Brian's [a] Straight Dope

Seeing Mel Brown

When I was in my early college years, aged about 19 or 20 in early 1990s New York, every once in a while I used to love visiting some of the legendary jazz clubs in Greenwhich Village near NYU, where I was going to school and living in a dorm on 10th and Broadway. A couple of times I went with friends to see Branford Marsalis at the Village Vanguard, where practically all of the greats have played from Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane to Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. When a friend visited from Oregon, we went to Sweet Basil, another great Village club, and saw the minor-legend of a trumpet player, Art Farmer. (My jazz guide lists one of his albums in their top 25 of all-time.) I also once turned down the chance to get a table at the Blue Note club to see Dizzy Gillespie the reservation cost $35 - plus a two-drink minimum ant tip! It haunts me to this day.

It was with those experiences in mind that I recently visited Jimmy Mak's jazz club in Portland to see Mel Brown and his trio play. Brown plays at Jimmy Mak's three nights a week, and has so for many years. He is a legend of the surprisingly accomplished and vibrant Portland jazz scene that he's been a part of for over forty years. And earlier in his career, he was a drummer for several Motown Records acts, as described on the Jazz at Newport website:

...later down the road it would be Redd Fox who, after hearing Mel’s drumming, made a call to Martha Reeves.  Weeks later Mel would find himself at Whiskey a Go-Go in Los Angeles playing for Martha and the Vandellas. This you could say was his entree into the Motown family. Eventually, Brown was the staff drummer for Motown Music Corporation, working with the Temptations and Supremes. For ten years Mel Brown was the drummer for an impressive list of celebrities including Diana Ross, Suzanne Somers, Hal Linden, Connie Francis, Pat Boone, Smoky Robinson, Stevie Wonder..... the list of musicians Mel has worked with is unbelievable!

What finally prompted me to go see Mel Brown play was an assignment for the small regional senior newspaper that I take a handful of portraits for each month. It's my only regular photography gig; the rest is writing. But it's a fun little diversion each month. In the case of the Mel Brown assignment, it was more than a diversion. I'd meant to go see one of his different ensembles (he also has a quartet and a septet) long before now. It shouldn't have taken me a paying gig to go see Brown or another group play jazz. I was reminded of that as soon as the set started. However, having the chance to photograph the Mel Brown Trio playing live in a semi-official capacity was an extra treat; I was very aware of the long tradition of great jazz photography by Robert Gottlieb and many others. (Paul and Rosie also once gave me a terrific book of jazz photos.) Not that I consider my picture-snapping of jazz or anything else to be at that level, of couse. I just don't cut people's heads off like my mom.

I had actually come to the club the night before, when Brown was scheduled to play but wound up canceling, due to last-minute tax problems (it was April 14) according to the gentleman taking admission at the front door. When Brown took the stage the following night to the applause of a nearly full audience of jazz fans and Greek food patrons, he told about receiving a call at 10PM the night before tax day that there was some kind of problem with his taxes. He didn't elaborate, but I imagined some relative, maybe a nephew or a son in law, telling him he forgot to do Mel's taxes like he'd promised several months earlier. Talking on a hand-held microphone to the audience from behind his drum set before the music began, Brown said, "You might notice me taking a few extra drum solos tonight." How funny to think of all the tortuous emotions jazz greats have wrestled with over the years with drugs, race, etc. And this guy is fuming because he didn't go to H&R Block.

I can't say there was anything extraordinary about Mel's playing versus other jazz drummers I've heard. I'm also no expert. But in the brief time I spent talking to him before the set, he was warm and friendly. He wound up dedicating the set to a former student who came up to visit while I was supposed to be taking Mel's portrait - none of those shots came out; the closest thing is the funny he look he's making in one of the photos above.

I also enjoyed hearing Mel's trio immensely. As someone who doesn't go out to hear live music very much at all (and when I do it's usually classical), I was reminded of the unmistakable difference you hear in real instruments. Mel's trio had a little bit of amplification to augment things, I believe, but the drums, piano and bass all could be heard plain as day without them. I enjoyed the soft touch that Mel had with the drums, with a fluid but subtly very sharp sense of timing and beat. It's no wonder Mel's apparently known particularly for his brushwork, which requires more of a feathery touch.

As I was walking out of the club the night before, I ran into saxophonist Warren Rand, with whom I used to work in the kitchen at Nick's Italian Cafe in McMinnvile, for several months in late-1995, early 1996 right after I graduated from college. Warren used to play at Nick's a lot; he lived in McMinnville back then and commuted up to Portland for gigs. I remember him always improving with his saxophone late at night after closing if somebody else took a turn at the piano alongside Warren. He also made a wonderful album of songs composed by Tad Dameron. I also remember Warren loaning me his VHS copy of Roger and Me, but I guess that's less to the point. Which is that I feel bad thinking of all the year's I've spent living in Portland and never going to see Warren or Mel Brown play. I'm more of a home stereo and i-Pod person by nature. But I'm going to make a point of going back to Mak's. If I don't, Dizzy Gillespie will come after me in my dreams.

The Abbey Road Side Two Medley

Back when I was running competitively in grade school and junior high, I used to take pride in finishing my races (usually the mile or the 800) with a strong finishing sprint. In sixth grade, I remember Cameron Ousley had about a 50-yard lead and I beat him on the last stride.

I thought of that finishing sprint this evening even though I'm in no shape to sprint. In fact, I'd just lain down after a heavy dinner of meat pie and felt practically comatose. But as I reclined on the bed, barely able to keep my eyes open, I put on my i-Pod and began listening to the second half of The Beatles' Abbey Road. Long before my food coma should have ended, I was suddenly drumming my hands on the polyester sheets, wiggling my feet, and singing along softly to myself.

