Tag: parties

yes, I was late to work

“Student Says Vomiting on Painting Was an Artistic Act”

A big fat scrumptious thank you to everyone who made it out to our all weekend house-party. Though it wasn’t crowded, at least fifty of you made it over, even through the cold snap and snow, and kept the party going from Saturday morning to late last night/early this morning. Thank you for coming by, for playing music, for bringing wine and berries and sausages, for coming over early and for staying up late, for appreciating my eggnog crepes and keeping me cooking from 11 am to 11 pm, for bringing unexpected new people, for cuddles on the couch, for throwing snowballs at my window and cheerfully bothering the one armed guy downstairs, who had another snippy middle-of-the-night fight with a drug dealer right outside my window last week. (Thank you William, you will always have a special place in my heart for that). Thank you for everything, and I hope to see you all again soon!

a satisfying week

Bill Murray has been crashing parties and hanging out with strangers.
(It could happen to you.)

Across the buildings, a slight gap in the clouds. Keith looks out and says, “oh look, a nice day.” A shift in the sky and the blue goes away. Weather whispering gray. Today it snowed briefly in a winter half effort. White flakes, fat with promise, that melted as soon as they touched ground. Now, as before, it is raining.

I’m glad my week has been wonderful enough to make up for the weather. I cried upon waking my first day back from California, mutely, pained, unhappy. “What’s wrong, what is it?” A thousand things, a hundred disappointments, ten I could say aloud, but only one to share, “There’s no sky.”

Tuesday: Finally seeing Cory McAbee‘s The American Astronaut on the big screen was absolutely fabulous. Officially Duncan was hosting it, but my involvement (with That Mike) brought me to the front of the room, answering questions as I sat beside him, swinging my legs under the table that only came up to his knees.

Wednesday: Amanda Palmer‘s show with Zoë Keating and the Australian theater company The Danger Ensemble was outrageously Off The Hook. It’s an expression I sometimes hate, but I can’t think of anything more apt. Zoë Keating was exactly as mind-bendingly glorious as expected, but Amanda Palmer raucously surprised me. Her humour and spark and pure scintillating shine blew juicy, delicious bubbles of overwhelming near-religious delight into every nook and cranny of my brain. Just like everyone else at that show, I think I now love her. It was also a great time to play catch up, as people I love were in attendance I haven’t seen in absolutely forever, like Dragos and Tall-Travis. (Also, Kyle, I said Hello for you. She was thrilled.)

Thursday: As a fluke, while waiting to get in to see Zoë & Amanda Palmer, Andrew Brechin gave David and I a free voucher to Waltz With Bashir, a strong, very personal animated documentary into the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon war. Telling the story of the 1982 Sabra-Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees through the director’s own reclaimed memories, it was educational without preaching, and painful without guilt. At first I was skeptical of the animation style, which reminded me too strongly of old cut scenes and on-line java cartoons, but the story pulled us in, and the animation smoothed as the film continued, leaving us rapt as it drew to a close.

Tonight: There’s a Tom Waits Tribute Night at Cafe Deux Soleils from 8:30 – midnight. “a line up of the who’s who in east vancouver gather together to sing the songs of one of the most influential artists around. his world of strange wit and hard luck characters has made a home in each of our hearts. come out dressed in black, red and your fancy feel ready to sing along and stomp the floor silly.” Featuring: Blackberry Wood, Tarran the Tailor, my sweet and charming friend Jess Hill, our very own RC Weslowski, CJ Leon, Christie Rose, Chelsea Johnson of the Foxy House which hosted my birthday, Corbin Murdoch, Jeff Andrew, Buffaloswans, Maria in the Shower, Fraser Mclean, Christa Couture, Nick Lakowski, Sarah Macdougal, Pawnshop Diamond, Katie Go Go, and Mike the Swan.

Tomorrow: Our all day, all night non-denominational, costumes optional, holiday social and house party to celebrate David moving in, with crepes in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and candle-lit silent black and white horror films until dawn. (In regards to BYO: Bring your own syrup, eggs, fruit, or toppings, bring tea, cookies, or pie, bring flowers, feathers, or figs, whatever you feel appropriate, but most importantly, bring yourself.) Extra guests welcome within moderation

Bonus: Amanda playing Radiohead’s Creep on the ukulele for Kyle and Neil at the Cloud Club.

get it here

Nato, a dear, dreadfully clever and entirely nifty friend of mine, has gone into the very niche business of selling LED Christmas Trees at LEDtrees.com. This thrills me. Oh yes. For I have seen these trees, and lo, they are awesome.

