beautiful, funny, sad & true

It’s safe to say that I have been a Monty Python fanatic for most of my life, starting when I was about thirteen years old.  My brother and I, when we used to visit Dad, had a tiny black-and-white television in the bedroom we shared.  Dad would say goodnight to us and head upstairs to bed, and he expected us to do the same.  What he didn’t know, however, was that at eleven-thirty Monty Python’s Flying Circus came on, and so did other similar British ‘programmes’ like Doctor Who and The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  We watched these shows at an almost but not entirely inaudible volume level, and parked ourselves on the floor, about a foot away from the tiny monochromatic screen.

When we were at Mom’s house in Yakima, which was the majority of the time, Flying Circus wasn’t available on TV there, so we went into a kind of withdrawal.  We rented the videos about a hundred million times, and I even made audio cassettes of the movies by laboriously holding a microphone up to the TV speaker so that I could constantly listen and memorize the dialogue between our viewings of the movies.  I was obsessed.

My obsession seemed only to get stronger and stronger, and it lasted well into my college years.  I would inject Monty Python quotations into pretty much every conversation, and since their range is so broad, it’s surprisingly easy to find quotes that are apropos to a myriad of subjects.  I used to pride myself on my knowledge of their trivia, and I was just enough of an a-hole that if someone dared make the egregious mistake of misquoting the Masters, I would actually correct the person.  The most commonly misquoted line I’ve encountered is one from the Black Knight scene in that movie about the search for a grail.  The Knight gets his arms and legs chopped off by King Arthur, but his fearlessly vigilant head and torso are still attempting to stop Arthur from crossing the bridge the Knight is guarding.

Despite massive blood loss and a complete lack of appendages, the indomitable Knight continues to hurl insults at King Arthur as Arthur and his servant walk across the hilariously puny bridge and go along their merry way.  “You yellow bastards,” the Knight yells over his shoulder.  “Come back and take what’s coming to you!  I’ll bite your legs off!“  The line, “I’ll bite your legs off” has somehow found its way into the public vernacular as, “I’ll cut your head off,” which A) doesn’t make sense, and B) isn’t funny.  That kind of thing used to drive me crazy, and I never hesitated to correct the offender.

All through high school and college, I had the reputation of being the Monty Python expert in my little social circle, but after a while, that kind of thing tends to get on peoples’ nerves.  I remember a couple of friends telling me in no uncertain terms that for once they would like to have a Python-free conversation.  If you’ve ever seen the movie Sliding Doors (and you should, it’s excellent), you may remember the fast-talking, witty Scottish guy Gwyneth Paltrow falls for.   He’s an obsessive MP quoter too, and there’s one scene in which he and she are at a dinner party, which he becomes the life of by quoting a huge chunk of the entire Spanish Inquisition scene, verbatim.  I couldn’t find the Sliding Doors clip, but I think a picture of the Inquisition will be enough to jog your memory.

So the guy is sitting there at the table quoting the entire scene.   Everyone is at rapt attention, hanging on his every word, laughing uproariously at the salient points.   I’ve been That Guy, and I’m here to tell you that real life doesn’t work that way.  People start to get annoyed if all you do is quote things, or if you don’t have anything of your own to add to a conversation.  They’ll quickly tire of talking with you and go talk with other people instead.  Funny how that works. . .and how long it took me to realize it.

There was a subsequent time in my life when I went through a rigorous training program I called (in my head, anyway) How To Be A Better Human.  Many people have had similar experiences; that sort of thing is one of the rites of passage toward being an adult.  I went through and found some of the areas of my life that weren’t working; there were quite a few at the time, I can assure you.  I’ll spare you the details for another time, but one of the habits I decided to break was the constant quoting of Monty Python.  I made a pact with myself that I would never do it again, since I had spent so many years doing it.  As a corollary, if I heard someone misquote a line or two, I was prepared to let that slide.  Life’s too short for that kind of pedantry.

Fast forward about fifteen years, and along comes Monty Python Day.  Everyone on Facebook is quoting and having a good time, and it IS fun.  But when I chime in (and I DO chime in!), I have to admit that I have slightly mixed feelings about doing it, because it means I’m breaking my pact.  I suppose after this many years of good behavior, I can ease up a little bit and just enjoy it.  Who among us doesn’t like levity?

As proof of my love of levity, I’m embedding one of my favorite episodes:  the one with the Lifeboat/Cannibalism/Undertaker sketches in it.  My all-time favorite Python animation sequence is the ‘Cannibalism’ section in this clip, starting around the 3:40 mark.

