Tag: friends

a goodbye that came far too soon.

Tony & Jhayne w. Drew aka Schmootzi the Clod
The day we met Drew Keriakedes (aka Schmootzi The Clod) at Circus Contraption. ♥

Drew and Joseph Vito Albanese (aka Dexter Mantooth) and God’s Favourite Beefcake will be missed.

For those who haven’t heard the shocking news, Drew and Joe were killed at 11 o’clock this morning by a random gunman at Cafe Racer.

News of the crime and the murderer.

Titanium Sporkestra have opened up their rehearsal space for an impromptu vigil at 1700 East Marginal Way South, which is where I would be if I were in Seattle tonight.

The gunman killed another woman during his car-jacking escape and then later shot himself in the head when cornered by police, but did not successfully kill himself. (He is known to be mentally ill.) Kendall and Dustin were not present, but Len, who also works at Cafe Racer, is still in the hospital, potentially still in surgery, and the severity of his injuries are unknown. Drew and Joe’s families were not notified by police, but found out through their facebook pages, which was stunning to behold.

They were glorious, talented, and beautiful people, lions and lords of their community who I greatly respected and deeply admired, who always made me feel welcome and loved. My heart aches to lose them and I have spent my entire day glued to the news, watching the story unfold, unable to stop crying. They’ve taken part of the soul of Seattle with them.

“It’s been good to know ya.
The time has come for us to say goodbye.
Put on your mask and don your feather boa.
We’ll sing and dance until the end of time.”

my life as a douglas adams character

My Improbability Field’s been cranked up this week. Saturday I went to Shane’s show at the Vogue, (beautiful as always, moving as always), and left with him after. We went to meet some of his friends, then, once the pub was closed and everyone finally dispersed, we crossed the street to Wraps Plus, a late night drunk-food donair sort of shop to get something to eat in the hotel room. While there, Shane received a text from a girl he knows, “Hey, we’re coming to you!” She arrived very soon after, highly excited, “Look! Look outside!”

A man was standing outside with his head on fire.

Flames at least a foot tall, licking the sky, shooting upward from his hat.

Turns out Ole, who it just happened to be, (as he also just happens to be her roommate), had swiped an oil candle from a bar up the street as they’d walked past it, dumped the oil onto his hat, and then set it on fire to impress us. Then, once he knew he had our attention, in a move that would have worked in a perfect universe, he swept the bowler hat from his head to wave out the flames. Instead the flames transferred to his hair. I have to admit, we were, in fact, impressed.

The next morning, on my way back home, our weird neighborhood foot fetishist got me again. Months and months ago, I met him on the bus. I was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, making a table for the book I was reading. He sat next to me and pressed his hand against the bottom of my shoe. I apologized and moved my foot to the ground. Natural, right? But then he dropped to the floor of the bus, lifted up my foot and put his hand underneath it, and asked me to step on him, while continuing to press down on my shoe with his other hand. I refused, tore my foot from his grasp, told him he was being inappropriate, and then he got off the bus. End of story. Weird, weird story.

Until Sunday morning, when I overshot my bus-stop by a few blocks and found myself walking down the hill home, checking my e-mail on my phone like the little net-addict I am. A stranger caught up to me, then fell into step, then very suddenly pulled off his jacket off and spread it out on the ground in front of my feet! Given my years of reading and walking, I auto-corrected my path and stepped off the sidewalk without even looking up. Assuming he had just pulled some sort of bizarre Walter Raleigh sort of move, I eyed the entire motion with suspicion. What terrible thing did he just unnecessarily cover with his jacket?

But no, it was far sillier and almost a little more sinister. As I moved to keep walking, he said, “Wait! Please walk on it, get it dirty.” I almost hesitated for a split second, a nearly uncountable sliver of time, but he continued with, “For art!” So I did. I stepped all over that jacket, very deliberately, from one end to the other. It wasn’t until about six feet later that I realized what had happened. Sure, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself the whole way home for being so easily profiled, but seriously, I really have to start recognizing that guy.

