beautiful, funny, sad & true

Once every month or two, I like to co-host my friend John’s radio show. Usually, we like to build a group of songs around a theme, such as Beatlesque or Girls’ Names, or Valentines’ Day. Sometimes, however, we like to just get together and randomly select songs, trying to surprise each other and create a compelling, seamless ‘flow’ from one song into another. Last night’s show was a ‘flow’ kind of show. John texted me to let me know that he was at a nearby pizza place, having a last-minute snack and drink before the show. I told him I’d be right there, and I drove over to the station, parked, and walked over to meet him. He was finishing up his food and drink when I arrived, but we still had plenty of time before the show, so he got a second drink, and I ordered a glass of wine while we talked and joked about what the show would hold.

It turned out to be a particularly good flow show, too, if I do say so myself. I thought we were totally on our game, and we were playing songs that really complemented each other and went together well. At three o’clock in the morning, when the show was over, we gave each other a hug and went our separate ways. We’d been doing the show since midnight, and I’d been out at a dinner/drinks/movie night with a couple other friends earlier in the evening, so I was definitely looking forward to going home to bed.

As soon as I left the station and came to the traffic light at the end of the block, there was a guy in dark clothing who surprised me by walking across the intersection against my green light. I had to swerve a bit in order to avoid him, which sent my heart racing. I turned onto Couch, and then Grand, heading toward home. Around the point where the freeway crosses Grand, a guy was crossing against that light as well. He was slowly pushing a shopping cart across the street, and he was very difficult to see in the darkness. Right before my turn onto Lloyd Boulevard, there was a construction cone in the edge of my lane, so I had to maneuver to avoid hitting it. All of these obstacles turned a normally tranquil late-night drive into a very nerve-wracking event.

As soon as I turned onto Lloyd, I saw police lights come on behind me. I pulled over right away. “Do you know why we stopped you tonight?”

“I don’t, actually.”

Apparently, I had made what appeared to be a wide turn onto Lloyd, and they’d noticed my swerves for ShoppingCartGuy and the construction cone, and assumed that I had been drinking. I had been, yes, but not for many hours, and I hadn’t been home to brush my teeth so it was still on my breath, though the effects had all but worn off. Suffice it to say that my tiredness and nervousness caused me to fail the standing-on-one-foot test, though, so they placed me under arrest and sat me in the back of the police car. They confiscated my laptop and had my car towed.

Speaking of my car, an important tidbit in this story has to do with the fact that the interior smells like marijuana, and it has since long before I owned it. I’m well-known in my social circles for my stance on marijuana. I’ve voted for it to be legalized a number of times, particularly for medical uses, but I don’t smoke it myself, and to this day I still never have. I didn’t know the car smelled like that when I bought it, but whenever the weather is rainy (and this is Portland, after all, so it’s always rainy), the smell is particularly pungent and strong. I’ve tried to scrub the interior, I’ve pulled the panels off and cleaned inside the doors, I’ve pulled up the carpet in the back to clean underneath it, and still the smell persists. I’ve half-joked about taking it to a K-9 police unit and having a dog sniff the car to find the source of the smell, so I can get rid of it, because I don’t like the smell of pot, and I don’t like the impression of me that it gives people when they ride in my car.

One of the officers noticed the smell when he was searching the car, and he walked to the door of the police car, poked his head in and told me, “Hey, your car really smells like marijuana. Are we gonna find something in there? If you take a urine test, are you gonna turn up positive?” I smiled and told them that no, they weren’t and that I don’t smoke, and that’s just the way my car has always smelled. He didn’t believe me; no one ever does. They drove me downtown for processing and further questioning. By this time, it was approximately four in the morning, and I had no idea what was going to happen to me. I answered their questions, and took all of their tests, while they filled in the paperwork. They gave me a breath test, which registered “.00”, which made the two officers very suspicious, so they decided to get a third opinion from their drug specialist. I was ushered into a cement and steel holding cell with a long wooden bench. I sat down and was amazed to see that even in a police holding cell, people will still attempt to carve their initials in a wooden bench.

