Weddings On Sunday?

today i had the distinct pleasure of attending a wedding. my good friends, katie and natasha, tied the knot in one of the nicest ceremonies i have ever seen. the wedding was in the back garden of the place they live and let me tell you, they should rent this place out for things of the like. natasha's family is jewish, so the tradition of crushing glass was observed...unfortunately, tash's glass was uncooperative and she ended up chasing it down the path a bit, stomping like mad. there was other fun poked at just about everything throughout the sevice, but it was tasteful and the loving intent was never lost. the other thing they did which was cool and should be common-place at outdoor weddings, is everyone was invited early and encouraged to drink wine before the service. how novel...actually relaxing and enjoying a wedding?!?!? how evil that i had to go to work right after cake and no drinking for me! poop.
this was my first same-sex wedding, but i am sure it will not be the last. they were sooooooo cute! happy tends to do that. so, to both of my girls: good luck, much love and take care of each other!

Good Time When It Should Not

let me tell you about the standard evening first...i played a show with my band that i really didn't want to. it was a show that was not promoted and, for the most part, off the radar for the people that we usually pull to a show. more than that, another good party presented itself recently. that is fine. so, the party i wanted to go to started at eight, and my show started at ten. mini-me and i (god love her), got off to the early party late, but still went. this is where my prospectively fucked-up evening started to go right.
the early party was a welcome-back-to-portland party for an old friend who is comming back to the mainland from hawaii for the time being. this party was a karoke party, and as we went, was looking to be a pile of fun! i am sorry i didn't stay long enough to sing...that would have been great! the up-side is that i got to see my long-lost friend, and she looked great, and she seemed to have a good crew of people surrounding her. i said my goodbyes, and went to my show at a bar we play at a lot.
when i got there (late, as it ended up), the opening band was kicking the holy hell out of the place. they were a cover band, but they had about a hundred people out for them and the dance-floor was packed! big fun! the were doing everything from tom petty to 311, and doing it well. by the time we got on stage, the crowd was jacked and we pushed it along. it is a rare thing when i end up playing funk-slap bass and rapping "the humpty dance" by digital underground within the first three songs! we ended up raging so hard, that two...TWO...of the main groups of people that were there and dancing got out of hand and were cut off by the end of our first set! that is pretty damned cool, but that lowered the number of party people in the house by about twenty (you don't hang in a bar if you can't DRINK in a bar). we held the rest of the crowd well. i was happy.
after the show, i got to hang out with a friend of mine that i don't usually see. i spent most of the time with his pseudo-wife and friend of my beans. we talked a good deal about their upcoming wedding (which i am standing as the best-man in) and how it will go down. all in all, weddings are happy things and we got some good things straitened out. i'm not a bridesmaid, but i'll help! in addition to this, in about twelve hours, i am going to another wedding! what a happy weekend! life is good and all is right with the world!

Friday Is Good!

to parallel mini-me's blog, i stayed up with our illustrious neighbor until all hours of the morning (7) kicking ass at cooperative halo on his big screen. this said, i was expecting to have an ass-dragging night of work this evening. i was wrong. i actually got to sleep for a few hours today and when beans woke me on her arrival home from work, i felt remarkably good. so i hopped out of bed, went to the store and bought clothes. "bought clothes" you may ask? well--none of mine are clean...the lazy and affluent triumph again--huzzah!
this evening turned into street-fighter night at the old tryon creek bar and grill. at the end of the night, i picked up over a hundred coasters off of the floor because they were being thrown all over the bar like shiruken to the resounding "OI-EUKET" or "TIGER" or "TAKE THAT, YOU FUCKER!" i myself scored many a hit from over fifty paces...i even managed to knock someone's baseball cap nearly off! with all of the tom-foolery that was being perpetrated, oddly enough, no one was hurt...there was some beer spillage, but that is merely alcohol abuse.
another side note to all you boys...every night i see new pretty young girl faces...and every thing else. there are more moving into the immediate area of my bar all the time. get whilst the getting is good; summer is upon us!!!!! oh to be back in college.

Friday Is Good!

to parallel mini-me's blog, i stayed up with our illustrious neighbor until all hours of the morning (7) kicking ass at cooperative halo on his big screen. this said, i was expecting to have an ass-dragging night of work this evening. i was wrong. i actually got to sleep for a few hours today and when beans woke me on her arrival home from work, i felt remarkably good. so i hopped out of bed, went to the store and bought clothes. "bought clothes" you may ask? well--none of mine are clean...the lazy and affluent triumph again--huzzah!
this evening turned into street-fighter night at the old tryon creek bar and grill. at the end of the night, i picked up over a hundred coasters off of the floor because they were being thrown all over the bar like shiruken to the resounding "OI-EUKET" or "TIGER" or "TAKE THAT, YOU FUCKER!" i myself scored many a hit from over fifty paces...i even managed to knock someone's baseball cap nearly off! with all of the tom-foolery that was being perpetrated, oddly enough, no one was hurt...there was some beer spillage, but that is merely alcohol abuse.
another side note to all you boys...every night i see new pretty young girl faces...and every thing else. there are more moving into the immediate area of my bar all the time. get whilst the getting is good; summer is upon us!!!!! oh to be back in college.