Every time I hear the two medleys--first of "Sun King", "Mean Mr. Mustard", "Polythene Pam", and "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window", then with a brief pause "Golden Slumbers", "Carry That Weight" and "The End"--I wonder about how the idea of it came together. Why choose to play only a portion of each song and then fold it into another? On The Beatles Anthology 3 you can hear demo versions of these songs in their entirety, but it never brought the satisfaction I expected. I missed having the medley, even though for years before hearing the Anthology I longed for the songs to be separated.

I now think the medley is a perfect finale for the end of the last Beatles record. Let It Be is often called their last album because it was the final one released, but I always think of Abbey Road being the real swan song because it was the last one they recorded. So as the songs from the medley bunch up together, I think of it as a finishing sprint. Even though they're about to break up, there's an urgency there: let's jam in as many songs as we can for those last few minutes of the last record. It even ends, appropriately enough, with "The End" (excluding the few-seconds-long "Her Majesty" that follows, of course). I particularly love to hear them just jamming at this point, not going quietly at all. There's even a Ringo drum solo.

When the Beatles broke up in 1970, it was the dawn of the age of long, indulgent, several-minute-long rock songs, a la Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. And yet the Beatles closed out the '60s, as well as their own career, with a bunch of short fast rock songs more like the '50s. On the other hand, though, you could argue that this succession of short songs that fold into one another without pause like this is a suite, an idea dating to 17th century France that was popularized by Bach and Handel.

As it turns out, I recently read the answer behind the creation of the suite, whichc was arranged by McCartney and producer George Martin. It seems obvious in retrospect: the suite, some 16 minutes in length, was conceived as a way to utilize a lot of Lennon/McCartney songs that had been left over from the White Album and Let It Be sessions, many of which were incomplete; thus, in many cases, one song seguing into another.

Often I have resisted researching the stories and decisions behind Beatles records. I'm afraid of anything threatening the wonderful spell these songs continually cast over me as I listen to them hundreds of times over the course of my life. Luckily I play it over and over, "The End" never really must be one.

Mom's Graduation

Last Sunday we had my parents over for Easter dinner and enjoyed a nice roast pork with rosemary, polenta, brussel sprouts and a simple tomato-avocado-corn salad in vinaigrette. Afterward, my mom took out a Ziploc bag full of old photographs of my grandma's; they were duplicates that she was giving to me.

Divided into two stacks of photos, one of me and one of my sister, there were shots from virtually every period of my life. My grandma was always a very prolific and enthusiastic picture taker, and there are whole albums at her house that say, "Brian 1973", "Brian 1974" and so on. The pictures of my sister, who was born when I was 12, show my awkward teenage years well documented as well. Mustaches seem to come and go from our dad's face, and my mom's hairstyles vary as well with the times.

My favorite shot, though, may be this one of my mom's college graduation in 1978 -- thirty years ago this spring. After leaving college at University of Oregon after her junior year to marry my dad in 1968, initially she'd been a stay-at-home mom when I was born in '72. But by the time I was headed to school, mom was pretty bored and wanted to develop a career. She enrolled herself at Linfield College in McMinnville, where we lived, on the same day she signed me up for kindergarten at Newby Elementary. A year later, she graduated with an accounting degree and a 4.0 GPA after initially being an English major. For two years she worked as an accountant at a helicopter company, but she's since been working at the same steel mill in McMinnville for something like 28 years.

I like this photo in part for nostalgic reasons, in part because it has a simple composition. Most of all, though, I like how this documents a key transitional moment for all three of us. (My sister would come six years later.) My dad had just quit managing a chain restaurant, where he was burdened by horribly long hours and a trough-like dining environment, to buy a small cafe in McMinnville that's still going strong today. My mom, although born into a conservative, patriarchal rural family where the women were expected to stay at home, embraced the times and entered the workforce - dependent on no one. I remember for years in her office my mom had some quote from a women's suffragist that said, "Make policy, not coffee." All this from a woman voting with the GOP. Meanwhile, I was in this picture a first grader, ending the early years at home with just mom and Sesame Street most of the time. There would be 16 years of school ahead, and that was just the start of things.

It was tortuous of me at the time to put on a shirt, tie and, worst of all, dark socks. But I enjoy so much now, these three decades later, seeing the three of us dressed up and ready to move on, together.

A Sublime Saturday Morning Jingle

Growing up, I thought of Looney Tunes belonging more to the domain of after-school cartoons than the Saturday morning variety. But thanks to The Bugs Bunny Roadrunner Show on CBS, they had a presence on the weekend as well.

The show seemed a little strange to me then, because it took classic Looney Tunes cartoons I knew well and seemed to either redo them or somehow change the film stock and audio to polish their look. You could tell that some of Mel Blanc's voices for the characters were ever so slightly different -- the work of a man twenty or thirty years older. And the cartoons usually didn't have the intro wind-up of that familiar Looney Tunes theme with the name bursting out of a series of fat circles.

But there is one part of The Bugs Bunny Roadrunner Show that always stuck with me: the opening theme. "Overtures! Curtains, lights!" Bugs and Daffy Duck sang as they marched up and down the stage with matching canes, hats and beige tuxedo jackets in a sort of Vaudeville by way of the Sixties style. I also liked the instrumental mid-point of the theme, when all the supporting Looney Tunes characters march across the stage in a line, from Yosemite Sam to Pepe Le Pew, as trombones blared.

Just as satisfying is the second song that comes as part of the extended BB/RR Show beginning. "Road Runner, the Coyote's after you!" a sort of 50s rockabilly-ish jingle goes. "Road Runner, if he catches you you're through!" It also includes a montage of several botched attemts by Wiley Coyote to catch him, my favorite perhaps being the lit stick of dynamite in a slingshot that explodes before the Coyote can release it. Like a lot of my friends, at least half of me was rooting for the Coyote to catch the Road Runner, but I loved the spareness of the desert backdrop and, considering the verboseness of Bugs and Daffy and most other characters, the fact that neither pursuer or pursued ever spoke. (The exception, of course, being Wiley Coyote's appearance in a couple of Bugs Bunny cartoons in which he very memorably speaks of himself in third person: "Wiley Coyote - super genius!"

