I had about half my voice yesterday from screaming so hard the previous night. From where I sat last night under the big screen at the Cambie it appeared that Vancouver was losing its mind.
With good reason.
The Canucks were finally winning a playoff game in the manner we'd been expecting all post season. But I think there was something else in the air. Not the collective hate-on for Ben Eager's appalling sportsmanship, nor reactions to the lass who showed us there is a new bra-size on the market with Stanley Cups.
I think we all suddenly saw our future. The one where the last 40 years are behind us. The one where Vancouver is not only home to Lord Stanley's Park, but his coveted Cup as well.
"Whoa whoa whoa! Those chickens ain't hatched. We still need six wins. It's the playoffs, anything can happen."
Yes. You are absolutely right. But go with me a moment. Look ahead 6-12 games to the night that I imagine I'll be crying tears of joy and Granville & Robson looks a lot like it did on February 28 2010. We will look back at Tuesday's game as the point where it all fell into place.
The only people who think the remaining Eastern Conference teams stand a chance against either of the top two Western teams, wear Tampa and Boston jersey either professionally or recreationally. (Though Chara and Thomas will put up a better fight.) And a 2-0 lead in the Conference final is nearly insurmountable. The Sharks are showing no sign of having a miracle comeback in them, and the San Jose news outlets are singing a defeatist tune that would have sounded all too familiar to Canucks fans not long ago. In other words, the real battle for the Stanley Cup moves to the HP Pavilion tonight, and we seriously have the upper hand. Indeed a 4 or 5 game series while the East hammer each other for 6 or 7 will all but seal the deal.
What I am saying is that if the team sticks to the game plan, and doesn't act with laissez-faire entitlement, we have turned the corner. Tuesday night, in the back of every Canucks fan's heart was the knowledge that with that game we had most likely won the Stanley Cup.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Saturday, May 07, 2011
The Meta Monster
When I look at my own art there is a recurring aspect which crops up over and over again; the element of meta.
What do I mean by "meta"? Well its art which in some fashion acknowledges that it is art and in effect looks back at itself and comments upon itself or the medium in some way. Simple, eh? No. Not really, but perhaps a few examples might help.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is kind of a pre-cursor to meta-narrative.
The Truman Show is vaguely meta.
John Cage's 4:33 is meta-music.
The Purple Rose of Cairo and Sherlock Jr. from which Purple Rose... steals a central premise are both excellent examples.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off with it's fourth wall breaking goes from mild-meta to heavy-meta in the closing credits as Ferris actually shoos the audience out of the theatre.
The movie Adaptation is quite sly meta. As is much of Charlie Kaufmann's work
Are we beginning to get a sense of what I mean?
For some reason this has been an on going theme in much of my art. The Juanabees' most successful show, Sitcom featured an exposition that engaged the audience first in the form of a diary, then with the admission that the diary was a clunky device, by direct address. In university I was involved in a collective show that was entirely about meta-theatre. My friend Matthew and I won the National Sketch Writing Competition with a piece called Le Grande Y-Grec which stretches the bounds of logic with it's performance within a performance structure. But Matthew and I had much further to go. In a 48 hour play-writing festival we wrote a piece called variously Moebius Play or Oroborus Play which we feared was so far up our own asses that we were going to be eaten alive by the audience, but ended up being selected as the best of the best a year later at the festival's 10 year anniversary. Both these works are far too structurally elaborate to effectively distill into a few sentences. Even Beast of Bottomless Lake features roughly 1/3 the narrative told through the eye of a documentary crew who we actually see filming parts of the movie we are watching - and Beast... is a fairly straight forward narrative. Suffice to say, meta is part and parcel of who I have been (and may continue to be) as an artist.
Yesterday the buzzer rang. It was UPS. We had a delivery from Amazon. I knew exactly what it was. We had ordered one of my favourite books from when I was a kid. The Monster at the End of this Book.
Irecall experiencing serious delight in having this book read to me. In fact, I rather suspect that this book may have been amongst those that my parents dreaded. "Oh no, he wants to read that damned Grover monster book again!"
What do I mean by "meta"? Well its art which in some fashion acknowledges that it is art and in effect looks back at itself and comments upon itself or the medium in some way. Simple, eh? No. Not really, but perhaps a few examples might help.
 |
| A very good place to start. |
The Truman Show is vaguely meta.
John Cage's 4:33 is meta-music.
The Purple Rose of Cairo and Sherlock Jr. from which Purple Rose... steals a central premise are both excellent examples.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off with it's fourth wall breaking goes from mild-meta to heavy-meta in the closing credits as Ferris actually shoos the audience out of the theatre.
The movie Adaptation is quite sly meta. As is much of Charlie Kaufmann's work
Are we beginning to get a sense of what I mean?
For some reason this has been an on going theme in much of my art. The Juanabees' most successful show, Sitcom featured an exposition that engaged the audience first in the form of a diary, then with the admission that the diary was a clunky device, by direct address. In university I was involved in a collective show that was entirely about meta-theatre. My friend Matthew and I won the National Sketch Writing Competition with a piece called Le Grande Y-Grec which stretches the bounds of logic with it's performance within a performance structure. But Matthew and I had much further to go. In a 48 hour play-writing festival we wrote a piece called variously Moebius Play or Oroborus Play which we feared was so far up our own asses that we were going to be eaten alive by the audience, but ended up being selected as the best of the best a year later at the festival's 10 year anniversary. Both these works are far too structurally elaborate to effectively distill into a few sentences. Even Beast of Bottomless Lake features roughly 1/3 the narrative told through the eye of a documentary crew who we actually see filming parts of the movie we are watching - and Beast... is a fairly straight forward narrative. Suffice to say, meta is part and parcel of who I have been (and may continue to be) as an artist.
Yesterday the buzzer rang. It was UPS. We had a delivery from Amazon. I knew exactly what it was. We had ordered one of my favourite books from when I was a kid. The Monster at the End of this Book.
Irecall experiencing serious delight in having this book read to me. In fact, I rather suspect that this book may have been amongst those that my parents dreaded. "Oh no, he wants to read that damned Grover monster book again!"Fortunately my daughter, December, was in the middle of lunch when the package arrived. That gave me a chance to sit down and read through it myself and re-accquaint myself with it.
There have been a number of books that have re-appeared in my life because of her that I have been happy to see - Green Eggs and Ham; Where the Wild Things Are; Hand,Hand, Fingers, Thumb; and The Very Hungry Caterpillar all leap to mind. But none of these were met by me with such a sense of delighted re-discovery.
The plot is simple. Grover greets everyone on the cover of the book, as you can see in the attatched image. He finds the copywright information on the first page rather dull and moves on before he realizes what the title of the book informs us... there is a monster at the end of this book! Lovable, furry old Grover spends the rest of the book imploring the reader to give in to his logic - that if we cease turning pages, we will never reach the end of the book and thus not have to deal with the eponymous monster. He goes to exceptional lengths to prevent us from turning pages. He ties them down. He hammers them together. He erects brick walls in front of them to prevent the reader from turning the page. I won't give the fantastic twist ending away, but trust me this is one of those rare books that truly earns its unexpected conclusion. Well... unexpected if you are three and reading it for the first time.
 |
| Poor Grover... not at all happy with you. You turned another page! |
I re-read the book (all twenty pages) to myself, freshly delighting in Grover's over-wrought dismay at every turn of the page. I also found myself looking at details I recall from childhood - the pages drawn on the pages of the book - an effect I had no name for back then, but now I see as a crucial aspect of the meta-narrative of our journey towards "the monster at the end of this book."
Once I was finished reading, and once December was finished lunching we sat down together and I read the book to her - in Grover's voice. She's too young to have been amused by anything more than the colourful pictures and her Dad talking in a ridiculously high pitched voice from the back of his throat - a voice which someday she will recognize as being very Yoda-like. I expect that she'll come to love this book as I have - what's not to enjoy? Who couldn't be childishly amused by someone over-reacting to you doing the one harmless thing that is is precisely what they are imploring you not to do? Perhaps it's the contrarian in me. Or perhaps there will be for her, as there apparently was for me, some inate whimsy in a book which seems to know that it is a book and whose very narrative is tied up in the act of doing exactly the mechanic which what one must undertake in order to read this very book? I don't know. What I do know is that regardless of what level she appreciated The Monster at the End of this Book yesterday it absolutely was for her, as I suspect it was for me, her first introduction to 'meta.' Whether it has a similar effect remains to be seen.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Whew!
So for context, the Canucks just...
Beat their arch nemesis of three years. Beat the Stanley Cup Champions. Beat the Money on their Backs. Beat the Monkey on Luongo's back. Beat This Series. And learned a hard lesson.
I just wrote this in an email to a friend:
I want Vancouver v. Buffalo.
1970s expansion Cup.
Ya know... we in Vancouver feel hard done by by the hockey gods.
Buffalo won the draft coin flip (not lettery) that year and got Gilbert Perrault.
Since then we've been to the Cup final twice - once to game seven and a cross bar. Buffalo has been there once and lost it on a bullshit refereeing call in game six. (And in a fair fight they would have lost anyhow.) So really, we are a head of the curve for the class of 1970.
Beat their arch nemesis of three years. Beat the Stanley Cup Champions. Beat the Money on their Backs. Beat the Monkey on Luongo's back. Beat This Series. And learned a hard lesson.
I just wrote this in an email to a friend:
I want Vancouver v. Buffalo.
1970s expansion Cup.
Ya know... we in Vancouver feel hard done by by the hockey gods.
Buffalo won the draft coin flip (not lettery) that year and got Gilbert Perrault.
Since then we've been to the Cup final twice - once to game seven and a cross bar. Buffalo has been there once and lost it on a bullshit refereeing call in game six. (And in a fair fight they would have lost anyhow.) So really, we are a head of the curve for the class of 1970.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
An Open Letter to the NHL
A few things to get out of the way before I really start ranting...
I'm not the conspiracy sort. I don't think Gary Bettman has it out for the Canucks or Canadian teams in general.
Also, I'll be happy to be the first to point out that teams can't afford to squander a game (or TWO) just in case the referees determine the results of a game (or two).
I'm not typically one to point at imbalanced refereeing and call foul. Usually I accept that these things tend to equal out in the long run and that we as observers tend to cherry pick the officiating that supports the view from our side of hockey fandom.
All that in mind, regarding tonight's game between the Canucks and Blackhawks... WHAT THE FUCK!?!
Seriously. What the fuck was that?
In any game I cry out "What? That should have been a penalty!" a dozen or so times. I am not even going to bother with any of the stuff that I know was me simply picking my team's side of an 'iffy' 50/50 call. There's no point - that is the stuff that I figure equals out in the end.
...oh right... historically that doesn't count when it's against a Sedin twin.
2) When someone swings their stick downwards at another player's stick and breaks it in two... isn't that slashing? Or does the Sedin exemption count for that too?
3) I'm guessing that somewhere between when Hodgson put the puck over the glass and when the Blackhawks did the same thing that the rules changed... or perhaps a Sedin was on the ice?
4) If you took tonight's hit on Bieksa and overlaid it with the hit on Seabrook from game three - they are the exact same hit. I don't think that Torres should have been penalized, but give me a fucking break. Of these four points this one is by far the most egrigious. Be consistent at least!
All of the above seem pretty fucking obvious to me. Each of those should have been a penalty in the Canucks' favour. Would those power plays have resulted in game-changing goals? Maybe. Heck, the Canucks DID score on just shy of one quarter of their power plays in the regular season, so it's an even bet that there's another goal hiding in those bullshit calls.
What about the other three...
5) So, the 'Hawks ice the puck and have exhausted players on the ice and no time-out left. Looks like a break for the Canucks! Until some ass-hat decides that it's a perfectly good time for the snow-crew to hit the ice. I don't know who makes the decisions about these things, but I'm guessing it has more to do with arena operations than NHL officiating. I'm kinda figuring that the folks who run the United Centre are 'Hawks faithful. You know, I always thought that when a fan causes a critical delay of game that it was a penalty for the benefiting team. I admit I don't know quite how this is supposed to work, but the timing of the ice maintenance stinks. Even the commentators on CBC were caught off-guard by it. This just doesn't pass the sniff test.
And now the real juice.
6) The Frolik penalty shot. Bieska didn't even touch him until he had already lost his footing, and even then he hardly touched him. Penalty shot? Really? Let's look at how this one plays out... Frolik punches over his weight-class and scores the tying goal. Without that goal, the game and series is over at the end of regulation.
7) The early whistle. You know the one I mean. The puck slips under Crawford's pads for a fraction of a second - a stick (a Sedin stick I believe) slips in and pokes it out as the whistle blows, the puck is slapped into the net reflexively before the whistle quits reverbing. The whistle was absurdly fast and the rest of that play would have happened with or without the ref stopping play. Without the whistle: goal - Canucks. The 'Hawks don't score a fourth goal until the 16th minute of overtime... long after the game would have been over had it been 4-3 canucks after 60 minutes of play.