Once home, I started contacting people, scouting for someone to go to the Vancouver Fan Expo with. Chris was game, so we met at the Conference Center and ventured in, running into only half as many of the approximately billion people I expected to. (Yanick was there, in from Montreal as a guest, which was great. It was his birthday on Saturday, so I gave him the best possible present, a tiny sassy miniature of the Bulleteer, the pin-up superhero character he used me as a rough body model for, that Don Debrandt gave me for my birthday many years ago. She’s from a fighting game and comes with a stats card that states, and I kid you not, that she has sixty-nine health points. Fuck the patriarchy, kids.) Eventually exhausted with the endless parade of bizarre anime costumes, and with no further opportunities to stalk John Delancy, we decided to find somewhere to eat. We didn’t have any clue what direction to take, but then! Across the street, a man in a suit, earphones in, wildly dancing the Christopher Walkens piece from Weapon of Choice. So of course we followed him, which led us on the path to Save-On-Meats, where we camped until half past nine, talking about politics, gender relations, authors, and pretty much a little bit of everything. Best possible destination.

From there we went to the theater, spur of the moment, to see Cabin In The Woods, the new Joss Whedon film neither one of us particularly knew anything about. Oddly, it was only showing in a very particular theater, one with an acronym neither one of us had heard of. Curious, I asked an usher what it meant, only to have another theater patron stop a moment to listen to the answer. (Which, for those that must know, boiled down to, “we charge you an absurd price for leather seats and call it a premium experience.”) I replied with something that wasn’t quite funny, but the stranger, being a nice sort of stranger, grinned at my joke enough that a dialogue started. Soon all three of us found ourselves standing in the upstairs lobby, deep in conversation, thrilled to have met, until we were almost late for our films. Contact info was exchanged and a possible plan made to meet up after our movies and swap reviews.

The film itself was spectacular. I want to gush about how completely fantastic Cabin In The Woods is, but I don’t want to ruin anything. Which is more grace than were given, as the projector shut off at the very end of the film, literally just minutes before the credits rolled. Not the sound, only the screen, leaving us listening to the incredible denouement that the movie had been working towards since the opening scene. Improbability engage!

The staff eventually fixed the issue, rewinding the film back, and then forward, and then back again, with the house lights on, then off, then on again, and gave us free ticket coupons for a future film, but it was almost no use. As soon as the projector flicked off, everyone’s phones were out, everyone was texting, and the ending was ruined. Amazing, though, as the movie failure tweaked our exit time just enough to run into the fun stranger again. Noah from Oakland, it turns out, up on holidays for the week, only knows one local and she’s way out in Langley, so he’s completely open to random adventures. Which meant, of course, Hamburger Mary’s at one in the morning until they kicked us out, and then hanging out all yesterday until two a.m.

This evening we’re going to Chambar for dinner, with a stop in at Guilt & Co. after for The Decadent Eccentric, a belly-dance, contact juggling, sideshow spectacular with Luciterra and one of my favourite acquaintances, Chris Murdoch. Tomorrow we’re renting a bicycle for two and riding the seawall and dropping in on Salt Tasting Room. The day after that, who knows? Finally my underemployment has changed into funemployment.

adventures in science parties

Friday morning was also a trial, though I crept out of it like a cat. I still had work, so I had to skip the symposiums, which hurt, but I made on-line plans from there with Alan to meet at the Science World party that night. So after, once I’d gone home and showered and changed into new clothes and did all the things regular people do when they’re about to go seriously crash the largest science conference in the western hemisphere, I packed a duffel to bring to the hotel after the party, so I wouldn’t have to return to the apartment again until the conference was over. (Could have done it the day before, but whatever. Dinner! Whales! Plus Science World has a significantly better coat check that the Aquarium.)

Once there, the only question was finding my people in the crush of people pointedly lingering next to the open bars and clumping in the areas where the waiters would cruise by with tasty nibbles. It all came together eventually, but I spent the first twenty minutes completely on my own, wandering through the exhibits, going from table to table, attempting to find the promised non-fish based food, as well as scouting for my clever partner in crime. The trick, apparently, was to stop looking for the shortest gregarious person and instead make for the tallest, Erik, as naturally they would be speaking together.

I didn’t know Erik, but it was instantly clear that I should. He was funny, eloquent, and involved in his topics in a way I utterly envy. Truly, there may never be a group of people I immediately get on with more than journalists. There’s just something about a profession that attracts the intelligent, literate, and perpetually curious that gets under my skin in the best kind of way. He wasn’t selling his story to Cosmos that night, though. It wasn’t quite the right fit, even though I found it personally fascinating. Even so, we all walked up the ramp together to the massive dome of the IMAX Theater, for the Kavli Foundation Awards, just in time for me to somehow lose everyone all over again at the door.

