This week was a special occasion.

One of the pleasures of spending so much of my last three years in Portland, Oregon is the immersion I’ve had in Portland’s indie rock scene – arguably the most vibrant in the land (with apologies to Brooklyn). You’ve most likely heard of Portland’s more famous acts (The Decemberists, M. Ward, The Dandy Warhols) as well as their eclectic collection of immigrants (The Shins, Modest Mouse, Spoon). If there is a “Portland sound,” I can’t hear it, although the songwriting of the late Elliot Smith set the bar so high that I don’t ever recall tuning out a Portland band due to inane lyrics.

But it’s Portland’s less famous bands that have become a major muse as the “Blue Like Jazz” screenplay has taken shape. There’s a track by the mighty Viva Voce that gets me in the mood to write. I listen to Dat’r every time I tweak the Renn Fayre scene. Just about any track by The Helio Sequence makes whatever I’m working on seem better.

And then there’s the band that made me strap on the coconuts this week: Menomena.

If you’re already a fan, then we are bonded for life by virtue of our shared exquisite taste. If you’ve never heard of them, then it’s my highest honor to make this introduction, and you are now forever in my debt.

Josh at Grimey’s (our local record store) was the guy who directed me to their “I Am The Fun Blame Monster” debut six years ago, and I was so captivated that I even licensed a track for my first movie. Since then, I’ve bought their entire recorded output, including side projects. If I try to describe their sound, I’m going to do us all a disservice, because they don’t really sound like anybody. Here’s what I can tell you: 1) They are three consummate musicians; 2) Their average height is roughly equal to the Portland Trailblazers. 3) Their live show is brilliant; 4) They’ve brought the art of album packaging to new heights; 5) After a long exile, they’ve made the saxophone once again sound like it belongs in a rock band.

The only problem with their last album, “Friend Or Foe,” is that I couldn’t imagine how they’d top it. Which is probably why it’s taken them three years to come up with a new one.

Do you remember the first time you heard, say, Radiohead’s “OK Computer”? If you’re like me, you weren’t sure what you just heard, but you were pretty sure it was The Sound Of Greatness.

That’s the Sound I heard coming through my mega-phones this week as I closed my eyes and listened to a pre-release of Menomena’s forthcoming album “MINES.” Sadly, you won’t be able to have that experience until the album’s release in July…

…but in the meantime, if you need further proof, I dare you to click here.

Whoa! When you click play, did you just get a pop-up advertisement for Domino’s? Do you like their recent advertising campaign apologizing for their decline in quality? I personally thought the old pizza was fine, but I have to admit that, since the upgrade, the new pies have an extra je ne sais quoi.

If you’ve had the video on pause for the last two weeks, let’s pick it up at about 1:44. We’re at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, and you’re seeing the back of a man’s shaved head (shaved, that is, except for the clump of dark hair above the back of his neck that he apparently missed). Then we cut away to another spooky cat, then back to Uncle Fester turning around and giving me the evil eye.

This man was a Doors fan who apparently did not want to be on camera. I can’t be certain, because he was speaking a loud, aggressive form of German that I’d not heard since the glory days of Einstürzende Neubauten, a loud, aggressive German industrial rock band who were kicked off the European leg of U2’s Zoo TV Tour after a band member threw an iron bar into the booing crowd. I turned off my camera during Üncle Fester’s graveside tirade. He was really mad. If he’d had an iron bar, he would have thrown it at me.

Back to the live concert – that’s me reaching into the crowd, all of us blissfully unaware of how easily germs can spread without the use of hand sanitizers. The concert footage comes from back-to-back shows in Southern California (where The Doors formed) at Knott’s Good Time Theater (where The Doors never played). There’s another awesome shot of me onstage, falling backwards, as if to say, “These are the perils of life in the Good Time spotlight. And this is what will happen when you’re hit in the head with an iron bar.”

I’m really getting hungry. I wonder what toppings would be on a French-themed Domino’s pizza?

