Saturday night and Sharkboy and I are walking towards the campground’s party tent. We pass a small tree and instantly we’re covered in spider threads.
“I’m covered in websites!” howls Sharkboy. His English fails him in times of panic (he hates spiders).
“I’ve got URLs in my hair!” I respond.
With my hand-me-down amp (thanks OldAudioDude!) and garage sale turntable, I am about to embark on the greatest computer adventure ever… burning my old LPs to CD. When I lived in England I loved music, as opposed to these days where music and I nervously say “hi” while passing in the laundry room. Back then I would scour stores and boot-sales for the best of mid-80s extended remixes like ohh… (randomly grabs a record out of his old milk crate that could actually hold an album) this one: Zang Tumb Tuum’s release of Propaganda’s 12 inch “beta” version (they were so advanced! Using “beta” in the 80s!) P-Machinery or … this one… Vicious Pink’s C-C-Can’t You See
If you want a sampling of the music I’m burning, check out Club 80s with DJ Lex. Or if you have iTunes: Radio >> 70s/80s Pop >> Club 80s with DJ Lex. It’s no Dayglo radio (rest it’s soul) but it’s fun, nonetheless.
Have you ever got yourself into something you’re not entirely cool with but yet you muster through anyway? The wind today at ROTC practice was brutal (Sharkboy claims that a tornado tried to take someone’s dog out back of my apartment building while I was in the shower). I couldn’t keep step, I dropped my flag a couple times and I think out of the 20-30 times we ran through the performance I got it right twice. I’m glad I’m only doing 4 parades instead of all of them. I don’t have the same feeling I did for this season as I did last year. I just feel uncomfortable, I guess. Show must go on, says Freddie.
I dont know how I am going to get through this week without peeing my pants. We’re 6 sleeps away from Miami and the cruise (that sounds like a Gloria Estafan concept album…) and I am already excited like a Japanese school girl at a cell phone convention. I tried on my old suit tonight for the formal dinners and hoooo boy it was tight. Despite my gym appearances. Okay so the last three weeks I haven’t been going – too excited! And now I’m paying for it. I’ve started a list of things I MUST take with me like The Davinci Code and my camera. Yeah I know. 2 years behind a bad trend. That’s me!
I’ve been trying to push through as much freelance work as possible and 99% of all my clients have happily been co-operative except for one client. Mine is the typical freelance sob story of a designer doing work for a committee-based client and firing off an invoice the day the work is done. Designer proceeds to sit by his mailbox 2 weeks… three weeks… 7 weeks… After a few emails and promises of payment, it looks like the designer won’t be para-sailing at Labadee. ‘Nuff said about that.
If you get a hankering for a funny, indie gay movie, rent Girls Will Be Girls. Its a movie of rapid fire drag queen rimshots while stealing…er…borrowing from All About Eve, Mildred Pierce, Psycho, Armageddon and a Jerry Lewis Telethon all rolled into one. One memorable line:
Varla: My mother always said, “Feelings are like treasures, so bury them.”
Part I – Miami
Part II – The Radiance of the Seas
Sharkboy and I barely slept all night. The wind picked up and howled outside our balcony door making the cabin sound like a windtunnel at a Honda Element testing plant. We wake to smooth rolling waves and somewhat overcast skies and discover that the balcony door was open ever so slightly causing the snarling wind noises. Closing the patio doors really helps keep the noise down!
We wander down to the dining room for breakfast and sit with a nice group of people (see previous mid-week post of Sharkboy’s attempts to create a common ground conversation). We ate and then wandered to the top deck to see Cuba. We go back to the room and got our sunbathing kits together.
The wind had picked up to about 45mph and the sundeck chairs would not stay open, towels wound up somewhere aft of the ship and drinks were knocked over. We set up beside a nice couple. I fell asleep instantly and the couple next to us gave up on the windy sunbathing. Meanwhile a group of 4 women arrive just as the deck begins to fill up. They noisily decide to take over three seats to our right and one seat to our left. This, of course, wakes me and I open my mouth to offer moving over one so they could be all together, but the singular left side lady starts to whine and complain and so I shut my mouth. Let her complain. Not one of them asked us to move so we didn’t offer. After a couple hours of them yapping between us, ordering drinks and arguing as to who was going to pay for them, we gave up and vacated the chairs. As we were leaving, they joked with us (finally acknowledging our existance) that our seats were “so taken”. “Where are you from?” Sharkboy asks.
“Hamilton. Ontario!” the leader pipes up.
“We’re from Toronto. That will be $10” Sharkboy says without hesitation.
