Category: Theatre

delightful

after a somewhat jostled trip downtown (travelling during rush hour being a real commitment for me these days) I joined Tammy for a lovely meal at Homer and then a wonderful walking tour of “Forbidden Vancouver” which Tammy also underwrote. I took the stool so I could sit down whenever; Tammy used it as well.

Nothing like standing at the epicentre of a race riot to help you get a grip on things.

After we hung out and I looked at pics of her vacays to places like New Orleans at Christmas (lovely light displays at night) and Fiji – my god, the guest house was set in a spectacular garden – and Sydney.

Then I went home, took a taxi from Edmonds.

And, apart from Jeff accompanying me on food to D Roti Shak, which supplied all of our meals yesterday, and a couple of shows I SLEPT ALL DAY YESTERDAY.

Katie’s here! Brekky time

 

Later – life sucks but I have friends and furthermore leftovers

Haunting

I find this haunting. Someone has tried to reconstruct Babylonian song.

Yesterday I saw Sue in Little Women the Musical.  Unfortunately the book was not as good as the actors and musicians.  Fortunately I was able to argue my points with the actors afterwards without being dishonest or unkind, and it widened into a broader discussion of the challenges and rewards of musical theatre.  Ten years ago I would have said, Oh it was great, it was great.  Now I have the brains to respect people enough to be honest and the social intelligence to be honest without being a cad.

It was in Granville Island.  I had half an hour to Christmas shop.  I got an Alexosaurus (stuffed T Rex) and a kazoo.  Strangely, that is what I wanted.  I have rarely had a briefer and more pleasant Christmas shop.  The weather was crisply glorious and I likely won’t get to Granville Island again until Tammy comes.

Jeff and I walked to IHOP and back for breakfast.  It was very pleasant.

I think Riddle Number II is a cloud.  What do you think?

Work on the trilogy continues. Kima is pregnant – with more than 100 zygotes  by three fathers of two different morphs. This presents any number of social, emotional, physiological and ‘race’ issues.

I had a pleasant recent conversation with Dave JD.  He has joined the ranks of the unemployed.  I tried to get Facetime to reduce the expense of talking to him and repeated and lengthy attempts to purchase it were fruitless.  I really loathe anything to do with Apple customer service.  When I want an Android app or book I press a button, and free or not, it appears on my phone in about five minutes.  (I’m still on the first chapter of the Piketty book -if anyone wants to mock me… go ahead).

I can’t really deal with heeled shoes any more so I took two pairs of Fluevogs into church yesterday (the bus DIDN’T COME at 10:03, or even five minutes earlier according to the guy I ran into so I was 25 minutes late for church, screw you translink).  Anyway the teenaged co-congregant who had admired my steampunky shoes got about 300 dollars worth of footgear in a little bag, and if I did nothing else yesterday I made her very happy.  Her socks MATCHED the second pair of shoes, in a most gratifying way.

How do you detect an extrasolar planet? With objects found in hardware stores and Nikon lenses and software and a little something something to remove blur.

Yesterday morning I awoke to a dream in which Hitler’s mustache was crawling up my door frame.  I woke up for real and spent a disoriented couple of seconds looking for it.  Very odd, and not a little disturbing.

Breakfast of writing champions! Peanut butter cookies warm from the oven and fair trade coffee with real cream.  Ha!

We think Autumn may be knocked up.  It’s always something.

6 more days

Spamalot was absolutely wonderful, and Marylke a delight as a companion for the theatre.  She’d never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail so she came new to all the wonderful gags. Then I came home and saw something that you will see too if you google Morgan Freeman Helium.  B’lieve me, it’s worth it.

I’m underslept and it’s a crappy day out there, but I have one week and one more day of work and it’s starting out a good day here in dried fruit and pasteurized nut land.

bits and bobbles

Jeff and I are off to Thrifty’s once he wakes up.

I have been thinking about what I like in an actor.

A good actor works consistently and takes time off only when she must.  She tries different roles and treats everything about herself as a component of performance. She can differentiate between the toxic pixie dusts of celebrity and notoriety, interviews graciously, is courteous to fans and professional with coworkers.  She is judicious in her use of alcohol and drugs.  She leaves her personal life out of her work unless it helps to bring snap to the performance, recognizes and honours excellence in others, never stops learning and protects those aspects of herself which make for great performances against all comers.  She can take direction and make suggestions. She understands as much about the business of acting as she needs to.  She takes every job seriously, even the fun ones. And the only time you hear about her when you aren’t actually watching her is when she’s promoting a role; she saves the interesting stuff for the screen and stays out of the fricking tabloids. A good actor is a working actor.  A good actor balances knowing what she does best with working in a challenging role, knowing she might fail spectacularly.  A good actor is too busy working to worry about the last blazing success or ignominious turkey.

Soup lunch today.  I may bake something if I feel energetic enough.

I have decided that I am an Assam person, not a Darjeeling person.  I may blend the two teas together; that’s pretty much how they make English breakfast tea anyway.  Proper loose leaf tea is really a thing of beauty.