Now I’m face down onstage. Am I trying to get up? Doing a few push-ups to get pumped? I’ve fallen face down on stages around the world, and I can tell you that Scandinavian stages are typically spotless and smell like trampled wildflowers.

Back to the cemetery and more cryptic Doors graffiti. The pacing is kinetic… frenzied… barely focused… as if the cameraman was being chased by an angry bald guy who can’t grow his ponytail back.

Another shot of me onstage… HEY! DID STEVE TAYLOR CHANGE CLOTHES BETWEEN SETS? Yes, I did. Because like Jim Morrison, I am an enigmatic chameleon who refuses to be limited by bourgeois concepts like continuity in editing.

We see glimpses of other band members – Jeff…Glen… Gym Nicholson from Undercover, who also shaved his head but made allowance for a fountain-like blond mohawk to gush forth from the top of his dome, which presumably would have allowed any pent-up Germanic anger to dissipate into the heavens.

And now, over the song’s somber, stately outro (that’s Ashley Cleveland singing on the track), we cut to fields of sunflowers. Yes, we’re in the South of France, because my wife and I did, in fact, meet up with our friends (two hours late, if you really must know), and during the ensuing week-long vacation I was able to get extra shots of flowers and spiders and more cats so that you barely notice by the end of this video that I’ve completely run out of footage…

Oops – is that the same shot of me jumping off the riser, arms flailing the air in slo-mo, as if waking from a nightmare where I’m being pelted with iron bars?

This is one of many cats that I saw while trying to find Jim Morrison’s grave. The whole cemetery’s crawling with cats. People leave food out for them, and since it’s France, I’ll bet the food is exquisite. My dad’s allergic to cats, but I think kittens are cute.

Whoa! That’s me popping out from behind that tree! I filmed most of this on my Super8 camera, but the shots with me in them were filmed by my keyboard player Steve Goomas. He likes to surf, and he has a big dog that can pull him down the street on his skateboard.

That’s me again! My gesture seems to say, “Come, follow me. I’ll show you Jim Morrison’s Grave.” And that’s exactly what I’m going to do, because I’m building visual tension, almost like it was a horror movie about a guy going to visit a spooky grave. In daylight. With kittens.

We’re seeing graffiti… arrows pointing to the grave… Doors lyrics… a guy writing something cryptic on a monument with a Sharpie… building tension… the words “YOU’D BETTER BEHAVE,” as quoted in the song, are scrawled into a neighboring grave marker. Wow, that’s a coincidence, right? (True confession: That’s my handwriting.)

And… CUT to me in a live concert setting. Notice I’m wearing the same coat, as if to say, “Yes, I may be performing a concert before thousands of adoring fans, but if this coat had eyes, it would shed tears of unreleased tension waiting for the grave pay-off.”

Wait –was that the grave? Maybe. I’m PLAYING WITH YOUR HEAD. Fast cuts. Shaky camera work. Back to me in concert. Did you see that karate kick I just did?! The coat kind of gets in the way of the footwork, but if that coat had eyes, it would tell you how I got that move from Karate Kid, Part 2. Which in many ways is superior to the original.

Memories of that day in Paris are flooding back. It was hot. My wife and I were supposed to get out of town in a couple hours to rendezvous with friends in Burgundy (I’m pretty sure “rendezvous” is a French word), but if I kept shooting more footage in the cemetery, we were going to be late and risk never finding them. I went chasing after another cat with my camera… my wife kept reminding me how late it was… building tension…

Did I mention today is our 25^th anniversary? We were married on March 16^th, 1985. We’re going to head out of town in a couple hours and spend a romantic day together in one of our favorite cities… as soon as I finish blogging about that argument we had in The City Of Lights in 1987.

Blogging… Deb’s ready to go… but I just want to finish this before we leave… building tension…

Maybe I’ll finish this later.

Oh yeah. I was crying like a little girl about having to blog more, and my business partners had just offered me a Kleenex.

ME: I can’t…(sob)…breathe…(sob)…in the blogosphere.

