beautiful, funny, sad & true

Yesterday was extremely stressful at work, so much so that my friends and I decided that we weren’t gonna let it get to us, and that we were determined to have a good day. LC sent me a message that said, “You want to walk over and get some doughnuts for everybody?” I jumped at the chance, naturally. “Great idea! Let’s do it.”

We walked the handful of blocks to PunkRockDoughnutShop, to find one person in the back, working by herself, with Metallica’s Master of Puppets CD blaring throughout the whole place. We ordered two dozen doughnuts, in random combination, and it took her a while to get them together. When we went to pay, she told us that they only accept cash. We didn’t have enough between us, so we asked if there was an ATM nearby. She said there was one across the street, but that it was out of order. LC said, in an empathetic way, “Oh, man, you’d have to put them all back.” She got mad and started to do that, but I said, “No, no, we’ll be right back.” We walked out the door, trying to figure out where to go, and then I remembered that there’s an ATM across the street at the Sandy Hut.

Cash in hand, we returned to PunkRockDoughnutShop. In our short absence, two of the woman’s co-workers had materialized. She walked to the back and announced to everyone, “I need to breathe; that’s what my therapist told me.” We kinda looked at each other, and then placed our order with one of the other employees, and the woman reappeared, saying, “I’ll take care of it. Remember those two guys I told you about? These are the guys.”

“I told you we’d be right back,” I said, smiling. “I was surprised to see you putting them away.”

She said, “Oh, I didn’t hear that. All I heard was, ‘I guess you’ll have to put them all back.’ ”

The guy behind the counter laughed and quoted Led Zeppelin. “Communication breakdown; it’s always the same.” Perfect thing to say.

So she refilled the box and we gave her twenty bucks, and told her to keep the change, for all her trouble. It all worked out for the best; I love it when that happens. LC and I happily walked back to work and e-mailed our friends. “Doughnuts are in the break room, but keep it on the down low. You’re welcome.”

Throughout the morning, we were talking about music and feeling nostalgic, so on lunch break, we walked over to EverydayRecordStore, and found a bunch of 80’s metal records and CD’s, including Ozzy Osbourne’s Bark at the Moon and Ratt’s Out of the Cellar. Those were two of my favorites when I was about fourteen. I had a huge smile on my face listening to those again after such a long time.

Now I’m on the hunt for more of my favorites from that time, some of which are extremely hard to find, so I recruited a couple of my more tech-savvy friends to join me in the cause. And why not recruit you too? I’m looking for Lick It Up by Kiss and All Systems Go by Vinnie Vincent Invasion. There are others, of course, but those are the main ones I’m dying to hear again. Please and thank you!

Now I’m going to the basement to dig out Creatures of the Night.

Riding my bike home from work at night:  check.
Riding without lights of any kind:  check.
Riding without a helmet:  check.
Riding home at night, without lights or helmet, while wearing a black hoodie:  check.
Riding home at night, no lights or helmet, with said black hoodie, carrying a bag of groceries:  check.

Yup, I’m officially an idiot.

In other news, IrishBand is doing a write-in interview for MessengerGodAlternativeNewspaper.  I need to somehow get enough energy tonight to whip up some compelling, insightful, and hopefully witty and intelligent answers to their questions, many of which are political in nature, rather than just musical, so they’re not ones I can just answer automatically.

First of all, dinner.  I’m going to attempt stuffed bell peppers, but I only have energy for chips and salsa.  Perhaps some chips and salsa while I’m making the stuffed peppers.  Hmmm. . .I like the sound of that.

My friend and I went to see the movie Tell No One tonight.  It was a really good murder mystery, clear up until the ending, when it suddenly turned into a Scooby Doo episode.  One of the characters started doing that thing where he points a gun at the main character and starts talking at him and revealing everything.  You know; ‘I did it.  It was ME.  That’s right, ME.  I’m gonna spell out exactly how and why I did it, too, because I love the sound of my own voice.’  Yawn.

