beautiful, funny, sad and true

Last week was super busy, so now I finally have a spare moment to sit, and process, and also to get you up to speed.

Wednesday night was the first play-reading group we’ve had since Tossed In tossed in the towel on leading the group. A handful of us have been persistent about keeping the group going, and after about two months, we finally managed to make it happen. We read the script for the movie My Dinner With Andre.

It was an amazing evening. A few of us were die-hard fans of the movie, and knew our favorite parts almost by heart, and a few of us had never seen or heard of the movie, so it made for a particularly interesting discussion. I really should say ‘discussions’, because we stopped many times along the way to switch to different readers, and to discuss the section that we’d just finished reading.

A couple of us had our favorite sections that we really wanted to read. I read Andre’s section about the Little Prince and about how New York is the new model for concentration camps, and Matt read Wally’s introduction, his argument near the end, and his ending monologue. We all discussed different ideas for staging this work as a play, and the various ways we could bring the various scenes to life, while still retaining the feel of a dinner. It was an amazing evening, and a passionate discussion all the way around.

Afterwards, Matt, Lindsay and I went to Squeez for a drink. I really should say ‘another drink’, because we’d already had plenty at the reading. We shared some quesadillas and continued the discussion about the play and about various other things.

Matt was too shy to want his picture taken that night. I tried to surreptitiously snap a picture of him and Lindsay while they were at the bar ordering, but the picture didn’t come out. Not that these did especially well, but the other ones are even worse, I promise you. I love the colors inside Squeez. It’s just a really cool, comfortable place to meet with your friends.

Oh, and for the record, I’m lucky enough to have found a very special copy of the script for MDWA. . .it was autographed in 1982, by both Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, AND it’s inscribed to someone here in Portland. A bunch of years ago, I went looking for the script, and finally found it at HugestBookseller. I decided to wait, however, and felt that another one would turn up, despite the fact that I had already been fruitlessly searching for it for years. No matter, I had a hunch.

The next day I went to Powell’s (even though I’d checked there countless times before) and sure enough, I was rewarded with this:

Talk about synchronicity. . .which fits in perfectly with the themes of the script, too. The autograph picture I left at higher resolution, so you can read what they wrote. I love it.

I first saw the movie when I lived in Yakima, at the age of twenty-four, and was mesmerized by it. I instantly went and tried to find out as much as I could about both of the guys, and all of the references they made to actors, directors, books, plays. . .everything. Jerzy Grotowski, The Master and Maragarita, The Little Prince, I couldn’t wait to understand what they were talking about. For the record, not one of my friends shared my enthusiasm for this movie. I raved about it, and even made a few people watch it, but they got bored and gave up after a few minutes. (I think this has something to do with the adage, ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.’)

Anyway, it’s one of my all-time favorites, and it also introduced me to the Little Prince, which to this day I re-read every year or two, and I’ve probably had to buy ten or twelve copies of it over the years, because I’ve loaned so many out and never gotten them back. That’s okay, in this instance, because the story is so beautiful that I want everyone to read it, and I hope that they get as much out of it as I have.

And I have my friends Wally and Andre to thank for it.

Last night I got home from a gig and just completely crashed. I slept for eight unbroken hours, and during that time, I had the longest dream I’ve ever had in my entire life. I don’t remember it linearly enough to tell it all, but I do remember most of it. It was comprised of many scenes; each was very long, with a different cast of characters (many of whom I know in real life - there are too many of them to explain, so I’ll just mention them as they appear, and you’ll have to just roll with that, I guess), and all of the scenes were all linked somehow.

