What We Did on Our Spring Vacation (Extended Version)

OK, I'll warn you right now, I'm putting A LOT of words and pictures on here. So if you're not in the mood for a vacation slide show you might as well go peruse this monstrosity for a few hours instead. As a reward for your patience, should you choose to stick around, here's some pleasant Cuban music to enjoy while I take you on a magical journey...




Your magical journey host, dog-tired after finally arriving at the resort

Our first day in Cuba was actually just part of one night, as we got in quite late. We'd rushed around like crazy back in Halifax, trying to get everything done before we left and becoming generally stressed out. A guy who looked exactly like Paul Shaffer, including the sunglasses, drove the minibus to the airport blasting Guns 'n Roses, the words to which I was surprised to find out Ali knew. He also kept turning the volume up and down while he drove, for some reason, as if it was one of the many knobs he had to keep checking and adjusting. In fact, he was very frantic in general and we were convinced he was on speed.

Then the ladies at the airport who were in charge of giving us our tickets told us we were late and almost didn't make it, even though there was still a full hour before the flight left. Weird. We didn't get seats together, so Ali watched the back of my head as I read my whole Believer magazine and got a good start on Infinite Jest. I put a pretty decent sized dent in that one over the course of the week, and am now maybe a twentieth of the way through it. The seats were uncomfortable and the meal was a roast beef sandwich (who eats roast beef anymore?) but otherwise the flight was pretty bearable for being four hours long.

The air when we got off the plane was unimaginably hot, moist, and oxygenated. It had an interesting smell, too, that I never did figure out what it was. Kind of like some kind of smoky spice or perfume. Of course there was no air conditioning in the little airport and the luggage carousel was excruciatingly slow, but we were entertained by the drug-sniffing dog, who was really cute. He wasn't a German shepherd or anything, and wasn't even being led around. There was a guy in charge of him, but he was just left to wander around, happily sniffing everything. I have to say, he was very thorough too, even though he didn't seem to have any kind of system, which made me think about all the energy that can get expended trying to create systems that ensure thoroughness.

The bus to the resort included a bit of a tour from a friendly Cuban woman named Madeleine, who told us about places we could see, tipping, a donkey that drinks beer, and other useful tidbits. We found almost all the people we dealt with friendly and helpful. We couldn't really see much in the darkness outside the bus, but an hour later we arrived at the resort and checked in. It seemed like a really nice place, mostly open to the outside and brightly painted with lots of plants and birds chirping everywhere, and a breeze blowing through the trees. The room itself was spare but clean, with a huge bed and a couple of beers in the minibar/fridge. Unfortunately there was also a pretty unpleasant smell like wet cardboard or a dead rat coming from the ventillation, so we turned the air conditioning off.

We were starving from not eating the roast beef sandwiches, so we went down to the inside/outside dining area, where we'd heard there was some food left over out of which one could make sandwiches, even though it was very late. A couple of cheese buns and some really tough ends of citrus fruit later, we were ready to call it, which is when Ali took the above picture of me. A slightly older (than us) couple had sat down at the table beside us and the woman seemed itchy to chat. Unfortunately, our eyes were glazing over at this point, and all we could manage in the way of conversation was a vaguely neanderthal "Huh. Huh." We crashed hard at probably around 2 or 2:30 and I dreamed about rats trying to eat our food.

The next morning we woke up to this:

The view from our balcony

It still smelled great outside and the birds were making all sorts of cute noises, plus you could hear the ocean beyond the trees. Unfortunately, it still smelled like a pulp mill in the room and plus now it was boiling hot since we'd turned off the a/c. We had breakfast at the buffet, which was pretty good except for these bullet-shaped breaded things that I was assuming were some kind of home fry or tater tot but were actually stuffed with what looked and tasted like flour and water. We later found out they were supposedly chicken, so I didn't have to eat any more of them.

We spent a lot of the second day wandering around, checking the place out and getting the lay of the land.

The resort, seen from a third-story walkway

The pool, seen from behind the bushes because this is where most of the yahoos hung out

Ali taking some pictures which we haven't gotten developed yet

Ali taking some more pictures that aren't developed, on the beach

Being sufficiently impressed with the layout and free everything including incredible cappuccinos, we went to the beach in the afternoon for a swim and some tanning. The beach was just a short sidewalk from the main resort, and actually had some resort-related small buildings right on it. We were sensibly cautious with the tanning lotion, having heard plenty of horror stories about three-minute sunburns. But we didn't end up being on the beach long anyway, because hunger soon struck and we had to check out the snack bar which becomes the disco after 11:00 pm. Having nothing but leisure time is strangely tricky to schedule. It definitely took us a few days to get the hang of it. The food at the snack bar, unlike almost all the food we had at the resort, was not very good. I had a plate of grilled seafood, which turned out to be covered in this tomato sauce that tasted sort of like a wet rag. The shrimps all had the shells still on them, and even their heads. Eyeballs too. There were legs and feelers everywhere. We couldn't figure out a good way to get that crap off them without making a huge mess. It wasn't so bad for me because I only had three shrimps on my combo plate. Ali fared a little worse, having ordered the grilled shrimp.

Later on, we ran into the woman at whom we'd grunted the night before, whose name was Jane, we learned. She turned out to be in the room next to ours with her husband, Bill. Their room also turned out to have had a bad smell. I asked her if it was like wet cardboard and she replied that it was more like a dead rat. But she said she complained to someone about it and now it seemed all right. Miraculously, ours was fine after that too. I don't even want to know how they fixed the problem.

Dinner was again at the same buffet, where we ate almost all our meals. It's called "La Arcada," which, according to Ali's Spanish/English dictionary has a double meaning of arcade and also retching.

That night we checked out the crazy old piano player I already told you about. He smokes a big cigar while he plays, and has a list of 104 songs that he knows. They are all rendered in this maniacal style where every bar has to have some new and surprising trick thrown in. It's entertaining, but really you start to wonder after awhile if there's any shred of sanity in his musical head. We also saw the tres guitar quintet I also told you about. They sounded kind of like the music you may or may not still be listening to. We watched them with Jane and Bill, but left when they were replaced onstage by a loud obnoxious emcee announcing loud obnoxious high-school-style skits.

Next morning we took some bikes out and explored the area a little. It's very rural and very poor. The houses all look like falling apart shacks, but I guess they are nicer on the inside than on the outside. Most of the people we passed smiled and waved, which made me feel a little less like an obnoxious North American thinking he's at the zoo or something.

Ali's favourite shack

We ended up getting kind of lost, and there were vultures flying around everywhere. Especially around the train tracks where a dog was eating some unidentifiable carcass. We later noticed that these vultures were always around wherever you went, but at the time it seemed kind of ominous.




A road that we turned down, hoping to find a way back to the resort, ended up leading down a hill to a "marina," at which point it stopped. We had just passed a lot of trucks at the side of the road whose drivers had all looked curiously at us as we pretended to know where we were going, and we now had to immediately turn around and ride past them again, looking like we didn't care that it was now as obvious to us as it had already been to them that we didn't know where we were going. At the top of the hill, an older guy with a flattened nose stopped us and asked us in Spanish if we had any food or clothes we could give him. I handed him a convertible peso, which he took as inconspicuously as he could. I guess begging is illegal.

Back at the resort, we grabbed some lunch and headed to the beach for a swim to cool off. Masks and snorkels were available, so we tried that out only a little fearfully. What we'd thought was a big rock in the still pretty shallow water turned out to be a large school of human-hand-sized tropical fish. They were mostly these flat roundish grey ones and cute yellow-and-black-striped ones. It was kind of creepy seeing all that life going on right around us, but also pretty cool. They're very good at not letting you touch them, even when they're all around you. I wish I had some photos to put on here, because we took a few rolls over the week with this underwater camera Alison borrowed from work, but those pictures are not developed yet either. Just watch Finding Nemo and you'll get the picture.

That night, the big show had been recommended to us by the staff every time we brought up how great the band the night before had been. They all said, "Yeah, those guys are good, but tonight we'll have the full band." But the full band turned out to be a guy playing electric guitar through either a chorus pedal or some kind of hair metal distortion, alternately, a keyboardist with a full arsenal of equally horrific sounds, and an "American Idol"-type guy singing numbers like "What's Goin' On?" (the 4 Non Blondes song, not the Marvin Gaye one) and "O-Bla-Di, O-Bla-Da".

The next day was mostly taken up with tennis, ping pong, and more snorkelling/lolling around on the beach. We did go for a couple of walks. One was to the next resort down the beach, which was "four stars plus" to see whether they had any sunglasses at their gift shop. I had stupidly forgotten to bring mine. It seems like when I forget to pack something, it's usually the most important thing. I once went somewhere for two weeks with no socks or underwear. Anyway, sunglasses were inexplicably impossible to come by the entire time we were in Cuba. The other resort turned out to be much like ours, but with everything bumped up to the next level. The people staying there looked a little fancier too — fewer student-yahoos and more suburban success stories. Interesting that the class divide is not just between the tourists and the Cubans, but also intratouristical.

