beautiful, funny, sad & true

I just got tagged by Carolina to reveal six random things about myself.  You may be surprised to find out that I’ve never been tagged in one of these things before, so I’m rapidly trying to think of what I can write about, since I usually have something in mind before I ever start writing.

Okay, here goes.

NUMBER ONE:

I love Bach’s organ music.  I mean LOVE IT love it.  If I could marry it, I would.  I love it so much that if it’s playing, I can’t do anything else because I get absolutely sucked in by its perfect structure and beauty. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.  E. Power Biggs playing “The Jig.”

One of my favorite memories of my dad (How many times do you hear me say THAT?) is when the two of us were attempting to play this particular piece on a beautiful pipe organ in Ellensburg, Washington. I was sitting on the bench, playing the manuals (that’s organ terminology for keyboards) and my dad was on his hands and knees underneath the bench, playing the pedals with his fists. It was hilarious and touching, even moreso when I think about it now. I’ll never forget that moment.

NUMBER TWO:

Speaking of Number Two, I find it absolutely repulsive to have to listen to someone go Number Two in the bathroom (I’m thinking of the bathroom at work, by the way), especially since most guys are notoriously disgusting and loud when it comes to this particular activity.  I’m so disgusted by it that if there’s someone else already in the bathroom when I walk in, I’ve been known to go downstairs so that I don’t have to listen to that happening.  I mean, really.  The sound, the smell, everything.  Ewww.  And if they’re sitting there tapping away on their cell phones, that grosses me out even more, because I imagine them wiping their asses and then grabbing their phones before they get the chance to wash their hands again.  NASTY.  I hope no one ever has to borrow their phones for any reason.

NUMBER THREE:

I used to have two mullets.  No, not at the same time, but consecutively.  I liked them so much that I grew one out until it got all scraggly, and then I cut it off and grew another one, which was only a slight improvement over the previous one.  Here’s a picture of the first one, in progress, in 1988. . .

. . .and here’s a picture of the second one, in full effect, not long before it got cut (THANK GOD) in 1995:

I know; I was hot.

NUMBER FOUR:

The longest time that I’ve ever dated someone was five years (on again/off again).  The shortest time was three days.  Does that count as two things?  I don’t know, but I’m counting it as one two-part answer to one two-part question.

NUMBER FIVE:

I have no tattoos or piercings of any kind.  I used to have my left ear pierced, around the time of Mullet Number One, but I only wore an earring in it for about a year, and I haven’t worn one since then, so the hole has long since closed up.  No, I don’t have any pictures of that.

NUMBER SIX:

I’ve made more money playing the accordion than any of the other instruments I play.  It’s paid for itself many times over.  The cello is in second place, then probably the electric guitar.

NUMBER SEVEN:

There is NO Number Seven.  Thank you.

So, which six people would I like to tag and to see respond to this in kind on their own blogs?

Andrea

Josh

Emily

Sarah

Jo(e)

BoringFish

Thank you to Carolina for including me in this, thank you to YOU for reading, and thank you six participants (or anyone else who wishes to) for lending your metaphorical voices to this endeavor.

OneYearAgo

Given the title of this entry, you might think that paranormal forces have been making their presence known to me, but unfortunately that’s not the case.  Sorry for my busy-ness and un-bloggishness lately.  Between DoctorLove being in town and Mom ‘n’ Stepdad staying with me, I’ve had precious little time for anything writing-related.  Suffice it to say that the weekend went well in every respect.

DoctorLove and I met on Thursday and walked around all the little shops on Hawthorne, talking and looking for gifts for her family and for her guy, after which we came back here for dinner.  J came over as well, and I cooked dinner for the three of us. . .tomato and avocado salad, with a main course of those mushrooms cooked in garlic and red wine that are absolutely to die for.  And some good bread on the side.  Nice.  We talked and laughed and caught up.