The first time I encountered an LED tree was years and years ago while I was still in the habit of occasionally Christmas shopping, (yes, I’ve mostly recovered). The retailers had rented a gutted section of failed stores, taken down the plywood frontage, littered the space with enchanting, glowing trees, and didn’t install any lights. Stepping from the grossly shiny Christmas shopping bustle, commercials and glam into a dark, fairy-tale area of soft, gleaming, colourful trees… It was stellar, wondrous. Completely Narnia. I may never forget it. It felt like creeping around a corner and stumbling sideways into the fantastic. Science as a substitute for the mad ceremonial waste of precious tree flesh. Pretty science. Pretty and really, really neat, making me happy in a gleeful child sort of way, like that “magic” wand I posted.

I love the internet world we live in, how connected we can be to anything we like. I love that something I’d always thought of as skin riveting rare is something that a friend is in business in. I especially like the white ones that look like some deliriously designed set piece created for a preposterous yet super stylish retro-future. Timeless and absurd, all at once, the Christmas tree Barbarella would ask for to go with her albino bearskin space-ship, or a fashionable, couture Dexter, (Showtime’s nonsensical, blood-splatter serial killer who feels nothing, but for ANGST!), to go with his immaculate, crimson clean lab. I’m obscurely proud that Nato keeps one hanging upside down above his desk, a cheerful lunatic lamp all year round. I want to do the same.

Of course, that said, it’s not like I’ve done Christmas for several years. This year, though, David and I are batting around the idea of having a Hannekuweenmas house-warming party, (it’s not our fault he wasn’t moved in by October 31st), an all day non-denominational, costumes optional, holiday social and house party, with crepes in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and candle-lit silent black and white horror films until dawn. What do you think? Would you come?

Thanks to a new technique, DNA strands can be easily converted into tiny fibre optic cables that guide light along their length.

COILHOUSE: magazine launch party

from their site:


Held this Saturday at Hans Haveron Studios this event will be stuffed full of excellence. Look forward to:

  • Art, photography & fashion exhibit
  • Refreshments, with Mer’s “special” Electric Lemonade
  • Incredibly strange music
  • Photo booth with weird medical props, straight from Zo’s cave
  • Wall projections of Issue 01 art
  • Your first glimpse at the actual magazine!

    Enjoy art.
    Become art via expert lenses of Polaroid superstar Lou O’ Bedlam and Zo! Style Technician’s own Andrew Yoon.
    Dress your snazziest and bring your friends.
    Everyone’s invited!

    I’m sending Antony as my proxy, as the second best thing to being there, but hell, if I were even a smidgen closer, I’d drop everything to attend. My friends are doing snazzy work and I support them 100%. (And, yes, one day I’ll get around to writing an article, I promise). I hope every single one of you who live down there will go and send me photos! My bleak little heart will break if you don’t.

    • birthday party reminder: this friday


    Day 95: Happy Birthday to Me. Originally uploaded by SaylaMarz.

    The amazing, astonishing, astounding, fantastic, fantastical, incredible, marvelous, miraculous, phenomenal, stupendous, unbelievable, wonderful, wondrous party…

    Jhayne’s Fashionably Late Birthday is this Friday, the 13th!
    at the Foxy House, 1531 east 4th ave

    with special guest star, the talented and glorious Venus Soberanes, who will also be celebrating her birthday with us!


    The party has been become significantly more organized since I first posted about it, and all to the better. We’ve added a special birthday guest, a magic show, a pirate band, and a beautiful sauna-inna-truck, (which sounds sketchy, but isn’t at all), with the possibility of a drag show and a belly-dancer.

    The schedule is shaping up as follows:

    6 pm to 9:00 pm: BBQ in the garden, yum! Bring food to make, food to share, and/or whatever else you want; wine, fruit, pudding, etc. Vegan/vegetarian friendly is an asset.

    10:00 pm: Magic show. Yes, a magic show. Because we are awesome.

    10:40 pm: Unconfirmed drag show.

    11:15 pm: The Creaking Planks, a pirate shanty band full of accordion and wash-tub bass.

    11 pm to 2-3 am: Sauna by donation, bring a towel!

    11 pm to ?? am: Dancing. Kitchen party-osity.