The other walk was along a trail that led off the beach, along the shore behind the trees that were between our balcony and the ocean. It was paved for quite awhile, and then turned into just a cut path through the forest. We were in sandals and so thought we might have to turn back, but the path was covered in naturally formed rock. It was really weird-looking — like concrete Swiss cheese. Sometimes you'd come across a pretty big hole and there would actually be a tree growing out of it, which gave the impression of a city sidewalk. I thought at first that it was volcanic in nature, but we figured out later that it was all fossilized coral that had been smoothed out somewhat by the water. You could tell because sometimes it would be broken open to reveal these mazelike patterns.

The five-piece band we'd liked so much two nights before played that night in the dining area, because it was "Noche Cubana". That meant that all the food they served was traditional Cuban fare, and the servers all wore traditional Cuban costumes. We enjoyed the band over one too many glasses of red wine while we ate. It felt like a special night.

The band and some guy eating his dinner

I went for a bike ride by myself early the next morning, as the sun coming up had woken me and it looked like there'd be some nice light for photos.

A bus brings some early arrivals from the airport

A field off the road protected by a cactus fence

The beach before the sun-worshippers invade it

At 9:00 we went on a bicycle tour with five other people, two of whom were Jane and Bill. Jane hadn't been on a bike in awhile and fell over onto the pavement before she even started moving. It looked really painful, but she said she was all right. In fact, when I asked her a couple of days later about it, she said she'd escaped unscathed. I said I was sure she would have gotten a bad bruise, and she said she might have one on her bum but hadn't checked yet, which I thought was a little weird.

A guy who looked like Chris Murphy with long curly black hair and a Spanish accent led us down the highway about two miles to a tiny subdivision of apartment buildings. He explained a lot about Cuban life along the way, and showed us the market where the local people spend their government pesos. These are the non-convertible ones that are worth about one twentieth of the convertible ones. This market is in fact the only place where they are worth anything, and you use them to buy your month's allotment of staples like rice and beans, provided by the government. All other transactions are in convertible pesos, which go for $1.30 CDN. Our guide, Anger (pronounced ahn-ZHER) makes 25 pesos a month working at the resort. He said that people who work at such places are considered lucky because they make more than a lot of people and get fed and make tips. His mother is a school teacher and only makes 15 pesos a month. The village of kind of gross-looking apartments, he told us, is for people who are exceptional at their jobs and have been doing them for a long time. As a reward for this, the government allows you the privilege of buying one of these apartments, but you are never allowed to sell it. So you are, in effect, forced to live there for the rest of your life.

The bike tour

The rest of that day was more wandering, ping pong, and snorkelling. We ate dinner that night in one of the "a la carte" restaurants, the Cuban one. The food was really good, but we found it kind of weird that this restaurant which was pretending to be fancier than it actually was was decorated to look like a gentrified version of the impoverished houses we'd seen lots of on our bike trip — the kind most of the people working in the restaurant probably worked in. After dinner we felt kind of romantic from the wine and being dressed up, so we went for a night-time stroll on the beach. On returning, we were stopped by a beach security guard so that he might give Alison a present of this leaf-origami grasshopper he'd made.



It was intricate and beautiful, and we thanked him very much and he smiled widely. Ali asked me if I thought he'd expected us to give him something and I said probably and she started to cry, which made me feel like kind of a jerk but which I also found really nice after all the thinking and talking we'd done all day about injustice and given the fact that it was so delicate and sweetly given and that we probably would have to leave it behind when we returned to Canada. I said he probably was just bored, thought he'd make something clever he knew how to make, and gave it to someone at random as an act of kindness, and if he happened to make some money out of it that would just be icing on the cake. That made Ali feel better.

The rest of our time there was pretty much more of the same. We did go for a disappointing trip to Guardalavaca one day, where we'd thought we'd do some sightseeing. It turned out not to be a town, but just another resort with a market outside it where people were selling the same crap they sold at our slightly better resort. We also went for another long bike ride on which we again weren't sure where we were going. But this time we ended up at the other end of the path behind the trees we'd walked along before. A ping pong match with Jane and Bill was threatened all week long but never materialized. An old Italian guy on the beach with an iPod wouldn't stop singing at the top of his voice. We caught two lizards "doing it".

The perpetrators — kind of hard to see, I admit

On our last day there, we flushed all our previous cautiousness down the toilet by lying out in the sun for a couple of hours without any sunscreen on. Stupid, I know. We thought that since we were pretty tanned already it wouldn't hurt us. I got the worse dosage and am still regretting it today. My entire front got a bad burn, and my shoulders even blistered. I'm peeling like crazy now, and I have to wear long sleeves everywhere because my arms look like a rotting corpse. The one positive aspect of that episode was that the cold Halifax air was kind of refreshing when we got off the plane.

Now we've been back for a week, the old routine is in full gear again, and we're getting ready to move into our new place over the month of June. I can't really say I like moving, but getting rid of a large percentage of our crap is fairly exciting. Tomorrow we ruthlessly go through the books and magazines. If anyone actually made it this far, sorry to be such a bore. Thanks for listening.

- Andrew

Dang!

OK, it's gonna have to be tomorrow night. I just spent the whole evening getting photos off the digital camera and adjusting them in Photoshop.

I will tell you that we're definitely moving and that our rent and utilities are going to be more than double what we've been paying. Yoiks! But it's a way nicer place. We have it for June, but we're going to hang onto this place until July so we'll have a month over which to make the transition. One of the perks of super cheap rent.

I have to go to bed now, even though there's tons of stuff I'm itching to fill you in on. Tomorrow for sure.

- Andrew

It's been a week...

...since my last post, and there's plenty of stuff to talk about now that we're back home, but I haven't had any time yet to sit down and do it. However, a party that was supposed to happen tonight just got cancelled, so get ready for a major outpouring. Just so you're warned.

- Andrew

Shoot!

Well, we took a bunch of photos with the digital point & shoot, hoping to upload some onto the blog, but no go. For some reason, the camera won't show up as a possible location to find files on this computer. I think they have a pretty smart multiple-user interface going on that won't let you frig around with the system at all.

I can tell you that we did some more snorkelling today and took pictures this time. Alison borrowed this cool underwater automatic camera from her work. I won't know whether they turned out until we get them developed, though.

We also got some nice ones of vultures soaring around at sunset. They're all over the place here. Kind of creepy, but they also look like mini-condors, i.e. majestic and beautiful if you don't know what they are.

We met a nice couple in their early fifties named Jane and Bill, whose asses we are going to kick at ping pong tomorrow. I told Jane this place was pretty great, although it reminds me somewhat of an old people's home, and then we found out she works in an old people's home. Bill is a car salesman.

There's a really great band of five older guys who play here regularly, in the tres guitar, i.e. Isaac Oviedo style. Tonight was "Noche Cubana" in the dining room, meaning that all the food was Cuban, and the band played unamplified. It was really nice.

The crazy old piano guy is playing now as I type. He just finished "Volare" and is now into "It Had to Be You". It started out as a tempoless cascade of notes, and is now a boogie-woogie barrel roll. We'll have to give him a nice tip.

It's so weird, the huge gap between the rich white tourists and the extreme poverty that's only half a mile away from this place. We biked through it pretty extensively yesterday, getting lost along the way. I used to think the housing in Preston was kind of bad. Some of the people seem to welcome the tourists and others give you stony stares and look away when you wave and say "Hola." I would be one of those ones.

The big whoop-dee-doo piece of crap high school variety show is about to start, so I'll have to tell you more tomorrow. Stinks about the no pictures. Maybe I can find a way around it.

See ya.

- Andrew

There's a computer here!

Albeit, a pretty slow one, but still... Man are we ever having a fun time. So far we've snorkelled, biked around, played ping pong, laid on the beach, read a lot, worked on the crossword, listened to the birds singing off our balcony, eaten lots of decent and lots of weird food, checked out a crazy old piano player and a fantastic tres guitar quintet, and taken limited advantage of the free booze all the time. Tomorrow will be tennis and suntanning, with maybe another short bike ride in there. The day seems so long when you can do whatever you want. Weather's been impeccable and everyone here is friendly and helpful. I'll have to give you more interesting detail later, as we're on limited time here and dinner's almost being served and we're freakin' hungry because we didn't eat much lunch.

One thing, though. Danny, if you're reading this, could you give us Johanna's address? We wrote her a postcard but can't send it. 411canada.com doesn't seem to know her street number. You could just put a number in the comments, if you don't want anyone to be able to see her full address.

Pictures to come, maybe tomorrow. I've got a pretty good idea for one that I'm hoping will work out.

Talk to you soon.

- Andrew

Good Times Are Coming

The usual Wednesday lunchtime production meeting was postponed this week, which meant Meg and I got to treat ourselves to the Wednesday chirashi lunch special at Dharma Sushi. Yum — chirashi. If you don't know what it is, as I didn't until I ate it the first time, it's a big bowl of seasoned sticky rice with lots of different kinds of sashimi (the slabs of raw fish with nothing else) sitting on top, along with some ginger and wasabi. It's a pretty nice treat, let me tell you.

Ali and I did some more tanning after work and we're actually getting some colour! I fell asleep in the tanning bed and dreamed I was in a spaceship. When the timer ran out and the lights went off, I woke up with a start and didn't know at first why I was in a highly constrictive pod in my underwear. Yikes!

By the way, here's a sample of that Congotronics 2 stuff I was telling you about. It's a pretty intensely happy sound.