DrugSpecialist appeared in the doorway, and ushered me to a chair next to his desk. He took my vital signs and blood pressure, and had me perform more stringent variations of the tests I had performed on the street for the two other officers. I had to close my eyes, tip my head back, and touch a finger to my nose repeatedly. I had to walk a straight line. I had to stand on one leg and count the seconds until he told me to stop. Each series of rapid-fire instructions was punctuated with, “Do you understand the question?” I easily passed all of these tests. He gave me a barrage of eye exams and asked me lots of medical- and drug-related questions. I answered all of them truthfully (I’m not on any medications, I don’t use drugs, I don’t intend to harm myself, I’m not suicidal, etc.) and they put me back into the holding cell while they conferred with each other about my mystifying results. It seemed to them that my stories all checked out, and that I was telling the truth; I wasn’t drunk, I was just tired and nervous. At about five-thirty, I think they decided that they were satisfied, and I was not the threat that they had originally perceived. They each made it a point to tell me that nothing like this had ever happened before in their many years of experience. One of them went so far as to sit down and say, “I don’t get it. I don’t know how you ‘blew a zero’, when I could smell alcohol. Your car smells like marijuana, and you say you don’t smoke. I believe you, but we’ll have to wait for your urine test to come back before we know for sure. You’ve been nothing but cooperative, but you have to look at this from our point of view. You’re a one-in-a-million case.”

They somewhat apologetically handcuffed me again, not because they felt they needed to but because the law said they had to, and they led me to a room where a different man frisked me and told to exchange my steel-toed Doc Martens for small, uncomfortable slippers. The original two officers again took me through a maze of electronically locked doors. “Sometimes people run,” one of them said, “but you don’t seem like a runner.”

The other one continued. “Assuming that you’re telling the truth, and your urine test comes back clean (and I’m sure it will), this case against you will disappear. You won’t have anything on your record, and it’ll be like this never happened. Your car’s been towed, so you’ll have to deal with that, but the rest of this. . .” He trailed off. They opened the door to the waiting room, unclasped my handcuffs, and gave me one of the strangest looks I’ve ever encountered. They still couldn’t believe the way this was turning out. I should mention that they were totally cool and respectful with me, and they did a great job, especially considering the bizarre circumstances. I thanked them and walked into the fingerprint room. The fingerprint attendant was a very friendly, almost jovial guy. “Did you know that you have what looks like eczema on your thumb?” I didn’t know that. “It’s not red or anything, but see how you don’t have much of a fingerprint there? That’s a classic sign of eczema.” Interesting. At this point, I thought the whole ordeal would be over soon. The fingerprint guy said, “Okay, looks like we’re done. Only four to six more hours, and you’ll be out of here.” Four to six more hours?

It was six o’clock in the morning now, and I was told to wash my hands and go sit in the waiting room, which reminded me of the old Firesign Theatre joke about the butler ushering a man into his home. He told the man, “You can sit here in the waiting room, or you can wait here in the sitting room.” There was a mens’ side and a womens’ side of the room, which were divided by a short cement wall. The room was gray on gray, with government-green highlights. There were two televisions mounted on the walls, and the sound was only turned up on the mens’ television. Sitting there with me was an assortment of serious drug users and repeat criminals. I kept thinking, BUT I PASSED ALL THE TESTS. I SHOULDN’T EVEN BE HERE. I closed my eyes and tried to relax, while avoiding the burnouts and miscreants I was trapped in there with. On the television was one of Dick Clark’s blooper shows, followed by an ‘urban’ sitcom, followed by Married With Children (a meth-head behind me blurted out, “That’s what I’M talkin’ about,” when MWC came on), followed by an hour-long show about a guy who pretended to be developmentally disabled so that he could run in the Special Olympics and beat their champion, becoming a champion himself and winning a bet for his partner in crime. It was painful.

Around eight o’clock in the morning, they finally called my name. I staggered wearily to the desk and faced another barrage of questions. The woman used the same loud, deliberate tone that they all use, after years of dealing with deadbeats and cretins. “We just need to confirm your identity, okay? Do you understand the question?” You have GOT to be kidding me. Yes. “If you have any friends or family members, we need to call them and talk to them, okay? Do you understand the question?” JESUS CHRIST; I’M NOT ONE OF THESE CRETINS! Yes, I understand the question. The only phone number I know by heart anymore is my mom’s land line, since people rarely have to manually dial phones anymore, so I gave the attendant my mom’s number and name, adding, “This ought to be a nice surprise for her.” The woman told me that it wouldn’t be much longer now. Did I have any questions?

