Halloween Round Up: Leather, Make It So, F*ck Da Pigs

Personal Bits, Queer stuff, Toronto, Work

Leila on a BenderYesterday was a good day, my friends.

Sharkboy and I started the day out by going to City Hall and forking over the $130 to get a piece of paper that says we can legally wed. O Bureaucracy, O Mores! I think I fell in love with City Hall as a building, not a concept, this trip because of it’s hushed tones, hip curves and trippy bubble clocks. And zombie like employees who came to their desks with heavy sighs and complaints about scheduling. Lady, I’d love to have your job for a while. I’d be so camp with the same sex licenses…

With that done, we hustled to our respective offices where, as you know, I donned my chaps, cop shirt, C.H.i.P gloves and Masters cap to much ballyhoo around my floor. Pictures below, if you want to jump ahead.

hey you!End of day, we met up with Rod and Bill who are 90% convinced that going on December’s cruise would be a great fucking idea. Please dear readers, give them 10% more of a reason. A nice round number like 10 at the table would be fun. We then headed to Wicked for their Halloween show.

Now, I’m a cynical old fart when it comes to Broadway musicals. I whole heartedly agree with the Simpson’s parody of Planet of the Apes or Trey Parker/Matt Stone’s version of Rent (Everyone has AIDS!). They’re lyrically stereotypical and schmaltzy. But Wicked was fun. I enjoyed it. It was well written (other than a few glaring plot holes) and did an amusing job of Lucasing the pre-Oz story.

There were some costumes in the audience. Leaving the theatre, I saw a family of 4 getting their coats on and noted that mom was dressed as Dorothy, one kid as The Scarecrow, the other kid as The Cowardly Lion and good old Dad was

Jean Luc Picard.

…What? The fuck?

I snort a laugh. I look at Sharkboy. He’s already into hysterics. Apparently Dad didn’t get the email saying “Oz Theme!”

Then we went to Church street. It was already 11:20pm and the street was still closed. Some my-tee-fine costumes this year, people. I was suitably impressed, dare I say “Best Halloween EVAR”? Very little repeats (although Dracula was popular) and only one Steve Irwin with a barb through their chest. Best Costume goes to the pair of guys with silver Barbarella-style 60s space outfits replete with goldfish bowl helmets. Damn me forever for not getting a picture. Lots of WTF costumes too. You know the ones: straights wearing boas thinking “Hey that’s enough to get by”. Next year I am going to ONLY take pictures of WTF costumes.

The police win the award for the biggest downers, however. At 11:30, they started to drive their cruisers through the crowd to clear the street. Their horns blazing, they berated the crowd to the sidewalk only to have them spill back out onto the road. I saw one cop physically shove a pair of guys, deliberately blocking traffic in front of Starbucks. Of course after they managed to regain control of the road, the traffic wasn’t that busy and they could have extended the street closure. But I am sure it was a question of paying extra cop salary to have them stay on. Regardless, the 30 mins we had there was fun. I have to say, I enjoy Halloween on Church more than Pride. It has zero corporate involvement and has 100% party vibe.

Halloween 2006 Photos are here, kids.

Dilbert, Silent No More

Celebs and Media

You might know that Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert comics, was suffering from Spasmodic Dysphonia, a disorder that halts the brain’s ability to process speech. Some people flat out can’t talk. Some can yell but can’t speak, some can sing, but can’t talk. He was able to get up on stage and manage public speaking (his “outside voiceâ€?) but unable to talk when he got off stage.

Recently he discovered he could “rewire his brain” (Boingboing calls it a “brain hack“) so that he is able to speak again.

I find this fascinating! When I was a kid, I remember seeing a 60 Minutes special on brain surgery where the patient lay awake under general anesthesia while the doctor poked around. We’ve all seen it. It freaked me out when he asked the boy to count to ten and when he hit “3”, it came out sounding like the noise used in The Matrix when Agents overcome regular people: “threewwaaaaaaaroooooom!” Cool!

I also find synesthesia fascinating. Alan Moore brilliantly created a character who worked as a police investigator who could sense music, colour, feelings etc from a crime scene. I’d love to have this for an hour.

J-J-J-Jammin’!

Toronto

Sharkboy won us tickets to last night’s Raptors game against Cleveland. Not having ever been to a major sporting event in Toronto, EVER, I thought it would be fun to go and check it out.

It helped that the seats were in his company’s executive box. Weep for me, dear readers, the box was NOT catered last night, but we did have an attendant who wanted to take our coats and go get us stuff. We’re not too use to being doted on so we opted to touch elbows with the commoners at Pizza Pizza in the lower levels. After paying $45 for two beers (regular can sized), two bags of popcorn and a diet coke for the second half, we settled in for some hoops.

I knew they played funky music at time outs and did little things to keep the energy up during the game like a 4-beat rising crescendo of music sound byte when the ball entered the Rapt’s end of the court, but I kept on wondering when sporting events started to pander to the public’s attention deficit disorder. I found the band of digital ads at bleacher’s height to be rather annoying and detracting from the game, especially when switching from a dark to light ad. From where we were sitting the Jumbotron was on the same level as the band of ads, and lighter ads hurt my eyes. I was forced to look down at the live action!

I kept on thinking of Rollerball – the 70’s version, not the hideous remake – and Romans cheering on their favorite gladiators as names of players were hollered over the loudspeakers. Stadiums and the shared collective experience, fascinate me.

Imma Go Git

Improv/Comedy

Last night at the Victory. The audio is low so don ye now your headphones and turn it up a bit. Lora, Lisa and I are doing a game called “Imma Go Git” where we endow the next person to come on stage with specific characteristics.