The real event of the night happened after we left, and I turned my phone back on.  I had a text message waiting for me, saying that the community access TV station in Yakima had just played a concert video of my old band.  And by ‘old’ I mean twenty years old.   The person who texted me was another member of the band, who lives here in the Portland area now.  I called him right away, and we laughed about the whole thing.  Turns out that his brother, who still lives in Yakima, saw the video and called my bandmate to tell him about it.  I’m amazed that the station even has any of those old tapes anymore, let alone still plays them.  Pretty hilarious, although we WERE described as a ‘juggernaut’, and ‘Central Washington’s rockin’ machine.’  So there.

This is another one of those times when I wish I had a way to get videos onto my computer, because I’d love to be able to share some of that stuff with you, but I have no way to copy VHS tapes to video files.   Argh.  Well, I may not be able to share that particular video, but I can share a picture from our very first show.  I was about seventeen in this picture, working on Mullet Number One.

You’re welcome.

I really wish I still had that guitar, by the way.  That was my first one, and it turned out to be pretty decent, although I didn’t know it at the time.  One of my friends joined the Navy and bought it from me.  That was the idea, anyway, because he never did send me the check.  Thanks, David Lowry.  Two hundred bucks down the crapper.   Hope you had a good time with my guitar.

Actually, y’know what?  I should probably go easy on him.  For all I know, he always meant to send the money, but got deployed overseas and lost my address or something.   It’s all water under the metaphorical bridge, anyway, but it would sure be great to get an out-of-the-blue check for two hundred dollars one of these days, especially with times being the way they are.

There’ll be plenty more to come on this subject, because this is the twentieth anniversary of our band’s rise to the heights, and our plunge to the depths.  Okay, I may be exaggerating just a little bit, but I CAN promise that there are good stories to come about the band.

I was going to say ‘stay tuned’, but A) that’s cheesy, and B) that’s the name of one of our songs, the lyrics for which were written by my high school Spanish teacher, who had some music written and actually asked me if we’d be interested in collaborating on a song with him.  We agreed, because he was the cool teacher, and the group of us created a pretty dang catchy song.  In retrospect, it’s very reminiscent of Bon Jovi.  We played it twice; once at a school assembly, and once at one of our regular shows, too, which was a lame ‘battle of the bands’ with a forgettable rival band, which I’m gonna go ahead and say that we won, even though it wasn’t a big deal at all, but this is my blog, dang it, and history is told by the winners, as Howard Zinn would say.

Wow.  Nothing like using Howard Zinn to bolster the reputation of the band you were in twenty years ago.  If HZ was dead, I’m sure he’d be rolling over in his grave right about now.

It’s been quite a year, I have to say.  Going through and choosing entries was particularly difficult this time around.  I always enjoy looking backwards.  So much has happened this year that it had become a bit of a blur, quite frankly, and it was fun to revisit some of those experiences.  Others, however, weren’t nearly as much fun.  I could have made this entry about twice as long as it is.  There will be another separate entry for the ‘best pictures of 2008’ coming soon.

accordions, Decemberists, and EmeraldCity – This involves a night when I made a noticeable transition from fan to equal participant.

shock – This was one of the worst days of my entire life.

good news and truth – This was the end of said time.

Yakima trip, part one – This was quite possibly the worst Yakima trip ever, in which I lost a friend.

Tinkle – Tinkle is the name of a fictitious product; this entry describes a hilarious parody my friends and I made of sports drink commercials from the early 90’s.

on tour, day 3 – This was one of the best and most memorable days of my entire life.

my dinner with Andre – We read the screenplay in the play-reading group, and there are also some ruminations about why this movie meant so much to me.

‘six-six-five and one fucking half’ – This is a rock ‘n’ roll story from way back in the day.

errrr. . .hi, mom – I have to be honest; I really like this particular entry.

