front and clapped for an uncomfortable (and slightly creepy) length of time after every single song. You can see what I mean from this picture:

He seemed a bit loaded also, but harmless enough. He was just a little bit weird, that’s all I’m saying. But the night was a blast, and the show went off without a hitch. Afterwards, we backtracked and drove an hour back up north to Salem, to stay at Breanna’s aunt’s house.

It was the perfect way to start a tour.

OneYearAgo

Spent the weekend in Port Townsend, Washington playing with IrishBand, which was a total blast, as usual. We all stayed at the home of Violinist’s parents, which is about seven miles outside of PT. They were GraciousInvitingOpenAndFriendly, and their house – which they pretty much built themselves – was beautiful.

We arrived in PT at around two-thirty in the afternoon, just in time to set up and play an acoustic gig at the Boiler Room, which was really more of a promotion stunt to get people to come see us at Sirens later that night. I took the opportunity to walk down the street and take a few pics. Here’s one that’s okay:

While we were setting up, there was an attempted robbery at the store across the street, and when the police car pulled up and parked, I thought (before we knew what was happening) that perhaps a parking ticket or something was in my immediate future, because that’s my red Honda, snookered in by the police car.

Turns out that my fears were unfounded.

We tried to take pictures, but we couldn’t see any of the action, and before too long, the street was pretty well filled with rubberneckers anyway. After our gig was over, we packed up and headed to Violinist’s parents’ house for dinner, by way of Fort Worden and all of the abandoned military bunkers that line the hillsides along the coast. We hiked through a few of them, and even walked through some of the pitch-black tunnels that connect them. I took a few pictures, because the light and the angles were so interesting from room to room.

The homemade dinner we were served was amazing, and the show was amazing. I didn’t realize there was such a sizable Brazilian contingent in PT, but there were quite a few in attendance that night. They were right up front, dancing up a storm, which always makes for a more enjoyable show.

Afterwards, BassPlayer and BanjoPlayer went off with a couple of rockabilly girls (for the record, only BassPlayer was interested in the girls; BanjoPlayer has a great girlfriend, and he knows it) most of us went to a ‘condo’ party. I don’t know whose condo it was, but it seems to be quite the party place. The party wasn’t too much fun, actually. Violinist and Singer used to live in Port Townsend, and they knew lots of the people there, but the other three of us were a bit out of the loop. There’s a notoriously obnoxious guy who actually called Singer’s girlfriend a bitch (Twice!), so she and Singer left really early. Drummer, Violinist, Violinist’s girlfriend and I tried gamely to stick around for a while, but after we overheard a few more weird comments, we decided it was time to leave. One guy, when his Asian female friend respectfully declined to join him on an outing he invited her to, actually asked her, “Why do you have to be such a Jew?” Violinist’s girlfriend and I looked at each other in a what-planet-are-we-on-again way. Then, as we were making our way to the door to leave, overheard a conversation between Obnoxious Guy and some random guy he didn’t know. Obnoxious Guy told Random Guy, “You’re acting just like a French Canadian. I HATE French Canadians.” (Drummer said the next morning that the ultimate revenge for a guy like that would be if he met and fell in love with a nice French-Canadian girl. I thought that was hilarious.)

It was about one in the morning when we all met back up again, and caravaned back to our home base. BassPlayer left the girls at the bar, and we asked him, “Why didn’t you go home with them? It seemed like one of them was kinda into you.” He replied, in a really low drunken slur, while putting two oranges into the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, “I woulda had a much better time. . .lying on my stomach. . .pooping.” We all cracked up laughing with surprise, and Violinist said, “What’s that from? That’s really funny.” BassPlayer replied, in the same low slur, “My diary,” which made us laugh even harder.

I slept on the sofa in the living room, in my sleeping bag, and Drummer slept on the other side of the room divider, on an air mattress on the floor. Drummer snores. A lot. He started in almost immediately, and he didn’t respond to my shaking, so I put in my ear buds and turned on my iPod just loud enough to drown him out. I can’t usually sleep to music, but I really can’t sleep to loud snoring, and the iPod did the trick.

I was the first one awake, around eight-thirty the next morning, since I hadn’t had very much to drink the night before, so I got up, took a shower, and went for a hike through the wooded five-acre property.

While I was hiking, there were homemade SausageVeggieEgg frittatas, homemade bread, homemade applesauce with mixed berries, and homemade apple juice all being born at the same time. Once they were ready, we all ate and talked and laughed outside in the morning sunshine, and then gradually packed up and made our separate ways back to Portland. Drummer and I drove along the eastern edge of the Washington peninsula, down Highway 101 until it turned inland at Olympia. We stopped along the way to take some pictures, but none of them really came out the way we had hoped. This one was probably the best, but I still don’t find it particularly compelling.

After a while, we just wanted to get home. We listened to a whole bunch of CD’s, but my favorite by far was a new band called Low Vs. Diamond. They’re really great, and we listened to their album three or four times. Listening to the songs now at that link, I was transported back to the trip, talking and laughing and eating ice cream with Drummer.

At one point, we pulled into a rest stop to get some coffee and cookies, and when we went to leave, my car refused to start. It does that occasionally, so we let it cool off for a while, but it still balked when we tried it a second time. Drummer taught me the push-start technique, and there were two guys watching and laughing at us while we pushed the car down the hill toward the on-ramp. When Drummer told me to pop the clutch, and the car started right up, he yelled triumphantly to the two guys, “That’s how you do it, boys!” and we were back on the road.

We got to Portland around six-thirty, and after dropping off Drummer, I came home to find that there was a house party in my building, planned for eight o’clock, which gave me just enough time to shower and change my sweaty clothes. The party was fun, and the festivities lasted until one a.m., when it seemed to be over, but I found out tonight that there were still people who straggled in as late as two-thirty. The party spilled over into today, in a way, because when I came walking home from work, two of my neighbor friends were sitting outside eating some of the leftover homemade salsa from last night. “Help,” they said, “we need to get rid of this.” I laughed and replied, “You don’t have to tell me twice; I’ll be right back!”

So yeah. Good times all around. It was quite the weekend. Tonight my plan is to watch a DVD (“Heathers”, a brilliant and very dark comedy starring Winona Ryder) and go to bed relatively early, to try and catch up on some well-deserved sleep.