We were in a Lyle Kopkicky documentary shown at the lovely Mission Theater.

Springtime in Portland is so wonderful. Lots of rain and sunshine.

 I wasn't planning on dressing particularly formal thinking is would be a small affair but Olive suggested I do spritz it up a bit. I'm glad she did. We took a few buses to SW P-town, over at the Mission Theater. When we got there, we found the place packed with sharp looking folks.
Lots of smiling faces. The evening is a showing of 13 short documentaries and there were representatives from many of the outlying parts of the Pacific Northwest. It was a fine night at the opera for O&D.

 When it was time for the movies to start we couldn't find a seat!The only open seats were the far right balcony. Luckily we found some folks who made room and we packed in like a crowded bus. Olive drank a hard lemonade and got Waaay tipsy, tipsy enough to spill drinks all over the table. HAHAHA! light-weight. The film followed our life It had some big laughs and some tender moments.The biggest laugh was a still of Lisa Loving's facebook post decrying the guy who stole Olive's bike. We were very nervous because during the filming we would forget he was rolling. Sometimes (when hustling)I get really mad when things don't go our way. Sometimes conditions are very unfavorable for us. His lense did catch us ranting and raving a bit but he brought it back around. The other movies were great too.They were about school gardens, preserving ancient Portland buildings and one was about the college school loan racket. Good stuff.

Artists statements. It was interesting that so many folks had the same thing to say to us. "You don't know me but I know you" lots of folks watched the film coming together and know our story well. The idea was the funny imbalance that a documentarian has with the subject. They spend hours and hours reviewing miles of tape. As they edit our faces and words we are busy living life and not thinking about it at all. So when we meet to see the final product, the artist knows the subject way better than the other way around. Lyle spent a year making this so we got to know him pretty good too. Great Job Lyle!

Wanna find Lyle? Click here

Like what we do? Donation bucket!

When I met Rich Mackin back in the 90's we had similar things going on.

He was the Boston punkrock/active clown and I was a Portland one. We were pen pals a little back when "E mail" meant "E rase the postmark to use the stamp again".When Mackin asked us to do some songs for this charity event, we were stoked. "Nuttin fer Crixmix is the last Pepto Dizmal song. It has great meaning and so I hooked Olive up with a copy of the old tune to memorize.She did a fine job. I kind of thought that it was a form of satire or anti-Christmas gathering. Kind of like a way to have the fun holiday without the religion and consumerist feeding frenzy. We aren't crazy about a lot of the Christmas rituals so our songs reflected that. Christmas means lots of pink plastic, batteries, landfills, planned obsolescence and of course the fuel pollution and slave labor required to get all that stuff here. Christmas is a huge present for China. So I was shocked when it started looking like a real live Christmas event. We aren't total Grinches, we wanna make our crowd happy. I started to worry that our stuff wasn't going to go over very well. After seeing Rich Makin telling us about Santa con and Jay Lieber's really cool presentation (As well as Mr Krampus walking around) it became clear that we would be ok.
 
 I just hoped we wouldn't offend the little kids and Sugar plum fairies. They were great!

 Pouring over the sweetest Santa Suit we ever saw.
 
Pre-show...

To any family units that thought Olive and Dingo on the bill meant we would be doing "Jingle bells", sorry for all those F words. When you entertain a room full of drunkerdly Santas, then there is a problem if you don't crack a few off the naughty list.

 Melian A. Sonnenburg one of the first folks I met in town.

Jay Rules.:) I love that guy.

What event is complete without a Jew in a Chicken suit? Great job Ari!!!!

That was great! Rock on Santa con...movie.