I have to qualify my last entry. I got some emails asking if I was ok. Yes, thank you I am fine. I guess when I said “lowest point of my day” I meant “a negative moment” or “my least optimistic moment”. I do have to admit that I will miss working at the bar: I caught myself yesterday caring about things happening there in November. Its going to be tough, I think. I invested a lot of time and energy into that bar and I would hate to see it backpeddle or slip in sales/popularity. Then again, Im glad to be done of the personality shit. I mean really…rent a slide projector for only three slides repeated over and over again for one 4 hour period? Come on…Bye Bye Drama!

Does anyone think that Cosmo and Wanda from Fairly Odd Parents are gay? Wanda sounds pretty bulldyke.

You may commence calling me a hypocrite at any time. Today I signed up to be an extra for Queer as Folk. Oh hush you people, I dont want to hear your bitching or comments. I walked into the extra’s office today and met with Sherri, who was one of those people on automatic. Her schpiel was honed to a fine ramble, but was easy enough to interrupt for questions. Ive worked around movie industry types so she came as no suprise…always on, looked good, and nothing could knock her off the track she was barrelling down on, verbally. Halfway through her diatribe, a scraggly post-heroin kid comes in with a thick thick European accent complaining of not having any money for a phone card for his cell, hence missing his last gig. She shoos him out of the office deftly and in the same breath says: “He’s great”. In fact I think she said “He’s great” about all her flock of extras, so Im glad she’s saying nice things about me behind my back. When I told her that 1) I did special effects make up for a while and that I knew set policies and 2) I was a web/graphic designer, she scribbled furiously on my application. “Good! I can so use you! Do you want to work on anyting other than QAF?” I said please while my head said PLEASE!!!! So keep looking in for on set gossip.

I, Robot Update: I heard the other day that I, Robot only uses one or two storylines from the original book and that its mostly a “pre-U.S. Robotics, pre-Susan Calvin” story in hopes to garner a series of movies, a la Lord Of the Rings. Im still not happy. Ive also found out these people have also bought up Asimov’s Foundation series. Which makes me believe that the Estate of Isaac Asimov must have had a shitty garage sale one day.

10:02 PM Update: Dear producers of The Joe Schmoe Show: You bastards!!

Im at the lowest point of my day today. You know the moment: where you indulge in taking stock in the crappy things in your life, like making Kraft Dinner when you’re alone. Oh dont sit there and say you dont do it. So Im listing things: Crappy fungal toenail. Im alone in this city. Not even a fuck-buddy. Inversley, dating makes me ill. I have no solid career after Oct 19th. I cant get past one part of the gameboy game Im on… etc etc. And Im on my bike (ten minutes before I had sat down wrong on my seat. Note to self: underwear when bike riding), and Im at a light. As I said, its the lowest part of my day and I look down. On the ground is an old newspaper page all crumpled and nearly all one grey colour, but one word looked back up at me: Passion. It was weird. It was almost neatly folded so that was the only word you could see on the page. I stared at it for a moment and thought “Was that meant for me? Is Kismet kicking my ass?” Or was it the French word for “fish”? I ride on.

A couple random thoughts while riding: Why do people think “farmer’s blows” are ok? Short of unabashedly pooping on the street, I can think of nothing less I would like to see someone do. Especially when coming out of a dirty bar. Why do rich people talk on their cell phones while driving their expensive cars? If they had the money, why dont they enjoy the ride?

Jon Erik Hexum. The first tv “hunk” I ever had a crush on. He and Lee Majors (I know, I know: how Marge Simpson of me) both had the hairiest chests on tv back then, at the start of the 80s. And Gil Gerrard too. Know him? No google searches…I will tell you in a moment.

There was a big boom of hairy chested beefcake on tv at the turn of the Me Generation: Regan was just a small virus spreading in California, Battlestar Galactica was so close to finding Earth, V was tv’s most lackluster metaphor for the Nazi rise to power (I thought Steven Speilbergs career at the time, was a better allegory), Magnum PI was using Higgins’ Ferrari, Dallas was on everyone’s yammering lips, and Buck Rogers (There…Gil’s tv show. Did you guess right?) was shooting up the Draconian space navy with Dale Arden. Bidda bidda bidda, Buck! Im rambling. Every male lead had a hairy chest for some reason. When did everyone become hairless? Was it with the death of disco? No more open shirts? Do we blame the Italians? Iranians? Turks? I can fathom the exact point in pop culture where we went from beautiful naturally hairy chests to these shaved house apes. I blame Calvin Klien.