Scene 1:

A couple of my neighbors (Skip & Susan), my mom and stepdad, and my work friend Val and her three-year-old son are all outside talking in the around-the-corner part of the yard of the house next door. Everyone is talking; Mom and Stepdad are sitting on the grass next to each other, Skip is sitting on the steps kinda near them, Val is standing on the sidewalk talking to Skip, her son is walking from person to person like three-year-olds do, and Susan and I are standing in the street, a bit apart from the group, talking to each other but still paying attention to everyone else’s discussion. Val’s son walks over and stands right next to Skip’s shoulder, which makes him very uncomfortable. He asks Val’s son to back up a little bit. The kid laughs in a high-pitched and obnoxious way, and continues to stand next to Skip. Val doesn’t say anything to her son, but continues to tell a story to Skip and my family. Skip is becoming visibly agitated, and quickly rolls and lights a cigarette. The kid is still laughing and standing next to him, so Skip finally reaches around and gently pushes the kid away from him, telling him to please step back. Val steps behind Skip, grabs the back of his collar, pulls it tight and starts to berate him for ‘throwing her son around.’ My mom steps over and starts to yell at Val about how she should have ‘handled her son.’ She pushes Val, who makes a show of very dramatically tripping down the stairs and falling into the street next to Susan and me. She starts to cry and yell at my mom, but once she realizes that we all know that she’s not really hurt, she stops.

Scene II:

I am on a chartered bus, with a group of fellow actors, filmmakers, film crew and various supernumeraries, all traveling to a film shoot that is taking place in a large Victorian house out in the remote hills near Livermore, California. The group consists of myself, a few people from the play reading group, Jen B and Jason R, an older guy who has long black hair and wears a black top hat, and quite a few other people. The bus is full. We arrive at the house in the early evening and set up our gear. There are broken black clouds in the sky, creating a threatening feeling, which some of us comment on as we walk from the bus into the house. The actors (I’m one of them) walk into a large room to talk and rehearse. Sarah C comes in from the other room (she is one of the production assistants) to tell us that they’re just about ready to start filming.

Scene III:

The filming has begun, in the main part of the Victorian house, and it’s going well. Sarah C is standing near the door, holding a clipboard and watching us. There are two cameras, each of which is on an opposite side of the room. There is lighting gear and all sorts of cabling everywhere. They are filming from down low, so the floor can be cluttered, because it’s not in the shots. Suddenly, a group of anarchists (I don’t know what else to call them) bursts in to the room where. There are about ten or twelve young men and women, mostly men, in their early twenties, and they are dressed in a mixture of styles, somewhere between paramilitary and punk rock. They appear to be hyped up on drugs. They have all sorts of knives and guns, which they make no attempt to hide. Two of the guys grab Sarah and one of them holds a knife to her throat. A few of the actors are pulled aside also. Some of them are pushed to the ground and threatened, and others are taken into the next room. Sarah somehow gets free and turns around to try and calmly talk with the group’s leader. A wiry, wild-eyed young guy, wearing camouflage pants and a bandana, grabs me by the arm and pulls a very large fork out of his pocket. He holds it menacingly next to my right eye. He is watching his friends wreak havoc on our group and steal our gear and belongings. His hand is shaking with adrenaline. I am very frightened, and I tell him quietly, ‘Please don’t. . .do anything.’ He laughs and moves the fork even closer. Finally the anarchists seem to think that they’ve done enough, or that they’ve gotten what they came for, and they start to leave. They load a bunch of the film gear and and a bunch of other stuff (like small but expensive pieces of furniture from the house, and some of our personal stuff, like cell phones, wallets and digital cameras, and even clothes) into their battered old SUV and leave. The house is a disaster. Just about anything that they didn’t take they either knocked over or destroyed completely. We are all a bit dazed, but relieved, and Sarah is taking stock of the situation, making notes on her clipboard about the extent of the damage. Several of us stumble outside to get some air.

Scene IV:

It’s the middle of the afternoon the next day, and I’m riding on DogBus. No one else from the film is on there with me. Each of us went our own way after the incident. I was taking the bus to Yakima with a smattering of random people, including a heavyset Native American man in his fifties and AlcoholicUnionGuy from my old job. There is an open area without any seats near the back of the bus, where the Indian guy and I are sitting on the floor, making little jokes and counting quarters from an enormous pile of them that is there, inexplicably. I keep having to start again because I always put them back into the same pile, instead of setting them aside into new piles. The bus reaches its destination on C******t and 55th (around the corner from my childhood home). I almost ask if someone can drive me to 60th and L*****n (my family’s current home), but I decide not to ask, because I don’t trust or want to spend any more time with the people from the bus. I tell myself that I’ll get myself there, and that ‘I’ll walk if need be.’