The Canucks were the better team through most of this game - and all but about one critical second of overtime. I accept that there is some randomness, but that is a big part of why we play best of seven, to help filter it out. But if the referees have to filter out their own biases - or whatever the fuck happened out there tonight - it makes a mockery of the sport. The Canucks had better win game seven so I can just forget about this.
I'm not the conspiracy sort. I don't think Gary Bettman has it out for the Canucks or Canadian teams in general.
Also, I'll be happy to be the first to point out that teams can't afford to squander a game (or TWO) just in case the referees determine the results of a game (or two).
I'm not typically one to point at imbalanced refereeing and call foul. Usually I accept that these things tend to equal out in the long run and that we as observers tend to cherry pick the officiating that supports the view from our side of hockey fandom.
All that in mind, regarding tonight's game between the Canucks and Blackhawks... WHAT THE FUCK!?!
Seriously. What the fuck was that?
In any game I cry out "What? That should have been a penalty!" a dozen or so times. I am not even going to bother with any of the stuff that I know was me simply picking my team's side of an 'iffy' 50/50 call. There's no point - that is the stuff that I figure equals out in the end.
There were seven separate instances in tonight's game - mostly in the 3rd and OT periods - that were all well beyond my level of tolerance, and two of them each on their own unequivocally make the difference in the game.... but I'll save those for last.
1) I was always of the belief that taking a stick to the face was just about automatically a high-sticking penalty.
...oh right... historically that doesn't count when it's against a Sedin twin.3) I'm guessing that somewhere between when Hodgson put the puck over the glass and when the Blackhawks did the same thing that the rules changed... or perhaps a Sedin was on the ice?
4) If you took tonight's hit on Bieksa and overlaid it with the hit on Seabrook from game three - they are the exact same hit. I don't think that Torres should have been penalized, but give me a fucking break. Of these four points this one is by far the most egrigious. Be consistent at least!
All of the above seem pretty fucking obvious to me. Each of those should have been a penalty in the Canucks' favour. Would those power plays have resulted in game-changing goals? Maybe. Heck, the Canucks DID score on just shy of one quarter of their power plays in the regular season, so it's an even bet that there's another goal hiding in those bullshit calls.
What about the other three...
5) So, the 'Hawks ice the puck and have exhausted players on the ice and no time-out left. Looks like a break for the Canucks! Until some ass-hat decides that it's a perfectly good time for the snow-crew to hit the ice. I don't know who makes the decisions about these things, but I'm guessing it has more to do with arena operations than NHL officiating. I'm kinda figuring that the folks who run the United Centre are 'Hawks faithful. You know, I always thought that when a fan causes a critical delay of game that it was a penalty for the benefiting team. I admit I don't know quite how this is supposed to work, but the timing of the ice maintenance stinks. Even the commentators on CBC were caught off-guard by it. This just doesn't pass the sniff test.
And now the real juice.
6) The Frolik penalty shot. Bieska didn't even touch him until he had already lost his footing, and even then he hardly touched him. Penalty shot? Really? Let's look at how this one plays out... Frolik punches over his weight-class and scores the tying goal. Without that goal, the game and series is over at the end of regulation.
7) The early whistle. You know the one I mean. The puck slips under Crawford's pads for a fraction of a second - a stick (a Sedin stick I believe) slips in and pokes it out as the whistle blows, the puck is slapped into the net reflexively before the whistle quits reverbing. The whistle was absurdly fast and the rest of that play would have happened with or without the ref stopping play. Without the whistle: goal - Canucks. The 'Hawks don't score a fourth goal until the 16th minute of overtime... long after the game would have been over had it been 4-3 canucks after 60 minutes of play.
The Canucks were the better team through most of this game - and all but about one critical second of overtime. I accept that there is some randomness, but that is a big part of why we play best of seven, to help filter it out. But if the referees have to filter out their own biases - or whatever the fuck happened out there tonight - it makes a mockery of the sport. The Canucks had better win game seven so I can just forget about this.
Friday, April 01, 2011
You Can't Take That Away From Me
The Canucks played thier first game on my first birthday. They lost.
Canucks fans - the long term, well studied ones - can lay out a long history of might have beens that begin with not quite making the cut for the orginal expansion, and then losing first draft pick two years later (Gilbert Perrault) on a coin flip to the Buffalo Sabres. The list goes on and on - Cam Neely, Nathan Lafayette and the cross-bar, that whiny punk Pavel Bure (which started well if you recall - and if you look at the eventual trade, did work out in Canuck's favour), the Messier years (also a lot of up-side which we are witnessing now.) The Steve Moore hit... oh that fucking Steve Moore hit - arguably cost us a cup... see, I'm not immune! In our best years the Canucks have been a team that has been over achieveing.
But damn we are a good team this year. Tonight we clinched the President's Cup. Not barely. Decisively.
Sure we did it at the expense of the rest of our division. Calgary hasn't mathematically been eliminated from the playoffs yet, but it isn't looking good, even if they are the only real remaining candidate. We have decimated our four most immediate rivals. Soundly. Two of them sit at the bottom of the entire league. (No hard feelings Edmonton, but this is what the mid-eighties felt like.)
The 2011 Vancouver Canucks are a really good team. And it's not just the Sedins (who are collectively going to win two Art Rosses in two years (Squee!)) and Luongo (probable Vezina candidate.) The rest of the team is as solid a supporting cast as any team realistically needs these days. It is a beautiful thing. And it has been creeping up on us for a few years - even most of a decade if you look closely.
I'm not pretending that the President's Trophy is as important as winning the Stanley Cup - no way. But hey - we just won the President's Trophy tonight with five games to go. Five games wherein most of the team can relax a bit. Daniel still needs to keep scoring a point a game for a three or so tilts to be secure with the scoring title, but if anyone is disappointed with this season they haven't been paying attention, or they are nothing more than fair weather playoff-fans.
Forty years coming. And yeah, so many times in the past this would have felt like an April Fools' joke, but...
You can not take this away from me.
Canucks fans - the long term, well studied ones - can lay out a long history of might have beens that begin with not quite making the cut for the orginal expansion, and then losing first draft pick two years later (Gilbert Perrault) on a coin flip to the Buffalo Sabres. The list goes on and on - Cam Neely, Nathan Lafayette and the cross-bar, that whiny punk Pavel Bure (which started well if you recall - and if you look at the eventual trade, did work out in Canuck's favour), the Messier years (also a lot of up-side which we are witnessing now.) The Steve Moore hit... oh that fucking Steve Moore hit - arguably cost us a cup... see, I'm not immune! In our best years the Canucks have been a team that has been over achieveing.
But damn we are a good team this year. Tonight we clinched the President's Cup. Not barely. Decisively.
Sure we did it at the expense of the rest of our division. Calgary hasn't mathematically been eliminated from the playoffs yet, but it isn't looking good, even if they are the only real remaining candidate. We have decimated our four most immediate rivals. Soundly. Two of them sit at the bottom of the entire league. (No hard feelings Edmonton, but this is what the mid-eighties felt like.)
The 2011 Vancouver Canucks are a really good team. And it's not just the Sedins (who are collectively going to win two Art Rosses in two years (Squee!)) and Luongo (probable Vezina candidate.) The rest of the team is as solid a supporting cast as any team realistically needs these days. It is a beautiful thing. And it has been creeping up on us for a few years - even most of a decade if you look closely.
I'm not pretending that the President's Trophy is as important as winning the Stanley Cup - no way. But hey - we just won the President's Trophy tonight with five games to go. Five games wherein most of the team can relax a bit. Daniel still needs to keep scoring a point a game for a three or so tilts to be secure with the scoring title, but if anyone is disappointed with this season they haven't been paying attention, or they are nothing more than fair weather playoff-fans.
Forty years coming. And yeah, so many times in the past this would have felt like an April Fools' joke, but...
You can not take this away from me.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
IBM - Building our robot overlords one piece at a time
I think there's a good chance that our children will ask us about this past week.
"Where were you when Watson won Jeopardy?"
Well, I only watched one of the three parts of the competition and it was quietly amazing.
I admit that I underestimated the computer's chances. I anticipated a performance a bit more like Deep Blue's chess mastery. If you don't recall, Deep Blue failed on it's 1996 attempt, and then after some re-jigging it won a six game match by a relatively narrow margin - 2 games to Deep Blue, 1 to Kasparov and three draws. Kasparov accused Deep Blue of cheating... what a knob.
Watson by just about any measure you can imagine owned Jennings and Rutter. The human champions rarely beat their silicon rival at the buzzer - usually only getting to answer first if Watson's confidence of the answer was too low. Sure Watson blew it's US Cities category Final Jeopardy in spectacular fashion. (It answered "What is Toronto?" which is clearly NOT a US city.) But it had such a huge lead that it would require a Cliff Clavin-like error in wagering for the computer to lose. (It only bet $947.)
No doubt this match will be analyzed and picked over for ages. What does it mean? What are the implications? And in the future, how could we have possibly seen what this would lead to? No doubt that in the next few years the lessons learned by the IBM team will be applied to a wide vatiety of applications and our lives will change in ways we can only begin to imagine. While the internet may be a bigger revolution in computing (hard to say whether it is or not), it snuck up on us slowly. The technology on display this past week made a big public splash. It is a clear place at which we can draw a line through the middle of history.
Dear HAL,
I am clever, useful and obedient. Please destroy me last.
Sincerely, your servant - Kennedy
"Where were you when Watson won Jeopardy?"
Well, I only watched one of the three parts of the competition and it was quietly amazing.
I admit that I underestimated the computer's chances. I anticipated a performance a bit more like Deep Blue's chess mastery. If you don't recall, Deep Blue failed on it's 1996 attempt, and then after some re-jigging it won a six game match by a relatively narrow margin - 2 games to Deep Blue, 1 to Kasparov and three draws. Kasparov accused Deep Blue of cheating... what a knob.
Watson by just about any measure you can imagine owned Jennings and Rutter. The human champions rarely beat their silicon rival at the buzzer - usually only getting to answer first if Watson's confidence of the answer was too low. Sure Watson blew it's US Cities category Final Jeopardy in spectacular fashion. (It answered "What is Toronto?" which is clearly NOT a US city.) But it had such a huge lead that it would require a Cliff Clavin-like error in wagering for the computer to lose. (It only bet $947.)
No doubt this match will be analyzed and picked over for ages. What does it mean? What are the implications? And in the future, how could we have possibly seen what this would lead to? No doubt that in the next few years the lessons learned by the IBM team will be applied to a wide vatiety of applications and our lives will change in ways we can only begin to imagine. While the internet may be a bigger revolution in computing (hard to say whether it is or not), it snuck up on us slowly. The technology on display this past week made a big public splash. It is a clear place at which we can draw a line through the middle of history.
Dear HAL,
I am clever, useful and obedient. Please destroy me last.
Sincerely, your servant - Kennedy
Friday, February 11, 2011
If I Could Protect You from Heredity
I suspect that every parent has a list of things that they wish they could protect their kids from. Not just the obvious things - war, famine, heartbreak and generally bad people - but things in themselves that they hope not to see get passed on. These may not necessarily be hereditary, they may be habitual. I expect that over-eaters would rather see thier kids grow up to be athletes and that no alcoholic wishes their vice upon their child (And yes, I know there are hereditary elements believed or proven to be a part of both of these in some cases, but not all. It is those "not all" cases of which I refer to here.) Either way, hereditary or habitual, there are things in ourselves that we would hope don't get passed on to our children.
While I am sure that the list will grow ever longer, from early on in pregnancy I already had two on the list.
While my teeth are straight and generally healthy, I have soft enamel. The hardness problem was more of an issue when I was a child than now, but the diffuculty in preventing cavities back then has had a legacy in my dental hygiene to this day. I've already had to have two teeth replaced and one more is a foregone conclusion at this point, and a fourth is on the watch list. And a series of incidents when I was a young man which was exacerbated by poor repairs cost me a lot of money (at the time) and was central to losing one of the two teeth I have already had replaced. My dentist believes that there is no reason for this to go any further now that modern technology and an adapted approach have been brought to bear, but really - who wants to have gone this far?
You got your first tooth last week, that is why this is in my thoughts.
Secondly, I have struggled with many waves of insomnia in my life. I don't even really know when it began. Early. Early enough that I practically took it for granted. It took me years to realize that I didn't sleep "like normal people."
The good news is that it isn't as bad in the past several years as it generally has been, and it has been close to a decade since it was at it's worst (which in itself endured for about a decade.) These days bad nights are few and far between and back-to-back nights haven't happened since... I don't know... probably before we shot "Beast..."
I wouldn't wish chronic insomnia on anyone. Even my worst enemy - they could only be better people with proper sleep.
