acache

givin thanks

Fifteen more minutes left of this year’s Thanksgiving long weekend, and it was a pretty full 72 hours.

It started after work on Friday with taking some photos for this contest that is going on in one of the free daily newspapers. The contest is to take a photo reading the publication in an unusual place. Me and one of my co-workers have a couple of different ideas of where we could go to take the photo – the grand prize is $240o and a digital camera. It’s a secret what our locations are, but once the contest winner is decided, I’ll post the photos to show what unusual place we chose to read it.

On my way home from taking the contest photos, my friend S. called because we had plans to meet up and discuss this project that we are going to work on together. She writes electronica tracks – a singer/songwriter (among other things) and wants to set up a website with all her stuff showcased. I’m going to help her set that up, even though I know basically nothing about setting up a website, except for a couple of HTML courses and a DreamWeaver course I took in the distant past. Because I’ve wanted to learn how to do that website stuff but I never finished any of my coursess… so I only partially learned how to do it. I guess now I’ll be going the DreamWeaver for Dummies route or something. So we talked about all this and then S. went over to her keyboard and played me the song(s) she is presently working on. OMG her music was so good it made me cry, tears pouring down my cheeks.

Anyways, we ended up going out to a neighborhood pub for tuna bites and juicy martinis. It was packed in there but we got to share a table with this guy who was sitting alone at a table for four. He turned out to be cool and we all talked (well mostly S and him as they were sitting next to each other) and I talked to his friend who showed up for a bit and then they left. We left shortly after, as next on the agenda was to see this movie we rented that S. said I had to see. It’s called “Freeway” and it stars Reese Witherspoon and Keefer Sutherland. Great movie – it’s harsh and funny with snappy dialogue. When it ended it left me wishing it would go on so we could see what was going to happen next to Reese’s character. She gets harsher and harsher as the movie progresses, as the circumstances surrounding her get harsher and harsher and as this is happening her reaction to what is going on keeps making things worse. But she manages to be hilarious at the same time.

Saturday I went to see my dad to discuss some documents, papers, family businessy stuff and to figure out plane tickets for the trip(s) I’m taking this winter. We spent the afternoon video-skype-chatting with my bro who is halfway round the world in Europe, and surfing travel sites to find the cheapest air fares. I guess it is kinda late to be booking flights now and I still don’t have my tickets confirmed. Then we repotted a plant, a special plant my dad got me – its from the Jurrasic period, and grows in Australia only. Now the little prehistoric trees are being shipped all over the world which, apart from making a bit of $ for the shippers, will ensure the continued survival of the plants as they will exist all over the world, not just in a secret hidden patch of land somewhere in Australia. The tree looks like a cross between an evergreen and a monkey tree…

Then that night I went with my friend CJ to a Vancouver Film Fest movie, a Brazilian movie called “Antonia” about female hiphop artists. It was excellent. Deep liquid colours and great cinematography – I liked the way the shots are set up, with long vistas of the characters walking away from the camera and getting smaller – lots of shots highlighting long or unusual perspective. After the movie we went for martinis.

Sunday was Thanksgiving lunch at my dad’s. We had tons of delicious food – birds with all the trimmings, brussel sprouts, potatoes, etc.  We ate so much. Then we went to meet up with my dad’s friend, P. to go see the “Bourne Ultimatum”. It was non-stop action the whole time, with intense fight scenes. Matt Damon was really good, but his poor character never gets to eat or sleep or fall in love in this one. The story was riveting, but I kinda wanted to see more about the relationships between the characters, because the characters were engaging – you want to get to know them better and how they relate to each other.

After the movie we went for drinks at a fancy hotel bar. We got there and there was nowhere to sit but there was this guy sitting alone at a table for four. We ended up asking him if we could share the table with him, and he actually let us have the table as there was seating nearby for two but not for three, which we were. I had a couple of martinis and had a nice time talking with my dad and his friend.