Were you aware that the global price of coffee is going to triple over the next five years?  If you can bring yourself to stop drinking it except as a treat you’ll be doing the planet and your wallet a favour.

The California drought is going to end.  Whether it will be enough to save the almond plantations is an open question.

 

Weigh in

I hadn’t weighed myself in a while, but my clothes were getting tighter, so I was delighted to see from the scale this morning that the weight I lost after I broke my shoulder has stayed off.  Now I’m getting ridiculous amounts of exercise, since I have to walk a minimum of 2 kilometres a day through terrain plus two sets of transit stairs just to get to work, so I expect the weight will stay off.  My hips and back are better; my knees and feet are shouting things ungodly at me.  I’m sleeping better and staying up later.

Jeff has commented that he’s getting interesting pings from various muscle groups now that he’s back exercising regularly with his new rowing machine.  One of these days I’ll check it out but I’m never wearing shoes when I’m downstairs…

Many hugs to Jeff for letting me borrow the car yesterday after my phone freaked out and I ended up being late getting out the door in consequence … I brought home some treats.

The family that ________s together…. 

In one of those bizarre coincidences, I mentioned the cave of Chauvet in my last homily, and until she broke her ankle, our speaker this Sunday was to be a woman taking as her text Werner Herzog’s unbelievably amazing Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  Since she can’t do it, we’re subbing in three church members talking about their creative paths, and I helped one of them since he was being put to it on short notice and he said he was feeling apprehensive and I gave him some advice.  He appeared happy to get it (my enthusiasm is a substitute for skill sometimes) and I await with pleasure how he will deal with the creative challenge of a minihom. So I would have enjoyed the booked homily and will definitely enjoy the substitute homily, and that’s pretty much how she goes at church.  Which reminds me, I should scare up a ride.

Benedict Cumberbatch will be taking on Hamlet in 2015, live somewhere in England.  Sigh.

Currently watching: Archer Vice (interesting, but no longer quite as funny), Rick and Morty (most recent show? the last two minutes took me to an unanticipated height of awesome), Justified (Boyd Crowder, how you do blow things up!), Downton Abbey, NCIS, NCIS Body Count, CSI, Person of Interest, Castle, plus the occasional Frontline and 60 Minutes.  I’ve pretty much given up on White Collar, mostly because those whackdoodles at Netflix don’t appear to want to stream it to my profile, and Jeff’s burned out on Burn Notice (ha!) although I still want to finish the show.  Person of Interest continues to be the show that Jeff and I are most likely to halt on the PVR so we can talk about the issues they are raising.  It’s a show that demands close attention and thought, and Root walked the dog Bear last episode.

Jeff is trying to get caught up on March Madness, otherwise known as the Squeaky Squeaky show from the sound of all those basketball shoes squeaking on those nice wood floors.

I wonder if two zone bus passes are available yet?  I’ll need one of those.  I do think longingly of getting a car, but I’ll be better off in at at least three ways without one.

Happy Friday to you all!  The port strike is over, although the drivers are still plenty choked.

 

Crad Kilodney is back.

Crad Kilodney is one of those people you have to file in the part of the Venn Diagram where ‘literary treasure’ ‘full bore pain in the ass’ and ‘exceedingly rude bastard’ meet. Author of Lightning Struck My Dick, Pork College and World Under Anaesthesia, he used to sell his little chapbooks on the street in Toronto, where I first made his acquaintance on Yonge Street when our Saviour was still commuting by T. Rex, after he had escaped from New York City. Now he has rewritten the 38 canonical Shakespearean plays for the ‘don’t stop me from texting just cause the Royal Vic is performing’ crowd, and I’ve read portions of several of them…. Okay, you’ve been warned.

Margot made a tribble noise this morning, which is where cute meets alarming.

Physio this morning was great. I walked back, picked up some groceries, and feel much better about my recovery.

No joy on the shop sale.  I have a lot of work to do but at least I’m feeling a bit more like doing it.

So I decided to see some live theatre

Let’s just look at the whole thing here: http://emeraldpig.ca/?q=news/2012/05/29/particular-class-women-june-24th

If that link no longer works here’s another: https://sites.google.com/site/siteoctogon/a-particular-class-of-women

So I had no idea I was going to a show about strippers.  It was HILARIOUS, moving, the costumes were droolariffic, and I got to sit next to the president of the Beacon Unitarian Church board, a fellow congregant, my former minister and her husband. Nudity! Swearing! References to bars in Toronto from the 80’s – when I lived there!   The former minister repeating some of the vilest of the lines in a stage whisper to her deaf husband!

frack! I LOVE BEING A UNITARIAN!  The food and drinks were overpriced and meh, but it was a great show and I am grateful to Sue for the opportunity to go and grow.

Sad cats are sad

Both of the cats are wandering around the house crying because “Daddy’s not here” (Jeff’s visiting on the Island).  Margot was so upset that Daddy wasn’t here for her to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, she came into my room and started attempting to destroy things.  I said “Shoo!” and “Scat!” (as in feces) but all she did was stare at me with the stare that indicates every functioning neuron in her head is currently dedicated to keeping her eyes open, but that no other brain activity or anything one could call consciousness was otherwise employed.