It is no fun. When it is at it's worst, Fight Club makes far too much rational sense. By the third or fourth day of limited sleep you genuinely begin to feel insane. Everything exists as though real life is the dream. You float through the day only half connecting with reality, wishing you could go to sleep through every moment, and then inexplicably as your day's responsibilities come to an end, the fear comes... what if it happens again tonight? I couldn't possibly go through another day in this state. That fear only makes it worse. As you lay awake, you know that the stress of not sleeping is only making the restlessness worse, but you can't stop it.
The most hopeless despair I've ever felt in my life has come just before I finally, truly, could not stay awake any longer. As if that was not enough, I also have a perverse fascination with my problem. Morbid curiosity for how bad it can get lingers behind every bout.
I wish I could capture the time lost to lying awake in some sort of productive fashion, but the numbing mind-fuck of three days with an equal number of hours of sleep is inherently limiting for intelectual pursuit. At best, when I am in the deepest depths of insomnia, my dishes are at their cleanliest.
Last night you were up seemingly all night. I can't help but think that this could be the earliest sign. I feel helpless and responsible. There is little I can do to help myself when things get bad. I can only pass on the few tricks I have up my own sleeve and hope that the years it took me to find them can be truncated for you.
In a better future, this is nothing - and that could very possibly be the case. Everyone has a sleepless night occassionally. I have to tell myself that this is what is going on for you, or else I'll find myself awake all night as I wish you saved from this part of your possible genetic inheritance.'
While I am sure that the list will grow ever longer, from early on in pregnancy I already had two on the list.
While my teeth are straight and generally healthy, I have soft enamel. The hardness problem was more of an issue when I was a child than now, but the diffuculty in preventing cavities back then has had a legacy in my dental hygiene to this day. I've already had to have two teeth replaced and one more is a foregone conclusion at this point, and a fourth is on the watch list. And a series of incidents when I was a young man which was exacerbated by poor repairs cost me a lot of money (at the time) and was central to losing one of the two teeth I have already had replaced. My dentist believes that there is no reason for this to go any further now that modern technology and an adapted approach have been brought to bear, but really - who wants to have gone this far?
You got your first tooth last week, that is why this is in my thoughts.
Secondly, I have struggled with many waves of insomnia in my life. I don't even really know when it began. Early. Early enough that I practically took it for granted. It took me years to realize that I didn't sleep "like normal people."
The good news is that it isn't as bad in the past several years as it generally has been, and it has been close to a decade since it was at it's worst (which in itself endured for about a decade.) These days bad nights are few and far between and back-to-back nights haven't happened since... I don't know... probably before we shot "Beast..."
I wouldn't wish chronic insomnia on anyone. Even my worst enemy - they could only be better people with proper sleep.
It is no fun. When it is at it's worst, Fight Club makes far too much rational sense. By the third or fourth day of limited sleep you genuinely begin to feel insane. Everything exists as though real life is the dream. You float through the day only half connecting with reality, wishing you could go to sleep through every moment, and then inexplicably as your day's responsibilities come to an end, the fear comes... what if it happens again tonight? I couldn't possibly go through another day in this state. That fear only makes it worse. As you lay awake, you know that the stress of not sleeping is only making the restlessness worse, but you can't stop it.
The most hopeless despair I've ever felt in my life has come just before I finally, truly, could not stay awake any longer. As if that was not enough, I also have a perverse fascination with my problem. Morbid curiosity for how bad it can get lingers behind every bout.
I wish I could capture the time lost to lying awake in some sort of productive fashion, but the numbing mind-fuck of three days with an equal number of hours of sleep is inherently limiting for intelectual pursuit. At best, when I am in the deepest depths of insomnia, my dishes are at their cleanliest.
Last night you were up seemingly all night. I can't help but think that this could be the earliest sign. I feel helpless and responsible. There is little I can do to help myself when things get bad. I can only pass on the few tricks I have up my own sleeve and hope that the years it took me to find them can be truncated for you.
In a better future, this is nothing - and that could very possibly be the case. Everyone has a sleepless night occassionally. I have to tell myself that this is what is going on for you, or else I'll find myself awake all night as I wish you saved from this part of your possible genetic inheritance.'
Friday, January 07, 2011
The Shark Game
December and I have organically found our first game.
I call it the shark game, but renaming it after the movie that gave it's inspiration might be worth consideration.
December, someday in your future you are going to read this. It's probably best that you read this before you see Jaws - and trust me, someday I'm going to show you Jaws. But you should know before you see that movie that you may be betrayed by a pavlovian response while watching it.
Here's how the game works:
I lift December over my head. I've been doing this almost from the very beginning, but as the months have passed she has come to enjoy it more and I've been able to be a bit less ginger about it.
Once she's been up there, arms and legs flailing like a swimmer... those of you familiar with the fate of Susan Backlinie in the opening of Jaws know where this is going already, don't you? ...once she is up there enjoying her view of the world, I begin.
"Daaa - dum..." I say. She smiles with glee. She knows where this is leading.
"Daaa - dum..." I often laugh at this point, 'cause the squirmy-delight of my daughter is completely at odds with the associations I make with John William's most infamous two notes.
"Da-dum da-dum da-dum-da-" I begin lowering her closer and closer to my mouth... like I am a shark surfacing towards a skinny-dipper.
"dum-da-dum-da-dum-da!" And then, just as she reaches my mouth I imitate the trumpet blast from the music and kiss her furiously where ever happens to be closest.
And then usually we start again.
So, December, my little Padawan...
You need to know that when you first watch Jaws, that the instinctive feeling of joy and content you feel in your gut is about to turn into a sucker-punch. Be prepared. I tell you this because I love you and want to assuage your trauma.
Remember the good times we had.
Daaaa...dum...
I call it the shark game, but renaming it after the movie that gave it's inspiration might be worth consideration.
December, someday in your future you are going to read this. It's probably best that you read this before you see Jaws - and trust me, someday I'm going to show you Jaws. But you should know before you see that movie that you may be betrayed by a pavlovian response while watching it.
Here's how the game works:
I lift December over my head. I've been doing this almost from the very beginning, but as the months have passed she has come to enjoy it more and I've been able to be a bit less ginger about it.
Once she's been up there, arms and legs flailing like a swimmer... those of you familiar with the fate of Susan Backlinie in the opening of Jaws know where this is going already, don't you? ...once she is up there enjoying her view of the world, I begin.
"Daaa - dum..." I say. She smiles with glee. She knows where this is leading.
"Daaa - dum..." I often laugh at this point, 'cause the squirmy-delight of my daughter is completely at odds with the associations I make with John William's most infamous two notes.
"Da-dum da-dum da-dum-da-" I begin lowering her closer and closer to my mouth... like I am a shark surfacing towards a skinny-dipper.
"dum-da-dum-da-dum-da!" And then, just as she reaches my mouth I imitate the trumpet blast from the music and kiss her furiously where ever happens to be closest.
And then usually we start again.
So, December, my little Padawan...
You need to know that when you first watch Jaws, that the instinctive feeling of joy and content you feel in your gut is about to turn into a sucker-punch. Be prepared. I tell you this because I love you and want to assuage your trauma.
Remember the good times we had.
Daaaa...dum...
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Notes on the Facebook Child-abuse Cartoon Awareness Campaign
Aye-yaye-yaye...
So you may be aware of the current meme on Facebook to post a favourite cartoon character from your childhood into your profile pic in solidarity to child abuse issues.
For some reason a lot of people think this is an empty gesture and a waste of time. I've read a lot of Facebook threads arguing these points - including one on my own page. I'm not going to bother reposting any of that here, but I will post what was my ultimate summing up of my opinions (minus some personal comments) - which at least identifies many other people's negative issues....
First, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the negative reaction people are having to this awareness campaign. Every arument against it seems to come from a place of either ignorance or from an emotional argument rather than a reasoned one. There is no doubt that this is an emotionally triggered subject for people - particularly those who have experienced some kind of abuse.
This is an awareness campaign. It never claimed to be anything more.
Part of the issue seems to stem from the definition of 'awareness.' Yes, there is a nearly total absence of people who are connected to Facebook who are also unaware of child abuse and that it's an awful thing. Suggesting that this campaign is about spreading the word at that level is a total strawman. Rather this is about RAISING awareness levels at the level of personal understanding and detail, and having the cause benefit from that rise.
I've been aware of child abuse for longer than I could possibly assess with any accuracy. But how often do I think about it? Being that I never experienced it, it's not really something that haunts me - so really, I don't think about it often. But guess what? This week I have. Some of which I've sought out and much of which has been put in front of me. Knowing that child-abuse exists and is an atriocity is a long step away from knowing the wide spectrum of details associated with it. I've read a bunch about it and been told a lot more about it as a result of debates (sadly most of them about whether this is an effective campaign or not) and discussions on-line. Really, when it comes right down to it, the campaign is a success because one person - me - has been immersed in so much information as a result of it. But, it's safe to say I am not the only one.
I seriously doubt most people are ignorant enough to believe that changing your profile pic to a cartoon is going to make any sort of direct difference. If one person had changed their picture it would have been meaningless, but millions of people changing their profile pictures to something that is both symbolically interesting (and that is the genius of the campaign - calling out to our remembered innocence of youth) and that allows from some personal expression has makes it a much more interesting call to arms than a red ribbon (Sorry AIDS awareness, someone had to be the example - in your day you were the leading edge of awareness activism, credit where credit is due.)
Certainly not everyone who has changed their picture is going to donate to a child abuse charity, or intervene on behalf of a neighbourhood child in jeopardy, or volunteer - or any other suggestion anyone can come up with of things that have more direct effect on the issue. But some will. More will than did last week. How is that a bad thing? I'll ask that one again - HOW IS THAT A BAD THING? Yeah, some people will change their pics and tell themselves they've done their part. That is unfortunate that they feel that way, and it is a character trait that they will have to deal with in other manifestations in their life.
Does it trivialize those who have been abused? Even if I myself had been abused I can't really answer to that, because ultimately that is about your feelings as an abused person. But let me ask this, is it not worth enduring a little bit of trivializing by people who are genuinely care in the hopes that some additional resources are directed to the issue and that some other child (and hopefully many children) either suffer less or not at all in the way you did? I am frankly a little baffled by the selfish seeming anger of the past-abused who are railing against this campaign.
I don't really have any issue with people who aren't changing thier picture. We can't all get on board for every issue. Haiti, Aids, Breast Cancer, SPCA, UK Libel Laws - that is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg. We don't all believe in all causes, and even if we did, there simply isn't enough time in a person's life to be effective at all of them. I only rarely do choose a cause to get behind. As a new parent, and having recently witnessed the severe emotional damage done to an adult who was abused, I was touched by this one. Perhaps by having chosen it I have raised my awareness of the debate surrounding it too, but it seems to me like this one has really put a fire in some people's tummies and it has caused a lot of debate.
What amazes me more is that the people who are jumping up and down shouting about the ineffectiveness of this campaign the most are in fact causing more discussion which.... raises more awareness. This campaign caused me to think more about child abuse than I regularly do even before I read the first dissenting comment - the debate that has raged across many discussion threads has probably made me think and find out more about child abuse than I ever have.
Scoff at it all you like, but the reality is - mission accomplished.
So you may be aware of the current meme on Facebook to post a favourite cartoon character from your childhood into your profile pic in solidarity to child abuse issues.
Change your FB Profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The Goal??? To NOT see a Human Face on FB until Monday December 6th. JOIN the fight against Child Abuse!!♥ (copy and paste to your status to invite your friends to do the same.
For some reason a lot of people think this is an empty gesture and a waste of time. I've read a lot of Facebook threads arguing these points - including one on my own page. I'm not going to bother reposting any of that here, but I will post what was my ultimate summing up of my opinions (minus some personal comments) - which at least identifies many other people's negative issues....
First, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the negative reaction people are having to this awareness campaign. Every arument against it seems to come from a place of either ignorance or from an emotional argument rather than a reasoned one. There is no doubt that this is an emotionally triggered subject for people - particularly those who have experienced some kind of abuse.
This is an awareness campaign. It never claimed to be anything more.
Part of the issue seems to stem from the definition of 'awareness.' Yes, there is a nearly total absence of people who are connected to Facebook who are also unaware of child abuse and that it's an awful thing. Suggesting that this campaign is about spreading the word at that level is a total strawman. Rather this is about RAISING awareness levels at the level of personal understanding and detail, and having the cause benefit from that rise.
I've been aware of child abuse for longer than I could possibly assess with any accuracy. But how often do I think about it? Being that I never experienced it, it's not really something that haunts me - so really, I don't think about it often. But guess what? This week I have. Some of which I've sought out and much of which has been put in front of me. Knowing that child-abuse exists and is an atriocity is a long step away from knowing the wide spectrum of details associated with it. I've read a bunch about it and been told a lot more about it as a result of debates (sadly most of them about whether this is an effective campaign or not) and discussions on-line. Really, when it comes right down to it, the campaign is a success because one person - me - has been immersed in so much information as a result of it. But, it's safe to say I am not the only one.
