beautiful, funny, sad & true

First of all, I’d like to say that I hope you’re having a Merry Christmas and a great holiday season.  I’d also like to thank you for reading BFS&T all this time, and for bearing with me through the hiatus.  And speaking of BFS&T, it celebrated its third anniversary a couple of weeks ago.  Let’s all raise a glass of some sis-boom-bah for that.

I should mention that I’m in Seattle for the holiday week, and that this will only be a short entry, but I did want to share with you the new insult I learned today.  I overheard it on a kids’ show that my niece was watching.   A boy band of sorts was trying to put on a Christmas concert, and a policeman was harassing them and trying to thwart the concert, and one of the guys in the band referred to him as a ‘blowhole.’  As in, “Hey, shut your piehole, you blowhole!”

I think that’s going to be my new favorite insult from now on.  I love it because it sounds a bit risque and naughty without actually being naughty.  Adam Carolla’s clever portmanteau ‘jackhole’ works the same way.   ‘Manhole’ is similarly not-naughty, but in that context it just sounds all kinds of wrong.  So ‘blowhole’ is perfect.

You’re welcome.  And Merry Christmas.

I wish I could embed this video, but the link will have to do.  It’s a short animated illustration of an excerpt of one of Alan Watts‘ lectures, and it’s absolutely brilliant.

LIFE AND MUSIC

I’m still on a mini-sabbatical from blogging, but there’s lots to tell you about if I felt so inclined.  Mixing for IrishBand, two gigs in Portland and Seattle (okay, here’s a picture from the Seattle show). . .

. . .opening up for the amazing Cirkestra, a fantastic day of music, dinner and the Oregon Symphony with the lovely and talented JapanesePianist, and for the next few days I’m taking a surprise trip to Northern California.  As soon as I get back, it’s into the studio with MellowBand.

But like I said, I’m still on sabbatical, so I’m not gonna elaborate on any of that stuff.  Sorry.

See you when I get home from NorCal.  Hopefully I’ll be in more of a writing mood by then.

You know it’s been a long time since you’re written an entry when you start to get messages from your friends that say, “You haven’t updated your blog in nine days.”

Yeah, I know.

I’m still alive and well, just kinda lying low on the blog front for a while.  I’ve been at this for quite a while now, you know.  This incarnation of BFS&T is coming up on its third anniversary, and I had the one on Blogger for a year before that, and the one on MySpace for two years before that.  It’s safe to say that I’ve paid my dues to the blogosphere.

I’ve been toying with the idea of a new approach, and I’ve been looking at some different options for platforms, and templates, and all of that sort of thing.  I’m hoping to find something that is as detailed as this is, while still allowing me to customize the template a bit more.

The name will stay the same, naturally.  Whatever I find will have to be able to be transferred to this domain name.  At this point, there’s one that does stand out among the others, but I’ve only recently started looking and comparing.

I’m spending Thanksgiving with the couple who used to host the play-reading group.  On the bigger holidays, they have dinner parties in which they invite a group of their friends who are either single, or have families who live elsewhere, or maybe they’re just interesting people in general.  Always a different group, and always fun.  So that’s where I’ll be.

I’ll be around.

I hope all’s well with you.

Too busy to post again lately.  What have I been up to?  By way of an answer, I’ll show you a few pictures, and give you the quick run-down.

I played one of the best and most memorable shows I’ve ever had. . .

. . .I went to see some friends play a very cool night of cello music, and might have come away with a new instructor (it doesn’t hurt that she’s incredibly cute, too!). . .

. . .I made a new friend, who’s a friend of friend.  My friend in question told me that she is “Japanese, and a pianist, and she’s looking for new musical friends.  I thought of you.”  She came to the IrishBand show in StateCapitol last Wednesday, and then came up here to Portland on Saturday night.  No pics of her yet, unfortunately. . .

. . .IrishBand’s Violinist and I played our first wedding, and had a blast during the extra-curricular activities as well. . .

. . .I got me a good ol’ 4-track cassette recorder for archiving FirstBand’s tapes. . .

. . .I recorded some new tracks (using the computer, not the 4-track!) on IrishBand’s theme song. . .

. . .I created a fairly esoteric (but fun!) new blog, which you probably wouldn’t be interested in, and which I will not be posting a link to. . .

. . .and I went out for dinner, a walk, and coffee with a friend who I haven’t seen in months, and took some nice pictures along the way.

Times have been good, overall, I’d say.

Tonight, I think a friend and I are going to hit the Last Thursday art ‘scene’ on Alberta Street.  I haven’t had the chance to do that in ages, because I always seem to have gigs on both First AND Last Thursdays.

So there you go; you’re all caught up now, and I feel much better too.

I had a funny dream the other day, in which I was out with a guy friend from real life and a girl and guy with whom he works.  We were at a pub drinking a bunch of beers, talking and laughing and all of a sudden the girl was talking about plumbing, and her faucet.  When she said the word ‘faucet’, I laughed and gestured toward my friend, “Or FLAUCET, as he used to say.”

By way of a snappy comeback, my friend pointed at me and told her, “Yeah, well one time HE said that he was gonna give me a hand job.”  Everybody laughed and I said, “I reMEMber that!  My sixth girlfriend and I used to joke about that all the time, so that’s why you weren’t surprised when that came flying out of my mouth.”

The girl turned to me and asked, “Sixth girlfriend, huh?”

I said, “Yup,” and then launched into a long, supremely boring story about her and me that even I wasn’t interested in listening to, so I cut it short and said, “What can I say?  I like shock value.”  My friend laughed a little, and then everyone went back to talking about whatever subjects we’d been talking about before, and continued to drink our beers.

* * * * *

Incidentally, my friend really did think the word was ‘flaucet.’  I don’t know why he thought that, and neither does he, but I’ve always found it amusing.  Also incidentally, my sixth girlfriend reads my blog, and she even has her own that’s listed in my blogroll.  But we certainly never joked around about hand jobs, nor have I ever offered (or wanted) to give my friend one, so I have no idea where that particular subplot came from.

Anyway.   All that’s neither here nor there.