Look who's Evil Now?

We caught a presentation of Evil Dead: The Musical at the Cabaret du Plateau last night, and it was a blood-spurting good time. This is one of those Fringe Festival plays that made it big. Although I know of Bruce Campbell, I've never seen any of his work (the Evil Dead series, Army of Darkness, etc). There were a couple of references to those movies in the play, but you can tell which ones are which by the audience's reactions.

We were sitting in The Blood Zone, which is the first few rows of the theatre. This means that we ran the risk of getting bled upon, but unfortunately, although there was plenty of spurting corn-startchy blood gushing off-stage, none of it reach our table. What a gyp!

If you get a chance, go and see Evil Dead: The Musical. You won't be disappointed. It's very funny, the special effects are cool, the singing is great, and the blood washes off.

You might not get this at your table, but our very own Andromeda put on a show involving my reading glasses and a banana. Its erotisticity has inspired me in a whole new way (more news on that as it comes).

I'm Thick

So this weekend, I'll be going to Domaine to LARP. I've only been looking forward to this for, oh I don't know, 8 months? And I had to miss the last one because of work. Grrr.

If you've been reading this blog awhile, I've no doubt you'll have picked up on this emerging pattern. Everytime I start looking forward to a weekend of fun and excitment... BLAMMO! I get sick a few days before and it keeps me from attending.

Two days ago, my fever reached 103 degrees, but it's back down to a degree or so over normal. I still intend to go camping this weekend, but I might be less energetic than usual.

Or it might kill me. As I get older, I see the grim reaper around every corner.

Quiz Time: Name This Country

If this government identifies you as a member or leader of a cult, they have the right to send a government official to your home to seize your property or assets. This can be anything from financial records, to furniture, to your collectable Elvis spoons. And you have absolutely no grounds to stop them.

They are under no obligation to tell you why you are being investigated, they can carry this investigation for as long as they like, and they are under no obligation to present you with the status of this investigation.

This government defines Cult as "any organization that actively seeks members and asks for monetary payment of some kind". That's nice and vague, so they have the leisure to interpret this in any way that they like (ie: you could say that the Cathoic Church is a cult under this definition).

So... Name this Government (or Country).

July 11th: The answer is -- France! Who knew?

Big City Lights

I've just spent the last few days in Toronto visiting my sweetie, so aside from some camping in August, this will have been my summer vacation (I haven't really had one of those in a couple of years). We went to Niagara Falls for a day, say The Producers, and generally hung out. It was great fun

I brought the new digicam with me and I was even more impressed than before (click here to see some of my fav pics).

Gotta unpack now and get my affairs in order again. This place is a mess!

Filming in Canada

Okay... I'll admit it: I went to see Taking Lives last night because it was shot mostly in Quebec city and Montreal. It was great seeing my old stomping grounds in a movie and still have the script reflect the actual surroundings.

For example, when I saw the DiCaprio/Hanks movie Catch Me If You Can, I nearly jumped out of my seat in surprise when I saw that the final scene with the printing press was shot in Old Quebec (right in front of the Eglise Samuel de Champlain).

My only beef with the film (and it is quite good -- you can catch it for cheap at the Eaton Centre ($5.95)) is that they show views of Quebec city (like the Chateau Frontenac) and they keep referring to it as Montreal. The whole story is set in Montreal, but parts of it are obviously shot in Quebec city.

I guess it's just because Quebec is more picturesque, but Montreal sounds cooler. But really, there's no reason why they couldn't have put the whole story in Quebec city.

Shutter Bug

As a late b-day prezzie to myself, I picked up a Canon Digital Rebel (a digital SLR camera). My old digicam (Fuji finepix 2600) has been disappointing me of late and I wanted something with more power.

So after consulting Imaging Resource and a few friends in the know, I had decided upon the Nikon D-70 or the Digital Rebel, so I headed down to York International to pick one up. Unfortunately, the D-70 was selling out so fast that they didn't have any in stock. "Besides," pointed out the salesguy. "Unless you're a professional-level photographer, you're not really going to notice the difference in the two cameras. Both are excellent."

So I decided to get the Digital Rebel and save $600 (and a month of waiting). The camera is complex and powerful, so I'm taking lots of shots to relearn the ins and outs of photography (I took a course back in my university days, but since I've been armed with point-and-shoots since then, I've gotten rusty on my technical skills).

But the rules of photography are pretty much the same. It takes about 20 shots before you end up with something cool (but at least I don't have to pay for the developping of pictures I don't want).

Here's a keeper and it's something I wouldn't have been able to capture with my pocket digicam.



