Portlandia: The Sequel

It's taken me a few years, but thanks to Jet Blue and Even More Space™, I finally made my way back to Portland.

It's one of the cities I happen to have big love for. Quirky, unexpected, innovative, creative and unbelievably great coffee everywhere you turn.

I'm staying at the Benson, which is where I stayed last time—although for a very different reason.

What I've learned so far this trip is that, in the same way people who live in San Francisco hate when tourists call it "Frisco", people in Portland aren't crazy about it being called Portlandia. Even though they love the show. Also like San Francisco and New York, they J-walk all over the place, but they feel a tiny bit bad about it.

And coffee everywhere. Did I mention that?

When I got in this afternoon, it was 37 degrees and light snow. Having been born and raised in L.A., my wardrobe is lacking when it comes to winter weather. It's also lacking in anything stylish. And clothes that fit.

Shut up.

So the first thing was to head to Nordstrom, where they carry all sorts of winter coats you can't find in Southern California. I picked up a snappy one (yes it fit), so now the cold isn't so challenging.

Which brings me to this post. It's the one I put up about my last trip here, and since I'm here again it seemed like a good time to revisit it.

It's impossible to be in this city without thinking about my late, great friend Paul Decker. When he passed away, they broke the mold. A brilliant writer, an extraordinary human being and an irreplaceable friend, I know without a doubt you would've loved Paul. Not a day goes by I don't think about him.

There's a link below to a post that goes into more detail about Paul. It'll give you much more of a sense of the kind of remarkable person he was. I think you'll like it.

In the meantime, please to enjoy this repeat post about my last trip to Portland.

I haven't been to Portland in a long time. Somewhere around nine years. And I miss it.

The last time I was there, I lived for three weeks at the Hotel Lucia downtown while I was shooting a commercial for an agency called Perceive that no longer exists (it barely existed when it did). Because we were also editing up there, I had plenty of time to explore the city. If you've ever been there, you already know it's a good walking town.

Alan Otto, my friend (currently) and creative director (at the time) would meet in the lobby every morning. Then we'd pick a direction and start walking for as long as we could before we had to be at the shoot or the edit. One morning we walked to the 97-year old Portland Luggage Company where I picked up a mid-size Boyt suitcase to complete my set and had it shipped home.

I love luggage stores. Whole other post.

Another great thing is that all of Oregon is a Powerball state. And for someone like me who's inclined to play the lottery since I won $5,000 in it once (yes I did), it was fun to play in a multi-state draw where we're talking real retirement money.

By the way, the hotel you see here isn't the Lucia. It's the Benson, just a block and a half up the street. It's one of the grand old hotels you run into, a 100-years old - the one where presidents, foreign dignitaries and celebrities stay when they come to town. In fact when we were shooting up there, at three in the morning Nic Cage was playing piano and singing to Lisa Marie Presley in the lobby.

Anyway, I imagine it'll be somewhat of a let down for them, but the Benson is where I'll be staying when I return to Portland in May. I'm looking forward to it because it's Portland, but also because the reason I'm going is for a gathering to celebrate my dear friend Paul Decker's life.

The good news is I already know what suitcase I'm taking with me.

Eye in the sky

Sometimes I really love technology.

For example, today my daughter had a flight on Delta from Los Angeles to Nashville. I can already see you being judgmental from here, but just know it wasn't me who put her on Delta. I'm not that kind of parent. It's a school trip to a singing competition, and the choir director was responsible for booking the flight.

I'd have gone with Jet Blue or American, and my little princess definitely would've been sitting in the front of the plane because she's the best daughter in the world and deserves first class all the way.

I've scored enough dad points for one night.

The technology I love is the FlyDelta app. It let's me track where my baby is in real time with all the essential information: departure time, estimated arrival time, altitude, time in flight, time remaining and a map of where she is at any given moment.

Every airline has a similar app, but Delta's, unlike the airline itself, is fairly intuitive.

I like knowing when she lands. That way when she calls me an hour and a half later and says "I just landed." I have a card to play later on I can use as leverage for things like room cleaning, or laundry doing, or car borrowing (not that she'd ever do that, because she's as honest as the day is long - more dad points).

My son also flies back and forth a lot from his out-of-state university, and when he does I have my eyes on his airline flight app as well. My babies mean the world to me and I like knowing they've arrived safely.

To me, the airline apps that let me track flight status is technology at its peace of mind given', stress relievin', parentally reassurin', easy breathin' best.

I just hope I can find one to make sure she doesn't listen to country music when she gets back.

Office space.

It doesn’t happen often, but like the Harmonic Convergence, total eclipse of the sun, Halley’s Comet and client approval, if you wait long enough you’ll live to see it.

Dust off those childhood dreams: NASA is now accepting astronaut applications for the upcoming Mars mission.

No doubt, despite the stringent requirements, they’ll be inundated with applications from hundreds, make that thousands, of unqualified people who haven’t seen Gravity and think space travel is as easy as booking a flight on Jet Blue. It's not. For starters, the baggage fees on the Mars trip are much steeper.

I think if NASA wants to thin the herd down to uniquely qualified candidates, the one place they should definitely start recruiting from is ad agencies. Here’s why:

Creative people are used to keeping themselves amused during long assignments that seem like they’ll never end – and often times never do.

