“Do you realize… that you have the most beautiful face?
do you realize… we’re floating in space?
do you realize… that happiness makes you cry?
do you realize… that everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know:
you realize that life goes fast,
it’s hard to make the good things last,
you realize the sun doesn’t go down,
it’s just an illusion caused by the world… spinning ’round.”
Last Sunday I attended the latest Lost Gospel show, which featured local Portland favorites Explode Into Colors. Lost Gospel is a loose knit group of artists and musicians who organize free underground shows in unique locations throughout the city without permission or permits. Basically, they’re (we’re?) guerrila-style facilitators of fun and music.
The plan for the show was genius: lay out a huge tarp behind a local middle school, tape down some canvases, fill some tubs with paint, get the band ready to go, and have at it.
Within seconds of Explode Into Colors starting their set, the canvases were well on their way to a Pollockesque state.
Rather than focus on one canvas, I grabbed a can of paint and began wandering around the tarp, adding drips and drops wherever I felt they were needed.
Meanwhile, the band played their catchy, bass and percussion heavy song bursts:
Lisa Schonberg on drums, and Heather Treadway on keys and percussion.
Claudia Meza on bass and vocals.
Pretty.
I ended up focusing my efforts on two of the canvases. This one:
And this one, which I later bought because I liked it so much:
Proceeds from the canvases went towards the cost of the generator rental and the next Lost Gospel show. Done with painting, it was time to catch the rest of Explode Into Color’s perfomance:
It was a great show, a great concept, and a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
With Nilina Mason-Campbell, photographer and one of Lost Gospel’s coordinators.
My friend Marissa is one of my favorite people in the world, and she’s been an important part of my life for a while now. A few weeks ago we were having lunch when she mentioned wanting to get a bike. I told her not to worry about it, that I’d get one for her. My plan was to browse Craigslist for a few days, find a bike that I thought might work, tune it up and give it to her. Simple, right? Well, it probably would have been…
…but then I met Dottie.
Dottie is the name of the mostly functional ladies 10-speed that I ended up buying for Marissa. In the Craigslist ad that brought me to her the previous owner referred to the bike as Dottie, so that’s what I called it in my reply. After I decided to buy Dottie, the woman told me that she was glad I was getting it because I was the only person who had asked about the bike by name.
This surprised me. When I think of all of the bikes that I’ve owned, it’s clear to me that those relationships have occasionally approached a kind of animism. Some bikes just have personalities, and their strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies eventually become the reasons that you love them so much. I suspect that this is a common experience, particularly among people who ride a lot.
So now I had Dottie, but what did her name make me think of?
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, obviously.
Thinking about Pee Wee’s Big Adventure made me think about how the plot of that movie revolves around Pee Wee’s stolen bike, which he considers to be the best bike in the world and which is, in a very real way, hisbike alone.
After pondering that for a while, I didn’t have much choice. Instead of giving Marissa just any old bike, I wanted to give her a bike that she would love as much as Pee Wee loves his bike, and acomplishing that was going to require more than a simple tune-up.
Last Saturday the Portland Cello Project performed an incredible set of dancey pop songs with vocals provided by several of Portland’s most talented frontmen/frontwomen. I wasn’t planning to go until the very last minute, but I was so glad that I did. It was goofy and charming and most of all, fun.
It was a sometimes a challenge to focus on the musicians over the vocals and wildly appreciative audience, but every time I paid attention I was rewarded for it. Stunning.
Push It by Salt N Pepa featuring Ritchie Young and John Brophy
One of the major highlights of the show was Brian Perez’s blistering rendition of George Michael’s One More Try. While some of the performances sometimes veered into karaoke+cello territory, Brian was full on and he killed it like no one else that night.
“Oh so I don’t want to… hold you, touch yooooooooooou…”
And the fantastic evening climaxed with a rediculous-yet-logical group sing-along of…
well, just watch:
This isn’t all of the food I’ve made in the last month or so, but it’s most of it. It seems that fruit, veggies, peppers, and seafood are all I feel like eating when the temperature rises.
Homemade coconut prawns, the result of a particularly insistent craving I had.