Mom ‘n’ Stepdad were good.  As you know, my mom occasionally reads my blog, but the visit was really nice.  Once they were settled in, and getting ready for bed and everything, I grabbed my cello and drove over to the party in DoctorLove’s honor.  A handful of the partygoers were musicians, one of whom is an excellent flamenco guitarist, so we had fun playing tricky flamenco songs (tricky for me, anyway!) until a second acoustic guitarist arrived, and then we bashed our way through a bunch of old Metallica songs, which sounded hilarious and incredibly good simultaneously, particularly the song Welcome Home (Sanitarium).  Here are some pictures from the night.  If only there were recordings too.  Le Sigh.

A good time was had by all, and I didn’t go home until around 1:30 a.m.

The next day was spent in pretty much constant motion, from making breakfast, to driving my parents around, to shopping at multiple places, to cleaning up and fixing some broken or leaky or clogged things in my apartment (extra super ultra-mega-thanks to them for that!). . .it was just completely exhausting.  I think I went to bed at 9:30 or something ridiculous like that.

Sunday came bright and early, and my mom had some specific presents she wanted to buy, so we headed to Hawthorne (my second time in three days) and got what we needed.  Came back, ate lunch, and then they hit the road.  I collapsed on my bed for a while, and was supposed to meet RockShowGirl, but I was beat and she was sick, so we talked on the phone instead, and planned to have dinner the next day, which, incidentally, we did.  That was yesterday.

Tonight Breanna and I are starting the recording process for her second CD.  This is very exciting, because I’m actually producing this one, instead of just playing on it like I did on her first one.

I need to get back to work now, but I did want to let you know that I’m alive, and well.  Just super busy, that’s all.  I know, I know. . .the thing about having one’s own blog is that one needs to write in it more than once every five days.  Heh.  Thanks for sticking around.

OneYearAgo

First of all, you’ll be glad to know that there’s good news on the car front.  I’ll spare you some of the details, but it boils down to the fact that since the distributor fixed the problem, that means that the timing belt is okay, and that I don’t have to do Part Two of the repair Plan.  Yee haw.  I’m still broke, though, for the time being, but at least I’ll only be broke for a month, instead of clear into the new year.

So that’s good, I guess.

Had a couple of odd experiences at shows this past weekend.  At the Breanna and Justin show, we had our first heckler, of sorts.  He was drunkenly walking from table to table and chatting up the all of the ladies, whether they were with their respective guys or not.  Naturally, this included Breanna as well, which already had him on Justin’s radar screen.  In the middle of our second set, Justin started to play one of his songs, which apparently has a similar chord progression to a classic rock song, because the guy started laughing and singing the classic rock song really loudly.  Justin stopped playing and said, “Do you want to come up here and sing?”

“No, I just blahblah suck blahblah mumble mumble.”

“Y’know what?  I don’t like you very much.”

“I don’t like you either.”  This was a very awkward and tense moment.  No one, including us, had any idea what this guy was likely to do next.

Justin’s honesty and diplomacy kicked in.  “Here’s the thing.  As a musician, you spend your whole life learning how to play the guitar, how to sing, how to write songs.  Then you go and play them for people, and some people really like them.  And that’s great.  Some people don’t like them, and that’s cool too.  Not everybody has to like them.  But if you don’t like it, and you don’t want to be here, then you can go ahead and leave.”

The guy stood up and walked slowly to the front of the stage, looked at Justin angrily for a second, then turned and walked down the stairs and out of the room.  Everyone clapped for Justin, out of a sense of relief and a bit of amazement too, I think.

The rest of the show was stellar after that.  We felt energized and invigorated, and played our best.  Before that, we had some technical problems, and some sound problems, and it was an ‘off’ cello night for me, which I have occasionally.  I even have them sometimes when I play guitar, after all these years.  Incidentally, November 20th (that’s tomorrow) is the anniversary of the day that I got my very first guitar, clear back in 1985.  I’ll let you work out the math on that, and in the meantime, I’ll try to scrounge up a picture.

At the IrishBand show on Saturday, Singer and his girlfriend had an argument. That’s all I’ll say about it, partly because they seem to have worked things out, and partly because both of them are readers of this blog.  All seems to be forgiven, but it did make for an uncomfortable show, and a short one at that.

