I hate ticketmaster


uploaded by Foxtongue.

Nothing from the realtor yet, but the listing has been found on-line. Apparently with this kind of property, I would need 40% down, which means something close to half a million dollars. However, my anger at the world as such is that I don’t particularly see that as much of a detriment. We can still make this happen. Sheer force of will and pulling in every favour I may have ever had claim to might see it through.

Brain-storming is obviously required. Lists of grants, loans, etcetera. My day-job keeps me from devoting as many hours to this as I want to. If you can talk to anyone, friends, family, companies, corporations, who might be interested in being a Patron to the Arts, please do so. Give them my phone number, promise them naked pictures.

Ghost Train tonight. Meeting starts at my place at Seven. We’re leaving for Eight.

Happy Hallowe’en.

heart of my world

Hours blank at work today, schedule says I’m sitting pretty as the only one in the building until the Sunday Salsa class arrives. Things like small mercies are coming alive in the absence of noise. I wonder who’s where and what’s happening outside in the world. The clock ticks behind me and occasionally the elevator makes a hesitant noise, as if it’s second guessing what floor it should be resting on.

Now, I want you to imagine this next bit being said seriously. I want the habitual laughing irony that characterizes my voice replaced by something like the phrase ‘terrified sincerity’ carved into heavy stone.

The movie theater near my house has a FOR SALE sign on it. I’m calling the number on the sign tomorrow and asking for details and a walk-through of the space. I know that the B.C. Government has grants both for first time buyers and to help young entrepreneurs with their first businesses. You can see where I’m going with this.

I want to know what kind of support I can get, who’s interested in being part of this investigation. I need information about writing business plans, the details of those grants I mentioned and of commercial mortgages. I want to how to get ahold of Alex McKenzie, (see: the Blinding Light Cine), and what are the rules about memberships that let you skirt certain kinds of licensing, (see: Pacific Cinematheque, the Railway Club).

I don’t want to be a non-profit. I don’t want to be a first or second run theater. I want to be a mainly art house repertory, showing all the things that the old place ran. I’m talking everything from original work to old films where the copyright’s run out, and double-bills like Marc Caro nights, (Amélie, Delicatessen, City of the Lost Children), everyone’s favourite director they never knew the name of.

There’s another thing too, when I was younger and lived in the building adjunct to it, the theater was then a venue. Rick Allen gave me a pair of his drumsticks, Neil Young played there with Sonic Youth. If the stage is still there, it might be a viable venue too. A place for plays, short performances, concerts, the coffee house cabaret evenings I miss so much from back east. I work in a Dance Center, I’m passing friends with half the local theater folk, there is no lack of performers who want intimate venues.

Your thoughts? I would very much appreciate in-put.

if I walk around him seven times, maybe I will break the power of this spell

I realized somewhere last night that the Saturday Thickets Show had entirely slipped my mind. Frack. Sometimes I feel like I must be on some subconscious regimen of torture and sedatives to have a memory this full of holes, but then I remember how little food or sleep I’ve been getting and realize my cognitive functions have simply disappeared in convulsions of polite deprivation.

For about a month, I’ve been unable to sleep a night through. Going to bed promises bad memories, sexual assault, being chased. Dreams that hate me, want me aching. Something snapped last month, some last hope was defeated, some essential promise was struck down, and I can’t find the tools to fix it. The required faith is gone. My innocence hesitated and was shot trying to run away. I can’t get up on the mountain without the knowledge that I can tear the thing down.

The experience was different when it started. I would remain trapped writhing in whatever perjury my brain was providing for me, but by now I’ve learned to suddenly wake instead. Surroundings don’t matter. I do the same whenever I’ve been and with whatever company. Utterly awake in half a second and completely dead inside. I feel contagious.

The moon is coming and with it, poor decisions. Chemicals words whispering bad ideas. I’m scared that I’m going to go hunting for a savior, now that I’ve been taught to be weak, instead of finding answers by myself.

In Würzburg, a small town in Germany, on November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen was experimenting with what’s now known as a cathode ray tube. He noticed that when electricity was turned on in the tube, which was new then and an unknown quantity, a plate painted with platino-cyanide would glow. Platino-cyanide only lights up when hit by particular frequencies of light, frequencies the human eye can’t see. Further experiments showed him that this light could pass through some objects, a discovery that he improved when he was able to photograph the interior of people. This type of photography was roentgenography, otherwise known as the x-ray. The first famous picture taken was this one of his wife’s hand. Both he and his wife died of radiation exposure as his discovery was being adapted by for medical purposes.

my life looks better when it’s written down

postsecret.blogspot.com - 4672833129

I was given website hosting this week, (still under construction, I’m tackling the learning curve best I can, but it’s a damned wall. Suggestions and coding help welcome).