When I got home at about ten pm, I remembered that at my play rehearsal the next day we were also going to have a potluck (it’s our first all-day-rehearsal) and I had put my name down to bring an apple crisp. So I started peeling and slicing the apples and the rest of the ingredients, finding whatever I could to use as the pie pan which I don’t have so I used a casserole pan…

My friends N and S called to tell me I should go to this afterhours dance party that our friends were putting on, not far from my house. So I got the apple crisp ingredients ready and left about midnight to go to S.’s house. We hung out for a bit and then went and danced to a DJ from Berlin. I got to see some friends who I hardly ever see, so that was great. It was early morning when I told them I had to go, and I left alone to go home to get some sleep before my rehearsal that day.

So when the alarm went off I was still pretty tired. But I got up, stuck the apple crisp in the oven and slept for another 45 minutes while it baked. Then it was off to rehearsal all day. The potluck turned out to be so yummy, everyone’s food was delish. And the rehearsal with all our props went well. We are all hoping the civic strike will end so we can perform in the community center theater which is presently still closed until the strike is over. The union and city are voting this week and we’ll know soon if the show will go on.

After the rehearsal CJ and me watched this movie I had rented a few days ago, called “The Fountain”. It was really trippy and I know there are so many part I didn’t get, that at first I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, or I didn’t like it totally because I didn’t really get it. But in retrospect I am liking it more and more. One interesting theme that was presented is: well what happens is that there is this man and his wife is dying from a brain tumor, and he is a scientist/doctor and he is trying to find a cure for the tumor so he can save his wife. But he discovers the tree of life, it gives eternal life/youth/health.

And an interesting theme was their attitudes to death – she was preparing herself to die and he was doing everything he could to save her, refusing to believe that she might die. It is so huge – what do you do/feel when you know you make die earlier than expected? Do you cling to life even more or do you try to find a way to embrace death so you won’t feel so wretched. And the people who are witnessing their loved on who may or may not die. Do they have to painfully distance themselves from the one wh omay die because that is the only way to keep their hearts from totally breaking?

It’s so weird how the dynamics of their relationship was at odds in some ways because they were dealing with the possibility of her dying soonish, differently- she was looking at the postitive aspects of death (what writers have written about it, about it being the “gatewaY   to awe”). He was horrified at the prospect of her dying and would focus on his work which was connected to saving her, instead of spending time with her becaus eit could be the last times he has with her. but he just couldn’t acdept thgat.

in the hood

It’s Saturday night and I went with my friend to one of the Vancouver Film Fest movies – the festival goes on for a week, showcasing independent film from all over the world. The film that we saw is called “Antonia” and it’s from Brazil. It tells the story of this group of female rappers/singers who go through various stages of elation and hardships in their pursuit of their dream of making/writing music/songs. (I love this one scene where one of them is incarcerated and the others go to visit her and what they do is they start writing lyrics sitting together but separately writing on pieces of paper, each in their own world of rhymes and beats, intending to bring what they have written together into a song). It is a really good movie, with gorgeous liquid colours at dusk and distinct characters that you can totally relate to.

After the movie we went to this little bar/pub in our hood (we both live a few blocks from Main St. and each other). Because one of our little plans is to check out the bars and pubs in our hood and go on extensive bar hops or pub crawls to places we choose as our favourites. So far we have a few favs and this place tonight I’ve only been to once before but it’s definitely one of the favs. They have a killer martini, it’s blue and goes down so easy. You can’t even taste the alcohol in it.

Actually we totally saw a cockroach and you know how they are supposed to be all hiding from the light and at least pretend to be scared of us, well maybe not scared actually, but at least there is usually a mutual aversion? This one was running all over the counter, totally unconcerned that we were sitting right there, trying to have a converstation. Instead of avoiding the presence of us people and the lack of darkness, he was very much front and center. He scurried along the counter then stopped right in front of us, turned to face us and just stared at us for a good minute if not longer. Meanwhile we were like, “hey, roachie, dude u are supposed to be hiding from us! go on now, go on under the counter or find a crevice to nest in!”(yeah the martinis were having an effect for sure), but he just sat right there in front of us and stared. His little antennae or whatever were all twitching. Like he was saying something but I couldn’t hear.