Meanwhile, all I know is that when I walk dowtown in a few minutes, there will be many renditions of "Overtures! Curtains, lights!" as I amble down the sidewalk.

My Righteous Anthem: "By The Time I Get To Arizona"

One of the fun things about having an i-Pod and listening to it all the time is getting acquainted with old songs from one's collection never listened to much, or re-acquainted with songs of past affection.

I've always respected and admired the seminal hip-hoppers Public Enemy, from Chuck D's sermon-like rapping to Flavor Flav's comical punctuations. Obviously a song like "Fight the Power", used to such great effect in Spike Lee's great 1989 movie Do The Right Thing, is a classic. Public Enemy also has what may be my favorite album title from any artist: It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, a brilliant reverse-view of the oppression-ridden African American experience.

When the song "By The Time I Get To Arizona" came about, I received it with a bit of a chuckle. This was the early 90s, and the states of New Hampshire and Arizona were slow to enact Martin Luther King's birthday as a national holiday. People forget this now, but there was a bit of a practicality issue at play in whether to add another holiday to the American worker's array of days off, or to subtract a different holiday's apportioned time off such as Columbus Day or Presidents' Day.

Understandably, though, Public Enemy and many other African American leaders saw these two states abstaining from an MLK holiday as a racist act. As Sista Soulja (remember her?) says in the intro to the song, they seemed to find "...psychological discomfort in paying tribute to a black man who tried to teach white people the meaning of civilization."

What I love about the song, though, isn't its attention to the politics of national holidays, or even race itself. I find myself continually pumped up and energized by the more transcendent sense of righteous anger. We all have stuff that gets us angry now and then. We feel wronged, or that some person or entity close to us has. We feel powerless, frustrated, and want to act out. "By The Time I Get To Arizona" has a very strong, cathartic aspect that I can apply to any of my own feelings and motivations.

I also have a somewhat more specific, Arizona-related connection to the song, but it's nothing as noble in inspiration as race relations or Dr. King. I'm thinking of the football game a few months ago when Oregon's most successful season in its 113-year history--one with a Heisman Trophy and a national championship seemingly within reach--was ruined on the field in Tuscon at the University of Arizona. Nobody on the UA team caused Dennis Dixon's knee injury that evening, but it's far from the first time that turf has caused a major injury to an Oregon quarterback. Two years ago, NFL-bound Oregon quarterback Kellen Clemens broke his leg there, and Oregon (despite winning their last three games without him) was more or less aced out of a prestigious January bowl game because of it. A decade earlier, Ducks quarterback Bill Musgrave had an akle sprain in practice on the field that cost the team the game.

By the time I get to Arizona? I'm installing artificial turf. But only at night, because you'd have to be insane to go outside when it's 120 degrees.

Then again, it was just yesterday that my parents departed for a vacation in--where else?--Arizona. Apparently they and others seem to think walking onto the surface of the sun is pleasurable to a little light rain.

Of course, my listening to the song so regularly should also be a reminder that righteous anger is a dangerous emotion. When people are too righteous, they stop listening to reason. I think of the Winston Churchill quote we have on a fridge magnet in the kitchen: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Unless it involves a sports team called the Ducks or Blazers, I don't want to be a fanatic or to be self-righteous.

But then again, it's always fun to blow off a little steam. And while I may be mellow on the outside most of the time, it'd take nation of millions to hold back my emotions.

"Demolition of the RosefriendApartments" at PIFF

Pardon the self promotion, but I wanted to put the word out that my short film, Demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments, will be playing this Saturday in the Portland International Film Festival as part of the 'Made In Oregon' shorts program.

As you can see if you watch it online, the five-minute film is basically just a collection of raw video footage taken of the building's facade being torn down by a giant crane. I considered putting it to music, or having voice-over interviews or other audio about the story behind the Rosefriend Apartments, which as many may recall stood at Broadway and Jefferson downtown across from The Oregonian and Higgins restaurant until being torn down last year. But ultimately I just decided to keep it as simple as possible and with no embellishment.

Demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments from astro_tiki on Vimeo.

The Ladd Tower is under construction on this site now, and for those of us who had hoped the Rosefriend could be saved, I think now those passions are better directed towards the future. But I had an affection for the building and felt compelled to film some of its demolition.

In the film festival guide, the title was erroneously called The Destruction of the Rosefriend Apartments. I love the NW Film Center, and I don't want to split hairs, but I actually think that 'Demolition' is an important distinction from 'Destruction'. It's similar to how Return of the Jedi was originally set to be called Revenge of the Jedi, but George Lucas made the change from 'Revenge' to 'Return' because he decided that revenge wasn't a Jedi concept.

I'm certainly no Jedi. Probably more like C-3PO. And by no means would I compare myself George Lucas - although we do share a birthday. But I distinguish 'Demolition' from 'Destruction' in a similar way to revenge/return.

Even so, filming the demolition that day, as I stood in a very large crowd of men seemingly giddy to see the crane do its work, it seemed like I was surrounded by people with an appetite for destruction, to borrow from Guns & Roses (not that I'm a fan). I was one of the gawkers, of course. But I also felt a little guilty, like staring at a car accident as you drive by. Let’s face it, though: destruction is fun to watch. I guess it’s that weird irony that made me run and film that day. That and a desire, however corny it may sound, to not look away when the moment came.

The 'Made In Oregon' shorts program screens at 2PM Saturday at the Portland Art Museum's Whitsell Auditorium.