Just my luck, I almost sat alone for the show, stranded in the empty seats I tried to save. Thankfully a very nice woman from Berlin came and sat with me, social orphans together. I have regretfully misplaced her name, but she was wonderful company, telling me about her goth days back in Germany, about her lab, about her adorable daughter. She saved me as easily as grabbing the keys to the car on the way out the door. We stayed together downstairs for nearly the rest of the night, playing on the exhibits, sitting on spinny things and climbing the hollowed tree in the nature room. If we’d been children we would have been running through the yard, thrown together by chance but making the best of it, playing tag by the overpass.

topical descriptions of life as we knew it


alt-text: i hear smashing glass in my head, ever time i laugh

I awoke a little panicked, aware of a certain dreadful absence of pinging alarm, not quite damning my day job, but coming close to it. The entire morning thing seemed insurmountable. It had been a long, unexpected evening, the sort I am generally familiar with, but never actually had, so all I wanted to do was sleep in. Drinks in a bar, an invitation up, my cue to pass out chastely on half of a hotel bed, that’s how it goes, how it suits my blood. But he was impossibly sweet and it seemed, after an indeterminate sleepy amount of cuddling, that my desire to cling to the familiar had evaporated somewhere, possibly seared from existence by his fiercely protective intellect, and the only path available was towards a new choice.

We went to the Aquarium after dinner later that night, (foreign dishes in a basement, the beginning of my stories, the tragic litany, the darker side of a thousand and one nights), me to crash the party, him with legitimacy, both with an equally sound purpose. Mine was to sneak in, the better to get me into even more later. We split up right away, once it was assured I had successfully bluffed past security, and that was that, I was on my own, a mercenary butterfly released into the opening party of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

It’s startlingly easy to make fast friends at the beginning of conferences. There are always a few people who’ve been attending since the dawn of time, but the majority of the crowd are strangers thrown together or people who’ve only known each-other tangentially or on-line, so the ground is primed for the sort of introduction that doesn’t generally fly in public, where you simply walk up like a little kid to a friendly looking face and say, “hi!”.

I almost immediately fell in a lovely women, Shauna, a fellow burner from Berkeley I knew I would like, then together, after taking pictures with the sharks, we found Elizabeth, there for CNN, best characterized by her amazing smile, as permanent as the moon. We chatted about the fish and science and wondered about the whale, elusive and grand, sequestered in an area of the aquarium that the conference hadn’t rented. Occasionally I drifted away, encountering new conversations and faces, making mental notes for later, attaching myself here and there, but made sure to keep swinging back to touch base, so as the night progressed, as I fluttered, I forged a little group with which to found a conspiracy.

Eventually we made a feint at sneaking past security to see the whale, but we’d gained mass, our core blossoming as we went into an unwieldy six or seven, too many to slyly saunter into an area we weren’t supposed to go. Then, sadly, after some magic with the otters and the dolphins, it was time to leave, the staff ushering us past the sleeping octopus and the shimmering glass cube of tiny blue fish that look like living streaks of light to a queue in the the parking lot for the hired buses that were shuttling everyone back downtown. I lost my partner in the crush, perhaps because I lingered too long, loitering in a hope to find him, yet I found surprisingly good company in his wake – Alan, Estrella, and Marc, who I first met inside as part of the attempt on the beluga tank. They wanted to walk, but didn’t know the way, so I put aside my concerns regarding my misplaced self as less important than the possibility of an entire lost group and appointed myself their guide.

The walk home was beautiful, if long. Mostly I fell in step with Marc, who I pressed for details about the Ig Nobels and traded stories of odd employment paths, but got on well with Alan, too, who possesses a Patient Zero level of infectious cheer. By the time everyone peeled off for their separate hotels, we’d discussed several adventures, planned a couple more, and all traded business cards, a habit I was to pick up even more as the conference went on. (The trick is to remember later which card goes to which face).

My fellow turned out to be table camping with the rest of his crew at the hotel bar, which I walked through on a whim, hoping to stumble across where he might be, my lack of cell phone again a strangely crippling artifact of the shockingly recent past. I joined them, of course, and was immediately taken with RJ, a clever young man from Waterloo University who was sitting at my end of the table. I spent the rest of the evening pulling ideas from him, chatting about clean energy and the internet, until the table finally dissolved, leaving me and mine to drift upstairs into the sweet oblivion that promises endless wonder but only ever delivers tomorrow.