As I mentioned in my comment, Yunte wrote me back, which was very decent of him.  I had mentioned to him that when pOp sent me the Charlie Chan movies on DVD I couldn’t bring myself to watch them as I’d drunk the Koolaid on them being racist garbage; as I said to him “I can now watch them with more nuance and less angst”.  Still not happy that Chan was played by white guys (except for the first two movies) but I can at least appreciate that they are entertaining movies now.  I think it’s great that my filial piety prevented me from throwing them out.

At some point today Katie and I and Keith and Mike and Rozo are going to brave the nipply weather of April and head to the beach.  Top down (da na na na na na!) in the sun (da na na na na na!)  I was thinking of taking a musical instrument, but given a choice between hauling sammitches down those effin’ stairs and something la di da like a mandolin, I’ll go for the eats.  Katie is NOT living with Daxus so my unconditional love faucet got turned back on.  Keith had his friend Chris over here last night.  They played Portal 2  and ate leftover spaghetti.  I was sorry to miss Chris as I quite like him; I’m thrilled that Keith has an intelligent, kind hearted friend.

I washed one of mOm’s quilts and it’s hanging on the line now.  I also did a compost run  The most immense pillbugs in Canada (latin name the ENTIRELY CHARMING Armadillidium vulgare) are currently noshing on my coffee grounds.  That would be my late Earth day news.

Heard from Paul.  Work has started on Lois and Bobby’s flooded buildings.  He called from the ‘Hat about an hour ago sounding like he wanted to do something family tomorrow.  When I mentioned the beach he groaned from pure jealousy.

Night before last, out drinking with the old Stat gang, and IHTA (It Had The Awesome).  Last night, Lost in Yonkers at the Langley Playhouse with Tom, Peggy, Rev Katie, Al, Joan, Ev, Gary, Elva AND the choir director Marnie and her daughter. As I mentioned on facebook half the church was in the audience.  Sue Sparlin was really good as the ferocious Cherman Grandmuzzer.

I look back on the beginning of February like somebody who had a bad dream, the effects of which still linger.  Did I really want to kill myself???? What’s up with that?  You know, I’m blaming it on February, because February in Canada sucks, and February in Vancouver, as I can say from personal experience, makes ya wanna die.  And then when the sun comes out you’re thinking…. oops.

I heart Tom and Peggy.  Right now I am really appreciating what lovely, talented, hospitable, intelligent and forward thinking people they are.  Also, they are newly minted grandparents, and I swear Peggy is leaving little curly trails of multi-colored stars when she talks these days.  Tom’s grouch factor is only barely moving the meter since the Bean arrived.

 

I won’t be here for Elly’s performance…

But maybe some of you will be…

Shining a Light on Disability

What is mental illness? Is it a chemical imbalance? Can we get over it? In her
fast-paced, one-woman play Now Who’s Crazy Now?, Elly Litvak candidly
brings her own personal experience living with and recovering from a serious
mental illness to the stage. The play is a highly entertaining and educational
piece, with a message of hope for recovery for everyone. 

Sunday, November 30, 2008, 7.00 pm

Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver
Norman Rothstein Theatre

Tickets: $20.00 and $12.00 for students, seniors. (Ticket subsidies available).
Call Debbie Havusha, Special Needs Coordinator, at 604.257.5151 for more info

More happy Easter

Deb sent this and I cannot resist posting it.

colouredchicks1.jpg

I dunno what kind of dyes they used but it’s certainly striking.

Yes, I have kind of fallen off the face of the earth of late. Let me see if I can make it up. As it turns out, it’s just as well the Luddite and I didn’t get together; he is feeling poorly and while I would love to quote the email he sent me I am not sure we all equally appreciate the humour of mild stomach flu. The Loonie Awards Show I am volunteering for is going fabulously well; hopefully I will be able to see it tonight as I was minding the door last night. Doug and Elly, the cast and the volunteers have all done an amazing job, and it’s always fun to go to the St James Hall.

The unpacking goes well. I know it seems sometimes that I have carted an unholy amount of paper junk with me over the last 30 years, but sometimes I find stuff that makes me smile. I hadn’t seen the promo for Puzzle Factory, one of Elly’s theatre projects in Toronto, for at least ten years, and the day I am helping her it turns up out of the great dusty pile. I volunteered and performed in that too, and god help us all, my performance is recorded somewhere on VHS.

I am sitting at the desk my grandfather studied at when he was upgrading his education and working for the Saskatoon waterworks. It’s a very pleasant feeling, and it’s a really nice desk. I’m glad Jeff hung on to it for me. I have promised him that he’ll never have to move my bureau again. Paul and I bought it from a second hand store in Toronto – it was solid wood junk then and it’s junk now. But it’s capacious and holds my folding clothes so I should just stfu. I can more or less fit everything except my books in my room. I don’t have an unreasonable amount of clothing but I do have too much for the closet. More dejunking? More dejunking.