Memo to Cuervo: Stop Saying "Cola"!

Last night I woke up at about 4AM and couldn't fall asleep for awhile. The reason couldn't have been more silly: I had a TV commercial that I can't stand playing continuously in my head.

A gravelly voice kept saying between my ears, "It's perfect with cola." It's the same voice I've heard in my head while showering for several mornings in a row. I feel outright tormented by it.

Years ago, my friend Chad told me a story of how as a child his younger brother had experienced a near nervous breakdown simply because the theme to the "Strawberry Shortcake" doll and cartoon was stuck in his head. ("Strawberry shortcake, my she's looking fine/Cute little doll with the strawberry smell.") I didn't believe it at the time. How could one innocuous jingle drive you crazy? But as silly as it sounds, "perfect with cola" is becoming my Strawberry Shortcake.

Although I hate to give them any additional publicity, however modest it may be coming from a little-read blog, the commercial was for Cuervo Black tequila. Apparently this darker variety of tequila is supposed to be ideally well matched with cola. But I have this thing about the word "cola". For starters, who even uses it? The brand names Coke and Pepsi have become synonyms for cola that are actually used far more often than the generic terms itself.

In other words, nobody says "cola". Except for my mom, of course, whom my sister and I tease and laugh at incessantly whenever we go to a restaurant and she says politely to the waiter, "I'd like a diet cola, please." It reminds me of that Simpsons episode when Mayor Quimby's young son goes ballistic because a French chef won't pronounce "chowder" as "chow-dah". "Say chowda!" he exclaims angrily. I want to do the same thing to the Cuervo people, only in reverse: Stop saying cola!

Apparently people usually drink tequila straight, or at least not mixed with soft drinks. Cuervo wants to challenge the traditional "rum and Coke" cocktail with its new tequila. But if they say, "Cuervo and Coke", they're plugging Coca-Cola. Or Pepsi were they to change the accompanying brand name.

My favorite part, also known as the part that irks me the most, is at the beginning, when the voice over says, "How to order a Cuervo Black and cola..." Next, a man steps up to the bar and says, "Cuervo Black and cola." Gee, thanks for the instruction - I never would have got that on my own!

An ad expert or a psychologist might point out that Cuervo Black's commercial has already achieved its purpose. People like me are blogging about it. No such thing as bad publicity, right? But as my friend John Jay, creative director at Adweek magazine's global ad agency of the year, Wieden + Kennedy, has said many times, little in advertising, art or culture matters more than authenticity. And even though it may be my own private affair, I find the Cuervo Black ad excruciatingly inauthentic. (Incidentally, WK's Coke commercial with a giant Charlie Brown the hero was my favorite Super Bowl ad. What if they'd replaced Charlie with another bald kid?)

If you really must try this new liquor offering, I urge you to try it with 7-Up or Sprite, also known as a lemon-lime carbonated beverage. And in case you need instructions on how to order, just tell the bartender, "Cuervo Black with lemon-lime carbonated beverage."

But I Really Love These Blazers

I never stopped loving the Portland Trail Blazers. Ever.

Not when they were ridiculed as the “Jail Blazers” for a string of crimes and misdemeanors. Not when they lost a 13-point fourth quarter lead in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals and a probable world championship along with it (Indiana would never have beaten us that year). Not when they went seven years without an all-star, or posted the league’s worst record.

The Blazers and Ducks are different from any other sports-team loyalty I have. The rest are friends. These are family. It's not that they can do no wrong, but that I refuse to abandon them under any circumstances. They're my teams.

But it’s a lot more fun to be a Blazer lover now than it was a few years ago. Or three months ago.

This is without a doubt the most entertaining, skillful, promising and likable group of players since the glory days of the Clyde Drexler-led squads of the early 1990s. They are an absolute joy of a team, comprised of likable personalities with great talent. As a fan, I'm pinching myself.

The late David Halberstam's magnificent book The Breaks of the Game, in which the Pulitzer Prize winner chronicles the Blazers' 1979-80 season, includes a passage about how the NBA championship winning team of three years prior symbolized a certain type of basketball. In 1977, the ABA had merged into the NBA, and with it had gome the ABA's greater propensity for street-style basketball: dunks, one-on-one play. I always loved watching players like that, particularly Julius "Dr. J" Erving, a poster of whom was pinned to my childhood bedroom wall for several years.

But the '77 Blazers represented the enduring beauty and unity of a basketball team that played together and unselfishly with precision. For example, then-Indiana University coach Bob Knight, whose 1976 Hoosiers had gone undefeated to win the NCAA title, was a huge Blazers fan. Despite the presence of a superstar like Bill Walton, Portland had a little bit of the still-to-come movie "Hoosiers" in them.

Admittedly, the current Blazer team hasn't risen to the level of the other three great Blazer eras/teams: Walton's in the 70s, Drexler's in the early '90s or Pippen's at the turn of the century. But after this second-youngest squad in the NBA won 13 in a row and 19 out of 21 after starting the 2007-08 season with just five wins and 12 losses, with reigning rookie of the year Brandon Roy emerging as not just an all-star caliber player but maybe even hall-of-fame worthy, the Blazers “Rise With Us” marketing slogan this year doesn’t seem far fetched at all.

It was ironic recently when Portland played New York. Earlier in the day Roy was named to the all-star team, which was celebrated that night at the game in front of Zach Randolph. The last four years, Randolph led the Blazers in both scoring and rebounding (something no one else in team history has done). His average of 23 points a game a couple years ago is higher than Roy’s 19 this season. But no two players better illustrate how there’s more to one’s game than stats. Roy is the leader of this team in ways that Randolph never could have been.

Still, I thought it was unfortunate that Blazer fans booed Randolph upon his return. If I were booing anybody in that building last night, it would have been Knicks coach Isaiah Thomas.

