Woman #1: “My daughter failed her first driver’s test.”
Woman #2: “Really…?”
Woman #1: “We went to the east end office for the test and they failed her for one thing! I found out that they have a high rate of failures there so the next time we went to North York and was in and out of the test in 5 minutes!”
Empty Bowl 2008
Has it been a year since our last Empty Bowl? Same amazing bowls, amazing soups, nearly over-crowded room, but this year no oppressive heat. Delish! Same drill: buy a ticket, get an artisan made bowl and access to 20 fancy falootin’ restaurant’s soups…proceeds to Anishnawbe Health Toronto.
Unfortunately Da could not eat anything but still went and supported the staff and had a nice chin wag with the other volunteers at the Gardiner Ceramics Museum.
Enjoy some pics:
Da, not eating, but still with his free bowl.
Get there early or the old ladies will knee you in the shins to get at the bowls first.
Hot Chef Bear from Jamie Oliver’s Restaurant
Da and his friend Keith share a moment.
Hold my bowl!
Seconds after I was told that there were no pictures allowed in the lineup for bowls. Apparently aboriginal sex fetishes have copyrights.
The bearded Bear Chef had intense greyblue eyes and spat out the words “Lobster….Bisque!”
Line up. Wait. Eat. Repeat.
What Looks Goregeous?
Spore, that’s what! Like millions others, I’m on the edge of my bum waiting for this since they announced it about a year (two?) ago. This video looks a lot less polygon-blocky since the first teaser release (and Matt Powers is a hottie):
And in a brilliant move, they’re releasing the Spore Creator as a freeware program 2 months before the game is released. Get prepped for the game by making the best possible microbe you can!
Paula, We Hardly Know Ye
Weekend Update
The above is the result of at least 2 hours of filming and editing using Adobe Premier Elements 3. I have a very slow computer.
Not much else got done this weekend. I did see Narnia but unfortunately Shelly slept through 2/3rds of it so no review. Didn’t see the first one? Don’t bother. Don’t remember much of the first one? Don’t bother. Think stealing Deus Ex Machina ideas from The Lord of the Rings is cheap? Don’t bother. In all… you got it.
We did have dim sum on the weekend and it was delicious. Unfortunately the brunt of the meal arrived as we were taking off our coats. Literally. Seven of us grab a table in our not-so-favorite place on Dundas and within seconds we were set upon by 4 women with steaming carts. Mr Insurance, a friend that I am mentioning here for the first time on Deadrobot.com, actually had to turn to one of the cart women from hell and say “Go. Away.” We were done our meal in 30 minutes. Which is a shame because it’s always super good and super cheap.
We had this interesting discussion about moving the long weekend back one weekend. I don’t recall any long weekend in my alcohol soaked memory where the weather was actually good. Sorry Queen Vic, but the people have spoken.
Gwap Until the Inevitable Robot Revolution
Help a machine get smart. Play simple games that help an A.I. locked in a cabinet in some mad scientists’ lab learn what’s what.
Start Your Long Weekend Right
This song is in my head. I don’t know why.
And it goes like….THIS!
Strange The Strangers
Saw the trailer for The Strangers last week when we went to see Iron Man. Usually horror movies don’t do anything for me because I grew up on a steady diet of 70s/80s slasher movies. I even took a night course on how to make horror make up and actually got to work on a Bollywood-type movie about East Indian zombies in the water reclamation plant. Or something. We didn’t get to see a script, just one day to make heads into zombies.
I digress. The trailer actually made me jump. Seriously. Okay it had the usual “WHAM! SCREAM! BOOM!” kind of structure but it did find one thing that manages to freak me out every time. The old “being watched by the creep in full sight” shot.
I find if you’re going to scare me it has to be the most cleverest of bait-and-switches (not just “open the fridge, get something, close the fridge…MONSTER behind the open door!!!”) or it has to be subtle. Theres a scene in the trailer that has the female lead standing alone in a large room, no sound. From behind, through a darkened doorway, enters a masked figure. And they just stand there, the woman unaware that someone is at the threshold of the room, staring at her. Here’s some screen grabs:
The reason this freaks me out is probably because I read waaaay too much Edward Gorey as a kid . His drawings of vacant Victorian rooms and random acts of tragedy somehow reminded me of certain rooms we had in the house growing up (see image below, from The Gashlycrumb Tinies). This trailer is the same effect, visually, as sniffing something and having a flood of memories come back to me. I was terrified of the vacant apartment we had on the top floor of the rambling old house I grew up in and I think I only went into it once, clutching my sister’s hand, cutting off the circulation.