“Yes, actually.” I tried very hard to formulate this sentence in a way that wouldn’t seem flippant. “I passed all of my tests with the officers just now, so I guess I’m wondering why I’m still here.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but you’ve been booked, so you have to follow the procedures just like everybody else.” The phrase ‘just like everybody else’ echoed through my head as I made a quick scan of everybody else in the room. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

I glumly walked back, slumped in my seat, and noticed that Not Just Another Teen Movie was playing on the television now. A staff member went around and provided us with a sack lunch that consisted of a dry bologna sandwich, a piece of dry coffee cake, a hard boiled egg, an orange, and a tiny carton of milk that proclaimed it was “best if used before 04-08.” In my delirium, I thought the date meant April of 2008, and that they were feeding us three-year-old milk. I sniffed the milk nervously before sipping it ever so slowly. With all the recent milk issues my stomach has had, I hoped to God that I wouldn’t explode vomit all over the room. Luckily, I managed to keep it all down. I left the egg and the orange sitting in the bag on the chair next to me, until an attendant wearing a prison-orange jumpsuit took and deposited the bag in the garbage can.

I sat for another two hours, head bowed and eyes closed, barely able to maintain my rapidly declining sense of equilibrium. Suddenly, a little after ten o’clock in the morning, someone came in and announced quietly to the staff, “We have a release.”

“A release?”

“Yeah, for [my last name]. It came in just after you guys showed up the last time.” Incidentally, I should note that ‘the last time’ (the last THREE times, in fact) was for a group of guys who were lining up to have their clothes checked in, so that they could be issued the clothing for their stint in jail. I had been expecting to hear my name each time, and each time it wasn’t called, my nervousness intensified. When they told me I was released, I was too tired to even feel relieved. The man told me to follow the black line, and I was ushered through another maze of electronic doors until I was finally let out to the room where I collected my phone, keys (minus my car key), car insurance card, and debit card.

“I had a laptop, too,” I told the man, “and a bunch of CD’s and a black scarf. Would that stuff be here?”

That stuff turned out to be in the Property Room, which wasn’t the property room I was standing in front of. “You can ask the gentleman over there about the Property Room.” I walked to the gentleman over there, who was seated on a high chair alongside a security checkpoint near the main door to the building. I was almost outside.

“I had a laptop and a few other things in a backpack, and I need to find the Property Room.”

“Oh, that’s not here,” he told me, rattling off a series of rapid-fire directions. “Gooutsideandturnleftandit’sinthissamebuilding, andthengointhedoorandtalktotheguyinthere.”

“Uhhh. . .errr. . .I spent the night here, and I’m a bit sleep-deprived,” I stammered. “So. . .out the door, turn left, and in this building. What’s the department name?” He told me what it was. I thanked him and walked out into the blinding blue morning. After staring at grey and green for the last seven hours, the beauty and color of downtown Portland was overwhelming. I called my mom’s cell phone, but she was unable to answer. I talked to John on the phone for a while, recounting the highlights of the previous hours. I got on the train and headed toward home. Luckily I live close enough that commuting to downtown and back is easy. Mom called back just as I was stepping off the train, and I told her that despite what the call must have sounded like, the situation wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, and that everyone knew I would be cleared of this charge in no time.

I have a court date this week, and I have to get my car and computer and everything back, and those things will surely cost money to resolve. I didn’t need any of this to happen, since I have enough happening already, but I’ll just keep being honest, and I’ll keep doing what I have to do to keep my name clear.

I can’t wait for this ridiculous nightmare to be over.

My older niece is in fifth grade, and every time we talk about school, I feel the need to bite my tongue a bit, because fifth grade was such a rough year for me.  My teacher, Mr. P., was horrendous, and mean, which I suppose is common enough, but that was also the year in which my parents got a divorce, and we were dealing with all that crap at the same time.  School work, naturally, got pushed to the back burner occasionally, as we were shuttled back and forth between Mom’s house and Dad’s new apartment.  My teacher sent many an angry report card home with me for my mom to acknowledge and sign, but I don’t think she ever saw any of them, because I would forge her signature and dutifully bring the cards right back to school with me the next day.  While I was in Yakima a few months ago for Stepdad’s funeral, Mom gave Brother and me each a box of our childhood stuff.  My box, which I now have here in my basement, was and is crammed full of school papers, drawings, my license plate collection, and even the slightly tattered blue blanket I used to carry around when I was really young.  Sure enough, mixed in with the forgettable mountain of school papers, I found one of those forged report cards.  I find it a bit depressing that with of all the important things I wish I still had (like my cassette tapes, and my toy cars!), that piece of hilarious minutiae somehow managed to survive the intervening decades.