I remembered something else I was going to warn you about. Don't go to see The Benchwarmers. It really stinks. Pee-yew. I laughed at it somewhat, but I really was laughing AT it, if you know what I mean. Serious stinkbomb. Smell-o-rama. An olfactory assault. Gas masks required. The only good reason for seeing it is if you're having flatulence problems and don't want to be discovered.

Neither would I recommend Caché, a postmodern cerebral French film in which I fell asleep. As the title suggests there are hidden layers to the film, and you're pretty much forced as a viewer to look for them because there's really nothing going on on the surface. Unfortunately when you discover the not very sub subtext it's every bit as boring as the rest of the film. I was woken up momentarily by one incredibly violent scene out of nowhere, but soon drifted off again as the camera lingered motionless on its aftermath for an eternity. This is a motif that repeats throughout the movie, if absolute silence can be called a motif. Oh yeah, did I mention it's a thriller?

Two more days until Cuba; I still can't believe it. I can picture myself lying on the beach only in a third person, visual way. I can't imagine what it will feel like to be that person. I started loading up the mp3 player tonight, but something weird happened where it thinks its full even though there's still plenty of memory left. Too bad — I had the ultimate mix of classic good time tunes and obscure gems planned.

Last night's yoga class was the most intense we've ever had, and I'm kind of still recovering from it, so I'm off to rest my elongated muscles now. Probably won't blog again before we leave, so love and kisses to everyone, we'll take lots of pictures, and who knows, maybe there'll even be internet access in a hotel lobby somewhere...

Buenos noches.

- Andrew

This blogging business is hard work.

Let me say first off that I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update this thing. In Neil Postman's words, we've been amusing ourselves to death somewhat. The final season of Six Feet Under is well worth the price of admission, for anyone interested in such things. Keep a healthy supply of eco-friendly tissues on hand, though. Infinite Jest is so far hilariously entertaining, if/because extremely wordy. And the latest album about which I have to insist "Buy! Buy! Buy!" is Congotronics 2, a compilation of contemporary bands from the outskirts of Kinshasa, Congo who are similar only in that they all play amplified thumb pianos, among other kooky and not-so-kooky instruments, through homemade sound systems that produce a crazy distortion to whose rhythm it is impossible not to dance. Maybe I'll put up a sample next time.

I guess I've also been kind of avoiding the home computer because there's been some work I didn't want to do and felt like if I sat down with Mr. MacIntosh I would have to get it done before I could do anything else. But I finally finished it off today at work, so now I can do whatever the heck I like. The project was writing explicit instructions for Meg, my friend and coworker, on how to produce the used car newspaper insert I work on for two days every two weeks. It was sort of an excruciating, drawn-out effort that made me realize I was crazy if I ever thought I wanted to pursue technical writing as a career. However, it's done now, which means Meg will be able to do the work next week, which means I can GO TO CUBA!!!

That's right — we've booked a trip to Holguin, where we stay at an all-inclusive resort for a week, and we leave this Friday. I can't really believe we're going and probably won't until the plane has landed. We've never really taken a "real" vacation together, so it's super duper exciting. There's a lot to do before we leave, though. This evening, for instance, we had to lie in tanning beds for eight minutes so we won't get a Canadian-style burn on our first day there and spend the rest of the week in agony. We also wanted to get our taxes done and sent off before leaving, but as I haven't done mine for 10 years now (shhhhh), I tried to take them to H&R Block, who said they would charge me about $700 to do them for me, so it looks like I'll be taking them with me for some rainy day fun. I'm not sure whether it was H or R I was talking to, but she also told me impatiently that I wouldn't be able to stay there and watch her while she did them. I don't really understand why she thought I would have any desire to do that. Wouldn't I just do them myself if having them done professionally involved my observation? Anyway, that's what is happening now, so I suppose it's a null point.

Let's see... what else?

Tim was down for a visit last week and we got to see him a few times, including at a softball practice, in the smokiest bar that has ever existed in a not-purely-for-torture capacity, and at various unanticipated times and locations around the city, which last was probably the nicest as it made us feel like he still lives here.

Speaking of softball, did I mention before that I'm going to coach some little kids on softball technique with a friend of mine this summer? Maybe I did; I can't remember and am too tired to check. But I'm really looking forward to it, anyway.

Continuing to speak of softball, Meg has agreed to try playing on our team this year, which is great news because a) she is awesome and b) we need another girl or two. Weekly practices will begin this coming Sunday, but of course I won't be here. I wonder if I should bring my glove to Cuba? Baseball's pretty big there, I gather.

I helped my friend Charles work on his new recording studio yesterday. It was the first time I'd been down there, and it's coming along really nicely. Looks like it's going to be a great spot — much bigger than the Mullet was and it's actually being built according to a design. I can't wait to see — and hear — it up and running.

We're probably going to be moving into that new place on Maynard at the beginning of June, so we're starting to look at getting rid of stuff. If we could reduce the quantity of our belongings by about half, I'd be happy. Anyone have any use for some moth-eaten sweaters and a box of used ice cream buckets? Danny, I'm looking at you.

I found some yoga poses designed specifically for my twisted old spine, and they seem to make my back feel pretty good. I recently had x-rays done and found that my scoliosis is even weirder than I'd thought, as my spine not only bends one way and then back the other, but it also twists around its own axis all the way down. Basically, it looks like a modern roller coaster. But so maybe these poses, and possibly a trip to a chiropractor, will help me not to be a hunchback by age 50.

There's probably still more things I have to tell you, but if so they'll just have to wait until next time. Whew.

- Andrew

This Just In: Not Much Going On

I can't believe how little has happened in the past seven days. It seems like staying up late last Sunday after the you-know-what-o's and having a couple of beers pretty much threw me out of whack for the entire week. I was often cranky and stressed out at work, and never felt like doing much besides watching Season Four of Six Feet Under when I got home. There was no yoga class on Tuesday, so that might have had something to do with it. What if it turns out that yoga is actually bad for you, and only seems healthy because after awhile you start feeling sub-par if you don't do it, as with any addiction? Maybe in twenty years we'll see yoga instructors vilified in court just as harshly as the tobacco industry recently has been.

The SFU, by the way, is a season we already saw, but the fifth and final season recently came out and we wanted to be completely clued in before watching it. Season Four really held up to our intense and hungry scrutiny; the writing on that show is so terrific, as is the entire cast. We took the box set out for an extra week, but didn't end up needing it, and now we've begun watching Season Five.

Lest you think our time has been entirely unproductive, here's a couple of photos from a roll of film Alison finally finished off and got developed. The first is the parking lot outside the movie theatre from when we went to see The New World back in February. I think I told you about that. Oh yes, here it is: "When we got out of the film 2.5 hours later, the sun had just gone down and this really weird fog had settled everywhere. The giant yellow sulfur parking lot lights above it were creating purple haze without the drugs or feedback, and the sky was a brilliant indigo with a bright half moon right in the centre. It was really beautiful and Ali got a picture of it, but unfortunately it's analog on a roll of 36, so it won't be available for some time."

The second photo is a pair of shoes Ali spotted in a store window and had to document so that I would believe her. It's called "Let Me Check".

Also, I wrote a poem. It's sort of an ode, inspired by my dinner one night:
The mushroom is
A delicious fungus.
If you only eat one,
It should be humongous.

Krista suggested I do a whole series of them which could be made into a children's book. I think it's a fabulous idea. I would call it A Child's Garden of Vegetables, illustrations by Alison Beckett. Anyone have any suggestions for material?

We did some laundry today and went to the nearby bookstore while waiting for the dryers to finish, what with the hippy café being kaput and all. I picked up John Ralston Saul's On Equilibrium so I'll have it available for lending when anyone shows any interest in it, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I've been meaning to read the latter for a long time and by the sheer physical weight of it I think that's exactly what I will be doing. Seems like it's going to be pretty entertaining, though. Then there was an impromptu pre-season softball practice after laundry, and everyone was looking real good. It felt great to get some exercise outdoors, even though it was sort of cold and quite grey.

Oh of course, how could I forget? I also went to see a band from Montreal called Torngat play at Gus' Pub on Friday night. It was a really late night in a really smoky bar, for which I'm still paying today, but completely worth it. They're three multi-instrumentalists who make a huge experimental post-rock sound with drums, french horn, various keyboards and effect pedals, trumpet, and even sometimes a xylophone. Pretty exciting stuff and all for just five bucks, which included two other bands as well. My friends Meg and Tomomi were there too and we all super loved it.

But tonight it's early to bed for me, so au revoir for now.

- Andrew

I swear this is the last I'll have to say about the freakin' Junos.

So, as some astute observers noticed, Rich's in-ear monitors were not working at the beginning of the show last night. No one knows why, but I suspect sabotage. Because he was wearing specially made ones that were molded to the contours of his ears, the lack of any signal meant he actually couldn't hear a single thing. Once he popped them out, he could hear the sound coming through the speakers, but that was significantly delayed -- hence his behind-the-beat delivery. I also noticed on carefully analysing the videotape of the show that I got fairly gypped in the mix. Kind of a bummer to offer such a mediocre performance after so much preparation, but at least he got all the words in and didn't end up doing a little elf dance à la Ashley Simpson.