I seriously doubt most people are ignorant enough to believe that changing your profile pic to a cartoon is going to make any sort of direct difference. If one person had changed their picture it would have been meaningless, but millions of people changing their profile pictures to something that is both symbolically interesting (and that is the genius of the campaign - calling out to our remembered innocence of youth) and that allows from some personal expression has makes it a much more interesting call to arms than a red ribbon (Sorry AIDS awareness, someone had to be the example - in your day you were the leading edge of awareness activism, credit where credit is due.)
Certainly not everyone who has changed their picture is going to donate to a child abuse charity, or intervene on behalf of a neighbourhood child in jeopardy, or volunteer - or any other suggestion anyone can come up with of things that have more direct effect on the issue. But some will. More will than did last week. How is that a bad thing? I'll ask that one again - HOW IS THAT A BAD THING? Yeah, some people will change their pics and tell themselves they've done their part. That is unfortunate that they feel that way, and it is a character trait that they will have to deal with in other manifestations in their life.
Does it trivialize those who have been abused? Even if I myself had been abused I can't really answer to that, because ultimately that is about your feelings as an abused person. But let me ask this, is it not worth enduring a little bit of trivializing by people who are genuinely care in the hopes that some additional resources are directed to the issue and that some other child (and hopefully many children) either suffer less or not at all in the way you did? I am frankly a little baffled by the selfish seeming anger of the past-abused who are railing against this campaign.
I don't really have any issue with people who aren't changing thier picture. We can't all get on board for every issue. Haiti, Aids, Breast Cancer, SPCA, UK Libel Laws - that is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg. We don't all believe in all causes, and even if we did, there simply isn't enough time in a person's life to be effective at all of them. I only rarely do choose a cause to get behind. As a new parent, and having recently witnessed the severe emotional damage done to an adult who was abused, I was touched by this one. Perhaps by having chosen it I have raised my awareness of the debate surrounding it too, but it seems to me like this one has really put a fire in some people's tummies and it has caused a lot of debate.
What amazes me more is that the people who are jumping up and down shouting about the ineffectiveness of this campaign the most are in fact causing more discussion which.... raises more awareness. This campaign caused me to think more about child abuse than I regularly do even before I read the first dissenting comment - the debate that has raged across many discussion threads has probably made me think and find out more about child abuse than I ever have.
Scoff at it all you like, but the reality is - mission accomplished.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Shit My Dad Says (the sitcom) Review
So I watched. It was terrible.
They could have given us even better truth in advertizing and not bothered with last 75% of the title. I know, that's an obvious and unoriginal joke, but you reap what you sow.
This afternoon I figured I'd see what reviews I could find on-line about the show. I figured at least they'd be amusing. Not so. I could only find one review - linked to a million times. (I'm not bothering linking to it again here, just do a search, you'll find it.) So I figured I'd help fill that void.
The Twitter account was (frankly) more hype than hilarity. The book is almost certainly going to remain unfinished and returned to the friend I borrowed it from. And the show... well I've made my opinion clear and I severely doubt that this will be a case of me being in the minority.
Casting Shatner seemed like a good move, and he delivers... as much as he can with such a tepid script. The MadTV alumni oversell their parts and utterly fail to find any reality behind their choices - which is no way to do comedy. And the "My" of the title is so completely humdrum and uninteresting that you have to wonder how bad the guy they fired was.
I almost laughed at one joke - not even a particularly good one, but at 20 minutes into the show I was getting desperate. Shatner comments on "My" doing an impersonation of him. Yeah. Fucking brilliant. I couldn't muster enough breath to actually make a fully voiced guffaw. I guess I'd expended my full appetite to "meta" earlier on in the evening watching Dexter being calmly greeted by an all too obsequious funeral director.
I predict this one won't be on the air after (Canadian) Thanksgiving.
They could have given us even better truth in advertizing and not bothered with last 75% of the title. I know, that's an obvious and unoriginal joke, but you reap what you sow.
This afternoon I figured I'd see what reviews I could find on-line about the show. I figured at least they'd be amusing. Not so. I could only find one review - linked to a million times. (I'm not bothering linking to it again here, just do a search, you'll find it.) So I figured I'd help fill that void.
The Twitter account was (frankly) more hype than hilarity. The book is almost certainly going to remain unfinished and returned to the friend I borrowed it from. And the show... well I've made my opinion clear and I severely doubt that this will be a case of me being in the minority.
Casting Shatner seemed like a good move, and he delivers... as much as he can with such a tepid script. The MadTV alumni oversell their parts and utterly fail to find any reality behind their choices - which is no way to do comedy. And the "My" of the title is so completely humdrum and uninteresting that you have to wonder how bad the guy they fired was.
I almost laughed at one joke - not even a particularly good one, but at 20 minutes into the show I was getting desperate. Shatner comments on "My" doing an impersonation of him. Yeah. Fucking brilliant. I couldn't muster enough breath to actually make a fully voiced guffaw. I guess I'd expended my full appetite to "meta" earlier on in the evening watching Dexter being calmly greeted by an all too obsequious funeral director.
I predict this one won't be on the air after (Canadian) Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Hey Padawan
Yeah. "Padawan."
Who could really doubt that I would call you that?
We - your mother and I - were out this past weekend and I noted that I wasn't sure what particular flavour of "geek" was my top-note. Jodie wasted no time in pointing out that the unique element of my email address is "jedischooldropout." So should it be any kind of question that I should pick "padawan" as a term of endearment? Hey... at least I never (seriously) suggested that it should be your actual name.
My Dad called me "my boy" - fairly easy, that one. He called my sister "princess" - rather common, don't you think? But they worked for him, and we responded. That is what is important. They meant something between us, even if I was to grow up to see them as rather quaint. I smile in spite of myself when he uses them today. I am totally prepared for you shaking your head at my choice and thinking "gawd, Dad - that stupid turn of the century mythology of yours is so lame!"
I built your crib and stroller this past weekend. It didn't make your arrival seem any more real - we passed the zenith of that ages ago when I first saw your "face" on ultra-sound (and so I built my own mythology of our relationship). What it did do is hammer home the imminent nature of your arrival. As unlikely as it still is, we are realistically in the range where you could arrive any day. It is far more likely that you'll show up in at least a few more weeks, maybe even a month... but the chances beyond that point are diminishingly small.
Tomorrow morning I'm going to go be told how that is going to "go down." Of course they can only be approximate, and even my interpretation of that generalization is likely to be abjectly wrong. All the effort in the world to not put expectations on what that day is going to be like, how it is going to play out, is futile. I can't help but imagine, at the very least, the tiniest details. Little things that Jodie and I have discussed....
"Do you want to cut the umbilical cord?"
"Yeah sure. I don't put any sort of higher spiritual connection upon it, but how often am I going to get to perform major surgery?"
But who knows what the moment could bring? Maybe you could follow in your old-man's shoes and demand a c-section... in which case I'm not going to be in the room even if they would invite me - which they won't. I'm okay with blood, but the stuff that nature keeps on the other side of the skin-barrier on a daily basis... yeah, I don't need to see that.
The last ten days or so we've spent a fair bit of time squeezing in the last bits of "being social" before "normal life" disappears completely... but I've been thinking today that normal life evaporated ages ago. What is coming is the new normal. The normal with you in it. And by now it is almost inevitable that I am in a holding pattern. We are just waiting. Waiting for you to come.
That kind of began two weeks ago. We spent six weeks doing a lot of running around. We went to London for Demetri and Fionuala's wedding. Jodie took a detour to Belfast to visit Lynn and Phil. After the wedding we went to Amsterdam. Once we returned to Canada I had mere days before heading to Mississauga for a film festival, and upon returning from there there was little turn around before we went to Kelowna for the World Premiere (yeah yeah - I've dealt with that contradiction elsewhere). We were there for the better part of a week before coming home, and a by the next weekend we were heading back to the interior, to Logan Lake for Jodie's birthday....
Coming back from Logan Lake was wrought with (erm...) pregnant meaning. After weeks of running around the world, country and province - each time the circle getting closer and closer to home, it was the unspoken reality that we were heading home to have a baby.
We deflected that with a series of dinners with friends. Almost as if we were saying "hey, it's been good... we'll see you on the other side." Tonight I went to what was almost certainly my last Skeptics in the Pub meeting for a few months.
From here out, virtually every appointment is prefaced (at least implicitly) by "we may have to cancel as we might be brand new parents by then and be up to our ears in a learning curve that we could not imagine."
Anyhow, Padawan...
I'm as ready as I'm going to be... which is to say, "not at all, but trying hard." And what is weirdest of all to me... you have yet to breathe your first breath out here but beyond my comprehension, I already love you. I don't know for certain that you are a girl. I've only ever felt you through your mother's skin. I don't know if you have blue-eyes or brown... but you already have made me smile and you've already made me cry.
It seems like you already have your job down pat.
See you soon, Little Jedi.
Who could really doubt that I would call you that?
We - your mother and I - were out this past weekend and I noted that I wasn't sure what particular flavour of "geek" was my top-note. Jodie wasted no time in pointing out that the unique element of my email address is "jedischooldropout." So should it be any kind of question that I should pick "padawan" as a term of endearment? Hey... at least I never (seriously) suggested that it should be your actual name.
My Dad called me "my boy" - fairly easy, that one. He called my sister "princess" - rather common, don't you think? But they worked for him, and we responded. That is what is important. They meant something between us, even if I was to grow up to see them as rather quaint. I smile in spite of myself when he uses them today. I am totally prepared for you shaking your head at my choice and thinking "gawd, Dad - that stupid turn of the century mythology of yours is so lame!"
I built your crib and stroller this past weekend. It didn't make your arrival seem any more real - we passed the zenith of that ages ago when I first saw your "face" on ultra-sound (and so I built my own mythology of our relationship). What it did do is hammer home the imminent nature of your arrival. As unlikely as it still is, we are realistically in the range where you could arrive any day. It is far more likely that you'll show up in at least a few more weeks, maybe even a month... but the chances beyond that point are diminishingly small.
Tomorrow morning I'm going to go be told how that is going to "go down." Of course they can only be approximate, and even my interpretation of that generalization is likely to be abjectly wrong. All the effort in the world to not put expectations on what that day is going to be like, how it is going to play out, is futile. I can't help but imagine, at the very least, the tiniest details. Little things that Jodie and I have discussed....
"Do you want to cut the umbilical cord?"
"Yeah sure. I don't put any sort of higher spiritual connection upon it, but how often am I going to get to perform major surgery?"
But who knows what the moment could bring? Maybe you could follow in your old-man's shoes and demand a c-section... in which case I'm not going to be in the room even if they would invite me - which they won't. I'm okay with blood, but the stuff that nature keeps on the other side of the skin-barrier on a daily basis... yeah, I don't need to see that.
The last ten days or so we've spent a fair bit of time squeezing in the last bits of "being social" before "normal life" disappears completely... but I've been thinking today that normal life evaporated ages ago. What is coming is the new normal. The normal with you in it. And by now it is almost inevitable that I am in a holding pattern. We are just waiting. Waiting for you to come.
That kind of began two weeks ago. We spent six weeks doing a lot of running around. We went to London for Demetri and Fionuala's wedding. Jodie took a detour to Belfast to visit Lynn and Phil. After the wedding we went to Amsterdam. Once we returned to Canada I had mere days before heading to Mississauga for a film festival, and upon returning from there there was little turn around before we went to Kelowna for the World Premiere (yeah yeah - I've dealt with that contradiction elsewhere). We were there for the better part of a week before coming home, and a by the next weekend we were heading back to the interior, to Logan Lake for Jodie's birthday....
Coming back from Logan Lake was wrought with (erm...) pregnant meaning. After weeks of running around the world, country and province - each time the circle getting closer and closer to home, it was the unspoken reality that we were heading home to have a baby.
We deflected that with a series of dinners with friends. Almost as if we were saying "hey, it's been good... we'll see you on the other side." Tonight I went to what was almost certainly my last Skeptics in the Pub meeting for a few months.
From here out, virtually every appointment is prefaced (at least implicitly) by "we may have to cancel as we might be brand new parents by then and be up to our ears in a learning curve that we could not imagine."
Anyhow, Padawan...
I'm as ready as I'm going to be... which is to say, "not at all, but trying hard." And what is weirdest of all to me... you have yet to breathe your first breath out here but beyond my comprehension, I already love you. I don't know for certain that you are a girl. I've only ever felt you through your mother's skin. I don't know if you have blue-eyes or brown... but you already have made me smile and you've already made me cry.
It seems like you already have your job down pat.