The success Portland has had this season is of course particularly astonishing given how tragically it began, with #1 draft pick Greg Oden out for year with a knee injury. I was so depressed a few months ago when it happened that I wanted to sob. But now, it’s almost as if Oden’s injury could be good for the franchise. If he’s even close to as good as he looks, Oden could be the Patrick Ewing or David Robinson of his time. Before then, though, the Blazers are learning to win without him, and showing the league that this will not be a one-man team. Or if it is, it’ll probably be Roy’s.

I haven’t even mentioned my favorite current Blazer yet: Travis Outlaw. Of course Brandon Roy is the MVP, and LaMarcus Aldridge would probably get the second-most votes. Yet Outlaw’s game is so exquisitely silky-smooth, the way his lanky frame can sink jumpers and dunk and play defense with the outstretched but effortless look of the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards. Add that to Outlaw’s rural Mississippi aw-shucks background, perhaps the best anecdote of all to Rasheed Wallace’s tantrums.

There's a TV commercial for the Blazers running currently in which Outlaw describes his game-winning shot against Memphis, which ignited the winning streak. Grooved into my memory banks and repeating whenever I think of the current Portland team is Outlaw recalling his winner: "Ooh my, there go the game!"

Again, even though I along with everybody else supporting the Blazers sheds no tears for Wallace, Wells and other malcontents being gone, it’s not fair to vilify them, because I would have been so jubilant had they won that 2000 championship. And they arguably had the best chance of any Blazer team that hasn’t won it all; even though Clyde’s teams advanced to the Finals twice, they were clearly the second-best team both those times. The 2000 Blazers were as good as any team in the NBA that year, and the only team that stopped them—the Lakers—went on to win three straight league titles after beating Portland by a hair’s breath. Wallace may have been getting technicals in those days, or threatening refs in the Rose Garden parking lot, or Damon Stoudamire might have been getting busted for drug possession. But the team’s leader Scottie Pippen was having a brilliant last flash to a hall of fame career with every aspect of the game—shooting, ball handling, defense, leadership—at full tilt. They probably never will, but I’d love to see Portland retire Pippen’s jersey someday. He was the MVP of that team, and he put up with a lot from his Jail Blazer teammates.

Even so, I knew there was something special about this team several weeks before the season began. In a move unheard of in Portland or any other NBA city, every member of the Trail Blazers voluntarily showed up weeks early to training camp. That might be what cost Greg Oden the injury to his knee, but it’s also what gives me reason again to hope for one of only two things in sports besides a Ducks football national championship that would for me connote paradise on earth. (And after the Ducks suffering their most tragic season in 113 years, the Blazer optimism is perfectly timed.)

Roy and company are still almost all in their early 20s, so there’s no pressure to jump through the window of opportunity as if from a burning building just yet. In fact, it’s the patience of general manager Kevin Pritchard that will be required in Portland rather than any smoking trades. Just let this team keep doing what they do, and the joys seem perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. In fact, it’s well under way.

If Not Bill, Then Barack (But Hillary Deserves Better)

For several months I wrestled with the choice of voting for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

My starting point was that I felt very loyal to Hillary, quite frankly, because she is Bill Clinton's wife. Bill will always be a favorite president of mine. He's who I switched sides for in 1992 after growing up in a Republican household as an aspiring Alex Keaton. I even got in a car accident the day after Bill Clinton was elected because the roommate who normally drove us to work called in sick, because we were hung over from drinking champagne in celebration the night before. And I still love the guy.

While other people may gripe or feel cynical about the partnership that she and Bill have always had politically, with her being his most important adviser even though she occupied no official role in the administration, I've always considered it a strength. Just as she was an asset to him when he was president, so too would Bill be an asset to her as president. Of course there may be differences between them as leaders, but I certainly wouldn't apologize one bit for essentially voting in both the Democratic primary and the general election to re-elect Bill and Hillary, or Hillary and Bill.

In fact, I think the elephant in the room of this entire campaign, as well as over the course of the George W. Bush administration, is that we as America's voters should have been able to keep electing Bill Clinton.

I've always been against the constitutional amendment limiting presidents to two terms. That's a matter of checks and balances that should be left to the voters. The Republicans ran through that amendment after the Franklin Roosevelt administration when he beat them in the general election so many times in a row. But that kind of multi-term presidency had always been the exception to the rule in American history anyway. It isn't as if FDR's extra long stay in the White House signaled some dangerous new era where presidents would grow into dictators with a permanent grip on power.

I think it's treating the voters like children to suggest that we can't be trusted to elect the same person president for more than two terms. It's one thing if you don't like Bill Clinton and don't want him to be president. Vote against him! But if the majority of the country would prefer him as president to any of the 2000, 2004 or 2008 candidates--and I believe that is the case--we should be allowed by the law to make that choice.

And as for Republican opposition to this idea, let me ask: What if Ronald Reagan had been twenty years younger in 1988. Do you really think the Republicans wouldn't wish he could run for a third term? And even as a Democrat, I say in that hypothetical situation that the voters should have had that option. I'd have rather won at the ballot box than because somebody was prevented from running.

But obviously Bill Clinton isn't going to return as president. So is Hillary the next best thing? Well, that's what I felt for a long time. And I would still love to have her as president. Absolutely positively. Hell, anybody would be an improvement.

Ultimately, though, I've come to see more of the young Bill Clinton who I fell for politically in Barack Obama than in Hillary. A cynic might say it's merely all about me being seduced by great male charisma. Obama is the first person in either party to come along since Bill Clinton who is just overflowing with it. But there's more to both guys than just charisma. It's about hope. And looking back the last fifty years, those from the left who have projected and radiated hope in that way are really maybe only Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and John F. Kennedy.

