I would happily live here in a sleeping bag, with a little Coleman stove to cook on. Of course, it’s not actually abandoned yet, so I’d have to start a rumour the seats were infected with the Ass Plague or something, but no great takeover was ever accomplished except by bold action.
OH, wait, another illusion shattered:
The set is an illusion that makes the stage look extremely deep… it’s actually quite small
But double wait: I think I’d rather live in a beautiful illusion, as long as I knew it was an illusion. Or maybe I already do.
As some of you may know, I’m still stuck up in P-town, that cosmopolitan megalopolis of the Interior, and am stubbornly going to remain here until I can get a free ride home. The way my luck’s been running, if I tried to catch a plane I’d be groped by some cranky TSA droid and let fly at him, at which point I’d be sentenced to life in prison for castration without anaesthetic, and if I tried to take Greyhound they’d seat me next to an escaped mental patient from Winnipeg with a knife and anger management issues. And I know way too much about serial killers to hitchhike or take the Craigslist route. If, knowing as many people as I do, I can’t get a free ride, nobody can, and then we’ll know the Recession has hit rock-bottom.
So, here are some lovely pictures of the burb to which I am trying to return: Vangroover, home of the Canucks and the Canadians, and where Marc Emery was once named Businessman of the Year.
Vancouver False Creek at Dusk by akameus
All together now: It’s a small world after all… Actually, every neighborhood in Vancouver is a small world, almost entirely independent of its neighbors. There’s one block on Cambie that is deeply hipster, and has been since before we knew what to call those people, but only the pub across the street is hipster, while every other storefront/bar/restaurant on that side of the block is pure DTES. Even though it’s technically DTWS. And then you turn the corner and it’s something else again. Forget the lack of freeways; it’s this “Islands in the Stream” quality that is most discombobulating for tourists. You can see them along East Hastings, looking puzzled and somewhat frightened as they frantically page through their maps muttering “gaztown, gaztown, czhinatown…” and if I’m well-dressed I try to help them. If I’m not, I just walk on by on the general principle that if someone DTES-looking approached them and began to speak, they’d probably break into a run and then god only knows where they’d end up.
Which brings me to this:
Gastown sign in the Diamond
Even though the Diamond (which is a delightful place, moreso because it’s hidden, and don’t try the veal: try the Vietnamese sub) sells $12 drinks and is constantly full of models and photographers, it’s still on the Downtown Eastside, and I can only ascribe that horrendous mistake on a very expensive sign to the desire to Keep it real, yo.
Yes, it’s still Wednesday, at least in my world (isn’t it ALL my world?) even though it’s 2:25am “on Thursday,” because I woke up on Wednesday and haven’t gone to bed yet, so there. See? Perfectly logical.
And if it’s Wednesday, what does that mean, boys and girls? That’s right, it’s Hump DayUnicorn Chaser Time! So today we present your delightful visual, auditory, and mental refreshment as a lovely picture:
coffee with the unicorn unicorn chaser
There, doesn’t that feel better? Now your eyeballs and mind are all refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the week. Remember, today is the first blog entry of the rest of your digital footprint, or something like that.
[ Yeah, this “raincoaster blogging sober” thing sucks. Don’t think you’re the only one who noticed it. ]
As if that weren’t enough, here is the cutest little tilt-shift video you’ve ever seen. Whistler, BC, normally looks something like Toy Town, although not as much as Silver Star does. This is what Silver Star looks like:
Silver Star is not exactly "Badass"
Seriously, it looks Just Like That. This is what Whistler looks like:
And yes, Whistler looks just like this. Also, I hear there are ski runs somewhere around.
So, really, you paid for ONE Unicorn Chaser and if you’re a unicorn, architecture, or ski buff, you’re getting like four of them in this post, so don’t forget to hit the tip jar on your way out.
If your sphincters are still in a knot from the Monday-Humpday grind, we have that video I was talking about earlier. Now, have you seen a lot of skiing/snowboarding/surfing videos? Sure, it’s technically an “extreme” sport, but it’s a sport. Taking place in nature. Without mechanical engines. And sounding nothing at all like the Cobalt at 3 in the morning.
Skiing/snowboarding/surfing videos do not recognize this fact. They endeavour, in fact, to cover it up by every means known to cheap-ass extreme sport video producers, which is a bag of tricks that comes down to, essentially, picking the least-untalented person featured in the video and letting his neo-post-apocalyptic-metal-country-punk band do the soundtrack. For free.
And overpriced at twice that.
You doubt me? Watch one of these puppies. And then watch it again, with the sound turned off. Better my way, eh? Everything is.
Never. Forget. That.
So where was I? Oh yes, about to show you the video. This is the antidote to all those snow videos that sound as if they were scored by just laying electric guitars end to end across the floor of a mosh pit and recording the noise hobnailed boots make when they do the pogo on them. It’s that gimmicky tilt-shift photography that people who don’t know how to make street scenes interesting always use instead of learning how to take inherently interesting shots, but in this case it IS interesting, well-done, and entirely, 1000% awesome.
Viewing full-screen would be kind of ironic, but then if you were a hipster, wouldn’t you be Googling for “instagram” and not “Tilt shift?”
And now, in case you STILL can’t face Thursday, here are your gossip links:
You know what I love? Fairy tales. You know what I hate? Disney. Oh, it’s not that these bloody-minded tales of Nemesis and warped value systems haven’t been Bowdlerized before, but they have never been Bowdlerized so creepily, yet so insipidly.
I mean, seriously, doesn’t Snow White just make your skin crawl? Is she not the most loathesomely irritating person with a simpering voice and obnoxiously dim brain since Mrs Topper as portrayed by Billie Burke?
(yes, I know this isn’t from Topper, but it’s all I could find)
Well, Snow White is up there when it comes to driveling bubbleheads with irritating, saccharine voices, surely, but at last some musical genius has made her tolerable. Behold the brilliant syncopations of “Wishery” by Pogo, a Pixar employee, and marvel at the unspeakable rendered not simply bearable, but beautiful.
Mostly by giving the dwarves more airtime, it’s true, but whatevs.
So it’s a little later than Wednesday this week; still, you can always use a good unicorn chaser, can you not? And what could be perkier, happier, or more charming than the B-52’s singing the theme song of every blogger I know, Deadbeat Club?
I once had a Facebook group called that, for the purpose of hosting FNFF, short for Friday Night Fuck Fest, but consisting of people who generally have nothing better to do on a Friday night than sit at the computer, drinking, and commenting on other people’s websites. Which actually isn’t a bad way to spend a Friday night, if you have half a bottle of something decent, a good connection, and time on your hands. Now that I don’t have an office, even a home office, anymore, those days are behind me. I swear, I’m paying so damn much for inferior coffee every damn day that I might as well just rent an office; it’d be cheaper.
It should also be noted that, after several years’ quest, I finally have that leopard coat. I do not, however, have the huge ’60’s eyes, but it’s on my wish list for the next life.
raincoaster 