All this being said, there will always be a special place in my heart (and probably my DNA, too, quite frankly) for the Pythons. They unwittingly played a huge part in the formation of my personality, and I owe them a great debt of gratitude. I “always look on the bright side of life” because of them.

There I go, breaking my pact.  Oh well.  No use biting my legs off about it.

In the interest of creating more levity, I’d like to share a little joke with you.

McCartney: Knock, knock.

Lennon: Who’s there?

McCartney: Fuck.

Lennon: Fuck who?

McCartney: No. . .fuck WHOM.

Ha ha. I should, of course, mention that I didn’t invent that particular joke. I did, however, choose the names of the characters involved, and I chose the picture and the following interesting video for this blog entry.

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!

So.  Back to the TMI childhood stories.

Like I said at the end of the last one, my little brother wasn’t immune to Cupid’s prurient influence either, despite his tender age of five years.  To be fair to him, I’m sure that he was more interested than he would have been if he didn’t have an older brother who was at just the right age for that kind of exploration.  Older brothers also tend to influence musical and cinematic preferences, and my brother probably wouldn’t have been interested in heavy metal or British comedy if left to his own devices, but that’s neither here nor there.  Suffice it to say that we both had a short period of time, well before puberty sexualized everything, during which we were very interested in nudity.

As I’m sure you can imagine, this is probably not the sort of thing you’ll want to read if you’re at work; although there’s no bad language, the subject matter may be inappropriate and you may get an eyebrow or two raised in your direction.  If not, or if you’re prepared to fly under the radar, then gawd bless ya and off we go.

My brother and I liked to run around the house naked (especially after a bath; we’d wrap up in blankets and watch TV), we would swim naked, we would even dare our friends to run back and forth across our front yard naked.  Sometimes they’d do it, and sometimes they’d chicken out and just take their shirts off or pull their pants down or something.  Our yard was full of smallish trees, which were problematic for front-yard sporting events, but great for hiding behind if a neighbor’s car happened to drive by.  Incidentally, the people who bought our house from us will never know the nudity-covering power those trees possessed, because they summarily removed every single one of them, and the white picket fences as well.  They even ripped out the three trees on the opposite side of the yard so that they could pave a double driveway.  Never mind that they could have easily kept all those trees and parked one of their behemoth cars on the street, or they could have bought two small cars, like we did, and parked them both in the driveway.  But that, as they say, is a digression.

Speaking of digressions, here’s another one about that house.  We had something like a quarter of a million cats when we lived there.  Every time we’d adopt a new one, she’d have a littler of kittens before we could get her spayed.  This happened a few times in a row, which meant that at any given time we had at least five cats, sometimes ten, and sometimes we even had as many as fifteen, in a small three-bedroom suburban house.  At some point one of them started spraying, and once one starts the others follow suit, so before long the entire house reeked of cat spray.  The garage bore the worst brunt of it, after the offending felines were banished from the inside of the house.  There was the telltale foot-high ring of dripping spray marks around the entire perimeter of the garage.  We did what we could by scrubbing and power-washing, but nothing seemed to work, and the smell was overpowering, particularly in the heat of summertime.

I told you that story to tell you this one.   Six or seven years after we moved out of that house, I was working at a video store, which was the largest in town.  I worked there for long enough that I made some really good friends during my tenure there, and I got to know many of the regulars personally.  One day someone came in who I didn’t recognize, so I asked to see her ID so that I could set up an account for her.  I instantly noticed that her address was MY old address, and I said, “No way, you live at my old house.”  She gave me a very strange look and took about one second before blurting out, “Do you know anything about cat pee?!”  You could tell she’d been living with that disaster for years, and praying to every god she knew that one of us would inadvertently walk into the path of her car one day.  With a herculean effort, I restrained a smile and said, “Uhhh. . .I was just a kid when we moved.  I don’t remember anything about pee.”   I could see that she didn’t quite believe me, but she couldn’t really do anything about it, and I certainly wasn’t going to go into any more detail with her.  Sometimes the best thing to do is play dumb.

See what I mean?  Also a digression.

