I’ve been feeling really good lately.

Lots of good musical things happening, including two amazing recording projects and one play production in which I’ll be playing the accordion at least, but probably some other things as well. It promises to be a great time.

Been laying low these last few days, to recuperate from the busy and exhausting weekend. I’ve also been planning the next installment of the 80’s hard rock blog thingy I’m working on, for fun.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone this week, too. Lots of planning, and talking, and re-connecting, for some reason. It always seems to happen at the same time.

I had a funny thing happen a couple of days ago, which reminded me of something funny that happened twenty years ago. Someone on my street owns a really nice old Mustang. I’m not much of a muscle car guy–I’m more of a ’60’s and ’70’s European guy (the BMW 2002 is my favorite car)–but I always appreciate a nice car that someone has loved and restored.

So. I parked behind this particular Mustang the other night when I got home late, and the street was unusually full of cars. Blame it on my sleepiness from the Daylight Savings Time adjustment, blame it on whatever you want, but when I went to go to work in the morning, I found out the hard way that I had left my car in first instead of in reverse, like I usually do. So I went forward when I expected to go backward, and I sorta almost hit the Mustang. I DIDN’T, but I’m just saying it was close.

That reminded me of a time back in 1989 when my friend Blaine and I were going to a school to do some location scouting for one of our band’s videos. He parked his little white Honda behind a really nice, flashy, purple muscle car. We walked across the street from a grade school, and Blaine noticed that he was parked too far away from the curb or something–I don’t remember the details–but for some reason I ended up going back to move his car. Since the road was at a slight incline, I opened the door, leaned in, released the parking brake, and reached my leg in to engage the clutch, so that the car would roll forward slightly. I did it more by feel than by sight, because most stick-shift cars are the same, but after the car had rolled a few feet, I really should have looked instead of relying on my angle-guessing, because I kept pushing on the clutch pedal instead of the brake pedal. This meant that Blaine’s Honda rolled about ten feet and then banged into the back of the pristine muscle car.

It took about one second for the car’s owner to come storming out of his house. He ran out the front door, across the lawn, and right over to the open driver’s side window and pointed at his car, yelling, “Hey! That’s the ’85 Hot Rod champion!!” There wasn’t any damage to Blaine’s Honda, and the only damage to the ’85 Hot Rod Champion was a tiny little crack in one of its two-inch round tail light covers, luckily. No real harm done, so I just apologized profusely, and told him how beautiful we both thought his car was, and the guy let us go on our merry way.

Oh, and a few years ago, when I had my little green Toyota truck, I rear-ended a Camaro when the driver stopped too suddenly–in in the middle of the block!–near the Lloyd Center mall to let some girls cross the street in front of him. Nice. The crash put a little scratch on his bumper, but really smashed up the front of my truck.

Apparently I have more of a problem with muscle cars than I realized; it seems that my subconscious is out to single-handedly destroy them all.