THEM: Here’s a tissue. Take the box. It’s a good thing you don’t act in your own movies, because you have zero believability.

This, frankly, hurt my feelings. I started rocking back and forth like Rainman in my Aeron chair, counting prime numbers with my fingers. This seemed to alarm them, as if maybe they’d pushed me too far. I could feel their resolve starting to crumble. Steve: 1 / Intervention: nil

Then one of them waved his Flip videocam in my face and threatened to post the footage he’d just secretly captured. Checkmate.

ME: So what do I blog about?

THEM: Blog about anything. Quantity is more important than quality.

ME: You mean, like mid-career Prince?

THEM: Huh?

ME: Give me examples.

THEM: Well… What would the Most Interesting Man In America blog about? Philosophy? Technology’s two-edged sword? The inner life of the aesthete? The age-old dialectic between art and commerce?

ME: No. No. What’s an aesthete? And no.

THEM: How about we post all those old music videos you directed and you can do a written director’s commentary? That way you can disguise your self-aggrandizement as an act of public service to your ever-shrinking fan base, all while reminding yourself of mistakes not to repeat when you finally make the movie?

ME: Hmm.

THEM (going for the kill): Blogging’s like a beauty contest. And the public is the panel of judges. You’re trying to convince the widest audience possible that you’re pretty.

ME (nodding solemnly): You’ve finally used a metaphor I can relate to.

So that’s the plan. I’m going to blog about stuff we can all relate to, like how I got those twins to cry in the “On The Fritz” video. And maybe I’ll blog about stuff that’s obscure, too. (I’ll shoot for one or two posts a week.) You’re going to tell people I’m pretty. And this will all make for a better movie.

The request lines are open.

I wish you could have been at my intervention yesterday.

I thought it was just going to be another weekly meeting with my business partners to update me on where they’re at raising funds for the “Blue Like Jazz” movie. Those meetings typically run something like this:

ME: So… where are we at?
THEM: We’re really close.

But this meeting was different. There was something in the office air that day. It smelled like a trap.

ME: So… (sniffing the air, eyes darting around the room for clues)… where are we at?
THEM: You need to blog more.

I sprang for the door. Too late – it had been locked from the outside. I briefly considered doing a Jason Bourne through the window, but it was really cold outside and I was underdressed.

So I plopped back down in my chair, exhaled through my nose, then suggested (with possibly a hint of sarcasm) that IF THEY WOULD CONSIDER PERFORMING THEIR NUMBER ONE FUNCTION AND GET THIS MOVIE FUNDED, PERHAPS I’D HAVE SOMETHING TO BLOG ABOUT!!!

Like any good Interventionists, they deftly turned the tables on me. Out came an impressive array of charts, pie graphs and metrics showing how every time I post a new blog, our website traffic spikes, the project’s profile gets raised, we garner more contacts, our streets become safer, and America’s Promise is renewed for generations to come.

I attempted the Humility Defense: I’m not an expert on anything, so why should anybody care about my opinions? They countered with another round of pie graphs proving that I was, in fact, the Most Interesting Man In America. Then they read aloud a personal note from Pope Benedict XVI with words to the effect that “for Steve Taylor to deprive the public of his insights would be considered a Mortal Sin.”

ME: Can I see that note?
THEM: No.

I told them The Pope wasn’t the boss of me. Then I stuck out my tongue and threatened to start being uninteresting just to prove a point. They said they didn’t care as long as it increased traffic.

I felt naked and cornered. I started to cry – deep, heaving sobs like I’d been taught in my Sanford Meisner Acting Technique workshops.

ME: I can’t…(sob)…breathe…(sob)…in the blogosphere.
THEM: Here’s a tissue. Take the box.

to be continued…

Perhaps you’ve asked me for one in the past – your new album, your latest book, your game-changing product, etc. I’ve politely declined after explaining to you that I’ve maintained a non-endorsement policy for years just so I don’t have to pick and choose who to say yes to. My friends all say they understand. I’m pretty sure they don’t.