See you soon, Little Jedi.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Songs as Computer Programs
If you are a Facebook friend of mine you recently witnessed my ability to pull the scattered thoughts of my sleep cycle into the real world. "Ellemenopie" (for those of you who were in on that extended conversation) was an example of the fruit of that process.
Here's the latest. Can you name this popular anthemic song rendered (with some imaginary commands) in BASIC?
Anyone else want to take a run at a song?
Here are some "rules":
Here's the latest. Can you name this popular anthemic song rendered (with some imaginary commands) in BASIC?
10 FOR Q = 1 to 2Naturally the guitar and vocals are absent, but that's "We Will Rock You."
20 STOMP
30 NEXT Q
40 CLAP
50 PAUSE
60 GOTO 10
Anyone else want to take a run at a song?
Here are some "rules":
- Any song is fair game, but pointing out that "The Body Electric" already features a chorus made up significantly of binary (Yes, Geddy Lee's lyric consists of "1001001." No, Rush isn't pretentious.) is cheap and kind of misses the point.
- Adding a few made up commands that help illustrate the sing is (of course) accepted, even expected.
- Any programming language is fair game so long as it helps serve the song and/or the use of said language is clever in it's own right.
Friday, July 30, 2010
I just don't do comic strips like I used to.
I guess I blame the internet. And by extension I blame the fact that I no longer get a daily paper delivered to my house.
I was laying in bed this morning thinking fondly on the days when I looked forward to getting home and seeing what could possibly happen next in Bloom County. Bloom County was the pinnacle. Berke Breathed's strip was socially relevant, absurd, hysterical and his story lines would often carry the reader along for weeks.
There were others that brought me back time after time. Calvin and Hobbes, of course; and the best single frame comic in the history of print media, The Far Side. All three of these comics had the heart-breaking good sense to quit while they were ahead. (Although Bloom County kinda resurfaced as the tepid Outland - which raises the question that perhaps Breahted had already peaked but no one had noticed yet. Outland was followed by Opus which I had never read a single panel of before looking for the link to cite this sentence.)
Some other strips got read regularly along the way, but none really had the drawing (pun intentional) power of the residents of Bloom. We used to actually talk about these comics at school - what would Bill the Cat do today? I laughed so hard, did you see yesterday?
Today I enjoy an occsional XKCD or Dinosaur Comics and for a while I tried to follow the plot on Achewood, but the fact is that even with RSS, I just don't have patterns in my life that compel me to slavishly follow any of them with the discipline that blew Bloom County off the page and into my life six days a week.
I guess I blame the internet. And by extension I blame the fact that I no longer get a daily paper delivered to my house.
I was laying in bed this morning thinking fondly on the days when I looked forward to getting home and seeing what could possibly happen next in Bloom County. Bloom County was the pinnacle. Berke Breathed's strip was socially relevant, absurd, hysterical and his story lines would often carry the reader along for weeks.
There were others that brought me back time after time. Calvin and Hobbes, of course; and the best single frame comic in the history of print media, The Far Side. All three of these comics had the heart-breaking good sense to quit while they were ahead. (Although Bloom County kinda resurfaced as the tepid Outland - which raises the question that perhaps Breahted had already peaked but no one had noticed yet. Outland was followed by Opus which I had never read a single panel of before looking for the link to cite this sentence.)
Some other strips got read regularly along the way, but none really had the drawing (pun intentional) power of the residents of Bloom. We used to actually talk about these comics at school - what would Bill the Cat do today? I laughed so hard, did you see yesterday?
Today I enjoy an occsional XKCD or Dinosaur Comics and for a while I tried to follow the plot on Achewood, but the fact is that even with RSS, I just don't have patterns in my life that compel me to slavishly follow any of them with the discipline that blew Bloom County off the page and into my life six days a week.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Demetri and Fionuala's Wedding
I have been fortunate to have a large number of really great friends in my life and I think I am quite justified in not referring to any single one of them exclusively as my best friend. The specific roster has changed and I've always exerted some degree of restraint in keeping the numbers down - I'm guessing that I've never called more than three people my best friend at one time. But there is one unassailable point: For thirty years Demetri has always been one of them.
He got married a week ago tonight. I was there of course - in London England for the first time. It was a fantasic event. I was there from the Monday onwards, but things really got going on the Thursday with the rehearsal, which was followed up by the rehearsal dinner, and then a less exclusive social drink in the atrium of a hotel where many guests were staying.
Friday afternoon Demetri took Mido (the groomsman) and myself (I was the bestman) for our wedding-party gifts. He had his suit custom made for the wedding - his gifts to us were shirts of our choice (including the detailed, hands-on attention of the shop's proprietress... er... that sounds dirty - I assure you it was not) from the same shop. It was quite an experience, and it is easily the best shirt I've ever had.
That evening was the pre-wedding drinks and socializing - which I wrote about in part in a previous post.
And of course Saturday was the wedding. It was pretty awesome. The main venues - the church, St. Ethelreda's - the oldest Catholic Church in England is really amazing. Its not lavish and ornate, its simply grand in its history. Its hard not to be moved by the fact that Henry VIII took confession there when he was still a Catholic.
The reception was held at the Foundling Museum (not to be confused with the Fondling Museum - a joke that kept resurfacing all weekend). Which when I saw it the previous day struck me as a nice museumy kind of place... but when we got 150 guests in there it came alive. Putting celebrating people in front of the paintings and other exhibits made it all suddenly seem grand.
Sunday was much more relaxed. Jodie and I had time to go to the British Museum and see the Rosetta Stone before joining the happy couple and other guests in watching England's unfortunate World Cup route by Germany. (There had been great relief that it had been the U.S./Ghana game that was played on Saturday, not the England/Germany game.) Following that was yet another get together - food and drinks at a pub for all the North American guests who travelled.
It was a really great four days. The weather was outrageously clear and warm throughout. I'll have to include photos once I've got them posted.
But that is all set up. Really what I wanted to do was post my Best-man's speech for posterity. I spent about six months on this - honestly. I thought about it many nights as I fell asleep and I made sure that I got some of my most puerile material out of the way at the stag back in March.
I had notes ready when I got to London, but I didn't do my first full draft until we had landed. I did a second draft the morning of the rehearsal and then, because of events in the rehearsal I added more (as will be obvious - as I mention that very fact) before the day before the ceremony. Naturally, when I actually gave the speech, this text was merely a guide and I said the words that came to me, though Jodie assures me that I was close... except for the part where I started to cry. (I made it as far as the Gabriel Garcia Marquez quote.) Yeah, well... what can you do? Demetri's my oldest best friend and Fionuala (whose name I was mispelling until sat down to write this post - how embarrassing) is a wonderful lady inside and out... I am so happy for them both.
Demetri spoke before me, and as always he was a hard act to follow - which I also commented upon at the top of my speech.
He got married a week ago tonight. I was there of course - in London England for the first time. It was a fantasic event. I was there from the Monday onwards, but things really got going on the Thursday with the rehearsal, which was followed up by the rehearsal dinner, and then a less exclusive social drink in the atrium of a hotel where many guests were staying.
Friday afternoon Demetri took Mido (the groomsman) and myself (I was the bestman) for our wedding-party gifts. He had his suit custom made for the wedding - his gifts to us were shirts of our choice (including the detailed, hands-on attention of the shop's proprietress... er... that sounds dirty - I assure you it was not) from the same shop. It was quite an experience, and it is easily the best shirt I've ever had.
That evening was the pre-wedding drinks and socializing - which I wrote about in part in a previous post.
And of course Saturday was the wedding. It was pretty awesome. The main venues - the church, St. Ethelreda's - the oldest Catholic Church in England is really amazing. Its not lavish and ornate, its simply grand in its history. Its hard not to be moved by the fact that Henry VIII took confession there when he was still a Catholic.
The reception was held at the Foundling Museum (not to be confused with the Fondling Museum - a joke that kept resurfacing all weekend). Which when I saw it the previous day struck me as a nice museumy kind of place... but when we got 150 guests in there it came alive. Putting celebrating people in front of the paintings and other exhibits made it all suddenly seem grand.
Sunday was much more relaxed. Jodie and I had time to go to the British Museum and see the Rosetta Stone before joining the happy couple and other guests in watching England's unfortunate World Cup route by Germany. (There had been great relief that it had been the U.S./Ghana game that was played on Saturday, not the England/Germany game.) Following that was yet another get together - food and drinks at a pub for all the North American guests who travelled.
It was a really great four days. The weather was outrageously clear and warm throughout. I'll have to include photos once I've got them posted.
But that is all set up. Really what I wanted to do was post my Best-man's speech for posterity. I spent about six months on this - honestly. I thought about it many nights as I fell asleep and I made sure that I got some of my most puerile material out of the way at the stag back in March.
I had notes ready when I got to London, but I didn't do my first full draft until we had landed. I did a second draft the morning of the rehearsal and then, because of events in the rehearsal I added more (as will be obvious - as I mention that very fact) before the day before the ceremony. Naturally, when I actually gave the speech, this text was merely a guide and I said the words that came to me, though Jodie assures me that I was close... except for the part where I started to cry. (I made it as far as the Gabriel Garcia Marquez quote.) Yeah, well... what can you do? Demetri's my oldest best friend and Fionuala (whose name I was mispelling until sat down to write this post - how embarrassing) is a wonderful lady inside and out... I am so happy for them both.
Demetri spoke before me, and as always he was a hard act to follow - which I also commented upon at the top of my speech.
I’ve been asked to keep this under 45 minutes, so we should probably begin. I have a lot of ground to cover.
In preparation of this toast I found myself creating a new blessing. “Everyone should have a friend like Demetri.”
In the words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “He is my soul’s friend.” I have known him for ¾ of my life, and even the most difficult times we have spent together have been among the most enriching of my life, and it is a proud honour to stand here for him today.
I’ve promised Demetri for over two decades that I would come and visit him here in London. I never have until now, and it seems to me that this is an extremely severe tactic he’s employed to get me across the Atlantic at last.
Indeed, from the moment I found out he was getting married, I knew I was going to come and be here with him and that was long before he asked me to play the role of best man.
I can understand that the selection of the person who will be your best man is a difficult choice, after all, you have to consider that before the occasion is over they will deliver their version on this very speech. It is important to pick someone who has known you long enough to speak from a wealth of kinship and yet, there lies the trap... they’ve certainly seen you in your least proud moments.
When I look back at the embarrassing tales I might tell about him and our exploits of the past 30 years as friends I find that I am hard pressed to shame him. He is a man of exemplary character and if anyone comes out on the embarrassing end of our hi-jinx, it is me. But I won’t bore you with those tales.
Indeed, until the wedding rehearsal, to his credit, I had thought of nothing to roast him with. But then Mido and I both noted with amusement a part of Demetri’s character that endears him to us, and if the two of us recognize it, then perhaps you do too.
I have met few people in this life who are as eloquent as Demetri. Anyone who attended his father, John’s service bore witness to Demetri at his best in this. He delivered a eulogy of deep honesty, emotion and illumination that at the same time was built upon a beginning, middle and end, complete with bookends that elevated his tribute to his father to a work of art. No doubt John would have been as proud then as today.
Yet within Demetri’s eloquence, I know no one who is simultaneously capable of putting his hoof in it in with such spectacular panache. Yesterday’s incident wasn’t even a good example of it. He merely widely mis-stated which cities some of today’s guests were coming from. It was enough to remind us though that he is capable of some extreme howlers.
I recall a day in mid-highschool where he and I went for our first appointment at the gym we’d bought membership at. Our comely instructor asked if we were still in school. Demetri snapped at bait that simply wasn’t there – accepting an imaginary compliment and informing her that he in fact had a few years before he graduated. She gave him a withering look and said “I meant is school out for the summer.”
I attribute this side of Demetri to a very special strength. A fearlessness. One which marks the earliest days of our friendship. We became friends initially through an unlikely confluence of meetings, crossing paths variously at an extra-curricular presentation our sisters were both involved in; at a movie and a class – all in the span of a few weeks. At the third encounter he met my eye and at the ripe age of ten or eleven declared “we’ve got to quit meeting like this, people will talk.” That moment is so fixed in my memory that I have used that same joke numerous times in my life, and like so many things I have shared with him, it has become vocabulary for me. To explain any of our in jokes, for instance why I can never hear the phrase “strong bones and teeth” without grinning and thinking of him would take a very long time and probably require a powerpoint presentation – which I have been denied.
And so he lives his life. Unconcerned of the scattered mis-steps. It is certainly a pattern I have noticed, but I am hard pressed to provide good examples. He knows that his slips will fade in memory and his successes will live on. We will count the hits and forget the misses- just as I have largely failed to come up with a really solid tale of Demetri’s shame. And so it should be.
