I can see the red tail lights headin' for China

Yesterday I borrowed Stephane’s car to drive my sweet sweet Marlo to the airport and take some books into the used book store for some cash.

I took a wrong turn (I went down Oak instead of Granville and I ended up in Richmond) but I realized my mistake early so it only took an extra 5-10 minutes off the trip. Then when we got in the check-in line Marlo realized she didn’t have her wallet, which was a source of some concern. She sent me back to the car to look for it twice but while I was out she got called the information desk as somebody found it and turned it in. Phew! We waited in line for about 20 minutes and when we got to the counter the lady said we had to go and get a sticker for the ticket from a different counter because the itinerary changed. Oi! But we budged back into line and caused a riot. Marlo’s backpack is super heavy and I hope she doesn’t get a hernia, but it was tagged and went through the little luggage car wash never to be seen again (by me, that day). I got breakfast at Harvey’s downstairs in the domestic terminal and that was pretty good. I got a veggie burger and even though I’m not vegetarian, I was a little disgusted about how they slather mustard onto meat and then put the spoon back into the huge condiment bowl for the next veggie burger. Still – tasty and not expensive.

Back at International Departures I raided the candy store and then we sat in line. There were a half dozen or so flights that were delayed because of a “security investigation” and that included Marlo’s flight to Shanghai. Poor Marlo, all stressed out. But after about a half hour of that, they started letting the confused and irate travellers bound for Frankfurt, Hong Kong and other points through the gates. I kissed my Marlo goodbye as I watched her go to a better place.

I drove back to my house and started loading up four big bags of books. I couldn’t park right in front of the building so I lugged these massive loads one at a time down the stairs and block. I walked out of Pulp Fiction with a four books (including 2 Bizarro collections) and $171.00! The dude at PF told me that they have the best rates in town for buying books. Tanglewood turned me away because they said they’d already spent their book-buying money for the day. Even so, PF only took about half of the books I brought, but I didn’t have time to go anywhere else. It takes a lot longer to drive around than I thought it would! Another reason not to own a car. So I zipped back to Sherane’s with just a quick stop at the record label to pick up CDs for the gig that night.

Thickets at the ANZA Club

Well the Thickets played at the ANZA Club last night and the question on everyone’s lips is, what is with the band lineup? And my answer was “yeah, what is with that?” I learned that Shane called Mario to say that he’s not going to play bass for us after all. So we decided that Merrick needs to step up to plate. He wasn’t in love with the idea but I think he can do it and that it will be good for the band. Also: what choice do we have?

Anyway, we played better than I thought we would have, and Jordan said that he played the best he’s played in years. So if you missed it, you missed it. But you’ll have another chance at the Pit Pub on the 29th. We tried out a new song and it went alright. We saw some old old fans – even a guy who played drums for us in the early 90’s happened by – and we got some new ones I think. CD sales were great and after the show some guy got the band to sign the wings of his Goth Cthulhu doll.

Track Zero

Last night I finished watching Red Dawn, with an audio commentary by Stewie, Darcey and Taylor (or as I call him, Taytay). They took the bad movie and made it funny! Not MST3K-ish, because it’s not just jokes and poking fun, but it’s like a regular audio commentary but more scathing. Plus stories and fun facts. Plus I do the intro voiceover.

Home_1

Recommended for all.

A quick plug for Jeff

If you love the VGG, vote for Jeff as one of the judges for the next ENnies awards
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=150831
His handle is Teflon Billy.

If you don’t love the VGG, vote for Jeff as one of the judges for the next ENnies awards
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=150831
His handle is Teflon Billy.

My OTHER weekend.

I forgot to blog about my weekend. Rather than schpiel on and on with pointless adjectives and conjunctions, here it is in point form:

Saturday miniature painting and watching television with Nathan and David and Marlo.

Sunday greyhound to Chilliwack. Wrote lyrics on bus.
Chris picks me up from depot while I try to avoid smokers.
Airport Cafe: undercooked hash browns as usual; Sour Cream Lemon pie is good but Blackberry is better.
Chris’ Torlo painting is coming along nicely!
Godzilla: King of the Monsters video game. Cheat codes let us play more monsters and in more cities! Fun.
Band practice with no Warren
40-Year Old Virgin at COLOSSUS in Langley: 7/10. Funnier than I thought it would be.