This non-endorsement policy of mine is, admittedly, hypocritical:
1) I’ve occasionally solicited endorsements in the past for worthy causes. (Thank you, Mr. Campolo, etc.)
2) I’ve never been offered big money to push a product. How would I respond if, say, Steve Jobs needed “Am I In Sync?” to shill the iPad? (Hmm… the more I imagine that commercial, the more I think it’s a perfect fit.)
3) There are a tiny handful of situations where I’ve violated my own rule. The One Campaign, for example. But when Bono says jump…

I tell you all this to set up my non-endorsement of a movie I’d like you to consider seeing this weekend. The producers haven’t asked me for a shout-out, and it’s already been in theaters a few weeks. But To Save A Life is surprisingly good.

It didn’t sound promising going in. Produced by a church. Written by a youth pastor. Directed by a first-timer. Have we not heard this set-up before? Did we not squirm at the results?

But To Save A Life is different. The acting was generally good, especially the high schoolers. The situations were plausible. And despite its miniscule budget, the movie looks and sounds just fine.

But more important, this is a movie that presents a realistic view of the church. The youth group has its share of hypocrites. The pastor’s kid is a pot-smoking reprobate. The basketball star has a conversion experience midway through the movie… then things get worse for him. Yes, things eventually get better, but, as in life, not all the loose ends get neatly tied up before the movie comes to its believably satisfying ending. (Satisfying, that is, unless you’re big fans of that other church’s movies.)

We’ve all heard Voltaire’s quote that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” To Save A Life is not a perfect movie. (And I speak from experience on that count.) But it’s breaking new ground, and it’s good enough that it would be ungenerous to waste any of my non-endorsement picking on its faults.

Go see it, and tell me what you think.

Yes, I let this go on for an extra day or so, but I was having so much
fun reading your guesses.
The Winner of the One-Word Error Prize is Jackie R, who correctly
guessed the shocking truth from page
228 of “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years.”

It wasn’t sweat. It was snot.

I tried so hard to hold it in, but gravity had the final say. And even
though it’s been twenty-eight years since the actual occurrence, just
writing this makes my gag reflex kick in.

Jackie, your prize is a very stylish, very rare “Blue Like Jazz” movie
t-shirt. 100% cotton. 100% snot-free.

Neither did I.

I did, however, just finish reading about myself in Donald Miller’s new book “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years.”

The experience is not easily described. I’ve had it happen a few times in the past, but they weren’t always very memorable books, so I’d tend to skip ahead to the parts I was in, smile or cringe at the passage in question, then stick the book on an upper shelf next to the other books-that-I-won’t-be-reading-but-can’t-sell-at-a-garage-sale-in-case-the-author-drops-by.

“A Million Miles…” is different. I’m not here to review it (yes, it’s superb, but you’ve probably heard that by now). I’m here to relate the exhilaration and terror of opening a book that a million people are going to read and seeing your name in print, over and over again.

Like most of you, I read “Blue Like Jazz” a few years ago. Unlike most of you, I then got to meet and hang out with characters from the book over the next three years. Like Penny. And Laura. And Rick the Pastor. In each case, Don had managed to describe a certain “essence” about them that struck me as absolutely true to the real person. I can’t tell you if every detail in “Blue Like Jazz” is exact. But I know that Penny is exactly the person you’d hope she’d be after reading about her.

And that’s what made my palms sweat as I opened to the first page of “A Million Miles…” As a recording artist, I’d spent years cultivating some sort of public image (it was, admittedly, a small-ish percentage of the public…), then trying, with varying degrees of success, to live up to it. Much of the cultivating was deliberate, some was probably subconscious, and all of it, as Christians should know, is ultimately futile. But Don and I, over the last few years, had spent weeks at a time working together and hanging out. He’d gotten to know me pretty well. And now, in the pages of his new book, Donald Miller was going to reveal my true, uncultivated, private essence. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And it was too late to call lawyers.