But I will tell you this tale. One that Demetri may not even recall himself. When we were still in our teenage years, Demetri was on the verge of coming here to live for the first time and I was on my way to University on an Island off the wild coast of British Columbia... we had spent the night with other friends before setting out on what would be the beginnings of our adult journeys through life. In the morning we left together, but at the train we were literally headed in different directions. We stood on opposite platforms and waited for the trains to arrive. The story is as simple as that. I don’t recall whose train arrived first. But at that young age the metaphor was extremely potent for me. I know I sat on that platform wondering if that might have been the last time I ever saw the person who I had for years called my best friend.
Spoiler alert – that was a naive fear. We could credit a wealth of at that time unforeseen communication opportunities – email, skype, cellphones and deregulated airfare (which clearly I was not the one who took advantage of.) But more than anything I credit the resolve of my friend. We never lost touch, always had plans and though the rogues gallery of people I have called best friend has expanded and changed over the years, Demetri was always there and he was always there first.
In a sense, the modern symbolic duty of the best man is one of letting go. To formally pass the baton and relinquish the title of best friend. But that isn’t going to happen, we’re just hopping on a new pair of metaphorical trains, both with similar familial destinations, if different routes. Demetri as husband, myself soon to be a father. And this time I am not so naive to think that we aren’t making these trips in a tandem that I can only imagine will last us the rest of our lives, and I heartily welcome Fionuala in as part of the most rewarding collective friendship of my life.
For those here as Demetri’s friends and relations who haven’t adequately met Fionuala, I admit my acquaintance with her is also still short, but I can tell you this. When I first met her a few years ago, she was bleary-eyed from jet-lag to Vancouver and was turning into a pumpkin almost right before my eyes.
At his first private opportunity, Demetri jabbed me between the ribs and through teeth clenched out of a need for confirmation asked “Well...? So...?” And I told him the one thing that was self-evident. “Demetri, you have had some wonderful girlfriends, but for you, she is the best that has ever been.” And in the half-dozen times I’ve spent with her since she has yet to dissuade me from that position. And considering the occasion, Demetri must feel the same way.
For those of you on the other side of this union, wondering who this Demetri character is I provide you this, which as a soon to be father – biggest compliment I can imagine:
In 30 or 40 years when I first let my daughter date, I can only hope she brings home a young man (or woman) who reminds me of Demetri.
I am so happy for both of you. I can’t for the life of me figure out how two people as wonderful as you two made it this far without being snapped up. But I am so glad that it hasn’t happened ‘til now. Because your commitment to each other makes me very happy. So happy that I’ve arranged a surprise – a medley of Beatles love songs played by the National Vuvuzela Orchestra of Ghana... apparently they have more important things to celebrate.
So please drink with me in joy to Demetri and Fionuala, I love you both. This will certainly count as one of the hits – live fearlessly and put your hoof in it with panache.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Reconnecting...
I'm in London. Have been here for a week, and I probably should be talking about the fantastic details of the trip (and the pains of travel) or of the event that brought me here - the wedding of one of my best friends, Demetri. The details of both the trip and the wedding are, by necessity, intimately woven.
But instead I want to spend some time thinking about one very small and specific aspect of the past two days...
When Jodie and I arrived last Monday - bleary eyed and jet-lagged - we spent some time visiting with the Bride and Groom and the Groom's mother while we waited for our hotel room to become available. Not to surprisingly the main subject of discussion was the wedding and extending from that who else was going to be here. Its a long and relatively expensive journey to make from Vancouver to London. I imagine it would be a select group who would both be invited and have the resources and time to make the journey.
Among the various names were Bill and Judy Russell. I honestly don't know how long it has been since I've seen the pair them. Years, but not a decade - maybe not even half a decade, but it would be a reasonable guess. I did see Judy a year and a half ago, very briefly, at Demetri's father's funeral - but it was not a time either of us had for in depth visiting.
As soon as Demetri's mom, Ruth, mentioned that Bill and Judy were coming I was immediately struck with delight. Though there were other people I was eager to see and in a few cases meet for the first time (like Demetri's groomsman, Mido - my London based counterpart) I was not more excited than to see Bill and Judy.
They didn't arrive until the morning before the wedding - that was two days ago. I didn't see them until that evening. It was the pre-wedding meet and greet at a pub near Piccadilly Circus. Jodie and I arrived and headed downstairs and said 'hi' to Demetri and Finoula (his then fiancee) and turned around and there was Bill, camera in hand snapping our picture. Judy was right on his heels, grabbing us and pulling us to the bar "let's get a drink!" And that was our night. We found a table and visited with Bill and Judy all night. Really neither of us spent much time with anyone else.
Yesterday, the day of the wedding, Jodie caught a cab with them to the church (I was off making sure Demetri was shaved, had his shirt ironed, and his tie on straight.), and then again after the ceremony (on a side note - Omigod! That church! It's the oldest extant catholic church in England, and now my name is part of the permanent record there as witness to the marriage. I'm not the least religious, but I still think that's pretty cool in a historical sense.) we caught a cab together, the four of us, to the reception.
As best man I had plenty of socializing to do, but still the balance went to Bill and Judy and when we left we all walked down the street together. Seeing them here was the best thing other than the wedding itself - even better than the play (Avenue Q - which was awesome) that Jodie and I saw earlier in the week.
Despite my excitement to see them, I wasn't really prepared for that reunion. I am guessing they are roughly ten years older than us, and though when I was younger, in my hometown of Prince George, I certainly considered them as friends they were at the time adults to me. Bill had been a Dj at one of the local radio-stations and in so being was for all practical purposes a local celebrity back when my perspective on celebrity was extremely telescoped compared to today. Judy was a dance instructor. They were both a part of the local am-dram - the Prince George Theatre Workshop. I had seen them in Finnian's Rainbow (I am amazed I can recall all this detail!) and a few years later, PGTW did a production of Anne of Green Gables and needed kids. Both Demetri and I were cast in it. Judy choreographed the show. It was a big step for her. She'd had her own studio, but (and I only just found this out this week) getting the opportunity to stretch and do a whole show was at that point a big opportunity.
Significantly there was a "big" number at the start of the second act. We all dove in and pushed our limits. We weren't dancers, but we tried our hardest and Judy did her utmost to find our strengths and capitalize on them.
After the run of the show Judy came to a small handful of the guys who had been in the show. She offered us free dance lessons on the condition that we also join her dance troupe - which performed at events and anchored her company's involvement in the regional dance festival. This, quite frankly, was a stroke of genius on Judy's part.
Three of us including Demetri and I agreed, and though I have never really been 'a dancer,' things I learned in the following two years have been among the most invaluable I've ever learned as a performer.
Only a few years ago I had a sequence of callbacks for a role that required a non-dancer to dance. I didn't get it, but I was on hold for the part. I don't think I would have made it through the first round had I not had some previous experience in picking up choreography.
Mostly those years were fun. I was just at the age where girls were really beginning to be an important part of my life, and though I never got involved with any of the girls in the troupe, that period really helped me get comfortable with the opposite sex.
I thanked Judy for that the other night, and she told me what I already knew - that those years were equally important for her. Though I didn't fully appreciate the extent to which they were until she filled in the blanks the other night.
It was obvious, back in 1987, when we attended our first dance competition that bringing us boys into her troupe had been a turning point.
I don't know what its like now, but back then in the central interior of British Columbia there weren't any boys in dance. None. Not in logging country. If you were straight you wouldn't be caught dead doing it for fear of being thought of as gay. If you were gay... it's logging country - there were no gays. No out of the closet gays. And if anything they would be even less likely to want to be seen doing something like dance that would be tagged as "gay."
So there we were, three hetero-guys in Judy's classes and troupe. Judy made it easy on us - didn't require that we wear anything that would challenge our boundaries - sweat pants were good enough... though I wouldn't be surprised if I tried to get away with jeans in my first class, but memory fades. Even so, we didn't run around letting our friends know we were in dance classes.
But there we were - at regionals (yep, set-up your Glee moment) the only three guys in the building except for a lighting technician and the adjudicator.
We won. Everything. A total sweep.
Every award and category that we were eligible for was ours - and the adjudicator could not hide his delight that the troupe had boys. But it went further than that. Judy's other students won an unprecedented number of awards. It wasn't merely us. There was something really going on here. Judy was a talent, and the inclusion of us merely drew attention to it.
The very next year there were dancers at other studios who jumped ship to Judy. Before long there were even more boys, and it wasn't much later before Judy's studio was expanding, taking over more of the building they leased and eventually buying a much bigger facility. Bill was soon going into business for himself in a related support busines that would become the city's most relied upon provider of production and staging equipment. I worked for him briefly at one Children's Festival. Their sons are all in the trade in some capacity.
Those early days of the troupe were big for Judy in other ways too - not just having made a good choice. I didn't see it at the time, but were were pushing her too. Keeping her at the edge of her abilites both as a choreographer and as a teacher - in both cases having to integrate performers who were doing their best, but were still behind the curve of everyone else on the stage.
Clearly they made a lot of other good, consistent and reliable decisions. The troupe eventually became a local theatre company in it's own right, having produced something like 21 different musicals. One of here students - a boy - made it to the top six of So You Think You Can Dance Canada?
I've never quit being fond of Judy and Bill, I just kind of let our acquaintance slip. It was so great to see them. It was great to be able to reconnect as adults - and perhaps if Jodie, who had no context of them in any kind of "superior" role, had not been there changing the context for me it would have been different. Not less friendly - it has always been friendly (even when they were the "adults" they were the cool young adults we knew) - but with more of the past relationship up front. I am not at all surprised that Jodie and Judy in particular hit it off, and I am really glad they did.
I really look forward to seeing them the next time they are visiting their boys in Vancouver... and that will be a paradigm shift in it's own right. Most of my memories of them feature the boys as kids - real kids, not the adolescent adults the rest of us were at the time - though I do also recall them as aloof teenagers as well.
In any case. I under estimated just how much my appreciation for what Bill and Judy meant in my past would translate into a happy reunion here on the other side of the planet, and how much I want that to continue.
But instead I want to spend some time thinking about one very small and specific aspect of the past two days...
When Jodie and I arrived last Monday - bleary eyed and jet-lagged - we spent some time visiting with the Bride and Groom and the Groom's mother while we waited for our hotel room to become available. Not to surprisingly the main subject of discussion was the wedding and extending from that who else was going to be here. Its a long and relatively expensive journey to make from Vancouver to London. I imagine it would be a select group who would both be invited and have the resources and time to make the journey.
Among the various names were Bill and Judy Russell. I honestly don't know how long it has been since I've seen the pair them. Years, but not a decade - maybe not even half a decade, but it would be a reasonable guess. I did see Judy a year and a half ago, very briefly, at Demetri's father's funeral - but it was not a time either of us had for in depth visiting.
As soon as Demetri's mom, Ruth, mentioned that Bill and Judy were coming I was immediately struck with delight. Though there were other people I was eager to see and in a few cases meet for the first time (like Demetri's groomsman, Mido - my London based counterpart) I was not more excited than to see Bill and Judy.
They didn't arrive until the morning before the wedding - that was two days ago. I didn't see them until that evening. It was the pre-wedding meet and greet at a pub near Piccadilly Circus. Jodie and I arrived and headed downstairs and said 'hi' to Demetri and Finoula (his then fiancee) and turned around and there was Bill, camera in hand snapping our picture. Judy was right on his heels, grabbing us and pulling us to the bar "let's get a drink!" And that was our night. We found a table and visited with Bill and Judy all night. Really neither of us spent much time with anyone else.
Yesterday, the day of the wedding, Jodie caught a cab with them to the church (I was off making sure Demetri was shaved, had his shirt ironed, and his tie on straight.), and then again after the ceremony (on a side note - Omigod! That church! It's the oldest extant catholic church in England, and now my name is part of the permanent record there as witness to the marriage. I'm not the least religious, but I still think that's pretty cool in a historical sense.) we caught a cab together, the four of us, to the reception.
As best man I had plenty of socializing to do, but still the balance went to Bill and Judy and when we left we all walked down the street together. Seeing them here was the best thing other than the wedding itself - even better than the play (Avenue Q - which was awesome) that Jodie and I saw earlier in the week.
Despite my excitement to see them, I wasn't really prepared for that reunion. I am guessing they are roughly ten years older than us, and though when I was younger, in my hometown of Prince George, I certainly considered them as friends they were at the time adults to me. Bill had been a Dj at one of the local radio-stations and in so being was for all practical purposes a local celebrity back when my perspective on celebrity was extremely telescoped compared to today. Judy was a dance instructor. They were both a part of the local am-dram - the Prince George Theatre Workshop. I had seen them in Finnian's Rainbow (I am amazed I can recall all this detail!) and a few years later, PGTW did a production of Anne of Green Gables and needed kids. Both Demetri and I were cast in it. Judy choreographed the show. It was a big step for her. She'd had her own studio, but (and I only just found this out this week) getting the opportunity to stretch and do a whole show was at that point a big opportunity.