I'll be back to updating my photoblog, so check it out here.

The Last Dance

Last Friday evening, we were discussing music over pints and shivering in the cold night air (in June! What's up with that?!?), and Patsy revealed to me that at her High School dances, Stairway to Heaven was always the last song of the night.

I used to think that only my school did that, but over the years, I've discovered that most Canadian high schools played Stairway to Heaven as the last song (or it might be a North American thing). It's even part of the lyrics of the Grade 9 song by Barenaked Ladies:

I've got a red leather tie and pair of rugger pants,
I put them on and I went to the high school dance.
Dad said I had to be home by eleven -
aw, man, I'm gonna miss Stairway to Heaven.

Where did that come from? Stairway to Heaven seemed to have plugged into a global consciousness and everyone played that song as the last dance song. It's a great song, but that's quite to coincidence.

Does anyone have an explanation?

Bonne Fête de la St. Jean!

En honneur de la Fête Nationale des Québecois (English, français), j'ecris en français aujourd'hui. SVP excuses mes fautes d'orthographe et de grammaire: je n'ecris pas en français tres souvent.

Normalement, je participe dans les evenements de la St. Jean (à Montréal ou à Québec), mais je suis un peu tros fatigué après mon contrat. Peut-être ce soir je trouveras quel-que chose de locale à faire pour affirmer mon coté Québecois.

Mes amis anglophones me trouve un peu etrange (pour plusieurs raisons) quand je dis que je participes dans ces evenements. Ils oublie souvent que je viens de Québec (Ste. Foy) et que j'ai des liens familial dans la communauté franco-Québecoise.

C'est dommage que la Fête Nationale des Québecois a encore une reputation d'être anti-anglais. Je ne dis pas qu'ils y en na plus de coté ou de sentiment politique dans cette célebration, mais le focus est maintenant plus sur la beaute de Québec. Et la réalité est que nous vivons dans un pays ou la politique existe dans tous ce que nous vivons. Il y a toujours quel-q'un qui va utiliser un evenement pour presenter leur agenda. Ca veux pas dire que tu ne peux pas trouver la beauté dans quelque chose parce-que quel q'un d'autre l'interprete un autre façon.

J'ai jamais apprecié mon coté Québecois avant l'université quand quel-q'un a essayé me dire que je n'étais pas un vrai Québecois parce-que je suis anglophone. C'est vrai que j'ai un petit accent dans mon français et mon français ecrit en pénible (mes excuses), mais tout les Québecois on un accent qui montre d'ou ils viennent (Montréal, Québec, Lac St-Jean). Mais je suis un Québecois de plusieurs génerations (4 du coté de mon père et 5+ du coté de ma mère).

Mais vous avez souffert assez avec mes éfforts d'écriture en français. Bonne St. Jean!

Blogging Draft Archive

I've started keeping a folder of text files with blog posts that I start and can't finish for a variety of reasons (usually because I've written myself into a corner).

My contract is finally done, which means the summer can begin. I've got a couple of trips planned (Toronto, Quebec city, maybe the Eastern provinces) and August is just booked solid.

I haven't had a real vacation in years, so I'll looking forward to it this summer. But I also need to keep busy and accomplish a few things, otherwise I'll feel like it was a waste.

One of my main things is I want to stay away from this computer as much as possible. I spend way too much time holed up in my house. Another thing I need to do is get myself back in shape (or away from the round shape I'm currently in).

Summer: projects! It's all good.

Wrapping Up

It's officially over: Storytelling has been brought to the Fringe Festival of Montreal in 2004. Over a six-show run, we received about 80 people (max. capacity of 390), so we're definitely going to lose money on the show. Oh well... we certainly had a good time doing it. We saw some fantastic shows, met awesome people, and the audiences always outnumbered the storytellers.

We're already talking about doing it again next year, but we might try to hide the word "storytelling" in the promotion of the show. I think it threw people off, thinking this would be only entertaining for children. Over the course of the run, we only received about 6 kids and the reviews were always positive (down by the Buzz Corridor).

Being in the Fringe this year has inspired me to try to finish one of my many playscript ideas. It'll be one of my summer projects.

The best thing about this Fringe show was that we passed around a clipboard and asked people to sign-up for more information about Word of Mouth Production events. When our Book/CD finally gets published (end of summer) and when put on our next storytelling event (Harvest Gala: October 31st 2004), we'll be able to tell people about it.

If you want to be put on that mailing list, email me at womp@sympatico.ca.

So thanks to everyone who came out to see our show! We really do appreciate your support!