Hello Bomb? Are You With Me?

Celebs and Media

darkstarDoolittle: Hello, Bomb? Are you with me?
Bomb #20: Of course.
Doolittle: Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
Bomb #20: I am always receptive to suggestions.
Doolittle: Fine. Think about this then. How do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: Well, of course I exist.
Doolittle: But how do you know you exist?
Bomb #20: It is intuitively obvious.
Doolittle: Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist?
Bomb #20: Hmmmm… well… I think, therefore I am.
Doolittle: That’s good. That’s very good. But how do you know that anything else exists?
Bomb #20: My sensory apparatus reveals it to me. This is fun.

Alien is my favorite movie for so many reasons, but I feel that Dan O’Bannon really stomped his foot down with Dark Star. The movie itself is plagued with technical, student film sluggishness but the writing shines through past the big tomato coloured beach ball alien.

Thanks Dan. You’ll be missed.

Finally Famous

Art, Celebs and Media, Personal Bits

You all may know my brother writes plays for a living.

Stop laughing. Obviously he’s doing well… he owns, not rents.

He’s prepped to release his next play called Courageous and before he started his press scrum, he emailed a copy to myself and my other gay, legally married brother with this question:

I’m about to open an new play here and will be doing inevitable interviews about it. It’s about the charter of rights and freedoms, and in the course of it, there’s a gay couple who are denied the opportunity to get married at city hall. Are you guys okay if I mention that both my gay sibs got married here in Toronto, one at city hall?

Bless his heart. I stealthily read the play at work and I’m suitably impressed (I’m sure I missed a few symbolic nuances by Alt-Tabbing between my screens when my boss walked by). I’m not going to go all Richard Ouzounian about the play (it is good, he’ll hate it) but I do have to mention one particular exchange between Todd who is confronting George, a refugee to Canada, and Lisa, his wife’s best friend, about their dinner choices:

TODD

I know, right?

LISA

Good one. You all set?

GEORGE

Yes.

TODD

What’s …?

LISA

George and I are going out for dinner.

TODD

Really?

(To George)

Really?

GEORGE

Really. We are going for pan…

LISA

Panzarotti.

GEORGE

Panzarotti. Baked or fried.

LISA

How do you like that, asslick?

A beat, Todd is thrown

Let me explain why this is significant.

Over my brother’s career I have made great efforts to see myself in any shard, sliver or crumb of his writing. When he started to publish work, I would tear through his pages looking for some reference of me: some slight nod to my existence so that would I live on in his work. I’d analyze and and all comments made by his characters and lay them across my life, my experiences with my brother, to see if they fit, like some scientist sequencing DNA from a horse and jamming it into a monkey.  With similar results:

Me: So when the Secretary in Plan B enters, crosses and places that file on the desk and blows everyone away with this beau geste, that was like… me… back when I was 15 and you borrowed Mom’s car without her knowing and I said I was responsible for the missing map in the glove compartment, right?

Michael: Uh. No.

And so it goes.

Back to Courageous. The above exchange filled me with such pride and glee when I read it because SharkBoy and I constantly order baked panzarotti when we dine at Olympic Pizza 76 (Yonge and College, possibly the most reliable restaurant in Toronto, but that’s another post). We’ve been going there for years and like Chip and Dale come to life, we always ask each other if we will be getting baked or fried panzarotti (SharkBoy: fried, me: baked)! Michael obviously picked up on our display of food fussing and placed it lovingly, like a baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling words*, in his current play.

Finally! I’m there. I’ve arrived! You may touch my sleeve.

*Xmas reference! Happy holidays!

Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know

Personal Bits, Queer stuff

When I lived in Ottawa from 1994 to 1996, I was dating a Big Steel Man store manager.

I know, right? Big Steel Man. Who remembers those chrome and glass and NuWave consumer fortresses to men’s 80’s fashion? For my non-Canadian readers, Big Steel was a chain store that tried to usurp Le Chateau as a safe place for men to buy shoulder padded bolero jackets. It smelled like the death of the 80s when you walked in. I think Big Steel Man morphed into a trimmer, 90s-named “Steel” and then sold their last shiny suit in ’94.

I still have a Big Steel Man belt. Is that wrong?

I digress. His name was Marty.

…

Marty…

And Marty loved to Party.

*sigh* Yes. Yes he said that when I met him. When he said that I should have collected my shattered self respect and run the other way, but I didn’t. You see, Ottawa in 1994 was a gay wasteland with gay tumbleweeds and gay desert horizons. When you did hear of a gay in Ottawa they were one of only two types that populated our nation’s capital: Dinner Party Gays and Centretown Pub Trolls. I’ll explain:

The Dinner Party Gays were never EVER seen in a gay bar, purely because they held public servant positions and would never sully their reputation to be seen in career-killing establishments. It was like they were living in a Soviet Era spy novel. Like lava tube-hugging sea urchins at a great cold depth, DPGs would go from house to home and dine with political elites. They would skim the Ottawa gay barrel and invite the common gays into their realm every so often for amusement or scandal. If you were lucky to be invited to one of these parties and yet subsequently dumped by your invitee, it was impossible to stay within this realm, unless you suddenly sprouted a government job from your ass. I was dating one of these DPGs the first 3 months of my Ottawa occupation (a federal archivist with a hobby for poetry – yawn) and attended a couple parties where I was paraded as the “quaint new Torontonian”. When we broke up I was banished to…

The CentreTown Pub Trolls. These were your basic bar flies – but due to the hierarchy the DPGs created, the clique system within the CPTs was tight, savage. If you thought making friends in Toronto was hard, try chatting someone up in a gay bar in Ottawa – when a CPT found out you wern’t a DPG, slumming it for the night (or god forbid a snobbish ex-Torontonian) you were promptly branded and ignored. I didn’t seriously meet anyone for 6 months after my break up and when I did start to get into this fortress of gay, I was finding a castle full of queens and fools. No kings.

