beautiful, funny, sad & true

I could watch this all day.  This kid (even at the age of, what, eighteen months?) has the act down pat.  He even knows how to use a microphone properly and time his arm movements with what he thinks he’s saying.  Those are skills that have to be learned, and he’s quite the little orator.

I used to have a much bigger chip on my shoulder about religion than I do these days.  I still kinda have one, which is why I find this video so utterly disturbing hilarious, but I’m much more tolerant of other peoples’ beliefs than I was when I was, say, twenty.  Suffice it to say that it’s a colossally good thing (both for me and the entire world) that I didn’t have a blog back then, but then I don’t think anyone did at that time; not even Steve Jobs or Al Gore.  Okay, maybe Al Gore did.

I think that might have been a digression just there.

The results are in, and it is, indeed, a digression.

I need to go put my laundry in the dryer now.  Oh wait. . .another digression?  Let’s find out, in the style of Family Feud.  “Di-GRESSION?  Survey SAYS. . .”  [sign on board flips over, and bell rings] Ding ding ding ding ding ding!  “Digression!”

Okay, I’m done.

How do you like the new blog theme, by the way?  It’s very different, and distinctly less blue, than all the others I’ve used before.  I wanted something a bit more cheerful.  I’m still learning how to tweak it, and working out a few issues I’m having (for some reason, my blogroll is showing up duplicated!?), but I think it’s cool.   Hello, spring!

The Indigo Girls were interviewed on NPR this morning.  Naturally, they also took the opportunity to play a couple of songs, one of which was “Closer to Fine” and the other was this one. . .

. . .called “Sugar Tongue.”  Loveitloveitloveitloveit.

It was just the two women and their guitars, and it was absolutely stellar.  This version has the electric piano, too, which is okay and all, but I found this acoustic version much more compelling than the ‘rock’ version from the CD (with the drums and everything), but discussing why I feel that way is actually a huge story in itself, all about music production, and the way I think about instrumentation and creating parts and textures, and all that kind of stuff.

That would be much too long a discussion, especially for a simple little entry saying that I love this song and that I want to share it with you.

IrishBand has been doing an incredible amount of recording lately at my place.  Drummer works early in the morning and is done by noon, so he’s been coming over here around one o’clock, where I have my drums and microphones set up.  It works surprisingly well, and sounds surprisingly good too.

A couple of weeks ago, we got an offer that we couldn’t refuse.  One of our musician friends, El Jefe, is in an audio recording program at the local community college.  Apparently it’s a really good program, and they sometimes ask bands to volunteer a day of their time so that the students can practice with a real group in real situations.  In return, the band gets a free demo of some of their songs.  El Jefe (in the black shirt and glasses) immediately thought of us, so we went in bright and early on Saturday morning.

We all had a grand time, and got two really good recordings out of the deal.  I can’t wait to hear how the final mixes come out.  The class will be working on them over the rest of the length of the semester or term or whatever.

Oh yeah. . .I forgot (which is to say, I remembered) to add some pictures of us too.

Irish flags tend to be pretty scarce around most recording studios, so we took the liberty of bringing our own.  Notice that we even put one in the room with Violinist, which I think looks really cool.  No pictures of me in this bunch, unfortunately (fortunately?), because these are from my camera, and I was the one shooting.  So.  When I see the pictures that the other guys took, I might post some here, but I’ll definitely post links to our recordings once we have some to share.

I also want to extend a huge thank you to El Jefe and the recording crew at the school.  They did a really great job, individually and together, and were total professionals.  Best of all, everyone left with a big smile on his or her face at the end of the day, which is always the most telling sign of a successful recording session.

Friday, after spending the day playing and recording drum tracks for my own version of one of Breanna’s songs from her previous band, I walked to the store to get ingredients for dinner.  Walking back up my street, arms full of groceries, I found that the police had all of the streets blocked off, and there were people standing on the sidewalk watching, all the way up the street.  I asked someone what was going on, and she said that it was drug-related, and that they were trying to get into the house of a person who was both selling and using drugs.  I continued walking on MyStreet, and a cop stopped me and told me that I wouldn’t be able to get through on MyStreet for a while.  I asked which way he’d recommend I go to get home, and he said I could walk up NextStreet and be out of harm’s way.  I thanked him and took the opportunity to quickly survey MyStreet in the process.  There were officers with rifles, and a SWAT team with an armored vehicle of some sort parked a block from my building, on the other side of the street.  I walked home quickly and grabbed my camera.

The neighbor lady across the street saw me and called laughingly to her husband, “Hey, he’s taking photographs!”  Someone walked over and asked the plainclothes policeman what was up, and according to NeighborSusan, “Apparently it was actually shooting-related. They located, or at least thought they’d located, a suspect for a shooting that occurred elsewhere at some previous time.”  The cop was telling people to stay inside for about half an hour.  I did, and listened with my window open.  I heard no gun shots, and the multitude of cars drove away half an hour later, so I’m assuming that means the incident ended well enough.

I guess you could say the jury’s still out on what really happened, (I’m gonna go with the shooting scenario rather than the drug scenario; drug busts don’t usually involve that many big guns and vehicles, unless it was a huge operation) but that was certainly not something you see every day in this neighborhood.

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.