The truth is, I’ve gotten a bit lazy over the past few months.  My job is ultimately boring and lacks any sort of energy.  I sit and push papers all day.  In a chair.  All day.  Thus, I’ve gotten fat.  And secluded.  I find myself spending a lot of time alone.  Don’t get me wrong, I like being alone, but after a while it gets grating.  Like walking down the waterfront.  Nobody walks down the waterfront alone.  You stick out like a sore thumb.

Anyway, my friends Missy and Nick came down from Tacoma for the weekend, because it’s Missy’s birthday², and I, much like Newton’s first law of motion, found myself at rest and unable to put myself into motion.  This happens a lot.  Fortunately, it was Missy’s birthday, and that was the external force needed to get me off my ass and out for the weekend.

And it turned out kind of neat.

Saturday was pretty simple.  Missy and Nick had originally arrived Friday night and wanted to hang out then, but I was in the middle of coding websites and whatnot and told them I’d hang out tomorrow.  They had a jam session, though, so I somewhat regret my decision.  Either way, on Saturday we (Missy, Nick [one married couple], Guin, Jeff [the other married couple], and the latter party’s three wonderfully vibrant children, whose names escape me right now³) met at Old Wives Tale for a late lunch/early dinner⁴, which was quite delicious, but also quite spendy.  I will mention at this point that missing two days of work (which I did to go to Boise for the weekend) is not the best thing, especially on rent payday.  Oh well, I’ve been broke before, I can deal.

Afterwards I went home for a bit more web design, before we all (minus Jeff, who was either taking care of the kids, or didn’t like karaoke, or both) headed off to Suki’s for karaoke!  KARAOOOKEE.  I haven’t sang karaoke since I moved here.  Suki’s was full of a hodge podge of young attractive business-looking people and some hipsters, mixed with your average Weirdos.  The ratio was much nicer here than in Boise, though.  In Boise, your typical karaoke bar will have anywhere from 40 to 75% weirdos.  Here it was more like 5 to 10%.

The first song I sang was Fergie’s “London Bridge,” which I prefaced by saying, “Hi, my name’s Josh and I’m from Boise, Idaho.  Now I’m going to show you how we do karaoke in Boise.”  Needless to say, they were impressed (the reserved table full of affluent young business folk especially).

At one point some guy named Mike was called up to the stage, where we all learned that it was his birthday.  For his birthday, he received a free cocktail⁵, and a “karaoke bump,” meaning he could bump his song up to the next on the list.  Pretty cool.  Then Dick, the DJ, brought all of his friends up on stage to spank him.  The guy was 41 years old.  Dick made them spank him 41 times.

All this led me to one fantastic realization: this was eventually going to happen to Missy.

My second song was “The Rainbow Connection,” complete with Kermit voice.  At this point a new group of people began to enter the bar.  They were young (25-30ish) model looking people.  The men wore Ed Hardy shit and looked lithe and handsome, the women were a mishmash of hipsters and black dresses and ranged from “hot” to “absolutely gorgeous.”  At first we paid no attention to them⁶, but they soon became a bigger part of the story.

Missy, in all her Indiana-born and bred glory, sang some Garth Brooks song.  I had to hand it to her — we hadn’t heard any country at all that night, and I was used to every other song being some stupid country song.  In a way she brought me right back home.  But before she sang!, she got her birthday present.  She’s only 27 so there wasn’t as many spankings.  But for the last one, Nick smacked her pretty damn hard.  I must say, it was awesome.

My last song was a duet with Missy.  It was, to be specific, “Suddenly Seymour” from the awesome musical Little Shop of Horrors.  I’ve always wanted to be in that show, so it was nice to sing the song.  We kind of butchered it, but for not having heard it in so long, we did a good job.

Shortly after, some really hot girl from the group I mentioned earlier got up and dedicated her song to the the group.  She mentioned that they all recently graduated from the dentistry school at OHSU, which led me to exclaim, “DENTISTS?!!” really loudly, because I thought she was going to sing “Dentist” from Little Shop of Horrors.  Alas, these were not the musical theatre types, and she (and everyone else who got up on stage) sang “Graduation” by Vitamin C.  Real classy.

At this point I got it into my head that I would sing Dentist, even though the night was almost over.  I went up to Dick, asked him if I could sing it, he said maybe, I was like Okay, and that was that.

Then something happened wherein some lady (also exceedingly hot) from the group of dentists used an alias to get up on stage quicker and Dick wasn’t having that, so he told her she couldn’t sing, and she made a fuss and the dentists started yelling and booing, and that’s when we knew it was time to go home.

Moral of the story: never deny a dentist a karaoke song.