As president, Obama would probably require a learning curve that Hillary wouldn't. I really liked one of Hillary's campaign slogans: "ready from day one". She definitely would be more ready at the beginning than Obama.

Ironically, though, thinking about Hillary being ready and experienced from the beginning makes me think with great regret back to all the time wasted during Bill Clinton's eight years. First the years of learning how to get things accomplished without gridlock, then hemmed in by a Republican congress after 1994, and then that totally ridiculous Monica garbage. I actually keep a newspaper clipping on my bulletin board from last year with a headline that reads, "Gingrich admits Clinton-era affair" as a reminder of the gargantuan hypocrisy that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment, and how it all just didn't matter at all. I couldn't care less if Bill is a weasel in his romantic/sexual life. Better that than a perfect husband who makes America the world's biggest pariah, and all after that rarest of moments following the 9/11 attacks when all the usual political barriers, both domestic and international, faded away in an outpouring of goodwill. Can you actually think today of the semen stained dress that captivated the media during the Bill Clinton impeachment and not bust out laughing at the absurdity?

When I sat down to write this, the idea was to talk about why I intend now to vote, however reluctantly, for Obama over Hillary. But I guess you can't talk about those two without talking about Bill.

One other thing I've got to say about Hillary, though. Today, as I glanced at The Oregonian's opinion page and found what seemed like Jack Ohman's 10 millionth cartoon based around Hillary being a mean bitch, I started to feel like I wanted to vote for Hillary just out of spite to all those who vilify her. In all my life following politics, I've never seen anyone attacked so much as she and Bill, by the media and the general populace. Many millions of Americans seem to outright hate Hillary Clinton as if she's an Antichrist with an ever-changing hairdo. And after 16 years, I feel really fed up with it.

Yet unfortunately, it's that very hatred of Hillary that also may play a role in my not voting for her. Like I said, I'd love to see the first woman become America's president, and for it to be Hillary in particular. But in the general election, what I want is for "Democratic Candidate X" to defeat "Republican Candidate Y". And I'm not sure Hillary's baggage, however unfair to her it may be, will allow that. I don't know if that means America is just still too sexist, or if people just have it in for her. But I think history will remember Hillary Clinton as someone brave and tough who took much more flak than just about any of her male counterparts.

Meanwhile, a much greater specter awaits in November. After being left for dead politically as a presidential candidate, John McCain now seems like the most likely one to get the Republican nomination. It's true I'd have much preferred McCain to George W. Bush, but in 2008 he represents something that feels unthinkable even though it's extremely plausible: the Republicans keeping the White House for a third straight term.

Funnily enough, after all this talk of presidential politics, I haven't even mentioned that Barack Obama is black. The stunning possibility of a black American president—with apologies to Jesse Jackson, easily the closest we’ve ever come--has been muted somewhat, I think, by the fact that we also have a female as the other main Democratic candidate.

Given what a horribly tragic and tumultuous racial history this country has, maybe my almost forgetting he's black is the best compliment you can give Obama. I don’t mean that I need to forget he’s black to vote for Obama—just the opposite, actually. If anything, in a general election I'd be extra inclined to vote for an African American candidate. Maybe I'm even guilty of some small measure of benevolent racism in that regard.

Even so, I find myself wanting to vote for Obama because he's Obama, not because of his culture or race or anything like that. Much as those things make us who we are, and how we are perceived by others, I think Obama has risen up into a class of people whose message and sense of self demand to be counted as something beyond such knee-jerk labeling. I'm not sure I believe in Americans enough to make him president, but I'd sure love to be pleasantly surprised.

And regardless, January 20, 2009 is going to be cause for a party.

Woodward, Bernstein, Libby: Sister Sara's Skyrocketing Portfolio

This morning my prodigous 23-year-old journalist sister has an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the nation's most respected and prestigious newspaper along with The New York Times. In the essay, Sara responds to a ridiculous comment by the creator of HBO's "The Wire", a former Baltimore Sun reporter in the 1980s, that Americans don't care about the news anymore. She begs to differ, and as usual, makes a pretty airtight case, at least if you're talking about people with half a brain (you know--liberals, Duck fans).

A little over a week ago, Sara also had an op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. This one was more personal, about her struggles through the college financial aid process as part of a piece about Harvard deciding to give more aid to middle-class students.

Part of me is as astonished seeing Sara pen these pieces for the nation's great newspapers--she's also written op ed articles for the Los Angles Times on Gen Y and the Christian Science Monitor on the rising pop cultural cache of Barack "B-Rock" Obama--as I am watching our postman currently deliver mail in 36-degree weather while wearing shorts. But even though she's barely old enough to buy alcohol, Sara has been at this for a long time now when you figure in the six or seven years of college and high school newspaper work.

As if her op-ed pieces weren't impressive enough, Sara was also promoted from her copy editing job to opinion editor at the newspaper where she works, the Los Angeles Daily Journal. I just hope in her ongoing path toward world domination, she remembers the little people who used to give her piggy back rides and make her favorite fettucini with sausage and cream sauce.

I'll Have the Tantan Udon

Although a couple days have already past as I write this, I still have good memories of a day off Valarie and I spent on Monday. She had the MLK holiday, and I’d worked for about twelve hours straight on a story deadline on Sunday, so I decided not to work very hard on Monday.

We hadn’t been to breakfast for a few weeks, and Valarie had an inspired idea: Café DuBerry. This is a little hole-in-the-wall, mom-and-pop kind of place on Southeast Macadam that we’d meant to try for several years. Back in the late 1990s, there was a Willamette Week cover story about Brian Grant of the Blazers, and how he was a likable, law-abiding star in the making that fans could rally around. The reporter set one portion of the article in Café DuBerry, citing it as a favorite restaurant of Grant’s.