But Niece doesn’t have to know about any of that for quite a while, as far as I’m concerned.  I don’t want to burden her with that knowledge, or to use the influence I have over her (as the ‘cool’ uncle) to sway her in that negative direction.  I want her to have the best school experiences she can, for as long as she can.  School’s hard enough without your uncle telling you how crappy it is.  But I do think about it from time to time, and I feel like fifth grade was the first real low point in my life, and that’s when something changed in me forever.

In sixth grade, I had a teacher with the very unfortunate surname of Growcock.  On the first day of school, he would quickly tell the students, “Call me ‘Mister G’.”  Thankfully, he was one of the best, nicest and most memorable teachers I had during elementary school, which helped bring me back from the shell shock of the year before.  He was always quick with a joke, but we knew to take him seriously also.  Each year, he would take the entire sixth-grade class to see a Harlem Globetrotters game in the nearby college town of Ellensburg, which was a tradition that all the younger kids looked forward to.

On Valentines’ Day that year, all of us kids made cards for each other, boys and girls alike.  That was the last year we did that before we all hit puberty the following year, which meant that valentines were out of the question.  One of those valentine folders survived in my childhood box, too, but I’m not sure if it’s the one from fifth or sixth grade.  What I do remember about that day was the folders we all made.  We cut out construction paper and drew a bunch of designs all over it – usually hearts or poems or whatever – and then we taped them to the side of our desks so that people could come around and place cards into them.  One kid, M. Reynolds, wrote a poem on his folder that quoted a popular commercial of the day:  “Reynolds Wrap:  the best wrap around.”  M.’s writing skills were a bit lacking, however, so he misspelled the word ‘wrap’, which meant that his Valentines’ poem was proudly displayed on the side of his desk, in huge bold letters, for all to see.

“REYNOLDS RAPE, THE BEST RAPE AROUND.”

My desk was right next to M.’s, which meant that I got to see that gem in progress before anyone else did, and I knew that it might get him in trouble if anybody else saw it.  I wasn’t necessarily a friend of M.’s, but I felt that I should mention it to Mr. G., and somehow stick up for M. at the same time.  When the bell rang and everyone else, including M., ran outside for recess, I walked up to Mr. G.’s desk and told him I had something to show him.  “I’m sure this is a total accident, since M. isn’t very good at spelling, but I thought you should see this, cause it’s funny.  I don’t want him to get in trouble or anything, though.”  We had a good laugh, and he told me he’d take care of it.  When the class came back inside from recess, M. had crossed out every instance of ‘rape’ and replaced it with the correct word.

Incidentally, I’m sure Mr. G. knew how lucky he was that he taught younger kids, because with the last name Growcock, teaching any older age group would provide decades of ridicule for the poor guy.   Maybe he consciously chose to teach lower grade levels for that very reason.  One of my current friends, who was in Mr. G.’s class at the same time I was, recently joked, “Man, I’d be changing that shit to Smith.“  I couldn’t agree more.  I did a quick search for Mr. G. online, and it seems that he’s still alive and living in central Washington state, although he’s almost eighty years old now.  I hope he continued to enjoy teaching, and I hope he’s had a good life.  I probably owe my sanity that year to him, although I promptly lost it again the next year, as soon as I entered junior high.

“Thank you for your interest in the position of [job title] with [company name].  I regret to inform you that upon review of your application materials, we are not able to offer you further consideration in this recruitment process.

As you may know, this recruitment generated a remarkable response. Due to the volume of applicants, I will not be able to provide you with customized feedback about your application or respond to similar inquiries. However, generally speaking, applicants currently being considered have qualifications that most closely align with our ideal candidate profile.

We truly appreciate the interest you have shown in this position, and hope you will watch for future career opportunities with us. Our current job listings are on our web site.

I wish you the best of luck in your future career endeavors.”

These responses are getting old.