But there’s so much going on in our neighborhood – from bars/p;ubs, restaurants to clothing stores and magazine/comic/book shops. There is lots of artsy stuff. Lots of places are super nice shops with super nice stock, that double as galleries as well. After we had a couple of martinis we walked up a couple of blocks to this flower shop called the Flower Factory. I had recently submitted three framed photographs to their gallery. Once a year they have this art exhibit where people from the hood are invited to submit some artwork and then they put it all on the walls of the flower shop. We walked by and through the windows we looked at the show – the art was all over the walls of the shop. Then we spotted my pieces! The were right there in a prominent spot, three photos hanging on the wall and in the company of all the other pretty amazing art, they looked way better than I remember them. It is such an honour to be in a show with all these obviously talented artists. It was pretty cool.

The next thing I would like to explore in the hood is the spoken word stuff that is happening at certain cafes around not just this hood but my old east van neighborhood as well. This city seems to be really expanding with art shows and productions sprouting up everywhere. From what I’ve heard, there are some wicked poets/rhymesters out there.

PS still havent got my camera for the laptop. And I cant even save files right now because my hard ddrive is so fing full. and the external hard drive I got won’t work… I’ve got to get my little computer working good again. It needs some attention from me that’s for sure because I’ve been neglecting it and now it barely can barely function!

zines and connectedness

So this last weekend marked the end of September and the deadline set for the print run of the little zine that me and D have been working on. It’s essentially promo for D’s clothing store, with some info about a couple of things happening around town. For the fashion layout I took photos of her, her store and some of the clothes she’s got for sale. There’s a page entitled “Customer of the Day” which shows one of her customers sporting an outfit from the store. Then we put in some of our doodles from our notebooks. There’s an article about a hip restaurant with live music, an article featuring a local artist and pics of his work and an interview about a ‘cutting edge’ community tv show that highlights the poorer neighborhoods in the city and cool stuff that is going on there.

It was a bit of a rush Sunday night, I wanted to have at least a few prototypes printed by October 1st. It was like 12:30 and I was driving to the 24 hour printer with a cd still hot from getting burned. But I got it printed so that’s good. Now I’ve got a few little mistakes to correct, lighten some photos up and we’ll do a print run of 100. D wrote the opening statement and in it she mentions the ‘next issue’. So I guess we’re doing a next issue for sure! It’s hard to believe, but this is the first time I’ve put together a little zine like this. And I’ve always loved looking at other people’s zines – some are really slick and some are totally hand-drawn – it’s cool to check them out.

So now I’m starting to think about the content for the next zine… and maybe I’ll do one that is full of just doodles and bad poetry… and hybrid photographs or something. Maybe it could tie in to my vlog that doesn’t exist yet…

I guess there are tons of topics, so many it makes my head spin like in the Exorcist and then everything goes blank. It’s freaky. But for example, the video below is a lighthearted look at global warming. I definitely need to do a lot more web surfing looking up pertinent stuff.

But I saw this cool thing coming up: this writer called Derrik Jensen is coming to town, doing a talk. My friend told me about him and I think I’ll go check that out… He talks about social-political issues and the state of the world that we’re in. And what the world could be – if we act differently it changes everything. So we act with the fact that we are all connected in mind, and it’s an amazing source of inspiration. Because time is running out and we have to hurry.

on camera

Today my neighbor came over to my house. He had his cell phone and wanted to videotape me saying something. I totally lamed out and was like, “um hi, F is taping me and wants me to say something, but I don’t know what to say…” it was something like that. Argh.

Why is it so hard to say something when you know that you are on camera?

Thinking about it later, I thought that I could have just said something like, “Hi everybody! How are you? It’s great to have this opportunity to say hello to you all. Here’s wishing you a great day – whatever the weather is where yu are. Well, thanks for watching!”

Or something like that!

A few days ago I wrote about vlogs – there are a few I saw on youtube and a couple were how-to-vlog vlogs. Still plan on getting one of those little cameras for my laptop. Kinda like the idea of doing a vlog… but what would I say? The same ikind of stuff that I say in this blog I guess…