The place actually calls itself a “country French” restaurant, and the walls are painted yellow inside with a dinner menu that includes French onion soup and some of the other bistro staples. And the breakfast we had was fabulous. My order of eggs benedict, a dish I order frequently at brunch, was probably more flavorful than just about any I’ve had. The ham was particularly salty, and the hollandaise sauce over the poached eggs seemed to have just an extra pinch of lemon juice.

Valarie’s French toast was unlike virtually any either of us have had. More than the standard bread soaked in milk re-fried, its interior texture was so soft that it seemed to have only come from making batter from scratch. It reminded me of my treasured recipe for my Grandpa’s buttermilk pancakes, which is right up there with seared foie gras, chocolate-chip cookies a perfect diner cheeseburger among my all-time culinary favorites.

That evening we made the latest in a succession of trips to Biwa, a relatively new Japanese and Korean-oriented restaurant specializing in grilled meats as well as homemade noodles and broth. It sits on the corner of an old building in Southeast Portland that used to house the Pine Street Theater rock club (also known as La Luna) but now is home to the Simpatica restaurant/catering company and a couple other businesses. The building is essentially on the ground floor but sinks down into the ground about halfway toward being a basement. So it feels cozy with its raw concrete and sleek wood tables but there is still plenty of light peeking through if you come before dark. Biwa always smells incredible because of the grilled meats, and for a starter I returned to an old standby: pork belly, which of course is kind of like bacon only without the built-in smoky flavor. I also got a skewer of grilled garlic cloves. When properly cooked, garlic cloves are so incredibly sweet and soft, almost like candies.

Then for my main course was a noodle dish called “Tantan Udon”, which naturally made me think of The Empire Strikes Back. "This may smell bad, kid, but it'll keep you warm," I told Valarie in my best Han Solo voice. But the Udon didn't smell bad at all. It had stewed curried oxtail over thick homemade udon noodles. Yes, oxtail, a delicacy I've only had once previously at a now-defunct soul food restaurant and laundromat. I dreamt of my tantan udon for hours the rest of that night, and I’ve continued to think of it occasionally since. And my memory goes back to that smoky modern concrete half-basement. Admittedly the Sapporo accompanying dinner was a larger-sized one, so maybe that added a bit to the mellow euphoria of it all. But Biwa routinely sets us off blissfully like this.

And I haven’t even talked about the trip to our favorite local Mexican fast food restaurant, La Sirenita, on the Sunday before our double-whammy restaurant good fortune on MLK day. I feel slightly silly waxing poetic for too long about a shredded beef burrito and a pork taco, but save for the gut-bomb feeling that came afterward, they were nearly as blissful as the eggs benedict, the pork belly, and the Tantan Udon.

In between for much of Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights, we watched Australian open matches into the wee hours and ate a succession of snack foods. It wasn’t a three-day weekend for me, but that third day was definitely a holiday.

Spinning on Highway 47

It’s 8:00PM on Christmas night and it feels like midnight. Which is not to say that I had a bad day overall. Quite the contrary, actually. But a few important seconds of it really sucked.

Driving home from my uncle and aunt’s house in the country near Forest Grove, Oregon, about an hour away from Portland my car suddenly slid on a patch of black ice. It had snowed at their house for several hours, but the main roads seemed to be relatively snow and ice-free (although it was accumulating in the shoulder) as I began the drive home. But as I was driving about 45 miles per hour down a straightaway (about five or ten miles under the limit due to the conditions), out of nowhere I came across the icy portion.

First I began sliding one direction, turned the wheel, and began sliding in the other direction. Ultimately I did a 360-degree turn and slid into a ditch. I wasn’t hurt, thankfully, and I was in cell phone range, and was able to call for a tow-truck. My sneakers submerged with icy water as I stepped out of the car, which was slanted with the driver’s side in a ditch. I also have retained this tactile sense in my mind of the feeling of coarse but icy, snow-covered tall grass on my hands, which I at one point was pulling out out by handfuls in hopes of wedging under the left back car wheel, the one stuck in a half foot of ditch water. But icy appendages were clearly the least of it compared to the accident I watched happen a few seconds later as I was on phone for the tow.

What really pains me is that it probably started because someone had slowed down to see if I was alright. I had the hazard lights flashing and was standing next to the car on the side of the road. A second car slowed behind the first car, and then I saw approaching a car that was, despite the snowy conditions, seemingly going at close to full speed. (But then again, so was I.) We often think we see accidents about to happen, or at least I do. There is that surreal moment when you believe you in a millisecond that inevitability of a crash, but there’s no time to do anything to stop it. And thankfully 999 times out of 1,000 they don’t happen. This one happened, in that same mind‘s eye slow motion, at least until you see and hear the crash.

The next thankful thing is that no one seemed to be too seriously injured. According to one of the firemen I talked to on the scene later, one person had chest pains and another had some lower back pain. But having been in a collision fifteen years ago that I walked away from relatively pain free, I know that down the road pain can suddenly arise. In my case, it’s stuck with me for much of those ensuing years in the form of recurrent head and neck pain. Certainly it wasn’t my fault if those people have any kind of mental or physical pain. But it’s still bothersome being even tangentially connected to it.

When the two fire trucks and an ambulance arrived on each side of me as I stood beside my ditched BMW, I was reminded of that familiar, maybe even cliché description of it being like a movie. The lights flashing on either side, the crunched metal, the freezing rain coming down amidst a handful of firemen who looked to be in their twenties. I thought of the slow-motion shot of flashing police-car lights at the end of Taxi Driver when Travis Bickel goes on his shooting spree. And since I’ve been at home, I comforted myself with a glass of wine and a high-volume listening of my favorite album of the moment, “Friend and Foe” by Menomena, which in many of the songs has this baritone saxophone in the background that I totally love, but also hearkens back to Bernard Herman’s heavily brass and horn-infused score for Taxi Driver. Thankfully the accidents tonight weren’t that violent. Worst-case scenario, somebody might eventually need a few chiropractor visits.

