Toren Atkinson

Crazy fans of the Thickets will know that The Shadow Out of Tim was dedicated by me to Steve O’Shea. The marine biologist of the selfsame song name was loosely modelled after him. If you watch this video you can see him for a brief moment doing what he does.

More about the colossal squid in the news.

I’ve been doing a lot of bookkeeping lately and it’s just too joyful not to share with all of you. So in case you’re a band in Canada who wants to cross the border “by the book”, here’s what you do:

Make sure all 5 of your band members have their American Federation of Musician memberships up to date: $870

Make your P2 visa application to “work” in the US for the itinerary of performances: $320

Ensure that the paperwork gets through on time by either paying a company who does this process regularly, or paying the AFM an “expedited” fee: $1000

Rent a van capabable of taking the band and all it’s gear across: $905 (including gas)

=$3095

Now if you’re getting paid more than that for your show(s), then you’re making money! But if you’re not getting paid at all for the shows (in our case), then you’ve got to make sure you’ll recoup on merchandise. Depending on your costs and markup, you’ll probably need to spend about $2000 on merchandise to cover the above costs and the added costs of making said merchandise.

So that’s about 5 Large. Cross your fingers we don’t get turned away at the border for accidentally packing an avocado in our lunch box.

ps – anyone want to lend us their van and come along with us to PAX?

Meantime, here is a larger version of the poster for the upcoming show. I bought supplies for my new costume yesterday and it should be good!

Two questions:

1) Does it look like somebody else’s hand is putting that gun in his mouth?
2) Does it look like his tear is made of milk?

So if my ex-landlord doesn’t give me my damage deposit back, do I call the police or what?

Thanks, Wikipedia and Harper’s Weekly, now I know something that I didn’t know before. And for why? Because last week Grainy pornographic films made for officers of the People’s Army of former Communist East Germany have surfaced in the Stasi files in Berlin. Other good news is that a triceratops skeleton didn’t meet the owner’s reserve minimum of 500,000 euros at a Christie’s auction so it didn’t sell. If it comes down to less than $100 does anyone want to pitch in? I think it would make a good D&D mini.

A coronal mass ejection is when the sun spews billions of tons of ionized hydrogen and helium into space. Sometimes these CMEs, which I like to call sun sharts, knock out our aircraft control gear and power grids. Here’s an amazing video of one of them wrecking a passing comet. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7348064.stm

Also, every day is Earth Day. But especially today for some people.

And if all that doesn’t have you rolling on the floor laughing, this will. (For those who don’t know me, I’m being facetious. Although how dumb do you have to be?)

I have a friend who is on the Riot Girls team. The Riot Girls team…of the Terminal City Roller Girls…the Terminal City Roller Girls…of roller derby. Yeah, that thing where two teams of girls on rollerskates skate around in a circle and hip check each other into the spectators. Not knowing what to expect I was taken to the first bout of a four game tournament, which this time was at the Kerrisdale rink. It was decent – I would have enjoyed it more if I understood the scoring, if the seats were comfortable, if you could make out what the announcers were saying, and if the place didn’t smell like a gym bag. But it was a great excuse to eat concession food like hot dogs and root beer.

The intermissions, on the other hand, killed me – they were longer than the game periods and the entertainment was exciting enough that we broke out a pad of paper and started playing tanks – you know, the game where you draw a bunch of tanks on either side of a paper and flick the pen to see how far it moves or if the tanks guns hit the opposing tank – rather than pay attention. It turns out bicycle ballet is not very exciting when the performers don’t actually ride the bikes but just kind of hold on to them and walk around.

Despite – or because of – the crashes and yelling, I can’t really say I found roller derby any more endearing than other competitive sports. The main difference between that and say, a hockey game, is I don’t know anyone on hockey teams, so I have at least some tenuous investment in the outcome of this game. And yes the Riot Girls did indeed trounce the Faster Pussycats.

The UBC POV film fest is this weekend. I’m going on Saturday to the Granville 7 to see the film “Hello/Goodbye” that I acted in.