Shameless Plug

my band, jaroh, is playing at the dublin pub (http//dublinpub.citysearch.com) on saturday at 10:00 pm. now i have done my duty, i am tired, and i am going to bed!

oy bajoh!

ps. dine, how will we ever talk if you have no comments!?!?!? what a world what a world!

Again With The Beatings!

sometimes i really miss wrestling and jiu jitsu. i miss being in outlandishly good shape. i miss knowing that i am as mean and tough as anyone weighing even remotely what i do could possibly be. most of all, i miss throwing the beatdown on a daily basis. i was reminded of that this evening when my buddies, chris and eddie, came into the bar tonight for some debauchery. the two delicate boys are welterweight ufc fighters...chris actually holds the belts for welterweight mixed martial arts fighting for oregon and washington. we like to play around, and i can hang with both of them move for move--we usually end up beating on each other pretty good when we hang out (not so much eddie tonight seeing as he has a bout this weekend). the problem is, i know for a fact that i am so out of shape that with anyone in my own weightclass, i would most likely have to tap after the first round for loss of wind! good lord, what a steady regimen of alcohol, cigarettes and general debauch will get you after four or five years...yeah, i could drink any three people i know under the table back to back, but what good does that really do me? i think this summer may be the time for me to find a new line of work and quit with the really late night hours...you hear that, d, no more aussie time for me!
not to fear, doc forkbeard is not hanging up his party hat completely, i just think it is sufficient to be able to drink any two folks under the table. three is sometimes excessive.

So What Do You Do?

wow! long night tonight. was the mc for a bingo game at work, then the whipping boy for how worked we got. not so much in the "good money" category, but fun. so, the random question is, does anyone ever get pissed off at their city? what i mean may be described better by the cool things i got to deal with today that were perpetuated by my city, ironically self titled, "the city that works!" so, this morning was sunday morning...the lord's day...the day of rest...the day that is usually safe from crazy shit early morning. oh, fucking, no! this morning at the ripe old hour of 8:30, i awoke to the fantastic sound of a back-hoe served jack-hammer that was plowing up the street a block from my house. now i try to come to terms with the rest of the world getting up and functioning when the sun comes up...not all folks are vampires like myself...but 8:30 on a sunday morning? my wife was even sleeping at that time, and when i awoke to the sound of hydraulic slamming, i daintily replied, "what the fuck is that!" to which she replied, "mrrrflgrirbitz?" good stuff for the next two hours. an unfortunate chain of events, seeing the illustrious lady-j (last time, i swear--you are jenn and always will be to me!) and the royal we had an appointment to "do" our yard in the early afternoon. i was looking forward to this, but i really needed some sleep before the ten hour shift i was going to have to make people laugh during was to fall on me like a ton of mackerals. so, put off. i was grumpy about most everything, and i hope my wife didn't get too pummeled by my bad mood. sometimes i suck!
the second fun "city that works" moment i had this fine day had to do with my return trip home after taking a co-worker to his appartment in tigard, oregon. now, usually, the trip from my place to the city of tigard is roughly ten to fifteen minutes either way. this is made possible by the easy freeway (i-5) access in any direction. unfortunately, on this fine day of rest, all--not some but ALL 7 exits off of i-5 were closed because of some construction that, while i looked, i could not for the life of me figure out what possible thing they were doing that required the closing of any exits. just to clarify, tigard is roughly fifteen miles from downtown portland, i-5 is the main freeway through portland, there was no way to get off of i-5 for those fifteen miles between the two. i live exactly two and a half minutes from work, and i drove twenty five miles home from it tonight! yes i am bitching. and i was bitching last night, but i know some of you all have the same problems. if you want to bitch, leave me a note and i WILL post it for you. us angry people need to know that we are not alone!

Saturdeath Night

to all of you fabulous folks who speed from a downtown party spot or work in an attempt to make it to your local bar fifteen minutes before last call--needing that last (or first) little bit of liquid barbituant before the great doors of the mecca that is "the bar" or "the quick-e-mart" stop selling booze until the sun rises on the morrow, please remember that it is your local bar, run by your local bartender, who is at the end of HIS work day but not finished until he has rid himself of all of the miscreants residing in his bar, and what's more, cleaned up after them after putting up with them for the better part of ten hours strait!
there. done in one sentence. i love my job.