Last night I threw panties onto a stage where Mark played Frank Zappa with his teeth, rock-star style.

Wednesday, the Celluloid Social Club showed Kryshan’s Zombiewalk film, had me come up and talk about it, gave me a chance to promote like an expensive whore, and my friends won the Bloodshots 48 Hour Horror Film Competition with a Italiana Nunsploitation flick that you can watch here. See: Steampower Films.

Today my work has decided to pay me, (with a slight raise), to attend the Rolling Stones concert next Friday and look pretty.

None of which, by the way, makes up for the fact that they pulled my fireworks show out of the Parade of Lost Souls.

Oh, and for all these lily innocent doe-eyed “what’s this parade thing?” types, the Parade of Lost Souls is possibly the only completely marvelous event that Vancouver actually has. Be there unrestrained and fanciful or I will always cherish the initial misconception I had about you and nothing more.

Sam’s in a silent Italiana nunsploitation film this year.

The CELLULOID SOCIAL CLUB presents OH, THE HORROR
on WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25th, just in time for Hallowe’en.

Screening of the Completed 5 min. Short Horror Films in 2006 BLOODSHOTS 48 HOUR HORROR FILMMAKING CHALLENGE

Other Films to Be Screened Time Permitting

Doors – 7:30pm Show – 8:00pm Admission – $5.00 at the door
The ANZA Club, #3 West 8th Ave. at Ontario St., Vancouver, B.C.

ZOMBIEWALK, written, directed and produced by Kryshan Randel, co-written by David Lewis, music by Goblin, starring David Lewis (Lake Placid, The Bully Solution) and hundreds of zombies. 5 min., documentary / news segment, 2006. Produced for Novus TV’s news program “City Lights” – On August 19 2006, hundreds of zombies marched the streets and beaches of downtown Vancouver; stopping traffic, climbing into moving vehicles, terrorizing beachgoers, and eating a whole lot of brains. And all of this was caught on tape, as exclusive media coverage of Vancouver’s second annual ZombieWalk.
WARNING: What you are about to see is 100% real, and is not for the faint of heart.

Time permitting, these will also screen:

VICTIM, directed by Kryshan Randel, written by Kathryn Cottam, produced by Tammy Bannister and Kryshan Randel, DOP Jason Pope, music by Julie Blue, edited by Tony Dean Smith, starring Victoria Bidewell (What Lies Beneath), James Lafazanos (Stargate: Atlantis) and Katrin Bowen (Bang!). 5 min., horror, 2004 – In the early ’70s, Jessie frantically searched for her missing boyfriend deep within the woods, and discovered a terrifying secret. VICTIM was made for the 2004 Bloodshots Film Festival, and had to incorporate backwoods horror, a crab, a chainsaw and the line “I gave blood last month”.

THE CRITIC, written & directed by Jaman Lloyd, produced by Chris Ferguson, staring Matthew Walker & Paul Anthony, 11 min., Crazy 8’s, 2006 – a gothic horror set in 1840s Philadelphia exploring the last moments of a literary critic confronted by a spurned poet. James Wilmot narrates his final night alive when confronted by an obscured and bedimmed figure. The figure is Edgar Allen Poe who has come to kill Wilmot for the degradation of his early writings.

THE VEIL Directed by Mike Jackson, Written by Sam Dulmage and Mike Jackson, Cinematography by Sam Dulmage, Music by Jeff Tymoschuk, Edited by Jean-Denis Rouette, starring Corina Akeson, MacKenzie Gray & Charles Zuckermann with Toren Atkinson and Robyn Forsyth. 11 min., Horror, Short, 2006 – A young married woman is haunted by dark visions. Is it her medication, or something more sinister? A lovecraftian period piece. 2005 Bloodshots horror short competition. This 11-minute version has been re-edited and re-mixed, with additional scoring and visual effects. Official Selection of the Chicago Horror Film Festival, H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, Chicago International REEL Shorts Festival, and plays Oct. 22 at the Toronto After Dark Horror Festival.

he’s certainly charming

So once again, (as it tends to), my livejournal is running out of Paid Account. If you want to help out, as I certainly can’t currently afford upkeep, then donate here to keep this journal alive.