We all laugh. Ha. Ha.
At this point I should stress that if we ask you to come with us on a cruise and create a group, we would have one major rule: you have no obligation to do what we’re doing and expect us not to follow you around either. These women could not do anything without each other. Hive mind, you know.
The rest of the day was a blur of eating, walking, $20 or so in the slot machines, some onboard shopping and bingo. $35 each bingo! And we won nothing! However, the caller was English and I believe that if Bingo ever becomes an Olympic sport, the English will bury us. The caller had 1000s of readymade expressions for call numbers and situations. “B-11! The two sexiest legs on sea!” or when they were confirming winning numbers (rapid fire, no pauses):
Checker: “B-2”
Caller: “That’s good.”
Checker: “I-20”
Caller: “That’s good.”
Checker: “Freespace”
Caller: “Cheater!”
Etc etc… He made spending $70 so quickly so fun!
Dinner (and every dinner after) was a combination of recounting the night’s and day’s adventures (gambling wins, drinking contests, cigars smoked, shopping conquests). All through dinner, the ship rocked and wind whipped spray up onto the deck around the windows.
We went to the Aurora Theater again for Bill Haley’s Happy Days show. Who is Bill Haley? Why he wrote and performed a little ditty called Happy Days (however, he didn’t sing the TV theme version). He was fun, energetic and I enjoyed it more than the previous night’s show. After one last wander of the decks, we snuck up to the Seaview Cafe and got take-away (risking having our plates ripped from our hands at 50mph winds) and watched a movie while nodding off. Life was good!
The next day, we throw back the curtains to Labadee! Royal Caribbean’s owned island off the coast of Haiti with ample beaches and waterpark for the kids. We opted to just get a chair on the beach and not do any of the excursions so we were one of the first people off the boat that morning. Our tender boat hit the docks and the skies opened up with torrential rain and we stood under a palapas until it slowed to a gentle spit. We wandered up the beach, looking at shells and sand and 4 metre high waves on the ocean side of Labadee’s jutty. We quickly learned that Labadee’s sandy coast was laced with large coral rock making our need for watershoes paramount if we were to venture out into the water.
We got two loungers and sat under a palapas at Hidden Beach which faced the ship. It was nice and dispite the rain, I was happy. When the rain stopped, we wandered down to the “marketplace” to see what was for sale. We were warned of their sales tactics but nothing could prepare us for the verbal assault given to us by the salesmen. It started by us walking by the closed market and a guy calling to us saying “You guys need anything?”
“We’re walking right now, we’ll come back,” says Sharkboy.
“You need water shoes?”
We’re stunned, how did he know? We had discussed getting a pair before hitting Jamaca, our next stop, and thought we would pick some up then. We agree to see what he’s got inside the long, low cabin and before we enter he says in all seriousness “Follow me, and don’t talk to anyone even if they start talking to you.” After hasitly buying the shoes, we literally had to fight our way out. They were relentless with their calls for attention. Not a good way to sell to Canadians: trying to be polite quickly dissolved to rude ignorance to their calls for attention and walking away was the only way to avoid their sales pitches. Before this, I felt like the Haitians were angry that we were there, even before they tried to sell us stuff. Now I was pretty sure they were bitter at the presence of tourists.
We get back to our private-ish beach and discover that Sharkboy’s shoes were actually pink and mine were “previously worn”. Ew. I shrugged and put my head down and slept. At least I had added to the island’s economy a bit. We woke to the sun cracking through the clouds and we put on our “new” shoes and ventured into the somewhat choppy water. Frolic! After a while, Sharkboy says “Is there a plastic bag in the water?” and I simotaneously yell “JELLYFISH!!” We leave the water quickly. The dang thing was brushing up against our legs when I noticed and had not got it’s stingers around to us. My left thigh was covered in goo. Great. Humped by a jellyfish.
During the BBQ lunch, a huge BBQ for the couple hundred people off the ship, with carved watermellons, burgs and dogs, fruits and cakes, I noticed a couple janitors cleaning up the big dining area who were alarmingly skinny and I wondered how many workers at Labadee were HIV+. Haiti has the greatest amount of HIV cases in all of the Caribbean and I wondered how much Royal Caribbean’s presence in Labadee was helpful yet a hinderance. I pondered this all day and couldn’t decide either way.
We stayed as long as we could and as long as the sun tried to stay out. We were back on the ship by 4pm. I did have a good time but I couldn’t shake this feeling of dissapointment and a bit of sadness towards Labadee/Haiti. Given the chance, I would probably choose not to go back there.
