Toren Atkinson

I didn’t eat nearly as much candy as I hoped I would this Hallowe’en. Oh well, I’ll make up for it in the next 364 days. Starting with this here Tootsie Roll.

Otherwise, the most wonderful time of the year was fun. We played our little show at The Marine Club, but the first band went on later than they were supposed to, the second band played too long, which meant that our set got cut in half because we had to stop at 1:30am. Oh well – we have had shows where we weren’t able to play at all because of these kinds of things. We played

Chunk
Shoggoths Away
Innsmouth Look
Power Up
Frogstar
The Math Song
20 Minutes of Oxygen
Space Ghosts

…then we were told we have “one song plus an encore.” Now what does that mean to you? Because to me an encore can be all the songs in the world. An encore is just when you come back on stage to play more. We used that grey area to full effect. We continued with:

Slave Ship which led right into
Walking on the Moon with no break, so really we just counted that as one song.
…Then I pointed out that we were saving time by not going off and back on stage for our encore, so that gave us time for an extra song. We played:

The Chosen One
Six Gun Gorgon Dynamo
Mustard Gas

And that was that. So, out of 20 songs on our set list we ended up with 13, which is actually a typical set for us, so hopefully nobody felt cheated. Bob (our bassist) felt cheated though, because he was playing with us that night for the first time in over 2 years. See, he had to quit the band because of his job and family, but he asked us if he could sit in on a show for old times sake.

The good news is that Stewie is talking about doing a proper show at the Railway Club. I suggested January. Hopefully Bob can come back again and we’ll try for the 20 song set. The Railway Club is open until 4am I hear. I’m also pushing for an earlier start time, what do you think about that? 50% of the sentences I heard Friday night were “are you guys going on soon?” The other 50% was “Take it off!!!”

After the show was over, Stewie, Marlo, Eng and I waited for a cab in the cold cold autumn night, like many other a becostumed fool, and finally ended up getting one by agreeing to pay $20 for a $7 ride. I guess that’s typical for such nights. I think that’s wrong. Then we got to my place where we watched tv, ate junk food, and tried to keep a drunk Anghold under control (no easy task, but I think we won more battles than we lost). Overall, a fun and memorable night. Especially memorable now that I’ve written it down.

Stop the Chris’

Here is the legend for my revised naming structure for the many Chris’ in my life:

Chris Cleroux: Cleroux
Chris Eng: Eng
Chris Gibbins: Gibbins
Chris Hold: Chrishold (all one word)
Chris Perkins: Perkins
Chris Pramas: Pramas
Chris Slater: Slater
Chris Stewart: Stewie
Chris Switzer: The Bean
Chris Woods: Sid

I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple.

Ed (Brisson), James (McBurney), and myself are part of the “Homegrown Horror” cover story for this week’s Georgia Straight. Scary stuff.

I have to go in and record voices tomorrow at Rockstar.
I have to make my Hallowe’en costume (Can anyone sew? I can put you on the guest list for our show.)
I have to write 24 dialogue scripts for an ESL book.
I have to finish four pieces of artwork for Black Sails Over Freeport, one of which is a full page.
I’ve got 3 days.
Yog help me.
Enough screwing around – Starting with this blog.
See you after Hallowe’en.

News you can lose:

George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate in economics, described the Bush Administration’s budget policies as “a form of looting.” A German man who taught his dog, Adolf, to perform the Nazi salute by raising its right paw escaped prosecution for the trick. Residents of a mountain village in Fiji apologized to the descendents of an English missionary who made the mistake of touching a chief’s head and was cooked and eaten for the insult. Happy Serbs accidentally shot down a small plane when they fired guns into the air at a wedding. Thai protesters captured the soul of George W. Bush, imprisoned it in a clay pot, and then drowned it in the Ping River. The Staten Island Ferry crashed in New York City; of the 10 people who died, two were decapitated and some were cut in half. Several people lost limbs. The captain, who apparently passed out, left the scene immediately, slashed his wrists and shot himself twice in the chest with a pellet gun. Coffee makes sperm swim faster, a Brazilian study found, and men who smoke a lot of marijuana have a lower sperm count and sperm that swim “too fast, too early.” In France, a judge was caught masturbating in court. A genomic survey of human feces
found it inhabited by 1,200 viruses, about half of which were previously unknown to science.

Awesome weekend only halfway done

Somebody outbid me on the scrabble board I was e-bidding on. Oh well, the thing about eBay is that there’s always another one coming right up. I’ve been trying to find boards in the Vancouver area, so that I don’t have to pay shipping. Hopefully Anghold will pick it up with me in her car-car, seeing as though she will probably be the one I play the most with (Marlo being the close contender). I like online scrabble because it does all the math for you. I don’t like online scrabble because if you run out of time, YOU LOSE! Even if you’ve got 300 points and the other person only has 1.