Significantly there was a "big" number at the start of the second act. We all dove in and pushed our limits. We weren't dancers, but we tried our hardest and Judy did her utmost to find our strengths and capitalize on them.
After the run of the show Judy came to a small handful of the guys who had been in the show. She offered us free dance lessons on the condition that we also join her dance troupe - which performed at events and anchored her company's involvement in the regional dance festival. This, quite frankly, was a stroke of genius on Judy's part.
Three of us including Demetri and I agreed, and though I have never really been 'a dancer,' things I learned in the following two years have been among the most invaluable I've ever learned as a performer.
Only a few years ago I had a sequence of callbacks for a role that required a non-dancer to dance. I didn't get it, but I was on hold for the part. I don't think I would have made it through the first round had I not had some previous experience in picking up choreography.
Mostly those years were fun. I was just at the age where girls were really beginning to be an important part of my life, and though I never got involved with any of the girls in the troupe, that period really helped me get comfortable with the opposite sex.
I thanked Judy for that the other night, and she told me what I already knew - that those years were equally important for her. Though I didn't fully appreciate the extent to which they were until she filled in the blanks the other night.
It was obvious, back in 1987, when we attended our first dance competition that bringing us boys into her troupe had been a turning point.
I don't know what its like now, but back then in the central interior of British Columbia there weren't any boys in dance. None. Not in logging country. If you were straight you wouldn't be caught dead doing it for fear of being thought of as gay. If you were gay... it's logging country - there were no gays. No out of the closet gays. And if anything they would be even less likely to want to be seen doing something like dance that would be tagged as "gay."
So there we were, three hetero-guys in Judy's classes and troupe. Judy made it easy on us - didn't require that we wear anything that would challenge our boundaries - sweat pants were good enough... though I wouldn't be surprised if I tried to get away with jeans in my first class, but memory fades. Even so, we didn't run around letting our friends know we were in dance classes.
But there we were - at regionals (yep, set-up your Glee moment) the only three guys in the building except for a lighting technician and the adjudicator.
We won. Everything. A total sweep.
Every award and category that we were eligible for was ours - and the adjudicator could not hide his delight that the troupe had boys. But it went further than that. Judy's other students won an unprecedented number of awards. It wasn't merely us. There was something really going on here. Judy was a talent, and the inclusion of us merely drew attention to it.
The very next year there were dancers at other studios who jumped ship to Judy. Before long there were even more boys, and it wasn't much later before Judy's studio was expanding, taking over more of the building they leased and eventually buying a much bigger facility. Bill was soon going into business for himself in a related support busines that would become the city's most relied upon provider of production and staging equipment. I worked for him briefly at one Children's Festival. Their sons are all in the trade in some capacity.
Those early days of the troupe were big for Judy in other ways too - not just having made a good choice. I didn't see it at the time, but were were pushing her too. Keeping her at the edge of her abilites both as a choreographer and as a teacher - in both cases having to integrate performers who were doing their best, but were still behind the curve of everyone else on the stage.
Clearly they made a lot of other good, consistent and reliable decisions. The troupe eventually became a local theatre company in it's own right, having produced something like 21 different musicals. One of here students - a boy - made it to the top six of So You Think You Can Dance Canada?
I've never quit being fond of Judy and Bill, I just kind of let our acquaintance slip. It was so great to see them. It was great to be able to reconnect as adults - and perhaps if Jodie, who had no context of them in any kind of "superior" role, had not been there changing the context for me it would have been different. Not less friendly - it has always been friendly (even when they were the "adults" they were the cool young adults we knew) - but with more of the past relationship up front. I am not at all surprised that Jodie and Judy in particular hit it off, and I am really glad they did.
I really look forward to seeing them the next time they are visiting their boys in Vancouver... and that will be a paradigm shift in it's own right. Most of my memories of them feature the boys as kids - real kids, not the adolescent adults the rest of us were at the time - though I do also recall them as aloof teenagers as well.
In any case. I under estimated just how much my appreciation for what Bill and Judy meant in my past would translate into a happy reunion here on the other side of the planet, and how much I want that to continue.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
The Best Laid Plans....
NOTE: Seriously, don't bother reading this. This is really just blogging as therapy... and not even particularly juicy therapy.
It has been a really busy month. Holy crow, has it.
I've been working on a contract for... well I've lost specific track, I think when I began it was six-weeks until I had to be done because I was leaving the country on holiday.
I leave in less than 24 hours. I'm not done the contract. I probably should have been. I could have found a few more hours to work on it - particularly early in the contract. But who knew what this past week was going to be like - how capricious life could get. (I'll get back to that in a moment.)
I've passed some of the last of the work on - stuff that I could technically take with me, but would be incredibly inefficient for me to do while travelling. I'm continuing to do some of the other stuff in the contract. Things that I can fit into the cracks - reading on the plane or when I would be doing leisure reading... but I refuse to let it impact on the vacation itself. That is all work that would have extended past my departure regardless of whether I had managed to tackle the rest early. Indeed I'm told to expect more in my inbox by the time the plane takes off tomorrow evening.
So... I was pretty much on course to finish all the complicated work as of a week ago. Then on Monday of this week I was hit by a double whammy. First thing that happened was I woke up... to the sound of the phone... A message from Craig that our film had been accepted into the Mississauga Independent Film Festival. This was cool... except that it kind of changed our plans. We had until that moment been doing the world premiere of the film in the Okanagan over two weeks later... precious time lost.
About 3 minutes later I discovered that one of the two screens I have on my desktop computer was not working. Worse yet - it was the larger of the two. So now I had about 40% less screen real-estate, all of it on my most powerful computer. This in itself was going to make a lot of the work I had to do in this week much less simple. (You would be surprized just how much time you can lose to dragging windows around and resizing and so on.) It was a challenge to get everything I had to do done (and I failed) - including day-job, Best Picture episode final editing (I haven't mentioned this yet - I will soon), the contract, and several tasks I had to do before leaving that only I could do efficiently for Provost Pictures, that had now been bumped up by the change of premiere dates. I did spend some time and effort looking into a quick fix of the monitor - no dice. It'll have to be replaced... and I was not really going to have an opportunity to do that until I return... maybe even after I return from Mississauga!
So I forge on, working at a slower pace, trying to prioritize and put contingencies in place should I not finish everything in time... but hoping that in fact I'd manage to pull it off in the long run.
Provost Pictures' work in particular - despite the fact that most of it was being handled by other people out of necessity - just would not settle down into an easily managed pile. But wait! There's more! Not that I can really get specific for reasons of efficiency (so many details to explain to make the circumstances clear) and discretion (I'm hardly legally bound, but it would be un-cool to talk specifics on either of these) but both the contract and another item I haven't even mentioned (a grievance I am involved in resolving on another project I'm working on) each got more complicated as the week went on. Oh, and did I mention the Best Man's Speech (the primary reason for my vacation is to attend a wedding) and an episode of Best Picture that is to be shot in part while I am in England, both still have to be written... and both will now wait for on the plane. Anyhow... somehow as the week wore on I continued to keep just ahead of the wave. Until yesterday evening I really thought I would have finished everything in time. It had been a challenge, but I had some how actually managed my time to the bleeding edge of my capability...
And then the power went out.
No kidding.
And as if that wasn't enough, for some reason the power is intimately connected to our internet in our building, to the degree that when the power went out, the internet was still on. (I am writing on borrowed wi-fi now.)
That was the proverbial straw. I should point out, in case you thought I was complaining (venting, yes, complaining, no - subtle distinction, I know), that I am actually rather amused by all of this. Perhaps if I could actually recreate the precise chain of events in detail and in all its snowballing glory and just how close I came to succeeding, then it might actually seem more amusing than I suspect it does.
Even today on borrowed wi-fi, working solely from my laptop (I swaer, that going from working on two separate computers and three screens, so working on less than half the screen-space and the least robust of the processors make me feel like I'm using a rock to do a hammer's job.) - and coaxing it to perform at the level I need of it in order to successfully do all the stuff I need it to in order to finish up all I have to do before I go - including be prepared to finish those few imperative tasks I have to do while on my way, I have barely kept the engine on the tracks... but as I watch the last few automated tasks complete as I finish writing this, I remain mostly bemused. I don't know I guess this is sort of a "don't sweat the small stuff" affirmation for myself.
You didn't really read to the end of this did you? Yeah, sorry about that.
At some point early on I thought I might actually get to talk about the honour of being asked to be Best Man at Demetri's wedding, or the happy complexities of having your world premiere scooped to a festival two weeks earlier than planned... but that didn't manifest. Perhaps while I'm on vacation. Afterall, part of the idea is that I'm going to have more time for stuff like this... but don't hold your breath.
It has been a really busy month. Holy crow, has it.
I've been working on a contract for... well I've lost specific track, I think when I began it was six-weeks until I had to be done because I was leaving the country on holiday.
I leave in less than 24 hours. I'm not done the contract. I probably should have been. I could have found a few more hours to work on it - particularly early in the contract. But who knew what this past week was going to be like - how capricious life could get. (I'll get back to that in a moment.)
I've passed some of the last of the work on - stuff that I could technically take with me, but would be incredibly inefficient for me to do while travelling. I'm continuing to do some of the other stuff in the contract. Things that I can fit into the cracks - reading on the plane or when I would be doing leisure reading... but I refuse to let it impact on the vacation itself. That is all work that would have extended past my departure regardless of whether I had managed to tackle the rest early. Indeed I'm told to expect more in my inbox by the time the plane takes off tomorrow evening.
So... I was pretty much on course to finish all the complicated work as of a week ago. Then on Monday of this week I was hit by a double whammy. First thing that happened was I woke up... to the sound of the phone... A message from Craig that our film had been accepted into the Mississauga Independent Film Festival. This was cool... except that it kind of changed our plans. We had until that moment been doing the world premiere of the film in the Okanagan over two weeks later... precious time lost.
About 3 minutes later I discovered that one of the two screens I have on my desktop computer was not working. Worse yet - it was the larger of the two. So now I had about 40% less screen real-estate, all of it on my most powerful computer. This in itself was going to make a lot of the work I had to do in this week much less simple. (You would be surprized just how much time you can lose to dragging windows around and resizing and so on.) It was a challenge to get everything I had to do done (and I failed) - including day-job, Best Picture episode final editing (I haven't mentioned this yet - I will soon), the contract, and several tasks I had to do before leaving that only I could do efficiently for Provost Pictures, that had now been bumped up by the change of premiere dates. I did spend some time and effort looking into a quick fix of the monitor - no dice. It'll have to be replaced... and I was not really going to have an opportunity to do that until I return... maybe even after I return from Mississauga!
So I forge on, working at a slower pace, trying to prioritize and put contingencies in place should I not finish everything in time... but hoping that in fact I'd manage to pull it off in the long run.
Provost Pictures' work in particular - despite the fact that most of it was being handled by other people out of necessity - just would not settle down into an easily managed pile. But wait! There's more! Not that I can really get specific for reasons of efficiency (so many details to explain to make the circumstances clear) and discretion (I'm hardly legally bound, but it would be un-cool to talk specifics on either of these) but both the contract and another item I haven't even mentioned (a grievance I am involved in resolving on another project I'm working on) each got more complicated as the week went on. Oh, and did I mention the Best Man's Speech (the primary reason for my vacation is to attend a wedding) and an episode of Best Picture that is to be shot in part while I am in England, both still have to be written... and both will now wait for on the plane. Anyhow... somehow as the week wore on I continued to keep just ahead of the wave. Until yesterday evening I really thought I would have finished everything in time. It had been a challenge, but I had some how actually managed my time to the bleeding edge of my capability...
And then the power went out.
No kidding.
And as if that wasn't enough, for some reason the power is intimately connected to our internet in our building, to the degree that when the power went out, the internet was still on. (I am writing on borrowed wi-fi now.)
That was the proverbial straw. I should point out, in case you thought I was complaining (venting, yes, complaining, no - subtle distinction, I know), that I am actually rather amused by all of this. Perhaps if I could actually recreate the precise chain of events in detail and in all its snowballing glory and just how close I came to succeeding, then it might actually seem more amusing than I suspect it does.
Even today on borrowed wi-fi, working solely from my laptop (I swaer, that going from working on two separate computers and three screens, so working on less than half the screen-space and the least robust of the processors make me feel like I'm using a rock to do a hammer's job.) - and coaxing it to perform at the level I need of it in order to successfully do all the stuff I need it to in order to finish up all I have to do before I go - including be prepared to finish those few imperative tasks I have to do while on my way, I have barely kept the engine on the tracks... but as I watch the last few automated tasks complete as I finish writing this, I remain mostly bemused. I don't know I guess this is sort of a "don't sweat the small stuff" affirmation for myself.
You didn't really read to the end of this did you? Yeah, sorry about that.