After that little ordeal was over, Rich's equipment was working fine again, and we had a great time watching a lot of the show from the floor. Coldplay were really great, and it was very surreal to be in the same room with Chris Martin, Pamela Anderson, and Bryan Adams all at the same time. Broken Social Scene came off a lot better live than they sounded on TV.

Our friend Krista was with us checking out the special appearances and hanging out backstage. Coldplay took off as soon as they were done, so we took over their dressing room, which had a television for watching the show. There had been some beers in our dressing room at one point, which had later gone missing, and we discovered them there, though I'm not pointing any fingers. There was also some delicious food which the sensitively anthemic Brits had very kindly neglected to eat.

Besides the performance going slightly awry, the other bummers of the evening were that I couldn't find the media centre until the ET people were gone and so didn't get to meet Cheryl Hickey; that I wasn't given one of the prestigious swag bags worth $5,000 that most of the nominees and performers got; and that Alison didn't think to bring her camera out onto the floor — she's pulling the last two hairs out of her scalp as I write this. Highlights were the Coldplay/Kraftwerk song; finally meeting Rich's fiancée, Claire, and his family; hearing Pamela Anderson get booed; hearing Jann Arden's retort get cheered; peeing in Coldplay's toilet; and getting to hang out with an awesome bunch of friends. Here are some backstage photos:

Don't ask me what the heck was going on here. That's Claire in the background.

Here's me; Rich's manager, Piers; Rich; Rich's other manager, Nick; and Charles in the dressing room.

Ali and Krista freaking out in front of "Dplay's" dressing room.

No beer tastes better than the beer that Coldplay steals from you and then you steal back once they're safely out of the building.

- Andrew

Best Minute and Forty-Four Seconds Ever

That's what you're going to see tomorrow night at 7:00 EDT. Well, maybe not REALLY, but I've gotta pump myself up a little. I am quite excited about it and it should go off without a hitch. We've practiced it many many times now, out of and then in the Metro Centre where the awards show is happening. Yesterday morning was three and a half hours of rehearsing the performance over and over again, with about fifteen minutes of staring into space in between each time, while the technical people sorted out camera angles and sound and technical type things. Ben Mulroney and his female e-Talk Daily counterpart, whatever her name is, were spotted sniffing around and filming some little incidental segments. He has a very large head.

I thought I'd probably be meeting Pamela Anderson somewhere in there, but now realize that the closest I'll come to her will be when the actual show happens and she steps onto a stage about 50 feet from ours as we finish our bit. Not that I was especially keen to meet her or anything, but I did have myself kind of psyched up to be as normal as possible and follow Alison's advice of "look her in the eye". But they really have the whole shenanigan planned out so that the high-level and low-level celebrities are kept well away from each other in both time and space. However, Coldplay's dressing room is right across from ours, next to the garbage storage area. I don't know what that means.

One "celebrity" I will get to meet is Cheryl Hickey. A woman who used to live in the apartment above us in Halifax, and now lives in Toronto, showed up at the bar where we were with some friends last night, and turns out to be working for Entertainment Tonight Canada. I told her, truthfully, that I think the show is a lot more interesting than its American counterpart, and revealed my embarassing but not insignificant crush on Ms. Hickey, the main host. Yeah, yeah, I know. So she says, "Well, you should come by the media area at the show. We'll be there, and you can meet her." Yikes! Hilarious, weird, and awesome.

This whole town has gone Juno crazy and there've been all sorts of shows and parties, most of which Ali and I have successfully avoided. The one last night at the bar I mentioned was The Self-Conscious, Mike O'Neill's new band. I think I've already raved about them on here, but no harm in saying it was really really enjoyable. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. The place was a madhouse of squashed together bodies, many from out of town. Normally, that would be a definite minus, but I kept running into people I know and everyone was so keyed up and full of good will that the mood was pretty infectious.

The evening before that was a free outdoor concert in the Grand Parade (Toronto translation: = Nathan Phillips Square), starring Joel Plaskett and Matt Mays. We couldn't wait for the Mays set, but Joel had the enormous crowd (4,000?) in the palm of his hand as he belted it out and pontificated Springsteen-style about the meaning of a hometown. Shameless Hali-pride pandering abounded. Hundreds of little kids were lifted onto as many pairs of shoulders. Many balloons were lost forever to the clear twilit sky. It was great.

And tomorrow night promises to be no less of a spectacle. Unfortunately, Rich's entourage seems to somehow be short a couple of tickets for the show, which means that both Charles and I have to give up our seats in order for our significant others to be able to attend. So you may catch glimpses of us after our opening bit, milling around down in the general admission section in front of the performance stages. I'll be the one punching the air to the Black Eyed Peas.

This whole thing has sure been a good time, and I'm pretty excited about tomorrow night. Playing with Rich again and getting to spend some time with him and Charles has been really nice -- I wish we could do some more of it. And I'm getting paid very handsomely too, even after you subtract the musicians' union's penalty for not being a member. Man, I hate that union. See you on the red carpet, maybe, I'm not sure, probably not.

- Andrew

Loose Ends

Finally, here is the Joni Mitchell song I was raving about a few posts ago. I had to create a new Castpost account to get it to work.

I forgot to mention yesterday that it seems Neuseiland will be playing a show soon. Tim's coming down from Toronto for a visit, and there's been talk about an April 13 gig, though I don't believe anyone has actually set anything up yet. Hmm, someone should probably do that... Well, we'll see what happens. Looking forward to seeing Tim, at least.


I feel today like I'm coming down with a cold. I bought some Cold-FX, so I should be OK, but say a prayer to the pagan god of your choice for me. If I come down with this flu that seems to have knocked out my entire family, and then have to play the Junos, there's gonna be hell to pay for the Ontario contingent. OK, chances are slim that I would actually have contracted the virus via some indirect and circuitous route traceable to one of them, but you never know.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that we went to Mitchell Wiebe's art opening at The Speakeasy on Saturday night. He had all sorts of great new material up, which I wish we could afford to purchase some of. We had just been saying the other day that we hadn't seen any of his recent paintings in a long time, so it was nice to see what he's up to. I guess you could say it's a continuation in the same vein he's been working for years, but you'd be using a pretty broad definition of the word "vein" in that case. He's always full of surprises, both funny and fear-inspiring.

- Andrew

We've been busy little bees.

Holy cow, it's been over a week since my last real post. I realized it because we did laundry again today and made some really nice sock balls. The excellent and inexpensive, hippy-run, mostly vegan restaurant above and beside the laundromat has closed down because I guess they didn't pay the rent. Sigh. Stupid, disorganized hippies. I asked the laundry guy about it and he said the building owners will be reopening it in about two weeks with all new staff, because those people were "a bunch of gypsies." When I laughed nervously at that, he said they were seriously disgusting pigs. I guess we can say goodbye to the refritos and Grateful Dead every Sunday morning.

Coincidentally, there was also a Joni Mitchell special from a few years ago on TV tonight. It was really good. Sorry I never could get that song from a couple of posts back working. None of our Castpost files were working, so I removed some, and now the YouTube video from that post doesn't work either! The internet's all screwed up, man.

I guess quite a lot has been going on since last we one-way communicated. Alison's whole photography gear deal got changed again, with the guy deciding he does want to hang onto most of his equipment except for one digital camera, so Cuba is now back on. I've taken the week of April 24th off. Also, the same guy has decided to sell his laptop, so Ali will be purchasing a pretty new G4 12" iMac! Very exciting. I'll have this beautiful G3 tower all to myself, muah ah aaaaahhh.

Rehearsals for the Junos have gotten underway, and it's sounding pretty sweet. I'm going to go in on my lunch hour every day this week to keep running through it with Charles and Rich until it's like Happy Birthday to us. It'll be the most practiced minute-and-a-half piece of music ever. Dress rehearsal is Friday. Incidentally, it was Charles's birthday yesterday and we went over for some cake and socializin'. His daughter Ava carried the cake in to him while we all sang the HB song as slowly as humanly possible. It was some cute, I tell ya.

We looked at an apartment today that's right under that of our friends Krista and Keith. It's gorgeous, and we're definitely going to take it unless the landlady decides to jack up the rent, even though it's currently more than twice as much as what we're paying here. We can afford it, and it has a nice back yard with gardens, a sunroom, a gas stove, and washer and dryer. Plus, there's plenty of storage space and it's right under the K's. A short hop from the Common too, for convenient access to softball games in the summer.

Oh yeah, that's another thing. I don't think I already told you this. My friend and softball teammate, Jen, ran into Alison on the street awhile ago, and described this dream she'd recently had wherein she was the coach of a little league softball team. She said she woke up so happy that she realized it was something she really wanted to do. But the thought of coaching a team all by herself was a little daunting, so she immediately thought of getting me to do it with her. When Ali told me about it, I thought it was one of the best ideas I'd heard in a long time, and couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to me before. So now Jen has put the call in to some guy who's in charge of such things, and we're just waiting to hear what can be done. One possible problem is that neither of us has a car. But we do both live really near the Common, so if all the games took place there... I really hope it happens; I'm quite psyched about the possibility.

Anything else? Hmm, I think that's about it. What more do you want out of a week? I spent about four days synthesizing the sound I needed on my keyboard for this Juno performance. There was a lot of random feeling around in the dark, not knowing whether I was getting closer or farther from the guide track Graeme had laid down, and it really had me pulling my hair out until I realized that the key was to make it sound like a rubber band being plucked. After that, I narrowed in on it pretty quickly and got it honed exactly how I wanted it. I'm glad I did, too. It's a very versatile sound, based on one of Kraftwerk's key signature timbres.