Subsection 1: A Voice in the Wilderness

Yesterday I went out to Airwaves studio to sit in on some ADR. Now, I’ve done a bit of ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording), most recently for Unrecoverable Error, but this studio had a cool “band” system – which is where a band scrolls across underneath the TV, upon which someone has written all the lines so you can sort of follow the bouncing ball. They were dubbing into English some German soap-operaesque Coronation Street kind of a thing. It was about this family of three kids to one mother, three different fathers, none of whom are married to the woman. It was interesting.

So, Robert DeNiro stars in a hit movie. They show it in Quebec, but they dub it into, yes, French. Who does the voice of DeNiro? Some Schmuck? What about the next DeNiro film that gets dubbed into French? You see, there is one guy – he is the French Robert DeNiro (voice). Good gig if you can get it.

After that was done, I walked down to Divine Industries to record my commercial voiceover demo (you will remember that I already have a cartoon voiceover demo). We do that in about an hour or so. I think it went well. I should have the finished product in a week or so.

Subsection 2: Movie Time

Then guess what happened! Nope, guess again! That’s right, Yvonne came over and oh the fun we had. I had this coupon for “Best Neighbors Restaurant” so I figured we’d walk down to take a look. I think their theme was ‘surburban family restaurant in urban neighborhood’. The special was some kind of steak. We walked down to Safeway and picked up some ravioli instead (plus that not-to-be forgotten Rold Gold mustard-onion pretzel chunks). We came back to the chez (I know that means “at” – just come along with me for the ride) and cooked up some yum. We watched an episode of Ripping Friends and then settled in for La Femme Nikita. Stewey came home and we played my little board game. Yvonne kicked our buttses. Then a further, different settling in for 28 Days Later. Finally, Mr. Sandman kicked us repeatedly in the chin. Yvonne woke up about a half hour before I did, and left before X-Men: Evolution started. New Justice League episode too.

Subsection 3: Paper Mates
More excitement was in store for me as Marlo ring-dinged to get in on some origami action with Anghold and I. For months I have been wanting to go to a PALM (Paperfolders Around the Lower Mainland) meeting. They’re held on the last Saturday of every month (except next month – second last Saturday) at the library branch in the Oakridge Mall. Joseph Wu puts them on. (Seriously – go to Joseph Wu’s page – he has Dungeons and Dragons origami.) He just got back from a big origami to-do in San Diego. We got there a little late. It was full of kids. Joseph said that there were more at this meeting than usual. There were three instructors there, and it was nice because Joseph was basically our own private tutor. We made crappy owls, bats that really fly (and catch paper moths), and rather boring and difficult-to-make windmills. It was a lot of fun, I recommend it. There was a pair of students from Langara who were doing a tv film project and asked to interview us. It was weird because after the tutorial part of the meeting was over, a bunch of kids came up to our table and started bugging us. We were the only people of our “age group” (i.e. not kids and not parents) there. Anyway we had to leave before the students, one of which was a cute asian girl who was overly-friend (or maybe she was hitting on me – sure, let’s go with that), could interview us.

Subsection 4: The tofyptophan in the tofurkey is making me sleepy.
Anghold dropped Marlo off, picked up Dalia, and headed to Coquitlam for Thanksgiving dinner courtesy of Anghold’s mom. Oh man it was yummy! Pumpkin cheesecake. I could go on but instead I’m just going to

Movies not yet on video that I’d like to see (in no particular order):

The Triplets of Belleville
Intolerable Cruelty (anyone seen this?)
Alien: Director’s Cut
Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
Bubba Ho-Tep (if it ever plays in this town)
Pied Piper, Valerie and her Week of Wonders, The Cremator

Perhaps those readers whom I don’t outright despise might consider getting together for some kind of film “viewing.” I like matinees, there’s a better chance of getting a good seat. Money is an object. My favourite cinema is Tinseltown. Oh, the seats are sooo nice. And you can put your feet up if you play your cards right. And by “play your cards,” I mean “sit in the right spot”. I like sneaking food into the theater. Especially clam chowder.

Movies to avoid: Radio. If for no other reason than that I’m sick of it being thrown in my face everywhere I look.

Will I want to go see Matrix: Revolutions? Tune in next week for the answer to that and other bone-chilling questions!

Michael Moore will be signing books at Chapters on Robson this Saturday at noon.

I would like, if I may, to point out that I never actually printed up or used those “get out of conversation free” cards. It was just a hilarious idea. No human feelings were harmed in the filming of this motion picture.

I’m still a misanthrope though. Make no mistake.

Confessions (Not mine – not until I get the comfy chair)

Some of these entries are as boring as CBC daytime television:
http://grouphug.us/

Here are some excerpts that I don’t find as boring as…well you know.