So today I feel liberated. Scared. Happy…actually happier than I have felt in a long time.

I quit my job today.

Too right, mates. I got a sharp boot to the backside and decided that it was enough dicking around and leave the bar. Long story short: I mistakedly put up a naughty pic onto the bar’s website that the owner didnt like. I got the call Sunday morn to take it down. Which got me to thinking that I wasnt really doing what I want to do, which is graphic design (web and print) and that I am wasting time sitting around cowtowing to promoters and committees that come to the bar with their hands out and faces blank, expectant for you to give them something just because theyre “part of the community”. Coupled with the constant gnawing at the heels of my brain that I was going nowhere and needed to do something with my life other than foreskin contests, I decided to make the jump. My old job will become a contract position where I will only do the website once or twice a month with the odd poster/pamphlet thrown in. I have other leads as well so Im not sitting idly by and wondering when the next bingo cheque will be.

I could be all bitter and mad and tell you the whole gorey details of how this revelation came about…Maybe some day after all this blows over. Im not sure how the owner is going to take my leaving…he may cut me out entirely as some employers are wont to do, or he might still want me around. My leaving is not even 6 hours old.

As I said, Im liberated. And scared. Anyone need a freelance graphic designer?

This Just In…
I wanted to comment on the whole Siegfried and Roy tiger attack thing. Ok, I think these two have been lucky so far that their tigers havent turned on them sooner. I am glad to hear that Roy has mumbled “Dont kill the cat,” through the bandages. But what makes me laugh is this (from the first news item):

Witnesses said Horn defended himself by hitting the tiger with his microphone. The microphone created a crashing sound in the theater when it hit the face of the male tiger

Okay. Here’s the soundtrack to that mental image:

“Down!”

“Raaaar!!”

chomp.

“Aaaa!”

bong!bong!bong!bong!!!

Is it wrong to laugh at this?

So Im playing a vid game at The Tool Box tonight. Its quiet. Not too busy. Two barflies are playing the game beside me. One skinny, on the game, the other, portly and hanging onto the skinny guy like some drunk bingo winner with a jackpot cheque in her hand. Heres the conversation:
Big Guy: “Halloween. You know what you are gonna be?”
Skinngy Guy: “If all goes right, a marine!”
BG: “If all goes right, Im gonna be a Klingon!”
SG: “First series?”
BG: “God who does that? Who does the first series Klingon!? Come on!”
Grope grope grope…

We’ve all had this happen. We grew up on a story or book that in some way has touched us. We put the book down and our lives are changed. Our perspective is solidified for most of our lives due to the written words on a page. Thus it was for me with the book I, Robot by Isaac Asimov.

I read a site almost daily called Dark Horizons (dont bother…spyware galore) which isnt the greatest in new media reporting. The author is from Australia but he seems to get some juicy tidbits every so often. When I saw the first report that I, Robot was bought and in pre-production I was happy yet apprehensive. Im still sore from Bicentennial Man and A.I. (Kubrick should haunt Spielberg for 10000 years for that crap ending), so when I heard that this book…this marvel of short stories dedicated to human condition and logistics…was going to be made into a movie I got worried.

The first indication that this movie will be bad is that its being filmed in Vancouver. Oh Vancouver friends and lovers, take no offense, but your fine city is not the model city of the future even with all the street dressing in the world. Maybe Chicago or some place dirty would make a good near-future villa (heee! Evil Panda). I am sure the movie is going to resemble some cheap assed Paul Verhoeven sci fi film (see: art direction for Total Recall).

The other indication is that Will Smith is starring. Okay… Ive read I, Robot a few times. There aint no black lead character. I seem to remember a Susan Calvin as a character that is re-occuring throughout the book. An introverted woman nerd. Not a black male music artist.

The final indication is that early set reports have Will Smith as a police officer. WTF? There’s a reporter who is never identified but no police in any of the stories. So its safe to say theyre deviating from the stories somewhat. Can you read the sarcasm, kids? Mike (from Vanc.) tells me that the set was admonished the other day because of gunfire at an early morning shoot. Gunfire. Im flipping through the book. Nope…other than a massive raygun blast that levels a mountain there are no firefights in it. I may weep openly.

So Im sad. As more stuff comes out from the set I will keep you posted about my utter disgust.