That’s all I can remember, but there was much more. I really wish I could remember how everything linked together, because it really did flow from strange scene to strange scene. If you stuck with this story all the way to the end, I applaud you.

OneYearAgo

Okay, so if you’re the kind of person who is bothered by the F-word, or the S-word, or by the mention of Satan, you’ll probably want to stop reading very soon.

For the rest of you, here we go!

Back in the day, when l still lived in Yakima, I was in a hard rock band that will remain nameless. On July 4, 1992 (no, of course I didn’t remember that date; I had to look it up on my guitarist friend’s MySpace page, because he actually has a picture from that show), we played a house party, and a heavy metal band (who will also remain nameless) opened for us. They had only been playing together for a short time, so they only had about six songs in their repertoire. That means they played their six songs, then we played for an hour or so, and then they played their six songs again, for the people who arrived late.

Those of us who were there for both sets got a real treat, because they played everything exactly the same, even down to the between-song banter. My favorite introduction, which I remember so well because I heard it twice, went like this:

“This next song is for all of you who, if you really knew anything about Satan, you’d shit your fucking pants. This song is called. . .’Six-Six-Five and One Fucking Half.’ “

That was the band’s cue to launch into the song’s slow, grinding riff. We had to put our hands over our mouths to stifle our laughter, especially after hearing it told the second time, with even more dramatic flair.

My favorite thing about that band, though, was the fact that the drummer was the only one with a sense of rhythm. If you counted off, ‘One, two, three four’, the bass player and the two guitarists would all come in at different times on the next ‘one.’ The only way they could manage to play together was visually, if those three guys were staring at the drummer. For example, if he would hit a certain cymbal, the rest of the band knew that it was time to play the main riff. When he hit another cymbal, it was time to do the second riff. It was completely bizarre, and funny, and it took quite a while to realize that that’s what they were doing.

I wonder what those guys are doing now. The only one whose name I can recall is the singer. Something tells me that he’s the only member of that group who’s still involved with music.

And what happened to the group I was in, you may ask? Well, you’ll be glad to know that my guitarist friend is very busy these days, living in Seattle, and is booked clear into the New Year. The singer, I have no idea. I’ve looked him up from time to time, but so far it’s been to no avail. He was always a bit of a technophobe, and a suspicious one at that, so I imagine that he’s kept himself off of the usual online places. The drummer actually lives here in Portland and is married, but when he lived in Yakima, he had a kid with a horrible woman who bled him dry and completely devoured his soul. (I say that about very few people, but this woman was a leech, and a despicable human being.) Drummer sold his drums, gave her his car (which she and her drug-addicted boyfriend later wrecked), paid for her to live in an apartment, and even paid for her other daughter’s expenses as well. It just went on and on.

And me? Well, I’m doing all of the stuff I’m doing now, with no looking back, except to recount stories such as these, with a shudder and a huge sigh of relief.

OneYearAgo

Yesterday after work, my friend Blaine came to meet me at my place, where we switched to my car and drove to Seaside to meet Chris and Nicole, who live in GoldenGateCity. You remember them, they got married this last spring. Anyway, they were up in Seaside (Oregon, that is; there’s a Seaside in GoldenState also) for the entire week. They stopped in to see me at my place on their way up, and I recruited Blaine to join me when I went over to visit them last night. We had a blast listening to a funny CD we made about a million years ago, and laughing like hyenas the entire way.

It was sunny and ninety degrees when we left Portland, but when we arrived at the coast it was cold and fairly crappy. This is the norm on the Oregon coast, and I’ve learned to be prepared with a hoodie or something, no matter what time of year it is.