Sorry for the silence on the blog front.  I’m sure that those of you who’ve been checking in here at BFS&T know by now that when I don’t write anything for a while, it usually means that I’ve been experiencing a deluge of activity in real life, which leaves precious little time for reflection, let alone writing.  This time has certainly been no exception, with lots of out-of-town gigs, lots of recording, and lots of gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest at all hours of the day and night.  Here’s the view from the cabaret venue where PolishCellist and I played in Seattle a week ago:

IrishBand played in Astoria, Oregon last weekend, as part of a poetry festival that brought in the likes of Bill Carter.  There was a freak snowstorm that night, and we somehow found ourselves in the midst of a snowball fight or three, always with random people.  That was probably my favorite memory of the trip.  Also, should you find yourself in that neck of the woods, you owe it to yourself to pay a visit to Clemente’s restaurant.  Their food is incredible, and they treated us like royalty during our stay there.  We became fast friends with the owners and staff.

In the midst of all this, my friend and I started a new band in which she sings and writes lyrics and melodies, while I write the music and play all the instruments on our recordings.  So far, I’ve been playing acoustic guitar at our gigs, but the recordings have lots of other instruments, so naturally, the subject of finding more band members arose.  I’ve been involved with the singer-songwriter scene for the last ten years, in which the members may change many times.  I’ve also been invited to join existing bands, whether to replace a member who has left, or to bring my own particular type of musicality to the band.  It’s been a really long time since I’ve played an active role in recruiting band members for a project of my own.  It’s exciting and daunting at the same time, and that calls for a story.

For about four years, I was the lead guitarist and producer for a woman who, for the pseudonymic purposes of this blog, will be called Bird.  Our original plan was for me to be the bass player, since good bass players are so hard to find, but after auditioning a few guitarists (and realizing that the overwhelming majority of guitarists play in the exact same blues-based way, which was of no interest to us), we decided that I should have that role and that we should seek a bass player instead.  We auditioned a couple of bassists, one of whom bragged about his ability to play the upright bass, but as soon as he pulled it out, it was obvious to us that he was clueless about it.  We finally did find a really good player, who had actually auditioned for us as a guitarist first, but was still interested even after he found out about our change of plans.

Once that hurdle was behind us, the search was on for a drummer.  The three of us knew that this would pose the biggest challenge, since good drummers are already scarce enough, and a newly-formed band has precious little to offer, financially speaking.  We started by posting an ad on ListByCraig, which turned up the usual suspects of tire-kickers and carless (sometimes even drumless!) slackers.  We then posted a free ad in MessengerGodAlternativePaper, which yielded us a couple of interesting prospects.  ProspectOne, in his late twenties, showed up with an endless series of stories about bands he’d been in and tours he’d been on, and the layers of stickers adorning his drum cases lent credence to his stories.  His playing, however, did not.  He was horrendous, and if you closed your eyes, you’d have thought that a seven-year-old was behind the drums.   We slogged through three or four songs (he’d driven clear across town to play with us, after all), then thanked him and told him we’d let him know.

Not long after that fiasco, we drove out to BeaverSuburb to play with ProspectTwo, a guy in his mid-forties who was becoming overwhelmed by his career as a doctor, and who wanted to spice up his life by reconnecting with his love of playing the drums.  He had a beautiful house, and a beautiful drum kit, and a beautiful PA system to sing through.  He cooked beautiful frittatas for us (I had to check the spelling of ‘frittatas’ just now) and squeezed beautiful fresh orange juice for us by hand.  He was a great guy, and extremely intelligent, and we quite enjoyed his company.  His drumming, like that of the previous guy, left a bit to be desired.  His skills were not nearly as lacking as the other guy’s, certainly, but his playing was far from solid, and despite all the positive qualities he offered, we knew he would never be able to meet our drumming needs.

