beautiful, funny, sad & true

At some point yesterday, the conversation turned to Dumb or Funny Things We Said When We Were Kids.

You know, the old standards like, ‘I know you are, but what am I?’ or ‘Same to YOU but more OF it.’ And who could forget the time-honored older brother classic, ‘Why are you always hitting yourself?’ As an older brother myself, I have to say that no one tells you about that one. It’s not as if there’s a group of Freemasons who roam the streets looking for young boys, and when they find you, they pull you aside and whisper the joke to you. Nope, it just pops into your head one day–as if by divine intervention–and you realize that you alone have just created the newest, funniest joke in the history of jokes. You’re not hitting him, he’s actually doing it to himself. You’re just trying to figure out why, and ‘glean what afflicts him’, as Tom Stoppard would say.

‘I’m rubber and you’re glue; bounces off me and sticks to you’ was another great one, and then later in the evening, as I was thinking about this conversation, I remembered a childrens’ song that seems to be sung slightly differently in different regions of the country. You’ll know it, so I’m not even going to name it, but I’m interested to know if you know a different version of it.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, we all used to sing it this way:

Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts

Mutilated monkey meat

Chopped-up baby parakeet

Lukewarm vomit floatin’ down the street

And me without my spoon (but I’ve got a straw!)

I’ve heard it a bunch of different ways, but as I’m writing this, I can’t remember any of the variations. Maybe you can help me remember some?

Then, of course, there was the infamous F.A.G./M.A.G. scenario, which I’ve already written about. I half-expect that one to turn up in a movie.

When you’re a teenager, all bets are off. You never know WHAT is going to come flying out of your mouth at any given time. My favorite example (and I use the word ‘favorite’ loosely) is when I came home one day to find my brother and his friend were playing a video game; I believe it was Baseball on the Sega Genesis. The score was some ridiculously high number to nothing, and to the person who was losing, I laughed and said, “Man, you’re getting your butt fuckin’ slaughtered.” Both my brother and his friend burst out laughing. They still remember that vividly, by the way, and they like to remind me about it to this day, all these twenty-some years later.

How the heck did I end up telling that?

Well, I guess if you liked that one, then you’ll be glad to know that there are plenty more like it. If you didn’t. . .well. . .there are still plenty more like it.

And I really would like to know if you can remember some other variation of Gopher Guts, and if you remember some of those other dumb phrases that we all thought were so brilliant back in the day.

Oh yeah. . .and here’s one more category I ask you to also be thinking about; Changed Acronyms. For example, when my brother and I would see commercials for TCBY–which stood for “The Country’s Best Yogurt” or something equally innocuous–we’d say, “Too Crusty Butt Yogurt,” and laugh like hyenas. And not just once, either, but multiple times.

So yeah. . .just be thinking about those things, if you would, please. Thank you.

And now I’m going to change my laundry loads, take a nap, and then play the cello for a while, to warm up a bit before the show tonight.

Tonight I spent an hour on the phone with a great friend who took a very big and gutsy step recently. I choose to say no more about it, but it took great courage to step up and do what he did, and I for one appreciate it whole-heartedly.

What a day this has been. After such a winter-storm-filled weekend, the weather was beautiful, so I didn’t really notice how stressful the day at work was. Went to lunch at CheapGoodMexicanRestaurant with a co-worker friend, and ran into the guy who engineered one of my recent drum recording sessions with Sarah. Not ShinsEngineer, but the other guy. Really nice guy, and since I hadn’t seen him since we did the recording session, it was really great to run into him again.

Sorry if this entry seems a bit cryptic, but I did just want to check in before I head out to rehearse for the play. Incidentally, here’s the flyer for said play:

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m incredibly honored to be a part of this production. It’s hilarious and touching and strange, and I just love it. I’m completely impressed with the people who are creating it, and at the same time, I’m glad to be able to be a part of it, too.

If you’d like to be there, contact me by any means necessary, and I’ll put you in touch with the people you need to be in touch with to get a ticket. They’re a mere ten dollars each. I try not to invite people to every single thing I do, but this one is so unusual–and so great–that if you enjoy what I do, and certainly if you’re a friend of mine, I can pretty much guarantee you that you will have a great time at this show.

This won’t be the last time you’ll hear about it. You will be reminded.

Oh yeah. . .just this second, I remembered that it was April Fools’ Day.

Hunh.

Well.

I don’t know what else to say about that, except that I didn’t get tricked today, and I also have to leave for rehearsal right now. Talk to you soon!

This morning, I had a short–but interesting–dream. I always set my clock for 6:45 (too early) every day, and then hit the snooze button three or four times, until it’s 7:20 or so (too late). During one of those snooze sessions is when this dream happened.