Adventure?

one of the big differences between me and my fantastic wife is organization. i don't make plans, she needs to have one. this is what i do: i put myself in a position of many opportunities and have the freetime to capitalize...i call it adventuring. while this is fun for me and is good for my beans (james/semaphoria) as a method to pull her out of the "planning box," it often times puts me in crazy-happy-go-lucky world, and she is home in bed. i will say this in front of the gods and everyone, my wife is a saint for putting up with my in-town late-night wanderlust! she is the shit and, soon, i will be growing out of this silliness...i can already feel myself not wanting to go out and raise as much hell as i used to. my bed with her in it is a good place!
tonight, though, i let myself wander. i went on a random adventure with people i usually don't go with just to see what there was to see! ie. i was leaving my bar to go home for the night after working for eight hours, and some folks jumped on the hood of my car and said "follow us." i did. after stopping at a house that is home to a few random friends of mine (not to mention a pile of large dogs who licked me to death...goddam hippies!), me and my buddy, kent, went to a house party. it was a pleasant mix of people, and i immediately got to talking with a number of complete strangers (one of the conversations was in russian, which is always fun!). after a while, the talk turned to music. now this is where my ego started having fun in spite of me...the conversation turned to local bands and i relayed some knowledge of the people i knew that they were talking about. at that point, one of the guys said "no way" and another guy in the talk said, "this is jaimie keller." at this point, the other guy looked at me as if a veil had been lifted from is eyes and responded, "no fucking shit!" minor celebrity status is fun, no matter where you find it, and that type of shit blows my mind. i just play where i can! i also ran into a few people from completely different circles that were just as surprised to see me as i was to see them. by the end of the night, i had offers for two different studio gigs, and three band invites. all in all a good adventure, and thank you to my beans for being cool enough to let me wander...she really is the best and i love her more than anything!

Yea, I Rule...

today was one of the rare days that i actually felt enough like a piece of regurgitated shiznat that i actually called into work and told them so...i'll be working tomorrow for that, but if i'm not throwing drinks, i don't get paid.
i like the strategy games, oh yes i do. i have been building scenarios for warcraft iii and brood war all day long, while resting here and there by throwing the beatdown in a little soul caliber, weapons master. if anyone actually does read this little slice of silly, what do you think the end-all-be-all build-and-beat-down games are. also, has any motivated knight of mars (i dub thee "sir fobboss, knight of mars, beater of ass!") gone out and acquired the new transformers game for the psii? it looks like a cross between panzer dragoon and mech assault...both bad ass! shhh! don't tell anyone that i double as a geek on occasion...wait, i am updating my blog...holy crapsocks, i am a geek!

Poor Beans

my poor little wife was laying on the couch this morning when i woke up, sick with whatever she picked up from her co-workers. unfortunately, it appears that i've contracted this silly business myself. well, it got me off work early...cool.

have you ever noticed that the subtitles for the song during the final credits of an episode of cowboy bebop are sometimes in english and some times in japanese, but written phonetically in english? odd.

Real Deal

marines:god-corps-country
ivar:beans-kittens-donkey
don't you ever forget!

Capitanisamo Nada!

tonight was fairly bereft of interesting things...other than a fantastic evening of "adult swim" on cartoon network. if this is not ringing any bells and you have cable, you are missing out in a serious way! for the anime geeks (my brothers and sisters!), most every night on the network will do for you after the ten-o-clock hour, but for anyone who has a funnybone, sunday night is your night. stephen colbert ("the daily show w/ john stewart"/"strangers /w candy") and gary cole (bill lumberg "office space") do most of the voices for "harvey birdman:attorney at law," while the mighty eric estrada (no need to tell you who he is) is one of the voices on "sealab:2021." most of these really great fifteen minute shorts are completely twisted storylines that use old hannah-barberra cartoons as their vessel and i will tell you, i pack out my bar every sunday because i show 'em on the big-screen! funny shit, boy howdy!
and i leave you with a tasteless joke that is easy to remember, and just plain fun for any parting words...
Q:what is the opposite of christopher reeve
A:christopher walken

oh no you didn't.