Working on it gave me a whole new respect for those guys. They really knew what they were doing -- you'd never just stumble upon this sound, because if you change it a little bit in almost any direction, it becomes completely wrong. Actually, I noticed that you can hear that sound slowly evolve with each consecutive album, starting with Autobahn. They don't quite have it yet on that one -- it still sounds a little cartoony -- but by Trans Europe Express it's very solid and they make significant use of it. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but I believe Autobahn is also the last album on which they used flute, converting themselves into a purely electronic band. It's as if they said, "Screw the flute, we've got rubber bands now."

I also had this flash of realization/memory that when I was very young I used to enjoy hooking elastic bands around bureau handles and other things to make "guitars". I could listen to and experiment with that sound all day long. Maybe that early musical experience unconsciously influenced my adolescent love of Kraftwerk! I'm now planning a recording involving actual rubber bands. My dream is to put together a full rubber band band. Maybe the drummer could play balloons.

So, in conclusion: no more hippies or expensive camera gear; Junos, laptop, Cuba, little league, and moving are all a go; Joni Mitchell and rubber bands rule. Have a nice week.

- Andrew

Yeah, this is REALLY boring! Who made it up?

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to it).
3. Find the 5th sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

Boring, boring result:
And not only not want to do it, but regularly act in an unhealthy way, based on my not wanting?

More Morbid Reminiscence

I'm obsessed lately with this Joni Mitchell song from the 70's. About a week ago, I started waking up with it in my head every day, and it's a pretty freaking complicated tune, so you can't just go around humming or whistling it when that happens. Believe me, I tried. I've heard it said that when you have a tune stuck in your head you should put it on and listen to it all the way through, because it's just your brain trying to work out how the whole thing goes and once it's heard the actual song it'll lay off. Well, so I did that and it actually brought me to tears. I don't think I've ever heard such a succint, rich, universal expression of the sadness and hope that is the human condition: It's a lonely life and, what's worse, you have no one to blame but yourself. But you are also the only one with the ability to turn it around. Very buddhist, actually.

Anyway, that didn't work at all and now it's almost always in my head. I remember going through about a year of this with the album Heijira back in the early 90's. Hopefully this one will be a little more short-lived. Yesterday morning I forced Ali to sit down and listen to it, and immediately burst into tears again. Enjoy:

[Well, I can't get this stinkin' thing working. Something's gone terribly wrong with Castpost. It was Down to You, off Court and Spark. You should go listen to it. Everyone has that album, right?]

And, in case the short glimmer of blue skies at the end was not enough upliftingness for you, here's a really nice piece of nostalgia I discovered on a pretty great site called YouTube. The ending's different from what I remember, but Ali tells me there were a few different ones. Just as well -- that handful of powder stands out as one my sadder childhood memories. Love those sweeping shots from within the contraption.


- Andrew

Laundering Money

Of course there's lots of craaayzee shenanigans going on as always, but I only want to quickly mention a couple of things:

1. We did our laundry tonight, as we do about once a week, and I think I noticed something very interesting, which no one ever talks about. I believe it is a general fact of human nature that everyone likes packing up the socks. The rest of the folding is a huge pain in the ass, but I'll do it willingly because I know when I get through it I'll be let at that pile of socks just waiting to be paired up and made into tidy little balls. Why is that such a gratifying activity? My theory is that it makes us feel incredibly intelligent to know we can successfully find the right match for each one, like kids playing the memory game, and then earn the reward of creating an entirely new thing out of the two matches. And I think this is a universal truth. Please correct me if I'm mistaken, though.

Speaking of hosiery, we were wondering on the weekend, due to a misleading crossword clue, whether "hose," as in stockings, is singular or plural. You can't say, "I am wearing a hose," right?

2. It's looking like we're probably not going to take that Cuba vacation after all. Alison's been trying to get a bank loan to buy all this photographic equipment at a good rate from a guy she knows well, but they won't go for it because she has no credit history. No history is good history, I say, but they don't see it that way. So I guess we'll have to use our savings to cover it. Which is a very worthy thing to be spending our savings on; it just means we won't have enough for a big whoop-dee-doo trip after all. We'll probably figure out some kind of cottage rental or something instead, and save the whoop-dee-doo for later.

I don't think that was actually the second thing I was going to mention, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. I am very tired and definitely shouldn't stay up to watch The Office, but that's exactly what I'm going to do because I don't see enough of people acting like insensitive boobs to comic effect during the day.

- Andrew

Performance

Hey, folks. Don't feel much like blogging this evening. Just finished doing a bunch of freelance and brought-home design work, and now I'm trying to get to bed. But here's an illustrated depiction of my solo show on Thursday night.






It was very low-key and quiet. Pretty intense, actually. I've kind of figured out that I don't really like playing solo and that the only people I would just as soon see play solo as with a band are Billy Bragg, Joni Mitchell, and Thelonious Monk. I'll probably think of others later. But anyway, I might want to try it one more time with an mp3-player loaded with backing tracks, to see if that's any more fun. Lest you think it didn't go over well, though, it did. All twelve audience members had a real nice time.

We went to see the Super Friendz last night, which was fantastic, as one would expect, and Mike O'Neill opened for them with his new band, i.e. drummer, which was also fantastic and a rare treat as he hasn't performed live in some time. Good to see him in top form and enjoying himself. The show was at the Grawood, which is a really weird student bar at Dalhousie. Loud, dark, and kind of unpleasant. Cheap beers, though.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend. We had incredibly warm weather for this time of year, and spent a lot of time walking around in it. Now I'm tired and must rest my corporeal form. Have a nice night!

- Andrew

What Have I Done?

Yesterday, at the coffee shop I visit at least once a day, the guy behind the counter told me he has a solo acoustic show coming up there on Thursday and asked me if I could do an opening set for him. He knows I play music, y'see, although I think that's pretty much the extent of his knowledge about the subject, so it was pretty nice of him to just invite me sound unheard. So I said (gulp) yes! Now I have to come up with enough songs I know how to play and figure out how to play them in a solo vein. I'm actually kind of excited about it; gonna throw some oldies into the mix. And it'll be good practice embarassing myself in front of people for the upcoming Junos.

On the weekend, Ali and I got to catch up with a bunch of people we haven't seen in a long time due to winter hibernation. There was a party on Friday night which was pretty mellow and really nice, and then on Sunday we went for a walk in the park with Charles and Kelly, their two little girls, Lee Anne, and her dog. I feel like I never spend any time with Charles anymore, but I guess we'll be hanging out a fair amount in preparation for the aforementioned J-awards. Alison brought her new digital camera along but couldn't get it working. However, we figured it out back at home and did a quick experimental series. Enjoy.

One more thing: if you ever feel like laughing uncontrollably, ask Alison to do her rendition of this year's Oscar winner for best song, It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp. I swear it's even funnier than the original.

- Andrew

Ketchup

Hey. Long time no blog. How's it going? Here too.

I guess we've been pretty busy, as usual. Mostly it's been the fun kind of busy, though. Last weekend we went bowling with Meg and her sister, Litsko. It was really a blast. I had been bragging about what a great bowler I am and the first four balls I bowled all went in the gutter. I gradually worked my way back up to my own standards, though. The beer may have helped. We had to wait a long time to get a lane, so there was a bit of an intersibling air hockey tournament. And I don't know why we're squishing poor Meg's head in the last photo here. She didn't even win.





We also went to a dance party the same night, in the space that is soon to become the store of our friends Sherry and Jay. That was a lot of fun, at least until Joe the de facto DJ blew out one of the speakers and started playing the same terrible tracks over and over again and wouldn't let anyone else on the stereo. We left pretty soon after that, but I guess people were there until around 5:30 or 6. Sheesh!

This week at work has been super hectic, but at least Meg's back. However, someone was also fired so it's pretty much as busy as when she was on vacation. These random firings seem to always happen right after we've hired someone new, and for some reason always just as Meg gets back from vacation. Weird, spooky, and very very sad.

Speaking of vacation, Ali and I are trying to plan one for around the end of April. We want to go to some kind of all-inclusive resort in a warm place for a week, figuring it'll be cheaper at that time of year. Anyone got any suggestions of where to go? (Please don't say Mexico.) I'm thinking Cuba would be pretty cool...

I am, by the way, definitely going to be playing with Rich at the Junos. So everybody set your VCR's to record on Sunday, April 2nd at 8:00 pm Atlantic Time (7:00 Eastern). Don't forget to put a tape in! Or that the VCR has to be turned off. That's the one that always gets me. Also, I think that's the day we start Daylight Savings, so don't even ask me to figure that out.

I've hardly had any time for reading lately, but when I have it's been spent on The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon. You may remember that I was saving that one like a compulsive weirdo until I'd finished some other, less immediately gratifying works, but I finally gave in about a month ago. It's incredibly rich and funny and emotionally compelling and just a really really great read. Two adolescent cousins in the thirties, one a recent American immigrant from Czechoslovakia, and the other a fatherless latent homosexual, invent a superhero called The Escapist, modelled on Houdini, and start a comic book early in the history of the form. Meanwhile, the Second World War looms. That's the plot, anyway, but the reason to read the book is the writing, which is warm and generous, witty and unassuming. In summary, me like.