O, the hilarity ensues – ‘Good luck driving around with my dead, pregnant wife!’

please ban more books – The school district in the town in which I grew up turns out to be responsible for upholding a ban on a very famous book.  Glad I left that town.

litany – This was a hilarious repartee my friend and I shared.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for your support throughout this last year.  In case this somehow wasn’t enough for you, here’s the entry for the best entries of 2007.

Have a great new year!

OneYearAgo

This Christmas season has been stressful, disappointing, exhausting, and marked by a conspicuous lack of financial means, all of which has left me feeling less than inspired to write much lately.  I’m still around, just completely broke (again. . .for the fifth consecutive month!), incredibly busy and stressed out.  Trying like crazy to feel like my usual happy-go-lucky self, with varying degrees of success.

The weather here in Portland is warming, and it’s been raining steadily for the last couple of days, so much of the snow is melting and disappearing.  We now have flood warnings in effect for parts of town and the state.  I took the chains off my car, one of which had broken and was hanging on by a mere thread inside the wheel.  I didn’t even realize it was still attached (I thought it fell off on the freeway the other day, and I haven’t driven since then) until I went out today to take off the remaining right one and saw the left one barely poking out from underneath the car.   I ruined my yellow rain jacket in the process, by getting grease all over both arms.  Niiiiice.   Well, it’s true that I wanted a new rain jacket anyway.

I found out yesterday that my grandma died on Christmas Day, at the age of 96.  For the record, I should mention that my brother and I didn’t know her very well.  I feel more disconnected and strange about it than anything else.  My family isn’t particularly close, on either side, either geographically or emotionally, and that’s what makes me saddest of all.  We hadn’t seen her for ten years, and it had been at least that long before that.  I’d been intending to reach out to her again lately, actually, and a couple of months ago, I got her address from my dad so that I could write to her and send some pictures.  He told me that I’d better do it soon, because she was ‘starting to lose it’, and that she’d been taking a turn for the worse these last few months.  I really regret that I didn’t write like I intended to, and that the time got away from me.  I wish that I’d had the chance to reconnect with her in some way.

I thought she’d be particularly happy to know that I play the cello now, because my grandpa (who died when I was about nine, but who I hadn’t seen since I was six) used to play the cello also.  I didn’t even know that until one day when I was about twenty-six or something, and I happened to mention to my dad, “I think it would be really great to learn how to play the cello.”

He gave me a strange, thunderstruck look and said, “I wish you would have said something earlier.”  He told me about my grandpa, and how he had an orchestra-quality instrument that was at my grandma’s house, but that she had recently GIVEN AWAY.  My dad continued.  “In fact, he put himself through college on a cello scholarship, I believe, and he played semi-professionally back in the 1920’s and 30’s.  After he died, his cello was in her attic, untouched and unused, for decades.  She kept it this whole time, hoping that maybe one of you guys would show some interest in it, but you never said anything, so she gave it to a student at her church.  She would have gladly given you his cello for nothing.”   My jaw literally dropped.

I didn’t get a cello and start playing until about four and a half years ago, when I saw an ad for one online, and offered to trade one of my electric guitars for it.  The person accepted, and I’ve been a happy cellist ever since.  Mine turned out to be an excellent quality instrument, an Ernst Heinrich Roth from the early 1960’s.  It needed quite a few repairs and modifications, since it had had a difficult life in a public school district.  I got done the repairs done as I was able to, and now it’s a perfectly good semi-professional level instrument.   I loveitloveitloveitloveitloveit.  It has a full, warm sound that newer instruments just can’t replicate.

And yes, sometimes when I’m playing, I wonder what they would think.  My grandpa, who knew the instrument so well, and my grandma, who kept it faithfully in the hopes that one of her children or grandchildren would play one day, to keep a connection with them and give them a gift they would very likely treasure for their entire lives.

Here are some pictures for you, grandma.  Wish you could have seen them, and also heard what was happening in my life when they were being taken.