After that round of auditions, we were starting to become disillusioned, and (if I’m going to be completely honest) even a bit jaded.  We tried a new tactic, which was to actually pay money and place an ad in the Musicians Wanted section of the main weekly alternative paper in town, which provided us with a distinctly higher caliber of applicants.  The next person we auditioned was amazing.  He had just moved to Portland, he was a great player, and he had a great personality as well.  We felt like the four of us gelled as musicians, and we sounded like a real band for the first time.   After we had played through our list of songs, we sat around and chatted about Life In General, and about Music, and about Other Stuff too.  Before we knew it, another hour had passed.  Then, the subject of Money came up, and the atmosphere in the room completely changed.  He turned quiet and weird and defensive, and blurted out something about how he needed to be compensated for this and that if he was going to be in the band, and that he was used to making so much money in his other bands back in Colorado or wherever, and that if we couldn’t guarantee that much, he’d have to look elsewhere.  We had no delusions of grandeur, and we made it clear to everyone potentially involved that this was a brand new band, and we might never make money, but we believed in what we were doing, and we expected all of the members to feel the same way.  He made an awkward getaway, and the three of us were left scratching our heads.  Years later, he became a well-respected drummer around town, but I daresay that most people will remember him for being robbed and assaulted in the middle of the night while riding his bike, then being run over by TWO different cars driven by drunks who were friends caravanning home after a night of partying.  Both of them fled the scene.  Drummer did not survive, and the one driver that was convicted was sentenced to an insultingly small fine, a few days in jail, and a short time in a drug treatment program.  In a strange twist of musical fate, I was invited to play cello and accordion on a song that was written by a friend of mine a few months ago as a tribute to him.  The song has recently been released, and I just saw an update on SocialNetwork that said it will be played on a local music ‘spotlight’ show tonight.

The final guy we met had also just moved to Portland from Yakima, which is where I grew up too.  He asked lots of pertinent questions about the songs, and played very tastefully and dynamically.  He even commented on Bird’s blue guitar, which he said matched his blue drum set, and meant that he was ‘in.’  He was our guy, and we all knew it.  The lineup was complete.

The four of us played together for the next few years, until the electric version of the Bird band split up and morphed into an acoustic lineup that didn’t involve the three of us.  But we’re all still friends, and Bassist and Drummer are still out and about.  They even play together in a new incarnation of a really great band that’s been around for a while.  Drummer was lucky enough to tour with the Canadian band The Paperboys, which was a tremendous opportunity, not least of which because they were his favorite band.

We tried out a keyboard player for a month or two, but he could never make time to rehearse with us or learn the songs, and he was going to Australia, and he always wanted to come to my place and videotape my hands when I played the parts, so that he could learn them exactly.  He always seemed to have a reason why he didn’t know the songs.  To be fair to him, he was a genuinely nice guy, and he even came to watch a couple of our early shows, but it didn’t quite work to have him in the band.

This is what the audition process is like, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s challenging, and grueling, and fun, and interesting, and frustrating, but ultimately rewarding, and it’s a necessary part of the musical life.  The good news is that I’m not just starting out anymore, and I know a bunch of people, and I have lots more experience under my metaphorical belt, and I have a MOSTLY good reputation, but it’s still going to be a tough process.  Who knows; I may even end up being the drummer in this new band.  For now, the biggest news is that the two of us submitted a song to the annual compilation of up-and-coming Portland bands, and we’ll find out this spring if we make the cut or not.  IrishBand submitted a song too, and both songs are very unusual in the overall Portland ‘scene’, which I believe will help our chances immensely.

Naturally, I’ll keep you posted.

2010 has been very strange.  At the beginning of the year, I was still on blogging hiatus, so it took a while to get back up to speed.  Springtime was crazy, with lots of great musical endeavors and memorable trips.  By the summer, both my life and this blog went into overdrive, when I really started writing again, and found my full stride while sharing a bit too much about my childhood.  Suddenly it was October, which is the month of my birth, but this year was also the month of my stepdad’s death, which has sent everything into a tailspin since then.  A surreal trip to Yakima for the funeral was followed by multiple trips to Seattle, both for gigs and for family functions.

There were some standout moments from this last year that didn’t manage to make it into the blog, for various reasons.  For example, here’s a video of a particularly interesting recording session that I was lucky enough to be involved with, albeit in a small way.  A local singer-songwriter, who is also a friend, put the word out on SocialNetwork that she wanted to create a cacaphony of 50 pianos, all playing an F chord at the same time.  I jumped at the chance.  She rented a piano showroom downtown, and my friend and I (and forty eight or so other people) joined in to participate.  I brought my camera to capture a bit of the action.

Another memorable moment from this last year was Trek in the Park.  This theater group gets together every year to re-create a famous episode from the original Star Trek television series.  This year’s was Space Seed, in which we meet the infamous character Khan (who returned in the movie The Wrath of Khan).  It was a very well-done production, with live music and everything. . .and it was all free of charge.  Here’s the climactic fight sequence between Kirk and Khan.