That's 'er fer now. Going to scarf down some pizza and watch an episode of The Larry Sanders Show before working on some freelance design. Take care, cheerio, etc.

- Andrew

I have seen the future of intimate suppertime jazz...

I finally got to the end of that lengthy bit of Halipunk nostalgia. Whew! Of course, it keeps getting added to every day, so if I don't stay on top of it I'll quickly be behind again. But I think it's kind of jumped the shark at this point anyway. How many more stories can I read that go "Remember at that party at A's house when B did way too much C and broke his or her D trying to smash E? I wonder if he or she is still alive."? I will be listening to Steve and Lee Anne's memorial radio show, though.

Tonight Ali and I went out after work with our friend Meg and her sister Litsuko, who's visiting from Detroit. They wanted to hear some jazz so after eating we headed over to the SoHo Kitchen to check out the Chalmers Doane Trio (a quartet, oddly enough). I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, as I'm pretty picky when it comes to jazz, and after two Sunday Editions in a row where Michael Enright debated whether jazz stinks I'd kind of come to the conclusion that although there is some jazz I love, I definitely sympathise more with those on the stinking side of the argument. In fact, even typing the word "jazz" that many times is kind of making me nauseous. But so anyway, it ended up being a really nice time. The guys (and gal) playing were pretty old and obviously just in it for a good time. It was very lightweight, which could mean terrible, but it managed to find a small, enjoyable position for itself in a little known territory between unobtrusive background music and uninspired improv. Meaning that it didn't force itself on you, but if you chose to pay attention, there was something pleasant waiting to reward you. Maybe it was the ukulele; I don't know. They were just having such obvious fun, without being overly ostentatious about it. We happened to meet up with a friend of Meg's and Alison's from the community college and her amusingly ditzy British chum, all sat at one table, and had a real nice time. And when the band was through, Chalmers came over to our table and thanked us for coming out, which I thought was pretty classy.

- Andrew

How I Misspent My Adulthood Remembering How I Misspent My Youth

So, I was pretty much the entire weekend poring over this tome. It's a really really long thread on the Halifax Locals message board in which pretty much everyone who ever went to Backstreet Amusements video arcade in the late '80s reminisces about, well, pretty much whatever. Thanks a lot, Sandra. Highly entertaining, even though I don't even know who most of the people on it are. I was around just enough during that time and have met enough locals since then to make a complete reading absolutely necessary to quench my historical curiosity. Plus, new people keep showing up along the way, who then have to go through the oh-my-god-can-you-believe-this-thing-it's-so-great- remember-when routine. And then everyone else is happily surprised to hear from them. It's quite fascinating and heartwarming, actually. So really thanks a lot, Sandra, without the sarcasm this time. Now I just have to get through the last 25 pages.

Note to Dana: Someone mentions at one point Callah and Natalie, who were always together. Must be the same ones, right?

Note to Johanna: There's a very nice, not at all embarassing photo of you at some party on page 87.

In other news, we got a visit from our friend Matt today. He came down from Toronto for a very short vacation with Laura and to try and get some kind of intership somewhere in Halifax for the summer. So we got to have lunch with him at the Shoe Shop, which was really nice but way too short. It was great to catch up with him. Seems like J-school's treating him well and he's enjoying the big city. Too bad our waiter was sort of an inept bozo. After lunch I took him up to my office to show him around. Matt, not the inept waiter.

The weather was certainly colder over the weekend than it's been. On Sunday the wind was whipping so hard around our poor little rowhouse that we were sure it was going to smash in a back window and blow us right out the front. Neither one of us was feeling very well, but we finally agreed that it was about time to take the screen out of our bedroom window and put up the plastic that allows the room temperature to approach the thermometer setting. Once that had been done, we felt fully justified in getting back into bed and spending the rest of the morning with "The Sunday Edition". That Michael Enright was cracking me up. He has definitely grown on me. For a long time I thought he was a total boob, but now I realize that he just plays the fool in a really dry way for entertainment's sake, and to draw thoughtful, coherent responses out of his guests. Though sometimes I'm still not convinced he's putting it on. But at least it doesn't drive me crazy anymore. I like how he ends every episode by saying, "I'm Michael Enright?..."

Gotta hit the hay now. Well, after I read a couple more pages of the Backstreet Boys' (and Girls') Proustian recollections: A la recherche des quarts perdus — Book I: Clarke's Way.

- Andrew

I got a real red wagon!

Last night for belated Valentine's Day we watched A Mighty Wind (again) and busted a gut over delicious Chinese food and a couple of beers. Fred Willard is the funniest unfunny guy ever!

- Andrew

The Aristocrats!

They were gone completely for awhile, but now they're back with new outfits on. You can't exactly tell from the photo, but the father is at least wearing pants this time. I'm not sure why the kids are still bare-bottomed. Cylindrica the cat doesn't mind, as long as she gets to sit on someone's lap.

- Andrew

I Love Sundays

So, Ali got home from the photo shoot on Saturday, and she brought back a sample portrait. They were shooting kids and babies sitting at a table, and she was required to sit in for some lighting measurements:


The next day we got a dumpload of snow. We decided to venture out and get some movies so we could be entertained while the weather raged outside. It was kind of fun walking around in it, but I was glad to get back into the house, where I could warm up with a hot bath.


We got a really nice email from our friend Matt in Toronto, to which a response is forthcoming, listened to some Sunday Edition and some Sonic Youth (Washing Machine -- man, that last song is long!), and spent some quality time with the DVD player. Junebug - sentimental and surprisingly lacking in surprises, but pretty worthwhile; The Aristocrats - entertaining, for a completely juvenile documentary, but don't watch while eating dinner. Even managed to see a bit of the winter olympics. Snowboarding. Those guys are so not athletes -- just a bunch of stoners. But I enjoyed watching it. It's really weird hearing the commentators talk seriously about the boarders' "old-school stylee". REALLY weird. Almost as weird as Brian Williams repeatedly referring to the central area of the opening ceremonies as the "mosh pit".

Stupid, stupid internet!

I put this post up around four days ago wherein I asked if anyone knew the origin of a certain saying, and I was wondering why no one had responded, then I realized yesterday that it had disappeared! Weird. It was definitely there before.

The saying is, "Know thyself, and to thine own heart be true." It just suddenly popped into my head the other day and struck me as incredibly wise. I like that you get the (fairly standard) advice to be true to yourself, or rather to that part of yourself to which it's particularly important to listen, but before even doing that you're advised to first know yourself. I think that's a step that a lot of people skip without realizing it. So anyway, DOES anyone know where it's from? I'd really like to see it in the original context. My admittedly lazy googling has turned up a lot of: 1) "some guy once said.." or 2) "As Shakespeare says..." (Through which character? In which play?), and that's only putting in one of the two connected clauses at a time. The entire quote has apparently only ever been written once on the internet. It's unattributed, and the writer in fact says, "At least I think that's how it goes. Email me if I'm wrong." Type it in quotation marks if you don't believe me.

In other news: I got a raise! My bosses finally gave me the review that I was supposed to have at the end of December, and gave me a raise that is retroactive from that date. Yeah! Free money!

Alison's been working a lot lately too, doing a lot of photo assisting, which she is in fact doing right now, on top of her work for the government, or "the glub glub gang," as we like to call them. So I guess we'll be smoking big cigars and taking limos everywhere for a little while.

Thumbsucker: see it! It never came here when it was in theatres, but it's finally out on DVD so we rented it, and I really really liked it. The main actor is great at being awkward. The director is Miranda July's boyfriend. So you know it's good. Even Keanu Reeves doesn't suck in it.

The Junos: I may be on them. They're here this year, and Buck 65 will be playing, and my services may be required. Maybe I shouldn't say anything in such a public forum, but what the hell. It looks fairly certain, though I've probably just jinxed it. I'll keep you posted.

Dream: I was reading the newspaper, and I could actually see and remember what the headline said. It was, "Royal Targets Empathy: Sentences Even Samosas." Doesn't that sound like a cryptic crossword clue?

Cold weather: sucks. But I shouldn't complain, 'cause we really haven't had much. But brrrrrr!

Ali's home now. Gotta go warm up.

- Andrew

P.S. Sorry no snaps or sounds. Gotta get out more.

Weekend "Activity"

Yesterday Ali and I went to see The New World. It was pretty great, in the usual Terrence Malick style: slow-paced and meditative, hardly any plot, lots of being inside characters' heads to hear their most mystical thoughts, gorgeous majesty-of-nature shots between every scene change. Too bad it had to be Colin Farrell, but he did a reasonable job. We had to take a bus out to the big-box industrial park to see the movie and we somehow got on the wrong bus. Neither one of us really knows that end of town at all, so we didn't realize it was the wrong bus until we came back to the same mall for the third time. We had to get off and catch another bus, which we almost missed because it was confusingly called "Out of Service," and then the mob of people at the theatre nearly made us late. I'm not really sure what they were all there to see, but it certainly wasn't our movie.