So Im in Pharma Plus returning some of those nearly disposable battery operated toothbrush heads. See I bought a “Spin Brush Pro” and picked up just the “Spin Brush” regular or something. They were the wrong ones. So anyway. I ask the woman at the counter if I could return them but I had bought them a while back and inbetween that time I had gone to Calgary and stuff. The package was still sealed so she said “I dont think it will be a problem.”

…And then just stood there

So I look at her. She looks at me. Then glances down one of the isles.

A moment passes.

I make a face that says, “So?”

“Oh theyre in the basement,” she says, like Im suppose to know who ‘they’ are and why ‘theyre’ in the basement.

Another moment.

“Can…you call them?”

“Oh theres no phone in the basement,” she said all conspiratory-esque.

Another moment.

Actually the moment lasted longer than a standard moment. More like an English Imperial moment. All bloated and confused.

“Is there a snake pit on the way to the basement?” I ask.

Her look was one like a Fembot that had just 1) had its face knocked off…all embarassed and exposed; and 2) glazed over like a Fembot that looked like “Whoa…water…Im gonna explode…”

I made excuses and left.

Totally unrelated: I forgot something my sister said in Calgary as we were driving around with Dad and Donald and myself: “I wonder what kind of package you need for a woody like that?” My eyes bug out. She meant the tricked up PT Cruiser beside us. Oh straight people…

• My sister’s house is massive. I really hope that she can offload it without any loss.
• I also hope she can build the house she wants beside the house she needs to offload. She’s busier than a paper wasp at a pulp fiction convention.
• I wore Government of Canada, Parks Canada rented shorts. I looked like I had canvas diapers on. Mike oddly enough looked kind of like a 1950s dad at a cottage…
• The mountains smell…like pine… We speculated as to whether or not there was a car freshener factory near by when in Kananaskis.
• There are some wicked used book stores in Calgary: I got Caves of Steel and Foundation, Issac Asimov; Salmon of a Doubt, Douglas Adams (I recommend. I was a bit aprehensive when I heard they were raiding his hard drives…Im glad they did); Crytonomicon, Neal Stephenson (I was reading it on the streetcar the other day and this guy punched his girlfriend and pointed at me “HE’S READING IT!!”)

Mike brought me a t-shirt from Vancouver…my second favorite Sushi restaraunt in the world.

My sister took us to the Dragon Pearl in Calgary where they served the best Salt and Pepper Lemon Seafood I have ever tasted. She went on to Freudian Slip-Up the soup appetizer into “Hot and Sewer Soup”. Laughs all around. I got my dad to eat Ethiopian food. He was cool with eating with his fingers but he was more interested in picking up the waiter. “Should I go? I could leave you two alone…”

I had 4 – 5 cups of tea in the morning with the paper. It was heaven. Ive not done that in a long time. Rhino (bro-in-law) insisted on making bacon in the microwave, which was ok, but nothing beats the gooeychooey of fat on a nice piece of smokey.

The last meal we had was at the Chicago Chophouse. $50 T-bone steaks ($5 extra for the garlic mashed potatoes) and (I kid you not) $20,000 bottles of wine. No lie. I had to rub my eyes to make sure the comma was in the right place. The restaruant was total “Beef and Oil” old-boy kinda place with the largest fully stocked bar I have ever seen (to impress the American investors-including the career bartender who knew every single drink on either side of the border, ever) and golf on the bigscreen tv in the pre-dinner lounge. The waitresses were nice in a classy Hooters kinda way. Dinner was about $100/person after dessert.

Back from Calgary! What was the land of “scared white, right winged rednecks” like? The first thing I encoundered was a guy grunting in the washroom stall next to me after I got off the plane.

I met a Hutterite. Think Mennonite but with relaxed attitudes. He was fucking hot…he had a unkept chinstrap of hair and a great weird accent and sold me some tomatoes. His ill-fitting suit (probably cut from the same template from generations passed down) just made him all the more attractive. I could tell he had great legs through his pants. He had big calloused hands that I wanted on my backside. Grrr

I saw a moose on Saturday. It wasnt as big as I expected and I guess TV has desensitized me to their actual greatness (I think it was an adolescent moose, its antlers wernt very big). We skidded to a stop and sat there in stunned silence for a nanosecond…then “Where the fuck is the camera?!” and “Moooose!!!” It trundled back into the woods right after that. I feel great about that.