Before the formal dinner we got our picture taken with the Captain. The poor poor captain who looked like a carboard cutout by the time we posed with him. His face was a mask of stern patience and offered us a curt handshake. As the photographer took the picture, the captain’s hand was literally pushing us out the way for the next couple. We found out during dinner that the Speedboat tour was so choppy, necks were sore and people got wet from high spray. The tour was nearly rained out (or should have been) and we guessed that sitting on the beach was probably the best.
We skip the show (a tribute to 50s and 60s music and wander the ship. Again back up to the Seaview cafe for hand-delivered cabin service and a movie before bed.
I am not work-burdened right now. The company has turned it’s crazy must-get-it-done-now gaze away from me and settled upon the poor two hapless print slaves and has demanded that a couple brochures and newsletters get done before the world cracks in half or something. I’m left to my own devices and I am rewriting meta tags on this, the last slave day before Xmas.
The previous web staff thought it was ok to just reuse the exact same words for the meta description and keyword tags for all 3500 pages of our company site. That’s right, our company’s site is ranked somewhere right beside “The Last Page On The Internet”. It’s a slow process as that I have to actually read the travel drivel describing toasty Tunisian landscapes and far-off exotic souks that syrupy drip over the HTML that is our site.
Needless to say I want to get out of here.
Tonight, Sharkboy and I are dining with Da, the WriterBrother and the Punk Neice and then driving to Montreal at 5am tomorrow morning where I will sit nursing a spiked egg nog as the French relatives talk around me. Then we get into the car and drive to Brockvegas to see my Mum for lunch, grab my WriterBrother and hit the Thousand Island Casino. We’ll be back in the city on Sunday night. Thankfully I have Mon/Tues off to decompress.
I hope you get every single present you ever wished for and greedily eat everything on your plate. Happy Christmas-Xmas-Kwanza-Festivus-Haunuka-PaganSolstice-bla-bla-bla!
Update Sharkboy just sent me this list of things he and his co-workers are saying loudly to get out of the office early:
Me: Elana, thank you for a great year, you can go home now
Me: Well, looks like Marketing is leaving, maybe we can leave too.
Me: The phones have been so quiet since lunch, that’s a sign.
Me: Did you notice how empty the parking lots are? Everybody’s gone home early!
Me: Did you finish all your shopping? Would be good to go now before everybody leaves work at 5 and fill out the mall…
Me: They were saying on the radio that the traffic is heavier at 3pm today than it’s been all week, I guess a lot of people are leaving early.
Me: I can’t believe the coffee place closed early today.
Me: I have so many things to do at home before dinner tonight.
Me: I guess I’ll clean the desk, not in the mood for anything else right now…
I sent back:
Try this one:
Did you see that movie last night? A Christmas Carol? Boy that boss turned really nice, eh?
And just now I got from him:
I guess my talking to everyone and not really being at my desk got me in trouble… Anyway, long story short, I was just told that if it’s that quiet, I could go home.. hehe
I have a paranoid friend and I love him to bits.
He keeps a small, cut up meatloaf tin over his apartment door letter slot. He says it to stop people from looking in at his $10,000 worth of computer bits. Once I tried to put a birthday card through his slot and wasn’t able to because of the snail mail firewall.
He has the most virus protection on his computer I have ever seen. He was shocked when he discovered that my computer doesn’t have an Admin password. In a conspiratory tone, he tells me of a way of putting a password in twice to make sure my box is secure. His wireless router’s password is changed daily.
He tells me that the Weathernetwork.ca, under order from Tourism Ontario, puts “nice” weather stats up before a long weekend, regardless of its going to be rainy or sunny, motivating people to travel. He wonders what kind of kickbacks The Weather Network gets.
Last night, over Rolo Blizzards, he made me stare at a cut out of Ronald McDonald. Close. Hard. He tells me that for the last 10 years, TV commercial Ronald has been played by a woman. It was the closest to a “Pulp Fiction” moment I have ever been to.
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.
I’m back from camping with only 3 bugbites on my right arm (for some odd reason). I have pictures and will try to get them up tonight. We had a great time with the usual crowd and it was great to see the Point guys putting up that great big tent blimp hangar structure for wedding/parties/anything as well as upgrades to the pool. Now to make more showers…
I do have one story to relate: Last year, there was a guy so far gone drunk at the social tent gatherings he was dubbed “Stumbalina” due to his mode of stumbling transport through the crowd. The first party of the weekend in the new Blimp Hangar, Stumbalina was there, doing his thing through the crowd, mumbling drunk disjointed come-on lines.