Squiddly Diddly Doo!

Exciting news for those of us who LOVE squid! Especially that of the giant persuasion. New photos of a live giant squid have been taken. Don’t be fooled into believing that this is the first time a live one has been photographed – in 2002 some photos were taken in Japan. But they are not of the squid in its natural environment (thousands of feet under the sea).

You can see them here: http://www.pref.kyoto.jp/kaiyo/2-topicnews/news/2002/02-02-01/mega-squid/mega-squid-01.html
and here: http://www.pref.kyoto.jp/kaiyo/2-topicnews/news/2002/02-02-01/mega-squid/mega-squid-02.html

The new pics are plentiful, and they are of a full-grown, healthy, 25-foot long archi*. The thing was caught on a line for four hours and they snapped over 500 photos of it. It severed a tentacle during the struggle and the scientists retrieved it, allowing them to confirm the species via DNA testing. Here are some of the photos: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/photogalleries/giant_squid/

* this length is extrapolated by the length of the severed arm. However, if the arm was not severed at the base, the squid could be even bigger. The longest giant squid on record measured 59 feet including tentacles.

If you go here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4288772.stm# you can see a BBC news report on the topic.

NEATO!

Fight Fire with Firemen

You know what’s fun? Having the perfect excuse for being late for work. About ten minutes before I normally leave for work, I heard tons of sirens which seemed to stop right when they got near. I look out the window and there’s a plume of smoke rising from the next block, and the fire trucks have parked in the middle of Oak Street. The #17 bus has been sitting at the bus stop for 20 minutes now. I just saw them kick everyone off the bus and John is walking down the street to some other bus stop. I guess I better go join them. It was fun while it lasted.

X-Tra

I went back for more shooting of X3 on Thursday, and the chances of my mug showing up on film increased tenfold. Of course there’s no guarantees, but I hope so. I met some nice people, and some not-so-nice people on set. Tomoko and Lance were the nice ones. Well Hugh Jackman was nice too, but I didn’t have QUITE as many conversations with him as I did with T&L. And I saw Norm there too (on Tuesday – did I mention that already?). It was really fun being a mutant (more so than usual) and it would have been way suckier if Taja and Shane hadn’t provided rides for me out to the woods. That was a poorly structured sentence but I’m prepared to live with it.

After I got home last night I actually put in the first X-Men film, I was so in the spirit of things. The schedule of shooting had me so mixed up, however, that I set my alarm for 6:20 instead of 7:20 this morning (for work at the warehouse), and after it went off I couldn’t get back to sleep.

Thanks to Tony Marsh for the half dozen boxes of Jaffa Cakes I got in the mail today! And…uh…Twinkers or whatever they’re called. They are strange. Stewie will be pleased.

My weekend.

What the hell happened on my weekend? Let me try to remember. Oh! I had dinner with Marlo’s folks on Friday night and that was very pleasant indeed.

On Saturday night I had my birthday auction and as usual, it was a number of blasts. I got the complete Wallace & Gromit VHS set, some amazing drawing materials that I put to use the very next day, and some miniatures. Other stuff too but I’m tired and my memory, as always, fails. There were some new faces to the auction, and David bought most of my and Chris’ and others’ comics. I made off with a decent cup o’ cash and the food was not bad – even some pineapple!

On Sunday I biked down to Drexoll Games and bought some red dice and another miniature (Reaper did a Cthulhu knock off). Marlo and I had dinner at Greens & Gourmet and then we watched movies. She wrote more about that on her blog so I will direct you to it.

Last night I played BURNING WHEEEEEEEEL!! with some gaming mates and that was pretty fun, though I was distracted all through the night dealing with phone calls from my agent-to-be about being an extra in X-Men 3. You could say I was an X-tra. But you shouldn’t.

Mutation!

I had a long day working on X-Men 3. I can’t really tell you more about it, except that my mutant power was to clean laundry.