(This is gonna be a long entry, apparently.)

Now SUNDAY, Sunday was the Surprise Protest.

To backtrack: through the grapevine I learned of an interesting concert the band Loch Lomond was going to play: specifically, it was to be in front of a castle in Portland. I immediately thought that was pretty nifty.  So Sunday afternoon I loaded myself into Missy and Nick’s car and we headed off to Washington Park.

The instructions via the grapevine said that we should meet at the tennis courts and wait for someone (it really never said who), where we would be whisked away to this castle up in the west hills.  So we waited.  At the time it was just us and some girl whose name I can’t remember.  Then we ran into some other girl who was also looking for where to wait.  She said she had seen chalk arrows on the sidewalk, and I said, “Let’s follow them!”  So we started following the chalk arrows, and about halfway up this hill, we ran into the people who we were supposed to follow.  They told us to go back down the hill, mostly because they were going to read a fairy tale to all of us when we walked back up.  Fair enough, I thought, and we all went back down.

It was a this point that we learned we were in a Surprise Protest.  The lady who used to own the castle was protesting because they were going to tear it down.  There was a small camera crew and some crying.  At one point the guy who owns the castle now drove beside us and started bitching at the lady from inside his car.  Some other people said stuff, etc etc.  I just wanted to hear Loch Lomond.  So we started up the hill.

the journey begins

This was the lady reading the fairy tale.  She was also taking phone calls from people who were either very angry, or knew some people who were very angry about what was happening.

the protestors?

The line of people heading up to the “castle.”

Now you can read this really poorly put together webpage about the castle, or you can follow my account, which goes like this: some really crazy rich guy in the 1930s decided it would be cool to have a castle up in the west hills, so he builds one.  End of story.  Now, the guy who lives next door to the castle purchased it from this lady (because she couldn’t pay her mortgage? I’m not sure) and decided to knock it down.  There’s more to the story, but honestly it’s blah blah blah at this point.

We learn as we’re walking up that Loch Lomond isn’t going to play at the castle itself, but rather at this lady’s house, which is about a fourth of a mile away from the castle.  So, let me get this straight … you couldn’t afford to live in a castle in the west hills, so you moved out … to a house just down the street, in the west hills?

This entire scenario smelled suspiciously like an Affluent White Person Protest.  But I’ll get to that in a second.

the group gathers

So we all take our seats in the grass at this lady’s house.  They read another fairy tale (oh, the first was Robin Hood, I forgot to mention that, and the second was Show White, which was picked by unanimous decision from the audience), and then Loch Lomond plays a really short acoustic set on the grass.

loch lomond

we were behind them

They sounded awesome.  Loch Lomond is truly a great live band.  Their albums are good but they sound twice as good live.  Plus the all acoustic setting just made it even better.  They only played four or five songs, which was a bummer.  And meanwhile the lady who once owned a castle was bawling the entire time.  Some cop cars drove by but didn’t raise a fuss, and the 63 bus passed once and was kind of annoying, but overall it was a great little found concert.  A really cool idea.

After their set they said that we could go up and look at the castle.  FINALLY, I thought, and so we all eagerly walked up the hill to look at this castle that they were so desperate to save.

And then we saw it.

the castle

WHAT?  That’s the castle?  Suddenly my Affluent White Person radar went off like gangbusters, and I realized I’d been Had.  First off, castles aren’t made of wood.  Secondly, you can’t save something that’s ALREADY BEING TORN DOWN.  Thirdly, it’s just a building!  Why was this woman getting so worked up over a building?  Especially one up in the west hills that 95% of the population of Portland isn’t going to see in the first place?  Apparently it was once on the Portland Historic Monument yadda yadda list but got taken off by this douchebag neighbor.  Well, I can attest that that neighbor was indeed a douchebag, but come on!  There are thousands of people down in the city right now who are desperate for a job, who are milking unemployment and food stamps and government assistance because our economy is in the shitter and no one knows when, or if, it’s going to get better — and you’re worried about this?!

Priorities, priorities.

I dunno, the entire thing seemed shady at this point.  The camera crew documenting everything … for what?  A DVD that no one is going to buy?  Why are you making such a big deal out of something that is NOT a big deal to anyone else but you?  I … yeah, okay.  This is just another one of those “white people pretending to have problems” sort of things.

Anyway, I’m sure it’s a tragedy for the lady who owned the place, but the rest of us just wanted to see a show.  Can’t we just see a show?  Why does everything in this city have to be attached to some movement, some protest, some political whatever?  You have the most breweries per capita in the world — can’t we just get drunk and watch a show?