Welcome to CanSec. I love it here.

  • Globe&Mail: LulzSec hackers reportedly brought down by own leader.

    Woke up in a massive hotel bed in the sky, fluffy and white and perfect, after an evening of late night hot-tubbing and room service, with a cell phone next to me connected to London. On the table in the main room is a small black robot that walks and dances, next to a package of Dita Von Teese brand bottled Perrier brought in from Paris. The laptop’s spring loaded keys light up blue and it runs facial recognition password software which loads quickly but doesn’t like the lighting.

    Today is the booze run, checking and fixing the stickers, booking the arcade machines, planning for the Whistler cabins, setting up the staff room, and programming our phones to talk to the white plastic surveillance bunny, so we can instruct it to say ridiculous things. (We’re all addicted to the creepy bunny. It watches you masturbate). Tomorrow the conference starts all proper like and then the real fun begins.

    • more people in a week, a slice of old life before I run out of busfare

    365: 2012/01/15 - "fashion photographer", a twitpic by Andrew
  • 70 Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies to Watch Out for in 2012.
  • The absolutely epic line-up of this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

    Tea today, slumping on Kyle’s couch, a cupcake, a scone, Lisa and Jeremy and Derek and Aleks and another girl, a name I have regretfully forgotten. A drive downtown, meeting Jacquie at work, then a route along water to the Naam, where Hawkfeather and Loren were waiting, and eventually, by chance, Lori and David arrived. Dropped off at Main, upstairs to the batcave, mad scientists lair, mess and matrix, Dragos and Leah, canned peach tea vodka, indian food, and my only christmas card. I should visit more. I miss these people, I miss this place. Next is Sherlock across the street, the Mcbunker, houses named, it’s A Thing, apartments as proper nouns, filled with friends and internet references, people piled in like pillows, pillows lining the floor. I am annoyed at the obvious plot, the awkward scene changes, but the company is especially sweet. Back to the penthouse after, all telescopes and swords, introducing Andrew to his neighbor, a stack of helicopters under the stairs. I am tired, but not exhausted. Chilly, but not frozen. I leave at midnight. I get home before one.

    • finally, a pause

    Friday was close to being a complete write-off. First I went downtown to take someone’s photo, only to stand about waiting for an hour in the cold, at home a note sent through the digital, “stuck in a meeting, sorry!”, my lack of cell phone stranding me yet again. Things cheered up briefly when I walked home to find an invitation to a job interview, only to find out, once I’d trekked back downtown, that it wasn’t for legitimate employment, but instead with a guy who wants a girl to “boss around” his home. “Oh good, you’re pretty enough.” Pardon? I explained he should be advertising in the personals section and left, but not before he referred to special needs people as “feebs”, (the second person to do so in my presence in as many days, ugh), and demanded I pay his bar tab. The entire experience lasted perhaps a total of fifteen miserable, uncomfortable minutes, but felt like a shotgun blast to the day. Walking home from that was even worse than the morning’s photography failure. And, of course, at soon as I’m home again, home again, there is a voice mail message with my name on it, from the non-profit I interviewed on Wednesday, “we’ve gone with another applicant”.

    But David got home in time for me to borrow his bus pass to go to the Ayden Gallery opening, where I met up with my brother Kevin, in from Montreal, his friend Nicholas, and Diego, recently back from Spain, and the art was nice and the company nice and Diego gave me a pretty necklace as a holiday gift and we got slurpees on the way out of the mall and cadbury cream eggs and there was a clutch of hipsters at the bus-stop all wearing fake mustaches and it snowed a little and I got to show my brother Nightwatch when we got back to my place and everything turned out pretty well after all. Hooray.

    Saturday was significantly better. Kevin took me to breakfast at Locus, one of my favourite Vancover restaurants, and we wandered around in the thin crust of snow a bit, talking about our mutual love of Montreal, before I dropped him off at a friend’s place and bussed home. He’s grown from an angry, unpleasant child into someone I am glad to know, for which I am thankful. It spills from me like water in cupped hands, brimming past the edges of our sad memories of childhood, a slow moving river that is going to take some time to get used to.