Blow It Up

i am a military sci-fi fanatic. i have close to every book david drake has ever put out including a few pre-editor drafts that are fun to read because they are moderately different from the posts. i am now pounding through the collected works of an author by the name of john ringo (he goes by john, but i think it would be cheezy and fun for him to go by "johnny") who has written five or six books based in the same timeline of a present day alien infested earth. if you are a fan of janet morris, eric flint or david webber, you will love this guy! also, anyone passing though this site that has any input on new places or authors that they think would tickle my hard-sci-fi fancy, please feel free to point me around!

so, in my hammered state last night, i forgot to mention a first for me...i have broken up my share (and his share and her share and his share...) of fights in bars and clubs both as an employee and a patron, but never have i broken up a fight that was being propagated by the bartender! i had to peel the bartender of my favorite watering hole, vic's tavern, off of one of the patrons last night. evidently, the patron in question got a bit too comfortable in the punk-rock livingroom that is vic's and decided that patrick (the tender) wasn't having enough fun, so he proceeded to tear the top of pat's button-up shirt open, scattering buttons to the wind. well, as one may expect, pat was none too thrilled with the young man's attempt at levity, and proceeded to start smacking him around! what fun! i think more bartenders should be allowed to abuse their patrons physically. unfortunately, my stature usually deters anyone from playing with me. oh to be a little man...

Wow It's Late

it's an iteresting game all together! it is almost five in the morning, and i have been sleeping on a lazy-boy for the last hour. i ended up being the good samaritan with my friend todd, and driving our other friends cars home from the bar at close...as in. i drove wendy's car to her house, todd followed picking me up from the house, taking me to the bar where i then jumped in NYTRAVIS' car (more to come about "gayvis" or travis from nyc) and repeat the process, then back to the bar to retrieve the bean-wagon (james' car) and return to the house party! the beer arrived and the OTHER debauch began, and in the midst of some conversation, i fell to sleeping on an extremely comfortable chair. upon waking to the sounds of a female wresting match (all in good fun, so greatly interesting to every male in the room), i found that i was out past my bedtime, made my goodbyes to the owner of the house (wendy) and high-tailed it home. at this point, my eyes keep closing on me, but, by god, i will do this posting thing every night come hell or high water.

in the immortal words of OZZY, "I love you all!"

No Rest...

you would think after a night of unrestrained drinking and debauch that this little piggy would be sleeping till the late afternoon, but no. for some reason, i'm up and at it! my late night postings were made inconvenient by the lead singer of my band "assed-out" face down in my living room on my comfey couch...driving was not the best of ideas for him last night. yes, we all lived the rock-n-rule lifestyle...and my head, she still pays.
the show went off, and oddly enough, i really enjoyed Big Wu--not bad for a hippy band! it was somewhat surreal playing with a hippy jam-band at the newly remodeled Mt Tabor Pub (now "Saballas"). it was odd because the place is now a hard-rock-punkabilly-metal club, complete with red flames painted on all of the walls, skulls and other such non-flower child business. all things considered, the place has evolved into a really cool joint...and the second Clutch plays there, i will never go anywhere else!

to ms. 30 second search...'twas not so much a challenge to find "ivar forkbeard" google style, but you still are the champion. the prize is a free night of show-going at any club in portland, if you are in portland, or whenever you roll through portland. no bullshit, i can really get you in anywhere! cherz is pissed he didn't jump sooner!

as for all you mean people out there call my tiny little wifey "mini-me," that's just plain mean...you need not desist, but it is mean;)

Friday Night

so this is my friday. i don't work on thursdays or fridays, so, in essence, thursday is my saturday and friday is a sunday that doesn't have to be an early night (work late on sat). this evening was an odd experience...it was dead. the only people left at close were two of my co-workers, and they both marveled at the fact i didn't have to throw anyone out at 2:30.

the upside to work tonight was the deepening of my love for my newly inherited i-pod. since i bought the mrs. (mini-me) the big old 40gig, i got the old 10gig. i promtly figured out how to play it through the system at work, and boy howdy, is it handy to have playlists set up for different moods in a bar. i think tomorrow i will have to learn how to play with the "smart" playlists...they may be better.

i am playing a show with "Big Wu" from Minnesota tomorrow night, so i may be too drunk to post on the morrow, but if i do, lord, i apologize now for the drunk things i will say to all the nice people reading my blog, and be there with the starving pygmies down there in new guinea, amen.

Off and running...

so i figured i should start playing with this whole blog thing...my wife seems to have loads of fun with it and has become a bit of a celeb in the blogger world. i am referred to as "the big guy" in a few other blogs, but since this is my blog, i can either go by jaimie or ivar (big prize to be decided upon later to whomever correctly identifies the origin of the name "ivar forkbeard"). i will be posting every night when i get home from work (4:00am) and keep you all informed of the tom-foolery that i get to see every night as a bartender/drunk/musician. we will see...but till then, goonaht!