The winner is....

...me!
Every week, I hopefully enter KINK FM's contests of the week.
Three times:
One for me.
One for Jeff.
And one for Charlie.
(That's as many email addresses as I can monitor.)
I win quite frequently.
Well, once or twice a year.
I gave it up for a few weeks because I hadn't won anything for a while, but decided to start up again about a month ago. Shortly after starting up again, I won tickets to go see "Snow Falling on Cedars", the play. I was a little dubious, not having been to see a play for a long time. But it was free, and I was curious to see how the playwright had adapted it for the stage. For the price of parking, $5, we had an entertaining night out. The play was astoundingly well done, the audience was rapt, and the venue was pleasant. The building is in the Pearl District in an old Armory, renovated in Portland edgy-environmental style. The parking structure across the street was also interesting, with narrow, steep ramps, skinny parking places (woe betide any SUV's that attempt to park there), painted brick, and arched windows. We deduced it must be part of the same military complex. Here is my conclusion about Portland. It may be on the extreme left edge of political wackiness, but once in a while it gets something completely right.
But I digress.
Then, last Tuesday, I got a call from the radio station to say that I had won tickets to the Tower of Power concert at Chinook Winds, the casino at the beach. "Cool," I said, although to be honest, it wasn't my first choice of a win. But my philosophy is, I enter everything and then if I win, I decide whether to go. If not, I pass it on to someone else. So far, I have chosen to capitulate to fate, and been pleasantly surprised every time.
As luck would have it, I had been looking for a getaway this weekend, as it is our, wait for it, THIRTIETH anniversary on Tuesday. So I booked a beach house, and off we went.
Do you even know who Tower of Power is? Jeff didn't. But he trusts me (why, I will never know) and he loved them. He is a good sport to tag along on my adventures.
Tower of Power puts the "fun" in "funkify". They have been together for 42 years and still sound as fresh as they did when I listened to them in the 70's. How do they do that? Their presentation is snappy, synchronized, and syncopated to the extreme. Jeff sat next to a black guy who was at the concert for the second night in a row, having driven down from Seattle just for that purpose. He knew all the words to the songs, the name of all the band members, and their whole history.
Now that is a fan.
This is my favourite Tower of Power song. They played it for the encore, thus rescuing me from abject disappointment. Turn up the volume and feel the funk.