Corn husk wrapped grilled salmon. I did this because
I couldn’t find any aluminum foil, but it totally worked.
Grilled sea scallops topped with a seven pepper salsa.
Wasabi prawn cocktail cooked in lobster stock and served with
sushi rice in saki cups, aka the “Gourmet Magazine shoot” plating.
And this is the ”how many people are coming?” plating of the same dish.
Fresh caught salmon with ginger, soy sauce and chili oil.
This is the “Everyone is hungry, who cares what it looks like!” plating.
Shrimp Diavolo in the “who needs a plate?” plating.
All of the stuff above was pretty brilliant, but the seafood dish that I was most excited about making was one that I had been thinking about for over a year: Dungeness crab stuffed artichokes.
I began with a whole mess of fresh crab- some that I had bought at the store and a lot more that was donated by my friend Marissa.
This portends great things.
In fact, we had so much crab that I decided to make two dishes with it: the artichokes that I was planning to make already as well as some rediculously overwrought bruschetta.
The mixture that I stuffed the artichokes with contained crabmeat, panko crumbs, Parmigiano Reggiano, Pecorino Romano, and lots and lots of fresh chopped thyme.
After generously hand filling each of the artichoke’s leaves I still had some filling left over, which allowed me to do extravagant things with it such as stuffing it into tiny yellow pear tomatoes before popping them in my mouth.
Yum.
While I was busy trying not to eat everything before it was cooked, Marissa went to town on the bruschetta preparation: it consisted of toasted focaccia bread topped with a blend of organic cherry tomatoes, basil, cheese, and white wine vinegar, avocado and lime, crabmeat, chives, salt, pepper, and a basil leaf as garnish. Eating one immediately made me want another one, and then another, so as appetizers go they worked perfectly.
The artichokes steamed for almost an hour using water that I had tossed a bunch of thyme and terragon in. Those herbs definitely came through in the end result, though not so much in the flavor as in the aroma.
Just as the artichokes were finished steaming, my friends Heather and Bill arrived. Heather was holding a still hot pan of summer tomato and Spanish chorizo paella that went perfectly with the hearty artichokes and tangy, acidic bruschetta.
I suspect that part of the reason I’ve always thought that crab stuffed artichokes seemed fitting is that artichokes are like crustaceans of the vegetable world- you have to put a lot of work in to get a little bit of a reward.
Also, both artichokes and crabs are really just an excuse to dip things in clarified butter before eating them.
Oh yes.
Shortly after we began eating, three more friends arrived, which was good because there was more than enough to eat. Later we all headed out to go to a concert, a little bit fatter and a whole lot happier than we would have been otherwise.
I’ve been riding my bike to work all summer, but for some reason, today I decided to take the bus. After hopping on and finding a seat, I realized that next to me sat a large man wearing a tophat, a billowing black shirt, a cape, a red sash, black slacks, and sandals.
After a moment, the man produced a long, skinny balloon and began blowing it up. A few twists and bends later the balloon came apart into two (still inflated) pieces and the man was forced to be begin again. His next attempt barely got started before popping, and while muttering about the quality of his balloons, he began a third time using a red one.
Yeah!
After shaping the balloon into a poodle, he presented it to me. I said thanks and asked his name.
“They call me Mr. Balloons,” he answered, and then handed me a business card.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Balloons.”
“You too. I had some trouble with the poodle, but that’s all over now.”
Having regained his confidence, Mr. Balloons soon created a second poodle (complete with leash) for a little girl, then gave a sword to a woman whose icy expression melted into something approximating a smile, and finally produced a flower that he gave to a young woman who seemed perplexed but grateful that she had just gotten onto a bus where all the passengers were smiling and several people were holding balloon animals.
is cooler than you.
I got off the bus holding my red balloon poodle and smiling, partly because meeting Mr. Balloons had been a great start to my day, and partly because I admired the fact that a lovely man with mild mental retardation had decided that since there was no point in trying to fit in, he’d stand out on his own terms- wearing a red sash, a tophat, his pockets filled with balloons, his heart filled with generosity.