Incidentally, the lyrics from one of those Menomena songs seem fitting:

Should my soul should survive this fall,
Then I pray if I pray at all,
That I can catch my breath and,
Come away unscathed,
Away unscathed

To have been in an accident on Christmas night in the snow and ice, and then witness cars crashing into each other as they slowed to survey my scene, and still wind up at home in my sweat pants and slippers, with my beloved fat cat Ruthie now plopped on the top of the easy chair I’m writing this from, not to mention a more or less completely intact car, is in my mind extraordinarily luckily. I even had another uncle and aunt from the Christmas gathering in a car lined up behind the accident scene, ready to give me a lift home had my car not been drivable. Still, when I close my eyes, as I did sprawled out on the sofa just now with the hideous tattered leopard-skin blanket I’ve had since early childhood, I feel dizzy as if I’m still spinning. I still feel the car doing its 360 into the embankment.

But maybe there could be some good to come out of it. As anyone who rides with me knows, I tend to drive way too fast. Although I try hard not to cut off or otherwise annoy other drivers, on any multi-lane freeway or other road where you can go 55-plus, I feel alive weaving in and out of traffic and getting past the car in front of me. Tonight I wasn’t driving like that. I was driving slow and through no fault of my own I hit some ice, did a whirling-dervish routine and slid off the road. But whenever I’ve had a driving trauma like this, however unharmed physically I may have been afterward, it’s always been a bit like reset button that, even if temporarily, shocks me back into more prudence behind the wheel.

Naturally it’s way too early to tell, but I also can’t help but wonder if this could be the marking point I need to sort of turn the page on this period of the past few weeks. As I described in my previous “Steve and Dennis” post, it’s taken a long time to come out of the psychological, emotional mire after first losing a loved one to cancer (the first of my generation from the family), and then having the Ducks football team whose fortunes my emotions (including many non-sports-related ones) are so intricately bound to suffer its most tragic season in 113 years of play...Well, frankly it’s really sucked.

Believe me, I’m not saying this accident was anything pleasant. But such a jar to the system, even one ultimately so benign, is cause to reboot my system of tendencies, assumptions, and ways of seeing my little world. I think of the petty hostility I felt toward a Beaver fan who told my sister she was going to laugh in my dad’s face. Wasn’t that the same thing I’ve been doing to Michigan fans for the past few months when I see them? Who the hell was I to get righteous?

With the reset button deployed, though, I feel shaken up, which overall is not good, of course, but it reminds me not to worry about what Beaver fans or other people think. Things may feel fragile right now, but still something to cherish. In fact, all the more for having been through this wintry spin cycle on Highway 47.

I've already started to feel better, though, here at home again. I was comforted by some of my Christmas gifts, not because they were material objects but in spite of it. Two favorites had personal meaning, too. One gift, from my 90-something grandma whom we visited in Eugene on Sunday, was a 70-year-old certificate commemorating my grandfather's crossing of the Equator for the first time while in the Navy. Apparently it's a rite of passage. It was a kitschy certificate, signed by Neptune and with lots of faux-Ye olde type of writing in calligraphy. But it commemorated a moment that's quietly breathtaking to imagine, of my grandpa on July 14, 1937 at not only the Equator, but also at its precise intersection with the International Date Line at 180 degrees longitude in the Pacific.

And as if all that weren't enough, the whole thing happened while his ship was at sea as part of the search party for Amelia Earhart.

My other gift is slightly self-centered, but authentically meaningful. On Shutterfly.com you can upload your own digital photos and collect them into a bound book. I did so with just over 75 photos from my recent trip to Beijing. Getting me the book stressed out my poor mom because I deliberately chose a blurry photo for the cover (of a Mao Tse Tung portrait in Tiananmen Square), but she thought it was a mistake, and thus spent hours on the phone to Shutterfly in addition to printing out a bunch of 800 numbers I could call to fix it. After the accident tonight, I felt myself flipping through the photo book over and over again, as if to remind myself that if I hadn't been so lucky as I was tonight with my car losing control, at least I'd been able to put a few very memorable pins on the proverbial map.

And tonight's being Christmas is not insignificant. I like to think of the hopefulness that a birth represents. Certainly given how I came through the off road adventure with scacely a scratch, I didn't undergo anything resembling real suffering. I think it was more like our cat Ruthie when she gets startled (which happens about every three or four minutes) and, as Valarie and I call it, fluffy: her hair standing up so she looks inflated, electrocuted or just in from a hurricane. (Actually, she always looks inflated now that I think about it.) I guess I got fluffy tonight, and the fluffiness takes longer to work itself out of my mind than the actual experience was.

Really I just need to be more like my friend Paul, who in high school during snowstorms would happily drive us all over in his beige Volkswagon bus, even deliberately spinning us wildly back and forth diagonally across the road, howling with laughter as the rest of us saw our lives flash before our eyes to the tune of Van Halen songs booming out of Paul's prized Kicker brand speakers.

Oh, and here's one other cool part. It turns out my car had a tool kit for just such a roadside emergency, as if Batman is designing cars out in Bavaria. The tow-truck guy just unscrewed the little toolkit from the inside of the trunk lid, took out a big screw with a circular ring on the end, screwed it into a little port on my car's back bumper that had been hidden by a little plastic flap, and hooked it to his truck. The work-order description on my pink customer-copy receipt says it all: "Winch out of ditch." And there aren't too many ways in which I've been more enthusiastically willing to fork over $73.

This is the part where I think of a clever way to wrap this all up, but I'm afraid I don't feel like it this time. I'm sleepy, but my feet are now dry and there is a Looney Tunes DVD awaiting liberation from its shrink wrap.