The Complete Works of Charles Darwin are now available online for free.

Sometimes I feel like I’m crafting obituaries when I describe people here. “He was a kind man, Mr. Haversham, tall and slightly too commonplace. We loved his newspaper clipping accent, me and Dave, and now he’s gone.” That said, I think I’m going to give a shot to talking about Mark, (leaving out as much description as possible), as locals have been developing a curiosity.

We met in 1999, my mother was somehow part of an African music festival event that he was doing the sound for. We went home together after to an Art House on Fraser St. that he was watching for the out-of-town owners and, after we got rid of Lidd, we stayed up all night talking. (I would be shocked if Reine’s mother was not friends with the artists who lived there, just to give you some idea of what the house was like). I’m not sure why we went back together after, except that maybe things just happen sometimes and occasionally personalities simply click. He says now that I was very shy then and it’s sort of true. I didn’t talk as much as he did, not knowing how to speak with people yet.

Threadless is having another $10 t-shirt sale. Go through my link to get bonus levels of awesome and help get something neat.

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago, after I’ve moved to Toronto and back, L.A. and back, Montreal and back. After I’ve singularly failed to escape from this place, actually, but have thoroughly lost touch with Mark anyway. I’m at a Timothy Wisdom party, having been invited by an acquaintance on the street, an anonymous e-mail, and Angus Ms. Spelt. Set between a funeral home and an industrial warehouse, I didn’t know the hosts, but I knew the house. People spill out of it when there’s parties, and everything on the main floor, excepting the kitchen, becomes dance floor.

On this dance floor, this most fabulous and exceedingly crowded place, I encounter a woman who stops me to say, “I have the other half of your sewing machine.” It’s an odd statement, but she’s right, she does have my old sewing machine. I’m surprised. We used to trade one back and forth to summers ago. To her left is Mark. We haven’t seen each other since before I moved to Toronto, but we recognize each other instantly. (Amazing if you factor in that he’s not tall anymore because puberty wasn’t finished with me last we saw one another and now I’m an entire four inches taller.) That quirk of timing goes “click” again, and now we’re best of friends once more, spending time too late at night and sleeping over more often than is strictly necessary for a basic social life.

I think we have a date in December, but I’m not sure how things like that work. I’m going to have to ask.

scraps collected from the floor

The polished cement floors and tall white walls of the The Dance Center foyer give an impression of being professionally vacant and irrepressibly busy, all at the same time. I like it. The desk I sit at faces a long glass wall that I watch the street through, its beveled edges act as rainbow prisms on sunny days. I am mostly here in the evening, however, as the dinner-time crowd travel undistractedly past in long black coats and oversize hoop earrings. Sunday nights are traditionally unexciting.

Occasionally a man comes in who looks homeless, long scruffy gray hair, a bright yellow rain jacket with a small hole over one elbow. He collects all the new reading material that’s accumulated over the week, pamphlets, brochures, upcoming events, and sits quietly reading them at the table, one after another, until either he is finished or it is time to close. I don’t mind, it keeps him warm and he seems inoffensive. I only wonder what he does with them after. A favorite idea is that of a small cooking fire flaring in the dark back doorway of a rich downtown hotel.

Jenn’s party last night, I felt like I’d wandered into three years ago. I wanted to be wearing something improbable, a snakeskin dress, a PVC corset, something with unlikely handfuls of feathers, just to put myself off balance, to rid myself of the feeling that I will never escape this place, that I will always return to these same people year after year in these similar places. That I can’t evolve or forget.

Even dropping by Oliver’s birthday party on Saturday after going to see The Prestiege did not feel so alienating. Of course, I’d made sure to arrive as late as possible to ensure that the guest of honour would have been steadily drinking himself into inoffensiveness since five in the evening, and I’m certain it helped. That and Mark dragging himself out of bed at two a.m. to threaten making me dinner after to fix how I might be feeling.

This year’s global ecological debt day, which fell early on October 9th, symbolizes the day of the year when people’s demands exceeded the Earth’s ability to supply resources and absorb the demands placed upon it. This means that it would take the Earth 15 months to regenerate what was consumed already this year.

My ecological footprint, last time I delved into this, turned out to be surprisingly small, (minus that I live in a first world country), so omitting some regrettable things, like not being able to shop organically or fair-trade at two in the morning, I think I’m doing okay. What’s your excuse?