    Please come at any time, stay as long as you want, and BYO-whatever you like. Easy suggestions include: Instruments, ice-cream, jell-o, glitter, spray-on hair dye, sidewalk chalk, funny hats, spare change, chocolate, pudding, bubbles, cake, cookies, sock puppets, music, games, cheeses, fake mustaches, body-paint… Costumes are always welcome, towels are recommended.

    because people have already started to wish me a happy birthday

    365 day one hundred & thirty-one: precious little mind

    An amazing, astonishing, astounding, fantastic, fantastical, incredible, marvelous, miraculous, phenomenal, stupendous, unbelievable, wonderful, wondrous party, Jhayne’s Fashionably Late Birthday is back!

    (When you only have a birthday party every two years, you really have to make it count.)

    When: Friday, June 13, 2008 at 6:00pm
    Where: the Foxy House, 1531 east 4th ave

    BYO-whatever you like.

    Easy suggestions include: Instruments, ice-cream, wine, glitter, spray-on hair dye, sidewalk chalk, chocolate, fruit, bubbles, cake, cookies, sock puppets, music, games, cheeses, fake mustaches, body-paint…

    Rumour says there may be a bar and/or a BBQ, to be confirmed closer to the date.

    not going to forget this year, you people won’t let me

    “It’s been believed in the past that the camera steals souls. I once thought this preposterous. Now I think it’s self-evident.

    This is why we photograph. The fear of oblivion, ours and our worlds. We will inevitably die, but our photographs, if they’re honest, if they show our lives with clarity, unafraid, our photographs will preserve us. Our souls at least. Who we were inside, and the things we saw. Our images? Particles of light that have been traveling forever bounced off our subjects, were focused through our lens into the tender tissue of our eye, and our brain, and our film. Now, those very same shapes, made by those very same particles, the same ones we saw, others can see. Forever, they can see that fraction of a second we saw.

    That’s immortality.” -Clayton Cubitt, 2005

    Scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter.

    May is quickly waltzing into being, every day one delicate step closer, bringing with it spring and, with that, my birthday. Fragile, the social ties holding me to it. Already people have started asking about a party, as I worked through my birthday last year. So once again, and this year I mean it, does anyone know of an appropriate venue for my birthday party at the end of May? My apartment is far too small to hold the 100+ people who will wander through during the course of the day and outdoors, really, is never an option I care for. It’s impossible to foster the security of the microcosm we call a kitchen party in a park.

    What I’m hoping for is the kind loan of a house with a yard for a BBQ that won’t mind if we go over-night, preferably with crash space, that won’t mind if we cook breakfast in the morning. Last time our resident Stephen was kind enough to lend us his place, but it has since been partitioned and rented out to people. (I think Frankie‘s girlfriend’s sister or something now lives in the basement, like, just to go to show how small this city really can be.) It was perfect, big, two yards, just off the Drive.

    It came out unscathed, too, minus a large pile of dishes in the kitchen we cleaned up the next day, two snapped guitar strings, and, I think, one broken glass. The people I know tend to be remarkably tidy when it comes to parties, we’re not hard-drinking bar-stars with anything to prove, more the sort of argue films and physics over spanish guitar on the porch. Profit: fifteen dollars in returnable bottles, a set of car and house keys no one ever claimed, (I still have them, people, identify them and they’re yours), and some wonderfully embarrassing arm-wrestling photos.

    So, please, if this sounds remotely feasible, drop me a line if you’ve got a place or know of one. Let’s see if we can’t work something out.

    edit: so far we’ve got the foxy house. anyone else?

    Karen & Jhayne’s tres cool house warming rent party potluck movie night!

    Why go go to several parties, when you could come to this one?

    To celebrate the joy that is having a sane and compatible roommate, we are inviting you to come and partake of Heima, the recent Sigur Ros movie, TONIGHT.

    Doors at seven, movie at eight, questionable party games, anytime.

    Food welcome, also donations, as oh noes, I’m being bilked by a software jerk who doesn’t want to pay for writing because “that isn’t real work anyway.”* If you’re worried you’re going to be coming over too late, don’t. Just call.

    BYO-anything you like.

    I realize that with the snow, travel is suddenly a bit of an issue. I hope you find it within yourself to come out anyway, as it’s nice to have company to make cold nights cozy. For those worried about getting stuck, we have plenty of crash space and blankets.

    *I had a verbal agreement with someone to do three pages of technical writing for them, now they’re saying they don’t have to pay, just in time for rent. My favourite quote “think of it as a contribution to your community”. I’ve posted what happened to the technical writing forum I collected the job from, and have sent him a very legal e-mail stating that the written work remains my property until he pays me for it. Unless I catch him, though, I’m pretty sure the point is moot.