Singer called me first thing in the morning to ask me if I was still up for our musician friend’s birthday brunch, which I had to confess that I’d forgotten about.  I said yes, I’d love to go, and he and Violinist came and picked me up.  The party was a blast.  We had quiche, and bacon (Singer, a lifelong vegetarian, ate bacon for the first time!), and cheesy potatoes of some sort, and all kinds of muffins and bagels, and fruit, and chai, and the best Bloody Mary I’ve ever had in my entire life.  Violinist even stuck a piece of bacon in his, which looked repulsive, but. . .well, he seemed to enjoy it.  I wished that I had my camera with me, but at least I had my phone, so here’s a picture.

We left around 1:30 and came back to my place to do record some parts (djembe, vocals, and violin) for one of our songs.  Sounds really good so far, but it isn’t quite there yet, so we have some re-recording to do.

In other news, CincinnatiFriend is in town to defend her dissertation.  She’s actually doing that as I’m writing this, and I’m going to go and visit her after I’m done at work.  I’m super excited to see her again.  She moved a year and half ago, and I can’t believe it’s been that long.  I’m taking tomorrow off from work so that we can either go to all of her favorite haunts, or take a little day trip and catch up about everything.

Mom and Stepdad are coming to visit from Yakima on Friday, which should be fun.  They’ll be staying with me, for the first time since I’ve lived here in Portland.  This is the first time that I’ve had the right kind of living space (and the right kind of furniture) to make that possible and enjoyable for all of us.  Wish me luck.  We’re gonna do lots of cooking, and a bit of shopping, and J’s going to get to meet them.  Hopefully CincinnatiFriend and RockShowGirl will get to meet them too.

Should be a great week.  I’ll keep you posted.

As you may or may not already know, my car’s alternator has been dying a slow, pathetic death over the last two or three months.  Unfortunately, my financial situation over the same period of time has been particularly dire, so the car has pretty much been parked since then.  I’ve used it occasionally to drive to work, or to take myself and the cello to a gig, but other than that I’ve been walking a lot and taking the light-rail train, which is good for the planet, good for my health, and good for gas prices.  But that, as I like to say, is neither here nor there.

Yesterday was payday, and I had finally caught up on my bills enough to be able to take the car in.  J picked me up at work and drove me home to pick it up, but when we arrived and I tried to start it, it was too far gone.  The engine light came on, but the battery was too discharged to start the car.  Curses.  So I called a tow truck, got a jump-start (guess what’s on my Christmas list this year!), and drove to the repair shop named after MythicalKingWithGoldenTouch.  I explained the situation and the symptoms, and they said they’d call once they had the diagnosis.

About an hour later, one of the guys called to tell me that he was unable to start the car, and he asked me how I’d gotten it there.  I told him about the jump-start, but that I’d driven it over normally, and that it started like it always does.  He said he’d keep trying.

Another hour passed, and I got a second phone call to tell me that he was still unable to start the car, and that now he’d have to start checking things out, which would cost an hour of labor of shop time.  “Sure,” I said, “do what you need to do.”

By this time I’m on pins and needles, wondering about my poor little car.  The third phone call came about two hours later.  “I need to show you what’s going on, and I should show you in person.  Can you come down and take a look?”  That sounded ominous, but I couldn’t make it until after work, so I told him to give me the abridged version.  “Your distributor looks like it’s falling apart, and you seem to have an oil leak inside, where the spark plugs are.  Also, I’m worried about your timing belt, which might have slipped.”  Crrrrrrrap.  “So now we’re in a situation called ‘open ticket’, where we have to replace things as we go.  I wanted to show you what’s happening before I started all that.”

Ouch.

These things are all completely unrelated to the problem that I brought the car in for, by the way.  It’s as if it somehow knew where it was, and threw itself on the mercy of the mechanic, saying, “Pleeeeease fix me.  I need you so very badly.”

So I went over after work, and talked to the mechanic, who showed me what was happening, and we worked out a two-part plan.  Part One involves replacing the distributor, alternator, valve cover gasket and spark plugs, and changing the oil.  This comes to over nine hundred dollars.  Part Two involves replacing the timing belt and water pump, and checking out that area of the engine to make sure everything’s the way it should be.  That will be next month, and will cost another five hundred dollars.

Ouch.

