beautiful, funny, sad & true

After being mildly bummed out all week, I went on an excellent day trip with a couple of friends yesterday.  We saw the house from the movie The Goonies, went to the top of the hill overlooking the town, and then just walked around the town, by way of a couple of local brew pubs. The pictures came out. . .okay.  It was overcast and misty all day, which makes photography a bit challenging.

This morning I got up early to meet a Seattle friend, her son, and two of her friends for breakfast at my favorite breakfast place in town, which was also a really good time.  Now I’m home listening to Kathleen Edwards and getting ready for an IrishBand gig, which is at a house in Northeast Portland.  The owners brew their own beer, and each year they have a big blowout of a party to celebrate the release of this year’s batch of beers, which they distribute at local restaurants afterward.  A friend and I went once before, and we were the only two quasi-hipsters in attendance.  The attendees were basically thirty-year-old frat boys (and girls).  Well, here’s an example of what the conversations were like.

When you walk in the door, you are encouraged to make a name tag.  I wrote my nickname, “Mr. T,” on mine and slapped it onto my T-shirt.  When I stepped up to the bar to order a beer, a guy saw my name tag and said, ” ‘Mr. T’, huh?  With a name like that, I’d expect you to be black and have a bunch of gold chains and a mohawk.”  He laughed, and I said, “Right, that’s the jo–. . .yup.”  I’ll probably go by my nickname again this time.   What am I saying?  Of course I will.

So what does the title “Contagious” have to do with anything?  Well, I saw this drawing on Artemis Wilde’s web site, and loved it, and felt that it’s apropos to how I’ve been feeling the last couple of days.

Sure, I could have stayed home and been a crankypants all weekend, but instead I choose to encourage better behavior than that, both from myself and from others, and a smile is the best way to do that.   So the title of this entry is shamelessly copied from her, as is the picture.  You can find out more about Artemis Wilde here.  I just love her simple, direct, touching style.

And now I have to pack up my bass and everything and get to the gig.  I just have to remember to bring my smile with me, and turn that frown upside down or whatever.

Portland just got hit by the craziest storm.  We had 40-mile-per-hour winds, torrential rain, thunder and lightning like I’ve never heard (something like two hundred strikes in the last couple of hours), and now it seems to have passed, as if to say, “Enh. . .I’m done with you now, Portland.”

Really weird.

I was supposed to have a gig tonight, but I decided to give it a miss because of the weather, and the traffic, and the fallen trees, and all of that.  If I thought we’d have had an audience, I’d have happily made the trip out there, but the newscasters were telling everyone to stay home, and I could imagine driving an hour out to the gig, only to be playing for an empty room.  Not worth it.

We had reports of a funnel cloud over the area that my gig was supposed to take place, but luckily the golf-ball-sized hail never did materialize.  I moved my car underneath a tree in my neighborhood to keep it safe, which seems to have been an unnecessary precaution, but we do still have plenty of thunderstorms on the way tonight.  A tornado was reported just off of the Oregon coast, near Lincoln City, which is pretty mind-boggling.  That NEVER happens.

Anyway.

I guess if you want a Portland weather report, you’ll have already been reading elsewhere, but I’m okay, and the power stayed on the whole time (unlike the homes of fifty thousand other people in the Portland area), so the worst is over.

What a weird week.  Since the end of April, which was one of the busiest I’ve ever had, my schedule has been blissfully activity-free.  Andrea’s wedding (at which I played cello) was touching and beautiful, and I spent the rest of the weekend lying low.

IrishBand’s singer and I were going to see a movie on Sunday night, but I got a mass text message from one of my actor friends saying that he was performing that night, and that everybody should come down.  I called Singer and said, “New plan for tonight.  We should go see this play.  My friend’s in it, and I have no idea what to expect, but the group wrote it, so I’m sure it’ll be good.”  He agreed, and I drove to his apartment to pick him up.  We went to the venue (not an ‘actual’ theater, but a room in the Eagles’ Lodge) a bit early to scope the place out.  Turned out we were too early, so we sat in the bar, had a couple of drinks and shared a basket of surprisingly delicious fries.  It was funny and a bit strange to be the youngest person there by about thirty years.

The show was inspirred by Busby Berkeley’s productions, and even used old piano music and quoted bits from movies.  It was really entertaining and fun.  My friend described it as a ‘farce’, with elements of burlesque.  There were dancing girls and a woman-pretending-to-be-a-man, and a gay boy, and forbidden love, and my friend, who somehow managed to incorporate bits of all of those elements.  It was great.

From there we walked across the street to the Sapphire Hotel, which is one of my favorite places.  We went there and waited for ActorFriend to join us after he changed his clothes and stuff.  He was meeting a woman friend for what Singer and I thought was a date, but it turned out that they were actually ex’s, and were meeting to catch up on each others’ lives.  They invited us to join them at a table next to theirs, which was better for conversing than our noisy table, so we slid it over and settled in for a great conversation, as well as delicious food and drinks.  I hadn’t seen my friend in quite a few months, and catching up was long overdue.  His friend turned out to be a singer-songwriter, and a very interesting person as well.  Here’s to many more evenings like that one.