IrishBand released our self-titled EP this year, as well as an amazing animated video that a friend created for us.  I would post that here, but our band name is very unusual, hence the pseudonym.  To celebrate, we went to Port Townsend, Washington (the hometown of three of the band members, and an adopted home away from home for the rest of us) to play a CD release party and catch the Rhododendron Festival and parade and everything.  It’s always a huge party weekend for PT, and this year was the tenth reunion for PT High School, which included Violinist and a bunch of other friends, so I actually went to the reunion barbecue in Chetzemoka Park during the afternoon, since I knew so many of the people there.  (God forbid that I actually go to any of my own class reunions; I haven’t yet.)  I also performed in the parade, in disguise, as an honorary member of Nanda.  I’m the guy with the Mexican wrestling mask, playing the bass, miming along to the dance music that was blaring from the speakers in the back of the truck.

I had the opportunity to see the Oregon Symphony perform many times this last year, with some pretty big-name performers.  Violinists Midori and Hilary Hahn, violinist Pinchas Zukerman and his cellist wife Amanda Forsyth (who, incidentally, gave a cello master class at the Old Church that afternoon, which I also attended, even though I’m far from being a cello master) who performed Brahms’s Double Concerto together, and a number of others.  This month, I have a ticket for pianist Emanuel Ax’s concert, which I’m very much looking forward to.  Yo-Yo Ma performed here a month or so ago, but his concert was sold out in the spring, only a few weeks after tickets went on sale.  Curses.

So it’s been a good year, overall, but I’m really hoping that 2011 is better, or less confusing at the very least.  I have lofty goals for the upcoming year, which include finding a job, finding love and a real relationship, taking care of some things that have been dogging me for a while now, and producing more CD’s.  I have a bit of news on the music front, actually.  A friend of mine hurt her arms a year ago, and has since been unable to play the piano, but that hasn’t stopped her from singing, or from writing lyrics and melodies, or from having tons of ideas.  She e-mailed me at some point to ask what people in her position do in the music business.  I told her I don’t know about ‘the music business’, but I’d love to give the songs a listen, and that maybe I could put music to them.  She sent me some mp3’s, and I instantly felt like I knew where the songs should go.  They felt familiar without being predictable, which is always a good sign.  That was about two months ago, and we already have five or six collaborations in the works.  Pretty awesome and exciting.

In other news, December is the fourth anniversary of this blog, so it seems appropriate to have a little birthday party, no?  Come on, let’s have some sis-boom-bah.

So anyway, on to the Best Of.  Here are the lists of what I consider to the best entries BFS&T has to offer from this past year, which naturally includes a list of the most interesting dreams, as well.  Enjoy!

THE ENTRIES:

SteamCon – the steampunk convention in Seattle in which PolishCellist and I played, and had a total blast doing so

tragedy – the death of Stepdad

struggle – the early aftermath of the death of Stepdad

sitting here thinking about the Holocaust – one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on the radio

folk festival fun – Portland Folk Festival, starring IrishBand, Dan Bern, Roll Out Cowboy, etc.

I’m kind of an a-hole – see for yourself

birthday present – prostitute schmostitute

the unicorn code – love it, learn it, LIVE IT

no one’s laughing – a peek into our family dynamics

d̩ja vu Рwhat it feels like, and a friend who claims to never have experienced one

the truth is out there – interesting UFO story, I promise

it’s not for shaving – Occam’s Razor, and how it applies to recording music

what if it is? – a very memorable and touching moment from the show Six Feet Under

THE CHILDHOOD STORIES:

shuttlecock

love and curiosity

he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

the final innocent tryst

synchronicity

THE DREAMS:

lights, camera, dream

festival dream

shape shifters

inimitable and imitable

subconscious and libido

this needs a name

frozen

Just in case this wasn’t enough for your insatiable appetite for blog entries, here’s the Best of BFS&T 2009 entry, for your gluttonous pleasure.

Thanks for being here and reading all this, and for supporting this blog for such a long time now.  I really appreciate it.  I hope we all have an excellent New Year’s Eve, and Day, and that 2011 allows us to learn, and to grow, and to change for the better, a little bit each day.

Happy New Year!