Agency people know how to subsist on to two-day old bagels, cold pizza and pumpkin muffins so hard you could slay Goliath with them. Dehydrated, freeze-dried, bite-sized foods coated with gelatin would be like dinner at Morton’s.

The part about wearing a suit they’re uncomfortable in, even for a short time, is something they’ve done before. And sadly, peeing in that suit isn’t anything new either.

Experience being trapped in a small space with three other people you have to pretend to like? Check.

Having no choice but to accept and make course corrections from nameless, faceless voices on the other end of a speaker is something creative people do all the time.

Once there, agency people have all the knuckles and know-how needed to make a great commercial to recruit future astronauts for subsequent missions. The toughest part will be going without a trendy restaurant with an outdoor patio for lunch.

Finally, agency people will give the Red Planet a short, memorable, meaningful tagline that can be used on t-shirts, mugs and banner ads no one clicks on.

No doubt with agency people steering the ship, NASA will have the right people for the job.

As long as the job doesn't start before 10 a.m.

Sticking the landing

When I freelanced in San Francisco for nine months, I was living in Santa Monica. I'd fly up every Monday morning, and back every Friday night. Occasionally, I'd have to come back a time or two mid-week. What I'm saying is lots of take-offs and landings.

Landings, with all they imply, are a welcome part of any flight. It means the screaming baby in 11B will soon be a thing of the past, you'll be able to take your iPhone off airplane mode and, provided you don't clobber someone taking your carry-on out of the overhead, you'll never have to see, make small talk or apologize to any of these people again.

What I've noticed a lot, especially in the age of discount airlines, is that when landing, a lot of times pilots simply come in hot. They have schedules to make, flight attendants to diddle (make sure they're fastened low and tight across your waist) or another plane to pilot. They're in a hurry to touchdown.

We've all been on that flight where you feel your bones rattle when the plane slams onto the runway, and then a flight attendant blows the dust off some old joke over the P.A. like, "As you may have noticed, we've just dropped into Kennedy."

Rare is a pilot who manages to stick the landing. I was fortunate enough to have one on my flight this morning.

It's family weekend at young Mr. Spielberg's university. So the wife and I hopped JetBlue to the red state to see our boy. When we touched down, it was barely noticeable if you weren't looking out the window and watching the ground come up. The wheels hit the asphalt with a gentle, feather touch. Both of them in sync, making contact at the same time. No loud screech of the rubber hitting the road. No one gear down and then the other. There wasn't a person within earshot who could stop talking about how perfect it was.

So kudos and many thanks to the JetBlue pilot(s) this morning. You gave a cabin full of sleepy, weary travelers a gentle reminder how the talents of a skilled pilot can make getting where you're going much more pleasant.

To everyone who flies, I wish for you what I had today. Happy landings.

Trigger happy

Back in the day, before I could roll out of bed and be at Jet Blue, when I wanted to go to Vegas - and it was fairly often - I'd just hop on the 15, crank up Springsteen, put my lead-lined shoe on the gas and go.

But before I stopped for a Quarter Pounder at the water tower McDonald's in Barstow, and before I pulled over to buy a lotto ticket at the Country Store in Baker, I'd drive past Apple Valley, the small town just after Victorville in the high desert.

Home of the Roy Rogers Museum.

Thanks to the giant statue of Roy's golden palomino Trigger on the roof of the museum, you could see it from the freeway. Every time I went screaming past it I always thought someday I should make some time and stop in there. Not exactly a bucket list item, but more to satisfy my curiosity about exactly what good 'ole Roy had that could fill a museum.

When I was growing up, Roy Rogers was the King of the Cowboys, starring in many musical westerns. Co-starring in all of them was his trusty horse Trigger. Famously, the big draw at the museum was the fact that when Trigger died, Roy had him stuffed. He was now living at the museum, posed rearing up, just like he used to do in the movies and on Roy Rogers television show.

It could've gone worse for Trigger. At one point, Roy Rogers had a chain of roast beef restaurants.

Finally, on one of my Vegas runs, I stopped in the museum. Though it'd been open a couple hours by the time I got there, I was literally the only person in the place.

I came to two conclusions right off the bat: first, Roy and Dale Rogers were hoarders. And second, seeing Trigger stuffed and posed like that was more sad than anything else. It wasn't so much a museum as a garage packed with souvenirs from a lifetime in cowboy show biz.

Like seeing Elvis at the International Hotel in Vegas, hearing Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. at the Greek Theater, and meeting Groucho Marx, I can now wear the badge and say I've seen Trigger in his eternity pose.

Given the low attendance at the museum, probably due to the fact there weren't that many hardcore Roy Rogers fans still walking the earth (at least they weren't stuffed and posed), the museum closed. It moved to Branson, Missouri for a bit, but it eventually closed there too.

Trigger still lives on however, although now it's in the lobby of RFD-TV in Omaha, Nebraska. When the museum closed, he was auctioned off to the station for $266,000, along with Roy's dog Bullet who went for $35,000.

Just like my childhood, Roy and Dale are long gone now. But they're a fond memory from that time, even if their museum wasn't the thrilling experience I'd hoped it would be.

Still, I like thinking that wherever they are, they're still singing', ridin', roping' and wearing the white hats.

Happy trails Roy.