And that was my weekend.

colin talkin to some girls

I’m not shy about my love of the Decemberists.  At one point I owned five of their t-shirts and an assortment of CDs and vinyls (some of which were all but stolen by my ex-girlfriend), and I can play almost all of their discography on guitar, and know most of the lyrics by heart.  So when the time came for them to play the Crystal Ballroom, I was excited.  Like, little girl excited.  Little girl watching the end of American Idol excited.

This was going to be a special concert because it marked the first time I was going to a show with fellow members of /orate.  /orate is the Decemberists online message board, and I’ve been a member there since 2005.  It’s really the only forum I frequent anymore (besides a couple of other forums that I check and post on occasionally), and I’ve made a lot of great friends through it.  It only seemed natural that we all go to the show together! The only problem was, the show sold out.  Quickly.  And I’m constantly poor, so I waited and it was too late and I couldn’t afford scalper prices.  But I managed to get an extra ticket from the adorably awesome Ashley, who gave it to me in exchange for a song, which I wrote just for her, and remains hers.  If you want to hear it, you’ll have to ask her first.

Anyway, long story short, I got into the show.  And I have shitty cameraphone pictures to prove it.

We were also the first in line, thanks to various /orators getting to the Crystal super early.  The rest of us arrived and just hung out.  I know people in line were pissed but meh, what can you do?  We got to the front of the stage and stayed there for the rest of the show.  Hence the following close pictures.  

loch lomond!

First up was Loch Lomond, a self-proclaimed “chamber folk” band from Portland, who have been touring with the D’s since the tour started.  They were, in a word, wonderful.  They had lots of band members who would switch instruments, which I always love.  The songs were definitely folky, the dynamic slow-LOUD-slow types which cescendoed in mere seconds.  They had a great audience who was very appreciative of every song they played.  And the omnipresent Dave Depper was there too, a Hush Records dynamo who I last saw play with Norfolk & Western at Musicfest.  Dave apparently had a kickass mustache but shaved it prior to the Portland show.  He also told a very clever whale joke, which I will not repeat on this review simply because it must be told out loud. Once Loch Lomond cleared out we waited for the Decemberists to arrive.  And then they did.  And it was Good.  

john moen and chris funk, barely visible.

While the setlist was, ultimately, uninspired (playing three of your new songs in a row, only two songs for encores, and one of those songs being only two minutes long, for example), the Decemberists always put on a good show.  Or Colin does, at least.  But one cannot fight the “ghosts” (as Colin called them) of the Crystal.  They were having technical issues and ultimately a fucked up cord and weird monitor issues cost the audience “On the Bus Mall,” as Colin traded his 12-string, thinking it the problem.  I only wish that he wasn’t so staunch on playing the 12-string for certain songs.  There might be some merit to playing “Bus Mall” on a six-string!

They sounded great, however.  Chris Funk’s guitar was a little loud at times but it was usually during songs that were meant to be loud anyway.  They played “The Island” which is always great, and “Culling of the Fold,” which is probably the most energetic songs they do.  Again, for Colin at least.  He goes nuts during that song.  That photo at the beginning of this review is from Culling.  He kicked a couple of people (including my friend and fellow /orator Lindsay) and I heard he cut a girl accidentally with his guitar, which was perched on this girl’s shoulder as he put her head in his hand and sang to her.  He gets a little creepy sometimes, let’s face it.

colin crowdsurfing

And then Colin went crowdsurfing.  Sort of.  He fell into the crowd and they held him up, at least.  Then they put him down and he was right in the middle of the crowd.  You can see that he crowdsurfed as far away from the /orate crowd as possible.  He probably thought we were going to steal his microphone or his pants or something.

Yeah, the encore was a let down.  They played “Raincoat Song” which is a cute number but it’s only two minutes long, and then they played “Sons and Daughters” and let no one up on stage except for a little girl.  At other venues (like the next night in Seattle) they let a bunch of people on stage to sing the final refrain.  What’s the dealio, Decemberists?  I know you hate the Crystal but we fans love you and want to sing “Hear all the bombs fade away” on stage with you!  Is that too much to ask?

After the show I got a picture with Uncle Paul, who is the man referenced in Colin’s 33 1/3rd book about “Let it Be”, the man who influenced Colin’s musical directions.  So that was cool.  I also got a picture with Mark, the head moderator/admin guy for /orate.  They were both super drunk, which was great.

I have officially seen the Decemberists four times now.  The peak show was January 22nd.  This one was probably third (the Boise show being fourth).  I still love them, however, and can’t wait to see them on tour for Hazards of Love.  They’re planning on playing the album front to back at each show, which should be a treat.  Unless the album sucks.  Then it could be the worst tour ever.