My two favorite nudity stories about my brother involve two different girls.  My second-favorite involves GirlUpTheStreet, otherwise known as WonderWoman (cause remember, I was her Superman).  To get back to the subject of trees, we had two crab-apple trees in our yard, and both of them had branches that were just the right height for kids to climb.  The one next to the sidewalk had one particular branch that was strong, flat and smooth, and about five feet from the ground.  This made it perfect for doing chinups, or for hanging upside down, or climbing up higher into the tree.  One day, GirlUpTheStreet was down at our place hanging out.  She and I were ‘married’ by this time, and she was hanging upside down from that branch with her pants unzipped a little and her shirt sort of slid up, thanks to gravity.  I was climbing on a nearby branch, when my brother came out of the house and saw her.  Before he even knew what he was doing, he ran over to the tree and made a grab for her pants, trying to unzip them the rest of the way and pull them down.  She half-screamed and half-laughed and tried to twirl away from him but it was to no avail.  She fell on the ground, laughing, while he tried to unzip her pants.  My dad saw what was happening, and came outside to put an instant stop to what he was doing.  “[BROTHER]!  Come in the house right now!!”  My brother sheepishly walked in and got the speech about how We Don’t Do That To Girls and about how When You Pull Your Pants Down With Someone, It Means You Love Them.  I wasn’t in on the first discussion, but I seem to remember being in on the second.  Perhaps my chronology of these stories is amiss somehow, and I’m jumbling part of one with part of another.  In my defense, it has been over thirty years since these events transpired, so I suppose the occasional memory lapse is inevitable.  Either way, these stories are all true, and let’s hope they make for some compelling reading.

All that being said, here’s my favorite ‘romantic’ childhood story about my brother.  Every once in a while, he liked to sleep naked.  I don’t remember doing that very often myself (and for the record, I still don’t do it very often), but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  I just remember that was one of the things he liked to do, and he would do it pretty regularly.  One day, a group of us from the neighborhood was playing outside in the yard, and Brother suddenly decided he wanted to go inside and take a nap.  As I also mentioned in the previous entry, there was a Mormon family who lived next door, and their four-year old daughter was a year younger than my little brother (and still is, presumably!), so she found him completely fascinating.  A couple minutes after he went inside, she went in to look for him.  He had whipped his clothes off and jumped into bed, when all of a sudden, YoungestNeighbor appeared at his door.

“Hi, [Brother].  Whatcha doin’?”

“Taking a naked nap.”

“Oh.  Can I take a naked nap with ya?”

“Okay.”

She pulled her clothes off, climbed up into his little bed (which at that time would’ve been the lower of our two bunk beds) and snuggled up next to him.  “Ooooooh, you’re warm!” she cooed.

I seem to recall that my mom found them and very gently explained to YoungestNeighbor that she should come back to play some other time, when Brother wasn’t resting.  I don’t think she blasted her out of the water the way she had done with my conspiratorial friend who wrote BELLYBUTTON and BAGINA on our patio in crayon.

That’s my favorite story of my brother, at least in this context.  My absolute favorite will be entitled “One in a Million”, and will need to be told before too long here on BFS&T.  But it won’t be today, because A) that story involves a cassette tape that I need to find first, and B) it’s not relevant to the topic at hand.  As I’m sure you’re very much aware, I’m nothing if not fastidious when it comes to remaining on-topic.

Speaking of topics (Do you like how I seamlessly worked that in?), there is more to come on this one very soon.  To be continued.

P.S. – I don’t know why it never occurred to me until just now, when I abbreviated the name of this blog  – BFS&T – it reminded me of turn-of-the-last-century railroads, which made me laugh a little bit.  Not uproariously, or even out loud, just a tiny little bit, and just to myself.  Anyway.

To be continued.

P.P.S. – The title of this entry comes from an excellent song by The Hollies.

The other day, I did something I would never normally do; I used my little video camera during a recording session.  I was working with two guys who have been long-time friends and collaborators, a bassist/singer and a guitarist.  The bassist was up here visiting from the Beast (my personal favorite nickname for the East Bay of California), so they wanted to collaborate on a couple of song ideas together.  I owed the guitarist a recording favor, so that’s how I got involved.

The guys were both so intense and animated (the singer, especially) that my arm reached for my camera before I even knew what it was doing.  I took a few other videos before this one, actually (by this time I had their approval), but this is definitely my favorite.  I promise you that he was not doing this for the camera, or for the open windows, or for my benefit; it was absolutely his megalomania personality and energy shining through.

Enjoy this while you can.  If I end up feeling even more like an unprofessional a-hole later, I may decide to take it down, but for now I just felt I should let you behind one scene of the recording process.