Some random impressions from my reading of “A Million Miles…”:

- I don’t recall ever getting up from my chair. (I have the bladder of a superhero.)
- I do recall laughing out loud. A lot.
- This time, unlike when I first read “Blue Like Jazz,” I knew almost all the characters. And I must say that Don’s portrayal of each seemed true to the person I knew.
- The book was strangely motivational. I’ve taken a few leaps of faith in my life, but reading “A Million Miles…” made me want to take more.

And what about me? How do I come off?

Well… Don’s a gracious guy, so who am I to argue with his flattering portrayal? I come off as quite a bit wiser than I am in real life. I stammer a lot less. He tends to focus on the good ideas I had for the screenplay and thankfully fails to mention the dumb ones. He perfectly portrays my long time friend and collaborator Ben Pearson, who is the glue that’s kept this entire movie enterprise from falling apart. And the details, as I recall them, are pretty accurate – on the first day we really did go kayaking through the snow-covered streets of his Portland neighborhood, etc.

But there is one detail pertaining to me that he got wrong. Maybe it was accidental. Or maybe he was afraid that the raw truth was too horrific for print. I guess I could ask him. But I’m thinking it might be more fun to turn this into a game…

If anyone out there can be the first to correctly identify and post the factual error pertaining to me in Donald Miller’s awesome new book, “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years,” I’ll send you a prize. (I’d send you the book, but I’m guessing that would be redundant.)

And here’s a hint: It occurs in the last few chapters. And it’s a one-word error.

When I first read “Blue Like Jazz” over three years ago, it left me with that same All Glowy feeling your comments gave me – a feeling that I’m not alone, and I’m not delusional, and this book is part of the proof.

Our goal for “Blue Like Jazz” is to make a great movie that leaves the audience with that same All Glowy feeling so many of us got when we first read the book:

We’re not alone. We’re not delusional. And this movie, Lord willing, will be part of the proof.

If “Using Profanity” was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, I’d be feeling pretty good about myself right now. Sadly, it’s not. In fact, I just googled “Seven Deadly Sins” – Expletive Hurling is nowhere on the list, and of the Seven that are, I’m pretty sure I’ve broken them all in the last thirty six hours.

I mention this as a way of easing into a potentially controversial topic in some circles regarding the Blue Like Jazz movie…

The screenwriting software I use has a feature called “profanity statistics” wherein all the expletives in a screenplay are magically counted and displayed in a tally. While the CussCount™ for Blue Like Jazz is lower than Al Pacino’s shootout scene in Scarface, it is considerably higher than all the Pixar movies combined.

For most of you reading this – No Big Deal. You assume that a movie set on the “most godless campus in America” is going to contain some measure of “language.” You don’t want it to be gratuitous, like that final shootout scene in Scarface (although who among us can judge what’s gratuitous when we’re riddled with bullets and high on cocaine?). But you expect, in a movie like ours, to hear a certain number of ****s, ****s, ***es, and possibly even the judicious use of ******* when spoken solely as an adjective.

But there are others of you who question the need for any profanity in Blue Like Jazz. After all, there isn’t any in the book, right? Aren’t there plenty of other movies set on college campuses that are good, clean fun for the whole family?

Good points all. While it’s true that the book managed to skirt the issue via Don’s first person narrative, our movie unfolds in dialogue, not voiceover. And yes, there are plenty of college-set movies you can take the kids to, although I believe most were filmed in black and white and include Flubber in the title.

For those who take issue with this news, please know that I’m sympathetic to your concerns. We, the screenwriters, really wrestled with the issue, and while our hope is that we’ve struck an appropriate balance, we suspect that when the movie’s released, your complaints about too much bad language will be countered by those who wanted more.

In the meantime, we offer this olive branch to fans wanting the language scrubbed: We’re open to your suggestions. Really. Please post a reply with your favorite non-curse word or phrase, use it in a sentence, and we’ll try out the best ones as alternate takes.

And for all you merry pranksters who might be tempted to lace your reply with expletives – don’t be an ******.