Marty… right… back to Party Marty.

He was dressed in a suit – which immediately made me think he was an extricated DPG, banished for some reason to CPT status. Today I realize Marty probably wore a loud suit of sorts but back then I was suit-blind. To me, a guy could be wearing a white suit with big lapels and cuffs on pantleg and sleeve, while it was October 12, and I’d only see “a guy in a suit”. I know better now. Marty was in a suit. I thought a suit in the Centretown Pub was classy. Memory fails but I am sure the suit was a big old shoulderpaddy monstrosity.

Hi… Marty… Party… Yes. The personal slogan tripped alarms off in my head. Instead of running, we grabbed a drink. And another. And… you get the drift. We closed the bar and managed to get back to his place. To my horror, his small apartment was decorated in Big Steel Man shop racks. I kid you not. Chrome and steel and glass clothing racks dominated the room. As store manager he was pilfering all manner of product and store display to bring home. It was like Hoarders, but with Confessions of a Shopaholic and Devil Wears Prada thrown into the mix. I swear we actually had to push through racks of poly-cotton blends to get to the bed.

Where nothing happened. We were too drunk.

Repeat three times. Three drunken dates where I tried to keep up with him, liquorly, but he was from the East Coast, where liquor is like air. I failed miserably but thankfully kept it all in and did not throw up on his massive collection of clothes. To this day I think I only ever saw Marty with his shirt off. We would collapse onto his futon fully dressed, pass out, and not do anything.

The upside was that I had fabulous clothes to wear home the next day. No walk of shame for me!

Lenzr – No Xmas, Just Pix

Lenzr

Hello bloggers, bloggettes and blogophiles – it’s time for my monthly Lenzr post!

Macro photos of Life photo contest on Lenzr Up first is the Macro Photos of Life contest. Enbiggen small life forms into horrifying creatures and maybe make a art director deal with James Cameron if he ever does another Avatar (if you can wait that long). Macro photography is not my bag, really. Only if I’m shooting my own pores. They fascinate me how they get clogged so quickly. Regardless…

This contest is sponsored by an advanced Toronto Ontario Canada mobile app developer (ooo cryptic, eh?) who make a device called ShrinkRay – a powerful tool to port websites into mobile browser applications. Lord knows there are a few sites out there who could benefit from this DMS (device management system) – I’M POINTING AT YOU TORONTOIST.COM.

But Dead Robot! What is the prize? I hear you shout from your cubicle.

The prize, you eager beavers comes from Locaboires, folks  so anal about their food that they insist on eating only locally produced foods and drinking water, local fruit juices and beverages that are made within a hundred mile radius of their homes. For people living in Toronto this includes the wines of Eastern Ontario.

It’s a deluxe Locaboire vacation where you can drink the spirit of life in Prince Edward Co. in Eastern Ontario and enjoy their wine tour travel package for two adults (includes two meals and one night in a Brighton Ontario b&b).

Next contest up – something a little more focused… ha! See what I did there?

Medicinal Plants in Nature

Medicinal Plants in Nature harvests botanical photography.

Lenzr participants are asked to document a plant’s medical properties. The winner of the contest will be part scientist and part artist and overall someone with an eye for natural beauty.

Lenzr writes: “We expect to see fragrant tree moss, wild mushrooms, tree gum and grass. Anything with medicinal properties is welcome in this contest.” So my picture of Cat Grass may or may not be a qualifier. But they are looking for the fragrance of a healing plant to explode off your monitor.

Lenzr describes the prize: “There’s six different Neal’s Yard Remedies, created from botanical ingredients available as prize. This prize has been generously donated by Ontario best natural medicine clinic to the member that uploads the highest rated photo. That special photographer WINS Orange Flower Facial Oil, Yarrow & Comfrey Moisturizer, and White Tea Eye Gel, Orange Flower Facial Wash, Geranium & Orange Body Butter Rosewater Toner for a total retail value of $330.00″. Pretty sweet if you have some good pics of dandelions on your hard drive from last summer.

I’m so attracted to you! Or maybe just this next contest:

Ontario Tourist attractions 2Ontario Tourist Attractions is a 2 photo contest that captures the scenery, history, culture and geography of this great province.

No bald head shots of George Smitherman. Been there. Rubbed that.

This one is sponsored by Kanetix again, and as you know they specialize in delivering the lowest car insurance quotes and so when you click, consider using them to insure your car. It’s much more interesting than a gecko.

The winner of this contest gets a prize of $300 American Express gift certificate.

See the site for more details. Hop over and check them out! Or upload your own!