When we got out of the film 2.5 hours later, the sun had just gone down and this really weird fog had settled everywhere. The giant yellow sulfur parking lot lights above it were creating purple haze without the drugs or feedback, and the sky was a brilliant indigo with a bright half moon right in the centre. It was really beautiful and Ali got a picture of it, but unfortunately it's analog on a roll of 36, so it won't be available for some time.

The bus home wasn't for another half hour or so, so we went into the Chapters across the lot and perused the mags. Alison found a decent photography one, and I was excited to discover Seed, my favourite magazine, which I thought had gone under since I hadn't seen an issue for about a year. It's a great science-for-people-who-have-a-working- knowledge-of-science-but-think-that-there-are-other-important-ways -of-looking-at-the-world-too publication, and this particular one has an article by Daniel Dennett, my favourite rationality-biased philosopher, who talks about the need for scientists to bring religion under the microscope. I guess it's taken from a new book of his which I will now have to track down. There's also a fascinating piece explaining how new brain cell growth has been related inversely to stress, meaning that people born into poverty and other hardships may be at an actual biological disadvantage.

So today is reading and crossword day. Next time I'll tell you about this great novel I finally allowed myself to start reading and now can't put down. Hint: it's not the Michael Crichton one about eco-terrorists that my boss loaned me.

- Andrew

Another Dream

I was at a bar having a drink with one of my bosses, who was sitting across from me. We were both in easy chairs, talking comfortably. My boss started getting more relaxed and took his shoes off. Then he started stretching his legs out while he was talking, so that one of his feet was pressing into my shin. Then he stretched out even further, until his entire foot was in my face, pressing my head back, his big toe poking into my eye. I finally had to say, "Could you at least wait until we're back in the office to do that?" Then I started laughing so hard at my own joke that I woke up.

- Andrew

Good excuse for antisocial insularity this time.

[Paranoid by Black Sabbath was here, but I'm taking all the copyrighted material off our Castpost account in the hopes that it will work again. Wish me luck. 3/27/06]

I guess I've officially joined the iPod generation. I know it's just one more way we're all keeping each other from infiltrating our mental space. But here in Halifax, we're having one of those major snowstorms today, the kind where it looks like there's a real thick fog preventing you from seeing anything, and then when you finally catch a glimpse of something it's nothing but pure white anyway. I'm the only one at work right now because everyone figured it would be OK to come in late, but I had to get something over to the newspaper first thing. When you think of me walking the deserted blocks of biblical weather in my rubber boots, listening to this on my mp3 player and feeling like some kind of really tough pioneer, you can probably imagine the smile that wouldn't disappear even if I wanted it to. Check out that guitar solo where the melody is in one ear and the distortion in the other! Wow.

Then this Cuban guy, Isaac Oviedo, came on playing quiet tres guitar and singing croakily and it was somehow even better. There's something about Cuban music that always goes great with snowy Canadian winters. And not just in some ironic, juxtaposed way, either. It's like the relaxed polyrhythms perfectly match the rhythms of the snowflakes falling or something. If I live to be 200 I'll never even pretend to understand it.

- Andrew

I have seen the future of rock 'n roll...

Wow. You gotta check out this Norwegian band, Serena Maneesh. OK, maybe I'm a little behind the times, as I guess this self-titled record that's got me all excited came out last August, but it's really hard to get over here. So hard to get, I had to track it down through not-entirely-legal means, if you know what I'm saying, but don't worry, I'm going to have my local record shoppe order it in for me. It'd be a disgrace if a band I like this much didn't squeeze a few bucks outta me for their hard work. And I've been legitimately buying a whole lot of music lately, too, so lay off me, man.

Serena Maneesh are a pretty fascinating hybrid, stylistically. They're all nebulous and breathy like My Bloody Valentine or the Jesus and Mary Chain, but also pastoral psychedelic like Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, and super wigged-out skronky like the Stooges. And they can chop it up post-punk style with the best of the contemporary kids too. However they're playing, though, it's all about the sound of the guitar for them, which is what really makes it great to listen to. You know when you can tell that a musician is just enjoying the SOUND of his or her instrument as much as you are, regardless of what notes they're actually playing, and you feel privileged to be invited along on the exploration of its possibilities? I feel that way about Thelonious Monk. Well, these guys are really really into the sound of distorted guitars. The main guy even seems like he's trying to look like Jimi Hendrix.

The whole album builds really nicely to an insane climax, so it's hard to pick just one track that'll show you what I mean, but this one seems to encompass at least some of the stuff I'm talking about. Enjoy.

- Andrew

Under the covers, behind the glass...

Ali started this post the other day (which is why the date says Friday even though it's Sunday), but the photo inserting wasn't working, so I'm finishing it for her while she works all day assisting on an Aliant photo shoot, about which I'll let her tell you. I'm pretty sure these were the two shots she was going to put up. Buster's been found completely under the covers of our bed a few times lately, though he'll never come in when we're in it. Weirdo. The mannequin family lives just up the street from us, and always gives us a pretty good chuckle when we walk by. I'm not sure why none of them wears pants.

Here's my first attempt at drawing Stephen Harper while I was watching him on TV. Something's not quite right. I'll have to keep working on it. Is it my imagination or does he wear an awful lot of turtlenecks? Maybe they just keep printing pictures from the same day.

Today and yesterday I got up at five in the morning. The first time was because I woke up from a nightmare that all of our stuff had been stolen, and today was because of something out the back window that sounded like a gunshot. But who would shoot anyone at five o'clock in the morning? Anyway, both days have been mild and sunny, and it's been really nice having so much time to get stuff done. I may even go to the gym today, which is unheard of on a Sunday. I've been stressed out and super cranky all week from bad work vibes, so a relaxed and productive weekend is just what I need.

- Andrew

Where's Ali?

Hmmm. This worked for Jason, so maybe I'll give it a try. Alison has an awesome picture which she should be putting onto the blog any time now, and maybe if you're nice she'll tell you a little bit about what's going on with her too.

- Andrew

Paradigm Shifts Required

We have a new prime minister. He looks like the creator of the bad smell that the last one always seemed to be inhaling. The new guy is less middle-of-the-road than the old guy, but we voted him in because the old guy was starting to seem like he was motivated by things beyond keeping us middle-of-the-road, and the only other guy was even less middle-of-the-road than the new guy. The new guy looks less like a deer caught in the headlights and more like a lizard sitting perfectly still and unblinking on a rock. As a nation, our motto is "Give us the status quo or give us death."

I saw a science show last night about a huge glacier in Greenland that is moving faster than it should. Glaciers typically move about a foot a day, but this one is moving about 113 feet a day, and steadily speeding up, even in the winter when it shouldn't really be moving at all. It turns out that this glacier has been melting so much, due to global warming, that the water it produces has been making its way down a hole in the middle of it, all the way to the bottom. You would think that water travelling through miles of ice would freeze back up before getting all the way through, but there's so much of it that the sheer pressure has forced it all the way down underneath the glacier, where it creates a little pool on which the entire glacier is now floating. So it's moving across the land and dumping itself into the ocean at a much faster rate than anyone thought possible, and this particular glacier accounts for 4% of all the sea level increases worldwide. Meanwhile, the exact same thing is happening with other glaciers all over the place.

We went to yoga last night, which was great, but I think I kind of overdid it. It's supposed to make you feel good, but today my back and legs are a little bit aching. Guess I was thinking too much about the goal and not enough about enjoying the process. No gym for me today!

- Andrew

The Wizard of Id

[In an effort to get Castpost working for me again, I'm taking off all copyrighted materials. This was My Ever Changing Mood by The Style Council. 3/27/06]

Here's another tune guaranteed to get you through the winter. Well, if you're anything like me, I guess. This one's getting maximum rotation on the mp3 player as it seems to make any and all surroundings into a movie montage of maximum joy. Bipolarity has never been so celebratory.

Does anyone listen to The National Playlist on CBC weekday mornings? It's a nifty concept and a fun show hosted by young and handsome tolerable Canadian goofball Jian Ghomeshi. They've had Grant Lawrence, host of CBC3's weekly podcast, on all this week, and his naïve but authoritatively delivered musical opinions have been driving me crazy. Today Ian Thomas, who is one of the other panelists, didn't like one of Grant's bland choices, so Grant started on a sarcastic rant about how hip hop is a new style of music Ian might not have heard about and how much he loves a particular Ian Thomas song from the 70's. It was really mean and made me so mad that I unsubscribed myself from the CBC3 podcast, even though he sometimes plays some pretty interesting Canadian indie rock on it.

Yesterday, on returning The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin to the video store while our clothes dried at the laundromat, I ran into the father of my childhood best friend, who was coincidentally the one who introduced me to the show back in the seventies. Very strange. I told him that I'd rented it and it hadn't really held up, and he didn't seem too surprised. In fact, he barely remembered the show. It's funny that in my memory it was his favourite show and the times spent with him and my friend watching it in their den were some of the greatest examples of hilarity and male bonding ever. Just goes to show you what a uniquely personal, Rashomonian version of events memory is. He asked me if I was still in Sloan.