Sharkboy and I leave to fall asleep in our tent in the quiet wooded section we love to rent (its away from the seasonal party people hence it’s 99% quiet). At about 3am, I’m nudged awake by Sharkboy with “There’s someone outside the tent!”
Outside, about 2 feet away from our tent door, eerily standing right in front of the nearly full moon creating a silloette with a misty halo, is Stumbalina. Swaying slightly.
Immediately the entire Blair Witch movie replays in my mind and I’m awake. I am freaked out. Sharkboy yells “Can you go away, please?”
“Muh lookn fr my tent,” I think he says.
“This ain’t it,” Sharkboy shoots back.
Stumbalina stumbles (duh) away loudly into the night. I’m still sitting bold upright. I’m certainly not going to be able to sleep.
Ten minutes later I can hear him kicking up underbrush near our car/cooler/food area, with no real direction in his movements. I am up out of the warm arms of Sharkboy and with a large, heavy flashlight in hand I am out of the tent and advancing on Stumbalina, who hasn’t drunkenly registered that someone is coming at him. I hit him with the powerful beam from the flashlight.
His reaction to the light was exactly like that scene from the 50’s War of the Worlds when Dr. Clayton Forrester shines his flashlight on the Martian: eEEEeeeeeEEE!!! His hands come up over his face, which is contorted like I sprayed him with ice cold water. “Buddy… where is your tent?” I ask calmly (Sharkboy says I was calm. I wanted to sink the flashlight into his face – years of being a bouncer at the Black Eagle kicks in when dealing with drunks).
“mulglgalgg …Eight!” Meaning he was in lot #8.
“Over there,” I point with the flashlight. He slowly turns and follows the beam.
Stumbalina stumbles into the night.
About 5 minutes later we hear a zipper and a thump.
The next day we see Stumbalina drinking gallons of water. He won’t make eye contact with us.
That’s fantastic! Now do HIV!
Can you hear that? It’s the grumblings of conspiracy theories brewing in the back of my head regarding the large pharmaceutical companies keeping the cure (or cheaper, less toxic treatments) for HIV/AIDS under wraps. Ebola was discovered a couple years after HIV and was considered a greater threat due to it’s ease of transmission speed of kill. Twelve years later there’s a major breakthrough. Meanwhile the “Until There’s a Cure” bracelet gets tighter around my wrist and all we can do is slow HIV. I know Ebola is not a mutagen like HIV. Indulge me: After reading this story I fantasized that HIVers banding together and fighting the drug companies by staging massive “purchase strikes”, refusing their high priced drugs and staging North American-wide die-ins while squatting in shanty towns on the well manicured lawns of Dupont, GlaxoWelcom, etc. Much like the rising of drag queens during Stonewall, these people would bravely die to advance the “research” of HIV treatment faster than the occasional “pill condensement” the pharms seem to be rolling out these days.
Then I woke up. Ffft! That will happen.
Do people sitting in a NYC theater go “yup!” or “hoo!” everytime Mall of Americas is splashed across the screen? Its hard for a movie shown in Canada to garnish respect when you know that the unnamed “American” city the heroes are cavorting around in is obviously the downtown core of Toronto. LotD had a “too many tight shots” feel, like Johnny Mnemonic, denying the viewer a satisfying base to reference from. You can usually sense a Canadian Tax Write-off movie when you see the characters exit the PATH underground out by the Toronto Stock Exchange.
And why do movies produced in Canada have these unnecessary story layers that do nothing to advance the action? Why the extra goons sent from Hopper, other than Star Trek Red Shirt fodder? Why the akward gun totin’ “love interest” if the damn thing ain’t going to go anywhere? Why the Picard-esque “Make it so!” line at the end ordering the ragged troop to Canada?
There were odd editing moments too. Ever see The Muppet Show when they are trying to create a sense of panic and have a chicken run in front of the action? That’s right, they used it. During a scene with Dennis Hopper and his butler (?) trying to get into a basement (??), zombies breech his stronghold (as they usually do) and are wreaking havok in his totalitarian utopia. Standing in the stairwell doorway a singular silver haired old lady zips in front of Dennis, just before he delivers his high hubris line: “You had no right!” It was pretty weird.
There were good moments (Best head-nearly-off zombie bite, ever! Best sprinkling of uniform-specific zombies! Best zombie reveal shot by having them come out of the water!) and there were small hommages to past Romero movies, but he’s a bit too little too late. Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later and even Shawn of the Dead leap-frogged over Georgeo and updated the whole genre.
Nothing new here folks, keep shuffling by.