Take your music video moments wherever you can find them

Sometimes you just have to sit back and appreciate the rock-video moments in your life. Sure, they might be like low-budget videos, the kind made by rappers who have to rent cars to make it look like they’re flush with loot. But they’re still rock videos, no matter how janky.

I had a moment this weekend like that. Of course, without the weekend that had preceded it, it wouldn’t have rocked quite so hard.

It started Thursday, with a heat wave that cooked the politeness right out of me. When I found myself thinking of ways to kill a man who was taking too long to back out of a parking space, I knew that I needed to find a shady space to get my head together.

Unbearably hot days are some of the few days everybody likes going into work. At least if your air conditioner is working. We’ll get to that later.

That night, I was scheduled to make a cameo appearance in Corvallis Community Theater’s production of “Knock ’Em Dead.” I was playing a dead body, which makes it all the more impressive that I was somehow able to screw it up. A coworker asked me if playing a dead body was a step up or a step down from playing a zombie, my last big role? I said that I wasn’t sure.

In my hands, I can now say with certainty that a dead body is a step down from a zombie.

So, after managing to flub my one line, be seen by the audience backstage and break a prop knife, I ran home to change for my second costumed role of the night: Fiend for the funk.

My friend Shake ’N’ Bake was celebrating her 31st birthday at the Downward Dog, and the theme was ’70s retro. I’ve lost a bit of weight over the past year, and suddenly found myself able to squeeze into a cream-colored polyester Lee leisure suit a buddy bought me at Goodwill. I combined it with a burgundy polyester butterfly-collared shirt and headed downtown.

Strutting into the Dog, I knew how the witch must have felt at the end of Hansel and Gretel. On the hottest day of the year, the electrical system had gone haywire, shorting out the AC unit. The one small box fan perched near the door was almost comical in its uselessness.

If ever there was a time I cursed the Corvallis City council for its stupid rules, it was that night. I had rolled in at 11 p.m., and that’s the arbitrary time appointed by the Council when you can no longer take your drink outside.

Which is good. I wouldn’t want to disturb the people that weren’t at the nonexistent apartments next door.

Anyway, all of us at that bar faced a perilous choice that night: Stay inside to drink and risk heat stroke, or go outside to cool down and risk sobriety. Just pray you never find yourself in that situation.

So, I sweated it out, perched at the bar, watching the polyester and bellbottoms, afro-puffs and furry boots slip and slide across each other on the dance floor. The night ended in the cool of 4 a.m. on a friend’s doorstep, as early morning traffic began its commute in an attempt to beat the coming heat.

Saturday was my friend Kim’s wedding at the spacious Altishin Estates way out Llewellyn Road, and it brought friends into town from Portland, Los Angeles and even Turkey via Utah. When these friends come together, all you can do is suck down some Emergen-C, pop a fistful of Advil and hope not to wake up in the hospital.

The next thing I knew, it was Saturday night, and I was back at the Dog for a performance by Corvallis’ own post-everything quartet, Xenat-Ra. If anything, it had gotten hotter through the weekend, and I was on the verge of climbing Mt. Olympus to punch Helios in the face.

JD Monroe was spanking his drum kit while Dave Trenkel coaxed cosmic tones from his keys and Matt Calkins was blowing into his saxophone like a lifeguard trying to get a nonresponsive man to breathe.

That was when the sky opened up.

They had been flashing for hours, the long, movie-style streaks of lightning, cracking the sky like a BB against a windshield and occasionally sending rumbles of thunder echoing across the valley. When the rain came, it was totally unexpected, and it damn near emptied the place out.

Walking outside into the monsoon, I saw two of my out-of-town friends standing beneath the bike rack shelter in the suits they wore to the wedding. I went and stood with them, watching the natural laser-light show unfold.

It was beautiful. Not only that, but you could hear the music perfectly, it was so loud. Xenat-Ra had ripped open the night, sowing the clouds with their irritant shards of funk.

When the women started issuing forth from the door of the Dog, dancing in the downpour and strobelightning, I leaned back against the bike rack and thought just how lucky I was.

Sometimes you just have to sit back and appreciate the rock-video moments in your life. You don’t have to sip Moet out of a supermodel’s navel, go to a White Party in the Hamptons or coast on thousand-dollar rims to your own Hollywood premiere.

All you really need is good friends, great music and, most importantly, lowered expectations.

Jake TenPas can be reached at jake.tenpas@lee.net or 758-9514.