Last night I dreamed for a long time that I was at a party at which I expected not to know anyone, but ended up seeing a lot of figures from my past with whom I'd fallen out of touch. It was a little uncomfortable because I didn't really know the hostess very well at all, and certainly didn't know how they all knew her. More and more people gradually populated the place, and it started getting louder and harder to move or hear, or even think. Just as it was reaching a fever pitch and I wondered how I was going to ever get out of there, someone yelled my name from upstairs, loudly enough that it cut through all the hubbub. I looked upstairs to see who it was, but there was no one there, and I suddenly realized that everyone else had also disappeared the moment my name was bellowed. I woke up confused. Then I went back to sleep and had an equally long but much more pleasant dream wherein I was sitting in the back seat of a car driving at night and watching the car ahead of us in our headlights through the windshield. Nothing happened, and I couldn't see anything else because it was pitch black, but it went on and on like that. It was a great relief and very relaxing after the previous dream. I don't really know what either one means exactly, but the juxtaposition seems significant.

- Andrew

Finally!

[This was it, but now it's gone. Golden Brown by The Stranglers.]

Got it to work. For all you Soulseek-deprived people.

- Andrew

Hulk Smash! Revisited

Blaaargh! This is really too much! 8:00 in the morning 'til 7:00 at night with no lunch and no review to boot because there wasn't time. One stinkin' new client -- whom I won't name -- is hogging all our time and refusing to be satisfied with our work no matter how ugly and unreadably packed with small type we make it for them. Suffice it to say that they offer a morally sketchy service to psychologically sketchy customers who give them money in exchange for the excitement inherent in the probability that it won't be given back. I was supposed to be working all day on one biweekly project for another client which takes a day and a half every time and is due tomorrow afternoon, and I hardly got to do anything on it because I was constantly doing major revisions to the work I went in for yesterday, which work of course turned out to be a total waste of time. The work was due today as it's to air on television on Wednesday, but I still haven't gotten approval. So now I have to go in early again, which means no gym again, which means Mr. McCrankypants will be sitting at my desk tomorrow.

Plus, on the way home, swaggering along to "Jockey Full of Bourbon" by Tom Waits and therefore feeling pretty cool, my ears are suddenly filled with the sound of a submarine's warning alarm like in the movies when something's gone terribly wrong and the camera shakes from side to side and people hurl themselves around with dazed expressions on their faces, only this one is broken so that instead of going "EINH, EINH, EINH,..." it just goes "EEEEEEIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNHHHHHH!" I try to pause the mp3 player, then I try to skip to the next song, then I try to turn the volume down, and finally I try to turn it off, all to no avail. Removing the batteries worked and it seemed fine after that, but it's a little disconcerting, especially if I'm going to use that thing to play live shows. Not to mention the fact that I pulled a total Kramer in the middle of the street and felt like an idiot.

And to top it all off, I can't get Castpost to work at all. I think maybe they've given me the boot because I keep putting copyrighted material on there or because I've used up more memory than I'm supposed to have, but I haven't gotten an email from them or anything. Strange. So I'll have to just tell you the song I was gushing about yesterday: "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers. Did you guess it? I'm sure Tim did. Not nearly as much fun as actually hearing it; sorry. None of my older sound files are working either. Has anyone heard of some kind of electronic fist software I can shake at the internet gods?

- Mr. McC Z8^(3

Haven't been able to get the song up yet. Try and guess what it is.

Here's my favourite song right now. I'd completely forgotten about it, but it popped up in this Australian movie we watched called He Died with a Felafel (sic) in His Hand. Noah Taylor was in it, whom we both love, and it was pretty darn good. I put the song on our mp3 player, which I've got narrowed down to an elite selection of 53 perfect songs. I've actually started walking around with it on, even though I'm in principle against all this deliberate insularity going on these crazy hypermodern days, and I have to admit it makes everything pretty enjoyable.

Listening to the song now, I just love the rapturous melancholy of it. Wouldn't it fit right in on a Wes Anderson soundtrack? I've got to get that harpsichord up and running so I can make beautiful music like this, but I never seem to have time.

Work has gotten so busy these days that I had to go in for six hours today to finish off the ugliest, most jam-packed newspaper ad ever, and some stills for a related television spot. Plus there's a meeting at 8 in the morning, so this will be a short post. Oh yeah, and I have my first review tomorrow, so I may be getting a raise. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Our yoga teacher, Michi, is back from her Christmas vacation in Japan and we had a class with her on Saturday. It felt so great and put me in a really nice mood for the rest of the day, even though I felt like I was getting a cold. She brought me and Alison each a 5 yen piece. She's so nice. We start another, longer weekly class with her in the North end on Tuesday. Should be good.

The above-mentioned cold, by the way, I seem to be fighting off with plain old ginseng. I know that's what Cold F/X is extracted from, and that always works for me, so I thought I'd try just ginseng this time, since we always have it on hand. I'm happy to report that the experiment seems to be a success so far -- the cold is definitely retreating in shame. Of course, any decently-designed experiment should be a success, since as long as the hypothesis being tested is either confirmed or disproven it has done its job. But let's not be pedantic.

People keep asking me and Alison when we're going to play again next. It's kind of weird and awkward, because I'm not sure Ali really wants to do that anymore, so it's something we have to work out between ourselves. We usually get all sheepish and don't really know what to say. I wish people wouldn't ask, though I understand and am flattered by the motivation. Maybe if they could just ask one of us at a time it'd be OK... It's kind of like asking a couple when they're going to have a baby.

Also, for some reason, people are lately pointing out that I could stand to gain a bit of weight. I finally just took off the ten pounds I gained over Christmas, for Jimmy's sake! Do they think I'm completely unaware of what kind of shape I'm in or something? It's weird how people you don't even know that well have no qualms about giving you health advice. I've decided to start offering snap psychological assessments in response. "I don't really find passive aggression a more acceptable outlet for anger over lack of parental approval than the eraser full of thumb tacks you think you're hiding in your desk drawer, but that's just me."

That's a pretty sour note to end on, but I've got nothing else to tell, really. Sorry. Oh, I know, we've been watching the second series of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Remember that British comedy from the seventies? It's kind of weird. The guy's more of a jerk and less funny than I remembered, but it's still quite entertaining.

OK, that's better. Later.

- Andrew

We apologize for the delay...

Man, I have really been out of sorts since the holidays. I guess I'm not alone in this feeling. At the risk of repeating myself, #*@*!!¿†* Christmas! My regular schedule got thrown all out of whack and putting it back into whack has proven next to impossible, as I was up late every night last week rehearsing for a Link Wray benefit show. The show was on Friday night, and it went pretty well, fun times, etc. Alison took some pictures, most of which didn't turn out so hot. But here are some of the better/kookier ones. I'm on the left hunched over my little MicroKorg.




I've also been spending pretty much any free time I've had getting a poopload of work done for my one remaining freelance client, as she's off to India for a month and had to tie off all loose ends at her store before leaving. So besides feeling generally bummed out and like there's nothing interesting to say, I have actually not had time to blog it up. Yesterday I finally sat down and tried to post something, but because I was morose and unverbose I had to get Alison to play a game with me where we would take turns writing the next word. After kind of a long time, it ended up being some fairly hilarious gibberish that sounded like a retarded person whose first language was not English. But then I tried to do some fancy adjusting of text under one of the photos I'd posted, and accidentally lost the whole post, thereby getting so discouraged that I had to give up entirely. May I take this opportunity to recommend the "Save as Draft" button? Such an undervalued little blue rectangle.

Then this morning I woke up in excruciating pain, basically from being heavier than I should and doing nothing for too long, and felt so super bummed that I didn't even want to get out of bed. Ever. I'd meant to go to the gym and finally get some exercise before work, which probably would have helped a lot, but I couldn't even force myself to do it. Instead, I got up at the last possible second and trudged off to work wondering how much longer I would have to suffer through this physical world.

But I think whack is in sight now. Working all day and getting some projects finished off helped a lot, plus Ali and I have started this five day "cleansing" diet where you eat, like, nothing but fruits and vegetables and drink ginger tea by the gallon. Oh, and you have to eat a teaspoon of sesame seed and raisins after every meal, for some reason. My brain seems at least temporarily back to its semi-normal state and I no longer feel like I was accidentally channelled into the body of an ancient cripple. Tomorrow I am definitely getting up early enough to go to the gym, and you can kick me hard in the kneecap if I lie.

- Andrew Z8^B

First Dream of the New Year

I've been having some strange nightmares lately, and last night's was particularly strange. In it I was Satan, walking around cheerily after dinner one evening with a group of friends. I don't remember who the friends were. I imagined that they didn't notice they were walking with the devil -- even though I was much taller than all of them and had horns, long bony hands, and the face of a monster -- because we were all laughing and having a good time.

But they were much smarter than me. At one point a brick fell off a building onto my head and hurt me quite badly. Everyone appeared surprised and concerned, and they convinced me that I should crawl into a hole in the side of the building to rest and heal. As soon as I got into the hole, though, I realized it was a coal chute that led into the empty, multi-chambered basement where I lived. Instead of tricking my friends out of their souls, I had been tricked by them back into hell.

This scene played itself out over and over again for some reason, with slight variations. The last time, I noticed that one of my female friends was in love with my servant, a man in a suit who had been following us covertly on the other side of the street. He would always show up in the basement a few minutes after I got there, to see if I was all right. So I convinced my friend this time to come down the chute with me so that she might be with my servant in private. She seemed quite content to be in hell once he showed up, and he seemed happy too to have a companion. I left them alone in one of the chambers. It was a happy ending.

- Andrew