At the age of 16 I did a sponsored walk for charity. I collected the money from friends and family and spent it on cigarettes, drugs and alcohol.

Sometimes I’ll go through a fast food drive thru and order one of the combo meals plus another burger or entree. But because I don’t want the cashier to think I’m a pig, I’ll order another drink to make it look like I’m ordering for two people.

I told my daughter that all my children let me down. I am very sorry

I have slept with more people in the time I have been seeing my boyfriend than he has slept with in his whole life. I justified this in the name of research – I wanted to see if they were better than him. Some of them were.

I once hit a guy on a bike driving home one night. I just kept driving…. I wonder if he’s ok.

I had crabs in the 11th grade. I was too embarrased to buy the shampoo to kill them. So I put it in my pants and started out the door. I got busted in front of everyone. [I think this one is about shoplifting]

When I was little I had guniea pigs. I would sit with them on the floor and toss them towards the ceiling. I delighted in hearing them squeal louder than any had ever squealed before. I would do this for hours, meanwhile continuously laughing.

I once bit the beak off of a live duck thinking it would impress my gothic girlfriend. She split up with me soon after that but I told all my friends that I was the one who dumped her because she was a bit too wierd for me.

I live with my flatmate. He really annoys me sometimes (he picks scabs off his neck and forehead and stealthily puts them in his mouth, but I can see it out of the corner of my eye). Anyway, he pisses me off, and I wonder how it would turn out if we got in a fight. I think about this too much, and the other day I saw him carrying a TV up the stairs and he was really struggling, because it was heavy. I didn’t help him, but when he went out of the room, I picked it up to see how heavy it was, to get an idea of how strong he is.

When I was nine, I was fiddling around with the telly. The tv was on this swivel stand and had a vase of flowers sitting on top. The inevitable happened: I bumped the tv and the water in the vase ran down the back. The idiot box made this “WHUMP!” sound, the screen went black and a small puff of smoke rose. I discreetly left the room. I heard my mum yelling soon after and she demanded to know what had happened. I mocked sympathy for my younger sister and said to her quietly “I think Jacinta might’ve knocked knocked the vase before and is too scared to say anything.”
Jacinta got screamed at, then smacked. She was five years old.

A very Thickety blog entry.

Nobody believes I can drive.

I can drive. I really really can. I have a license and everything. I just don’t have a car. In fact, I do some of my best songwriting while I’m driving and while I’m taking a shower (I was going to type “while driving and taking a shower” but that would be wrong on more than one level) which is tragic because I rarely have ready access to my dictaphone during those times.

Yesterday Marlo and I played a board game I created many many moons ago. It was fun and Stewey did a bad thing: he told me I should finish it. So last night I started working on a bunch of revisions when I should have been working.

After that short visit with MarMar I took the bus to Stephane’s, borrowed his car, drove to Chilliwack, where the sun meets the rain (rainbow!) and practiced with The Thickets. Warren’s in Australia so it was just Mario, and Boob Foostie is coming back into the folds of rockdom for this special Hallowe’en show. It’s been over 2 years since Bob played with us. It should be fun and exciting. At the moment we’ve got 21 songs on the set list. Including some awesome oldies we haven’t played for years and years. So, come and see us on Hallowe’en at the Marine Club. Word is we’ll have all-new costumes, too.

From the “and you thought it would never happen” department :

Geez I’ve been reading too much of that Mad Magazine I got in the mail.

Cthulhu Strikes Back: Special Edition, is finally ready for consumption. Originally slated for, I think, May or June, then slated for “summer 2003”, now at long last here in Rocktober, just in time for Hallowe’en, the CDs are finally done. Phew! I’ll assume they’ll be on amazon.com and cdbaby.com shortly, and they’ll be listed on http://www.divineindustries.com/Thickets.html as soon as they update their site. In the meantime, you can get them from me!

Is anybody moving next month? I’ll help you move.

This is an idea I came up with a few years ago. You are in a conversation with somebody you don’t want to talk to. Say, you’re at an art gallery and somebody comes up behind you vomiting artspeak; or you’re at a bar and somebody starts hitting on you. Well, you just reach into your pocket and pull out a card, hand it to the person, and walk off while they’re reading it. The card reads:

CONGRATULATIONS
You have just received a
“get out of conversation free” card
Don’t be angry at the person who gave you this card – you’ve just received a valuable gift! This card is now yours, and can be used in almost any social situation as an easy, hassle-free way to get away. Simply hand this card to your conversation partner, and quietly walk off as he/she reads this very sentence. Hopefully, by the time they’re done reading, you’ve made good your escape, and they are now left with this legacy to a less-awkward, simpler life with a higher standard of living. Enjoy!

Unfortunately this little scheme won’t work if you’re in a bank lineup, buying groceries, or any other situation where you can’t just walk off. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I actually got around to making these cards up.