The terrible picture is from my phone, by the way. There’s a huge amateur volleyball tournament happening this weekend (Sarah in NYC? You gonna be there?), so there are nets everywhere on the beach, as well as a smallish stage. We met Chris and Nicole and went to sushi at a pretty decent Japanese restaurant called Tora. After that, we headed back to their time-share, which is the same one that Chris’s parents and siblings (and siblings’ kids) were staying in, so we went to their parents’ place to say hello to everyone.

We all talked and laughed, and at around 10:00, Blaine and I drove the hour and a half back to Portland. Again, we had a great time talking and laughing, but the drive was more difficult this time. It was foggy through the mountains, and we saw a coyote or something in the road at one point. Once we were in the city limits, around 11:45, there was a huge wreck in the opposite direction of the highway, which looked like a motorcycle was involved. There were lots of police cars, and at least one ambulance, and traffic was completely stopped.

We got home and I went in and went to bed, but Blaine still had to drive himself back to his house, which is about half an hour’s drive, in Vancouver’s NorthernSuburb. Incidentally, I’d like to give a ’shout out’ to Blaine, who said that he reads my blog in the morning on his PDA, while sitting on the toilet. No doubt some would say that’s the only appropriate place to be while reading blogs, but as far as I’m concerned, wherever you want to read from is fine by me.

OneYearAgo

I didn’t sleep well at my mom’s house, because of her three dogs. They all wear clanky chain collars, and they also have a tendency to bark in the middle of the night. I got up around 10:00 a.m., called Chris, packed up my stuff and drove over to his house at noon.

I’ve known Chris for about thirty years. He’s actually my brother’s best friend (since kindergarten!), but I consider him a very close friend as well. He, his wife and I used to work together at the ‘crazy’ video store, back in the diz-ay. Incidentally, he is an active reader of this blog (and much more frequent than my brother, I might add–HI, CHRIS!), so here I am sending a salute his way. Spent the afternoon with him, his wife, and his kids, which was great. I even got a sandwich, some homemade potato salad, and a bagpipe concert as part of the deal. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but I did. Good times.

From there, I drove to the home of GuitaristAl, who I met when I was in college. He’s a really great guy, and an amazing guitarist (both then and now), and he’s created quite a career for himself as a teacher. We sat and talked at his house, and played guitar together for a while. I wish I had a picture of him playing (and falling in love with) my old white Guild guitar. After a while, we started to get hungry, so we went to the sushi restaurant in Yakima. (I’m pretty sure it was Al’s first time having sushi.) It was surprisingly good; a bit on the expensive side, but good nonetheless. The restaurant is called Ozeki, and it’s in the location that used to be the Golden Moon, which is about two blocks from the shitty apartment I lived in for four years. Yes, I have pictures from back then, but they’re far too embarrassing to share here.

With my belly full of sushi and my brain full of good conversation, I decided that it was time to head home, so I drove back to Portland. I took a few unexciting pictures along the way, despite the fact that Highway 12 is one of the most scenic highways in the state of Washington. The problem is that the most scenic parts happen to occur at the exact same time as the curviest, narrowest stretches of road, so there’s no real opportunity to stop and take interesting photos. Oh well.

Five hours later, I got home and crashed. End of story.

Oh yeah. . .here’s a funny story.
There are two hand prints, about a foot and a half apart, on the back window of my Honda. There is also - although you can only see it when the light is just right - the imprint of a woman’s back and the shoulder strap of her tank top. This means that people were either making out or getting it on while they were leaning against the back of my car! This happened on Friday night, while I was at the gig, and my car was parked in the lot behind the venue.

If you saw how dirty my car is, you’d find that even more hilarious.

Can I just take a minute to reiterate how glad I am that I don’t live in Yakima anymore? Cause it’s true. Even after almost thirteen years, I still get down on my knees and thank HigherPower that I made it out alive. Yakima is a shit-hole of a town, and I don’t use that description lightly.

And now, after that catharsis, it’s time to go to bed.