* * * * * * *

I’m in my room at my childhood home on 55th Avenue in Yakima. It’s the middle of the night, and I’m in bed. The curtains are open, and the moon is shining brightly into the room. It’s bright enough that I actually think, ‘I bet I could probably read in bed if I wanted to.’ I reach for a book on my bedside table, when suddenly I see a bright orange flash coming from the end of the street. One of the houses at the Summitview end [that’s a street in Yakima] of the street has just exploded into a thirty-foot wall of fire.

A fire truck races by with all its lights flashing, but the engine is silent. I get up and walk to the window to look, when suddenly about eight or ten pieces of flaming debris start to land in our yard, and on our house. The house up the street explodes a second time, with an even larger wall of fire. I run to wake up my mom and my brother, and then I see that in our front yard, there are lots of small fires burning.

I pull on a pair of jeans and quickly try to decide which of my instruments to take out to my car. I decide on the cello, the accordion and my ancient white Guild electric guitar. Interesting that the instruments were all the ones that I have now, and that the car was the red Honda that I have now.

* * * * *

That’s the point at which I woke up, one minute before the next snooze alarm went off.

Also interesting that today is the day I’m going to visit my dad. Hunh. I’m sure that fact and this dream don’t have the merest possibility of a hint at a suggestion of a connection.

Maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe I’m like the main character in the book The Lathe of Heaven, whose dreams change the real world–and he’s the only one who remembers the way things were before he dreamed the changes–and that maybe I’m nocturnally bound and determined to destroy Yakima once and for all, via my dreams.

Sorry I’ve been away for a few days. I’ve been meaning to write, but I’ve been busy every single night for the last two weeks. Between the multiple rehearsals for the play, an impromptu recording session with Steph, working a full day every day, it’s just been exhausting.

It’s been crazy. Go to work, go out for lunch with work friends or other friends (like today), come home for an hour or so to eat (or sometimes not), then go either out with a friend, race to a play rehearsal, or off to a gig. On Tuesday, RockShowGirl and I had dinner together here at my apartment, and then she came with me to Stephanie’s recording session–which, incidentally, was great!–and then I dropped off her off and got home at around 11:45. I checked my e-mail really quickly, and saw that Tossed-In was online too. He saw that I was on and called me. We then spent the next hour talking about music and ‘flow’ on the evening of the play, so I finally went to bed at one in the morning.

So yeah; lots of long phone conversations, lots of working, lots of playing, lots of rehearsing, lots of gigging, and it’s not even the weekend yet. Tomorrow I’m working a half day, then driving an hour and a half to visit my dad and stepmom. I’m staying overnight there, then coming back to town on Saturday morning in time to grab my cello and race over to a rehearsal for Bryn Loosely’s CD release party, which is Saturday night. Sunday afternoon is play rehearsal in the middle of the afternoon.

Right now I’m supposed to be getting ready for tonight’s Breanna gig. I’d love to be able to take a shower (woke up too late this morning) and play the cello for a while, but a little bit of down time will help immensely. If I’m lucky, I may just be able to squeeze in all three things.

My head hurts from laughing so hard.

Just got home from rehearsal for the plays. I say ‘plays’ because in about a month, we’re going to be having a night of six short plays, for your pleasure.

I say ‘we’ because I will actually be playing accordion and piano (and maybe cello or something) as incidental music between the acts, actual music for one of the actual plays, and I’m actually playing the actual accordion in one of the actual plays (in which I even have an actual speaking line!).

I say ‘pleasure’ because that is the feeling you will be overwhelmed by if you come to see this show. Allow me to elucidate.

There are six plays in this particular show:

One–written by a member of the reading group–involves a writer’s struggle to create; one explores the nature of how much information is too much to share with a new love; one is a touching story of a father and a son; one–written by another member of the reading group–explores the nature of predator and prey, and involves both goldfish and marijuana; one is the story of the hijinks that ensue when staunchly feminist Amazon women encounter a handsome male ‘diplomat’ in the jungle; and the play I’m in is the story of a girl who wears a coat that’s made out of meat.

If all of this doesn’t sound enticing to you, then gawd help you. I’m honored and thrilled to be a part of this production. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that this is Theatah At Its Finest. The show will be on April 12th, and costs a mere ten dollars. Contact me by any means necessary if you’d like to come. If you leave a comment here on BFST, I’ll have your e-mail address.

And now I’m home, eating dinner and enjoying what I like to call a Crash Day, where I stay home and completely unwind after an insanely busy couple of weeks of work, rehearsals, gigs, and socializing. Special thanks to Maddy for making the trek down from Seattle to come to the awesome Stephanie gig last night, and for bringing me some DVD’s of a show I’ve been wanting to see for a year.

And now it’s time to start watching said DVD’s of said show. The Crash begins now.

Oh, and hey. . .here’s the first actual incarnation of OneYearAgo!