The good news is that by Christmas, I’ll have a car that runs like a champ for a long time to come, despite my having survived an almost total cashectomy in the process.

Ouch. This month is gonna hurt.

Boy, has this week gotten away from me.  Sorry it’s been such a long time between posts, but this week turned out to be as busy as last week was, but I left off at the Ray LaMontagne show.  The next night, Thursday, I took the train downtown to see a poet who shall remain nameless, because while my two friends and I were very interested in him as a person, we found his poetry to be distant and unapproachable.  In fact, my two companions fell asleep for a while during one of his longer stories.  From there, Tossed In gave me a ride to my next engagement, which was Allanah’s birthday party.  Total blast, but I heard later from Mike that it ended in vomitous tragedy.

Friday night was a slightly odd IrishBand show, which took place at a firemens’ local union hall thingy.  Something like that.  A couple of the members play a sport called hurling, and their team of guys was getting together at the end of the season to have a party and give themselves prizes and awards.  One of the guys is a musician, and is a friend of our band, so he told the guys that since it’s an Irish sport, they should invite an Irish band to play.  So they did, and we did.  My favorite part was watching how Mike would change (or mumble) the more adult lyrics to some of the songs, since there were children present.  In fact, a few of the kids came right up and sat on the steps at the edge of the stage.  A girl who looked like she was about eleven sat right in front of me and watched the cello like a hawk.  (Hawkette?  Hawkess?)  She even made cello motions with her arm at one point.  After we were done with our set, I said,  “Do you play too?  You must.”  She said that she used to, and she’d played for about a year, bu then her cello got broken when it fell over or something, and it was never replaced.  I invited her to play mine, and she accepted.  She sat down and started making sound with the thing right away.  It was very fun to watch.

I actually had the weekend completely free, so I spent the majority of it sleeping, doing laundry, and watching episodes of Six Feet Under.  I hadn’t ever seen it until J loaned me the DVD’s, and now I’m completely hooked on the show.  In fact, we watched a couple of episodes together on Saturday night.  After she left, I watched two more, and then two more the next afternoon.

Monday was supposed to be a recording session with Breanna, but she had to re-schedule because she and Justin weren’t feeling well.  I offered the time slot to IrishBand’s singer instead, because we have a few high-profile gigs coming up, and we’re trying to get some music and promotional material posted on SpaceBelongingToMe by then.  We had dinner first, of pasta with alfredo sauce and smoked salmon, and then Mike recorded a new acoustic guitar track.  I then showed him how to run the recording software, and he manned the computer while I recorded a cello track, an accordion track, and a glockenspiel track.  We still need to add vocals, violin and percussion, but it sounds really great so far.

Last night was the Breeders show here in town, which JBJ and I went to for free, thanks to the tickets provided by the radio station that airs his music show.  We arrived during the second band, and were lucky enough to find a seat in the balcony.  There are only two rows of seats in the entire place, so we were very fortunate.  We weren’t impressed with the band that was playing when we arrived, which is to say that we talked with each other rather than listening to them.  They were called PaperCut or something, or maybe they were the PenguinSomethings band whose name I never knew.  I dunno.  Then the Breeders came out, and they sounded good, but I’m not gonna lie; we found our attention waning during their set as well.  We did get to hear them play “Cannonball”, though, which was really cool, then we decided to leave after listening to a couple more songs.

Tonight I’m home for a bit before meeting RockShowGirl, whose name may sound like one of those clever pseudonymic blogisms that I love so much, but it’s actually a variation on her name from SocialNetworkingSite, so it seemed apropos.  Anyway, she just went through a very strange and sudden break-up last weekend, which she’s still reeling from, so I want to go talk to her and cheer her up.  It seems like a movie might be in order.

Tomorrow’s a Breanna and Justin gig, and then Saturday is an IrishBand gig, so there’s still plenty on my schedule.  Next week may very well be even busier, because CincinnatiFriend is coming for a visit, and then Mom and Stepdad will be staying here the following weekend.

Phew.

Sorry for these many days of absence, and thank you again for reading all of this.  Now it’s time to eat something and figure out what RockShowGirl and I are doing tonight.