Oh yes, I think I’ll see this one!
Dad Goes to MaRS
Good news! Da is on his way to getting released! He’s still on the nil-by-mouth regime and will still need the bag for nutrients (a nurse will come in at 9pm to get him a fresh one, he’ll use it up while he sleeps and another nurse will remove it by 9am and he’s free from the IV for the day) which willl give the pancreas the needed rests before the operation, but he’ll be in his own bed, away from the semi-private-is-a-joke hospital room. He won’t be sitting in a bed going squirrelly for the next three weeks.
However, the first signs of squirrelly is evident here:
The Toronto General Hospital is linked to the MaRS building, a beautiful research and development centre right beside the hospital. Last night, on our nightly walk, we wandered into the lower atrium and discovered a party in full swing. “See if they can pour a martini into your bag!” exclaims SharkBoy.
“How close to the hors ‘dourves table do you think I can get? Get a picture of me trying!”
He starts to wander towards the suits and gowns with his IV in tow. I can see nervous event planners starting to converge on our location…
I love my father very very much.
England Memory #8 – Romance, or Wise Up Sucka!
Brighton holds the honour of being the location of the first romantic moment I’ve ever had in my life (Note: this story is completely trumped by many many many experiences given to me by SharkBoy. The ultimate being the day I got asked to be betrothed, of course).
I’m sitting in that crappy flat in Earls Court, expecting another penniless Saturday night, listening to the blubbering homesick basset hound when there’s a knock on the front door. It’s Nigel. By this time we have had two drunken nights out together and he had failed to mention that he’s got a boyfriend. I’m utterly clueless and only slightly wonder why he’s never given me his home number. Love and being in a new country blinded me, made me rather unsuspecting.
“Pack for one night,” he says. I’m out of that shitty flat like it was overrun with flaming cockroaches, and sitting in his Mini (a real one!) within seconds. We head south.
A little over an hour, we’re in Brighton. We stop at his brother’s flat, who is conveniently out of the country at the moment, and grab a post-road trip G and T. Then off to dinner.
It was my first French restaurant. Nigel bravely took up my dare of eating Steak Tartar while he ordered the Crab Salad for myself. He knew that it came in the hollowed out carapice of a King Crab, legs draped over the plate, face turned towards me as if to say “I ‘ope yew findz me, ‘ow do you zey… delishious? Mai oui!” When the salad arrived we both discovered that I had a fear of King Crab – insectoid and ugly and expecting me to touch it.
“Calmly lift the top,” Nigel instructs, and walked me through dinner.
Two bottles of wine later, Nigel pays the bill and we walk out into the night (£120 for two! To this date, that was the most expensive meal I’ve ever had. Later in our relationship he would regularly take me out to lunches in Covent Garden before my afternoon shift at the RAC and I would stagger into work, borderline drunk). He takes me down to the pier. To the ocean. I’ve never seen the ocean before. It’s bastard cold but the wine has made me giddy and I start running along the pebbled beach. I scoop rocks up as I run, laughing. I start tossing them into the sea, shouting, laughing. I’m really in that moment: the shitty flat, the homesickness, the crappy computerless job, all wash away and I feel Nigel’s hand, arm, encircle my neck and I lean back onto his chest.
Cue waves crashing on the beach.
To this day, when I hear waves, it always “centres” me, relaxes me. I don’t remember Nigel, but I do remember the happiness.
The next day he drops me off at the flat. As he drives away, it’s like being a puppy being brought back at the pound. Then it hits me: we haven’t made plans for another date, despite this one being so fantastic, nor has he given me his home number, just his office one. It was then that I smartened up and started to suspect Nigel wasn’t being honest with me.
Okay so I lied that there wouldn’t be any more adulterous posts, but this memory ties pretty much all my memories of England into one. I was happy, adventurous, independent and in love. I was also naive and innocent which was burst by my decision that it was ok to “be that other woman”. England taught me a lot about who I was becoming.