Monday and Tuesday I was exhausted and pretty much slept the days away, but yesterday I woke up early and felt great after finally getting a full night’s sleep.  I called my friend J to invite her to the Japanese Garden, which she felt was too expensive, so I suggested the Chinese Garden, which I had a couple of complimentary passes for.  It was an offer she couldn’t refuse.

I hadn’t been there in years, but I used to have a membership there, which is how I got the free tickets.  A couple of months ago, I got a letter in the mail saying, ‘Come back!  Renew your membership’, et cetera, so I took the opportunity to take J, who hadn’t been there before.  Naturally, I brought my camera, and here are some of the results.

In one of the buildings was a chest of drawers with a jar full of numbered sticks on top of it.  The idea was that you shake the jar of sticks, and whichever one comes out first is the one you were meant to have.   Mine was number 23, so I found the drawer marked ’23’ and pulled out a single piece of paper, which read:

In case you’re one of the people who reads BFS&T from a feed or something, it says, “You have made a deep impression on someone dear to you.”  I love stuff like that, as you may already know.

Lovely place, lovely day.  From there, we left the car parked at the Garden and walked to the MAX train to ride downtown to the bank for cash, then walked back up to Old Town to an incredible little Thai cart for a super-cheap dinner, of which I have some left over and will happily finish tonight.  After that, we drove around aimlessly for a while, and I headed up to the Alphabet District in Northwest.  We both felt like walking some more, so I drove us to Macleay Park, where we ditched the car and hiked into the woods.  I took no pictures, because we were having a pretty deep conversation, and I wanted to pay attention to her.   We hiked a mile or so in, to the abandoned Stone House, climbed all over it, then turned back.

We left, exhausted, and I dropped her off at home, because I needed to learn a bunch of songs for tonight’s rehearsal with a new songwriter with whom I’ll be playing accordion occasionally.

That’s why I’ve been so absent from blogging lately; it’s because I’ve been out there living.

Time for Thai food!

Yann TIersen’s concert in Portland was fantastic, as I knew it would be, but I have to admit that there were a few surprises.  The first and most obvious was that he didn’t even bring an accordion.  The second was that it was an all-electric show, with the exception of the violin and melodica.  And the ukelele, which KeyboardGirl and BassPlayer each played once or twice.   There was a Moog synthesizer too, which was used by Yann and KeyboardGirl to interesting effect.  It was awesome to see Yann and the band in this electrified way, but I would imagine that fans who are only familiar with the Amelie soundtrack and his earlier work may have been disappointed with this show.

The crowd seemed to be most appreciative when something outside the realm of NormalRockBandLineup happened, such as when Yann played his violin.  He launched into Sur Le Fil, a solo violin piece, to thunderous cheers and applause.  I think after the long jams, we were all excited to hear something recognizable, and something we associate with the best of Yann’s musical abilities.  As a multi-instrumentalist myself, however, I certainly know all too well about the hassle of carrying around a truckload of weird, fragile, unruly (not to mention large) instruments in a car and a plane and a van and a trailer.  I can only imagine what it’s like to do that for months on end.  But accordions and mandolins are relatively small.  Jeez, Yann, you could have at least brought one of those, or maybe you can find a backup guitarist who also plays something else besides guitar?  I hereby volunteer my services to you.

I certainly wasn’t bored or disappointed with the show in any way, but I would have loved to hear at least a little bit of accordion, or piano, or something.  What I love most about Yann is that he’s a composer and not ‘just’ a rock band.  Or maybe it’s that he can be a rock band if he wants, but he’s so much more than that.  This was a very good rock band, but it was still a rock band.  I would have gladly shelled out much more money to see him at PCPA with a more eclectic instrumental lineup.

The things that did disappoint me about the show had nothing to do with Yann or his band.  First of all, there were signs everywhere at the venue saying “NO PHOTOGRAPHY” and everyone was told at the door, “No cameras, and no camera phones. ” This policy was strictly enforced, too, because I saw the staff guys wearing fanny packs that were stuffed with contraband cameras, and I heard him say to someone, “You can’t use your camera.  It’ll be confiscated.”  Well, crap, I thought, and dutifully left my camera in the pocket of my hoodie for the entire show.  Therefore, I have no photographic proof that I was there, which is a shame too, because I was standing in a really good spot.  Le sigh.

I had two friends come to the show, one of whom I had given my extra ticket to, but both arrived later and were unable to find me, so that was disappointing.  The good thing, I guess, is that I was able to pay more attention to the performances, but it would have definitely been nicer to have company.

The tour T-shirts wouldn’t have looked good on me, and I already own all the CD’s, so I came home empty-handed and a bit heavy-hearted to have missed out on my friends, but I was supremely glad to have seen the perfomance of a true musical genius who I never imagined I’d have the chance to hear in person, especially not without a great deal of traveling.  The Wonder Ballroom is about ten minutes’ drive from my place.  And I’ve had the opportunity to play there, too, so I know what the backstage area and everything is like.  I imagined Yann sitting on a sofa in one of the green rooms in the basement, warming up on his violin.

Here’s a picture from the previous night’s show in Seattle, which another of my friends took with her camera phone.  Apparently they didn’t have the same anti-photography regime in place, or if they did, she was able to circumvent it long enough to snap this one shot.  Anyway, here it is.

Incidentally, Yann’s the one with the longish hair, just to the right of center.

It was a really great show, overall, and I’d recommend that you take any chance you can get to see Yann.

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.