    Then Aleks came over and napped in my bed with the cats for awhile before driving us over to Andrew & Sara‘s for an in-house Molly Lewis concert that was stuffed to with spectacular people. She sang about Myspace and having Stephen Fry’s baby and generally charmed the heck out of everyone and for the first time all week I relaxed. It was wonderful.

    Eventually the clever after-party dismantled for a trip to The Whip and though outside it was cold, it was beautiful, with snow, real snow, the dry, enchanting stuff, floating down like feathers after a televised pillow fight. We sparkled up the street, running in bursts then sliding along the frozen road on the flats of our shoes, arms akimbo, all transformed into ten years old. The group splintered at the bisto-bar, breaking off to different tables, mine against the far wall, the kitchen party, with Michael and Andrew and some folks from Seattle. We talked about terrible twitter jokes and a scandalous lot about nothing, but it was as full of odd glory as the weather, if inevitably more silly.

    When it was time to go home, we skated down the road again, sliding even farther, whooping with cackling laughter, occasionally colliding, but never remembering to fall. Plans were made, Sherlock mentioned, and I fled down the street, trying and failing to get Andrew with the one tiny snowball I managed to make. S. drove me home, spinning the car down one of the back streets near my apartment, just because he could, with the sort of wicked joy usually reserved for roller coasters and haunted houses, toothless darkness and danger followed by ice-cream in the sun.

    Start as you mean to carry on: Our NYC Itinerary

    please hold me the forgotten way

    Tony and I leave for New York tonight. Here is our itinerary so far. Please, if you’re around, come join us! Make plans with us! Take over our question marks!

    Aside from the shows and an overwhelming desire to eat at Shopsin’s, (I Like Killing Flies), our itinerary is very open. We figure any unaccounted chunks of time can be filled with sillies from the ZoomDoggle Fun List NYC.

    Friday

    6 am – Arrival.
    ??
    Noon – Lunch with Mordicai.
    ??
    7 pm – Sleep No More. Punchdrunk, a British site-specific theater company, has taken over three abandoned warehouses and crafted them into an insanely detailed, art deco, film noir, one hundred room Hitchcockian hotel, for a haunting, immersive performance loosely shadowed on Macbeth. The level of detail sounds astounding, especially given the wide range of rooms, (everything from a sweets shop to a hospital room, and the witches have a rave). According to the NY Times review, “everyone who attends “Sleep No More” is required to wear (and keep on) a Venetian carnival-style mask. You are also asked not to utter a word during the two and a half hours you are given to follow the characters of your choice from room to room. But you are encouraged to poke around in corners and trunks and bookcases, and allowed to get as close as (in)decency permits to the lithe-bodied denizens of this chic spook house. (Just don’t touch them, though they may well reach out and touch you.)”.
    ??

    Saturday

    ??
    ?? – Walk along Highline park.
    8 pm – Dances of Vice presents their 4th Anniversary bash, Enchantment Under The Sea, a Back To The Future-esque 50’s themed junior/senior prom at Morningside Castle. A teaser from GeekChicDaily says, “… like Marty McFly’s hand, tickets will vanish fast. Don’t be a slacker. Get yours before the clocktower strikes the 11th hour. It’s gonna be heavy.”*
    ??

    Sunday

    ??
    ?? – Visit CB I Hate Perfume.
    5 pm – The COILHOUSE Black & White & Red All Over Fundraising Ball at the velvet drenched Red Lotus Room in Brooklyn, featuring music and spectacle galore from people like Kim Boekbinder, Brian Viglione of the Dresdon Dolls, Molly Crabapple, Jessica Joslin, Muffinhead, and the Purevile! Girls. “A Love Letter To Alternative Culture” come to life! This just might turn out to be the party of the year.*
    7 pm – Fuerza Bruta, an extraordinary show, absurd, messy, and very, very fun. There’s bright lights, loud music, dancing, confetti drop bombs, explosions, someone gets shot, it rains indoors, and a swimming pool comes down from the ceiling. It’s kind of A Thing. I loved it when I saw it in May, (thanks to Duncan for telling me about it), and now Tony is determined that we go.
    9 pm – Back to the Coilhouse Ball!
    ??

    Monday

    ??
    Noon – Lunch with Mordicai.
    ??
    5 pm – Departure.

    *There’s a special $25 package deal available for general admission to both Enchantment Under The Sea and The Black & White & Red All Over Ball.