At some point early on I thought I might actually get to talk about the honour of being asked to be Best Man at Demetri's wedding, or the happy complexities of having your world premiere scooped to a festival two weeks earlier than planned... but that didn't manifest. Perhaps while I'm on vacation. Afterall, part of the idea is that I'm going to have more time for stuff like this... but don't hold your breath.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Are you frikkin' allergic to Google?!?
Okay, so I know I can use some big words and some esoteric references. I can hardly help it. I'm a smart guy, I'm well read* and I'm a bit of a sponge for factoids. I don't expect everyone else to have the same knowledge set as me, or even the aptitude for acquiring it - we all have different strengths, that's the way of the world. But it's not like I'm Dennis Miller. You don't need degrees in History, Literature and Theoretical Physics to follow along with my Facebook statii.
But yes, I recognize that on a regular basis my status will be eliptical and vague if you don't have the foreknowledge of what I am talking about. I accept that many of my one-liner Facebook statii are going to go over many people's heads. But here's the thing - any joke that has to be explained is not going to be funny. If you 'get' it initially, fantastic. If you don't - that's unfortunate, but when you DO get the next obscure reference I make you have the added benefit of feeling superior over the rest of those folk who you damned well know didn't have a clue.
But here's the thing... I am officially stating for the record, that I am no longer going to be responsible for illuminating the details. If you 'get' the joke - congrats, you are 'in' (for what little that is worth); if you don't 'get' it, either let it go and wait for the next one ('cause really, I'm not so clever that every lateral thought I have is going to be a worthwhile gem, so you probably aren't missing anything), OR (and here's the crux)... muse on this: If you have Facebook in front of you, you also have the awesome power of Google in front of you. You can figure out what I'm referring to much more efficently by searching on one of the interwebs than by adding a comment to my status that reads "????" or "Huh?" or anything else that doesn't really add to the conversation. The ONLY way that is going to be more efficient is if I just happen to refresh the page the second after you post your query and I happen to be looking at that specific comment thread. Even then, you have to get me in a good mood - which the simple act of displaying your inability to use Google will almost certainly ruin - AND I will have to feel that I can explain the detail more succinctly than a quick trip to a relevant Wikipedia page can (good luck on that one).
If you are actually in the room with me... thats a different story - asking me is then a social act that is actually likely to get you the answer faster. Otherwise I have better things to do than type out an explanation for you that will almost certainly not be funny, and if anything, will ruin the joke for everyone else.
In almost any obscure post I make there is bound to be a word or phrase that is unique enough that even the most clumsy of Googlers can craft a search string (I use that term so loosely - in most cases said "string" will be a single word) that you'll find the info you need in order to understand my gag within the first page if not the first hit. A few recent examples; a link to their first hit (excluding news) in a google search: Sisyphean; Evel Knievel; Preakness; "down two with the hammer"; "I stab at thee" - the first hit, EVERY SINGLE TIME (with no special search terms or symbols except for the quotes around the phrases) gives relevant context.
If by some chance you can't find an illuminating reference on Google, then chances are that the reference was a more personal one - one that while not actually private, is actually intended for a select group of people. If you aren't one of those people, then you just have to let your need to know go.
It may seem that I'm making more of this than it warrants, and perhaps I am. But I have gotten so tired of explaining my more esoteric references that I've taken to simply ignoring the requests - and I know that that in itself doesn't solve anything. So this is official notice. I can't imagine any likely circumstance where a person might have access to Facebook but not Google and therefore I hereby assume that any request for clarity on any of my left-field witticisms is nothing but either outright intellectual laziness or, more charitably, a failure to realize that there are far better ways to get the answer than by tossing a "WTF?" in the comment thread. Either way, don't expect an answer. Sorry, I'm not doing your homework anymore.
But I WILL do this:
If you don't really know how to leverage the best results out of Google, here's some handy and very simple tricks. Now you can be a Google ninja.
*When I say I'm well read, I am including the voracity with which I consume all media - including TV news and podcasts... indeed I actually don't read all that much these days, and am a slow reader anyhow.
But yes, I recognize that on a regular basis my status will be eliptical and vague if you don't have the foreknowledge of what I am talking about. I accept that many of my one-liner Facebook statii are going to go over many people's heads. But here's the thing - any joke that has to be explained is not going to be funny. If you 'get' it initially, fantastic. If you don't - that's unfortunate, but when you DO get the next obscure reference I make you have the added benefit of feeling superior over the rest of those folk who you damned well know didn't have a clue.
But here's the thing... I am officially stating for the record, that I am no longer going to be responsible for illuminating the details. If you 'get' the joke - congrats, you are 'in' (for what little that is worth); if you don't 'get' it, either let it go and wait for the next one ('cause really, I'm not so clever that every lateral thought I have is going to be a worthwhile gem, so you probably aren't missing anything), OR (and here's the crux)... muse on this: If you have Facebook in front of you, you also have the awesome power of Google in front of you. You can figure out what I'm referring to much more efficently by searching on one of the interwebs than by adding a comment to my status that reads "????" or "Huh?" or anything else that doesn't really add to the conversation. The ONLY way that is going to be more efficient is if I just happen to refresh the page the second after you post your query and I happen to be looking at that specific comment thread. Even then, you have to get me in a good mood - which the simple act of displaying your inability to use Google will almost certainly ruin - AND I will have to feel that I can explain the detail more succinctly than a quick trip to a relevant Wikipedia page can (good luck on that one).
If you are actually in the room with me... thats a different story - asking me is then a social act that is actually likely to get you the answer faster. Otherwise I have better things to do than type out an explanation for you that will almost certainly not be funny, and if anything, will ruin the joke for everyone else.
In almost any obscure post I make there is bound to be a word or phrase that is unique enough that even the most clumsy of Googlers can craft a search string (I use that term so loosely - in most cases said "string" will be a single word) that you'll find the info you need in order to understand my gag within the first page if not the first hit. A few recent examples; a link to their first hit (excluding news) in a google search: Sisyphean; Evel Knievel; Preakness; "down two with the hammer"; "I stab at thee" - the first hit, EVERY SINGLE TIME (with no special search terms or symbols except for the quotes around the phrases) gives relevant context.
If by some chance you can't find an illuminating reference on Google, then chances are that the reference was a more personal one - one that while not actually private, is actually intended for a select group of people. If you aren't one of those people, then you just have to let your need to know go.
It may seem that I'm making more of this than it warrants, and perhaps I am. But I have gotten so tired of explaining my more esoteric references that I've taken to simply ignoring the requests - and I know that that in itself doesn't solve anything. So this is official notice. I can't imagine any likely circumstance where a person might have access to Facebook but not Google and therefore I hereby assume that any request for clarity on any of my left-field witticisms is nothing but either outright intellectual laziness or, more charitably, a failure to realize that there are far better ways to get the answer than by tossing a "WTF?" in the comment thread. Either way, don't expect an answer. Sorry, I'm not doing your homework anymore.
But I WILL do this:
If you don't really know how to leverage the best results out of Google, here's some handy and very simple tricks. Now you can be a Google ninja.
*When I say I'm well read, I am including the voracity with which I consume all media - including TV news and podcasts... indeed I actually don't read all that much these days, and am a slow reader anyhow.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Hey Li'l J
You kicked me tonight.
Just for that, you have to stay in your womb.
Your Mom's been trying to get me to feel your kicks for weeks now.
No luck 'til tonight. It was really weak, but it was there.
We were watching Being Erica (that's an old-school 2-D TV show on the now defunct Canadian Broadcast Corporation in your world) and I had my hand on your Mom's belly. There was this tiny poke into my palm and your Mom asked (as she always does) "did you feel that?"
My response was a simple, but immediate "yeah...." and that was that.
You kicked me tonight.
See you soon.
Just for that, you have to stay in your womb.
Your Mom's been trying to get me to feel your kicks for weeks now.
No luck 'til tonight. It was really weak, but it was there.
We were watching Being Erica (that's an old-school 2-D TV show on the now defunct Canadian Broadcast Corporation in your world) and I had my hand on your Mom's belly. There was this tiny poke into my palm and your Mom asked (as she always does) "did you feel that?"
My response was a simple, but immediate "yeah...." and that was that.
You kicked me tonight.
See you soon.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Another Old Piece of Work
I took sometime on this one 'cause I figured that the script on it's own didn't have the impact that it would if produced...
The main short coming is that I am doing all the voices... but I think I've effectively differentiated them all.
Enjoy!
The main short coming is that I am doing all the voices... but I think I've effectively differentiated them all.
Enjoy!
Friday, April 09, 2010
Help Kids Read
Or, more to the point, help kids learn the value of reading.
I'm not prone to public service announcements on my blog, but I'm making an exception this time.
I've been involved in this project before - it is a fun way to spend an afternoon...
And it is in danger of cancellation due to too few participants.
If you read for any reason in your job, then you have something to offer the kids and you WILL have a good time doing it....
Read on, what follows is from the organizer - I'll have more to add at the end.
------------
It is that time of year, some of you have helped out in the past with this. We are really struggling this year to find volunteers so are casting the net as wide as possible.
The Camp Read program occurs at an inner city school in Surrey where folks come in from the community and read stories to the elementary kids. A lot of these kids come from pretty rough backgrounds or are brand new immigrants to Canada, so they need to have some positive role models.
It is a really relaxed and simple community event. You simply come, have lunch, read a couple of stories to a class of kids (you can pick the grades/ages you would like), they ask you a few questions (supposedly about how you use reading in your daily life... but more often it is just crazy stuff kids ask). All in all it takes just a couple hours.
We are in need of around 20 people still, so it is quite a shortfall this time.... so if you know folks who might be interested we can use all the help we can. This school has a very diverse population so it is especially great to have volunteers of various ethnicities to show positive role models of all types. Kids are still talking about Sewa coming in his fireman's uniform last year as they hadn't seen an East Indian fireman before and unfortunately a lot of them in this area don't get to see positive role models that look like them and they can relate to.
The details are:
Thursday 29th April
12-2pm
Info Sheet:
Lena Shaw Elementary is having "Camp Read" on Thursday April 29th, 2010. We are asking good role models from the community to volunterr their time and visit Lena Shaw for an afternoon of reading to students and talking about how reading is important to their lives. We are asking for volunteers to arrive at the school between 12:00 and 12:15, and then be available until 2:00pm. The volunteer can bring their own favorite book or let us know if they want one picked out for them.
Lena Shaw Elementary School
142500 100A Avenue,
Surrey, BC
------------
If this sounds like something you would like to give your time to, please let me know and I will connect you with the organizer.
If you are concerned about getting to the school, I have been assured that they will be more than happy to arrange transport from the SkyTrain to the school.
I will see you there... RIGHT!??
- Kennedy
I'm not prone to public service announcements on my blog, but I'm making an exception this time.
I've been involved in this project before - it is a fun way to spend an afternoon...
And it is in danger of cancellation due to too few participants.
If you read for any reason in your job, then you have something to offer the kids and you WILL have a good time doing it....
Read on, what follows is from the organizer - I'll have more to add at the end.
------------
It is that time of year, some of you have helped out in the past with this. We are really struggling this year to find volunteers so are casting the net as wide as possible.
The Camp Read program occurs at an inner city school in Surrey where folks come in from the community and read stories to the elementary kids. A lot of these kids come from pretty rough backgrounds or are brand new immigrants to Canada, so they need to have some positive role models.
It is a really relaxed and simple community event. You simply come, have lunch, read a couple of stories to a class of kids (you can pick the grades/ages you would like), they ask you a few questions (supposedly about how you use reading in your daily life... but more often it is just crazy stuff kids ask). All in all it takes just a couple hours.
We are in need of around 20 people still, so it is quite a shortfall this time.... so if you know folks who might be interested we can use all the help we can. This school has a very diverse population so it is especially great to have volunteers of various ethnicities to show positive role models of all types. Kids are still talking about Sewa coming in his fireman's uniform last year as they hadn't seen an East Indian fireman before and unfortunately a lot of them in this area don't get to see positive role models that look like them and they can relate to.
The details are:
Thursday 29th April
12-2pm
Info Sheet:
Lena Shaw Elementary is having "Camp Read" on Thursday April 29th, 2010. We are asking good role models from the community to volunterr their time and visit Lena Shaw for an afternoon of reading to students and talking about how reading is important to their lives. We are asking for volunteers to arrive at the school between 12:00 and 12:15, and then be available until 2:00pm. The volunteer can bring their own favorite book or let us know if they want one picked out for them.
Lena Shaw Elementary School
142500 100A Avenue,
Surrey, BC
------------
If this sounds like something you would like to give your time to, please let me know and I will connect you with the organizer.
If you are concerned about getting to the school, I have been assured that they will be more than happy to arrange transport from the SkyTrain to the school.
I will see you there... RIGHT!??
- Kennedy
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