Kevin's Journal

Whoa

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 05:34:23 GMT

I actually started this entry more than a month ago, but as usual, events conspired to prevent me from finishing it. Here's what I wrote at the end of October:

***

"So the other day I was scanning through some of my previous journal entries, trying to find something in particular to show someone, and realized that I quite enjoyed reading the scattered record I left behind of my activities over the past few years. 2004 seemed an especially good one (my writing kinda peetered out later on, and I'm not too fond of my early entries.) Anyway, this prompted me to make an update, which will include the obligatory hollow promise of me posting more frequently.

I will try to post more frequently."

***

Right....

Anyway, the rest of the entry is pretty outdated, so I won't bother with it. In fact, I just deleted a whole chunk of it. That felt GOOD.

So basically I've been sick for about a month, and only now am I finally recovering. Glancing at my calendar, I can pinpoint exactly when it all began. It was somewhere between November 1st and 2nd. I'd just come home from a particularly outrageous session of Super Smash Bros. at Mark's, my lungs protesting from a combination of laughter (caused by Aaron's hilariously authentic Chinese accent) and extremely annoying asthma-related constrictions (caused by the cats.) Some combination of these factors, plus the mercurial weather, the already generally nasty cold season, and the fact that I came home at 4 am and wasn't getting too much sleep, all must have contributed to what was to come.

The next day I felt the first signs of a sore throat. I drank lots of tea and gargled lots of salt water, to no avail. The day after that I was definitely getting sick -- I could feel the cough blooming from within. However, I was at Sheridan College with the rest of my film class collaborating with some animators, and afterwards Aaron and I shared one of the biggest meals I've had in my whole life (we had two massive boats of sushi and sashmi, plus platters of various complimentary rolls and tempura and, eventually, banana-encrusted vanilla ice-cream. It was damn good. It was also the last good meal I was to have until about...last Tuesday?)

Unfortunately I had to work the entire weekend, and that was pretty rough. I teach Saturdays at a music school called Euromusic, and I have this weird feeling that I might be getting fired soon, since my students are about to write their exams next weekend and they...well...kind of suck. I work Sundays too, accompanying violin students for the Toronto Suzuki Studio.

Anyway, next week I tried to stay home as much as possible, as my parents were getting on my case about how I'd been going out too much and not getting enough rest, so it was no surprise that my system would break down again. They weren't wrong, but it does annoy me how fragile my health is compared to some of my friends. I know people who haven't been sick for years...some of them haven't been sick for so long they've forgotten what it was like!

So I skipped most of my classes (I did attend one, but it was to hand in an essay) and stayed in bed for most of the week, doing very little except watching bad movies on TV and, well, getting a Facebook account. The only productive thing I did was mark papers and write a scathing letter to the St. Michael's Hospital review committee (they were reviewing my dad's boss, who is an asshole of the highest order.) It was by far one of the best things I'd written all year, and was received with a significant amount of admiration from the committee members who despise the prick as much as my dad does.

The weekend rolled by (Nov. 11-12) and I was STILL sick. More teaching, more accompanying. The next week I forced myself to attend an interesting seminar, and found I couldn't stay because I was coughing too much. I think I stayed home the rest of that week, too, but it's all kind of a blur now. Oh, I finally went to the doctor's on Friday. He prescribed to me a bottle of antibiotics and an asthma ventilator. (Note: I went through the entire bottle and used most of the ventilator, but I don't think it really did anything.)

Another painful weekend came and went. Now the mucus was finally starting to pile up in my nose and chest, which I figured was a good thing -- symptoms of a normal cold and all. On Monday I started to feel a bit better (I proctored a test for my Materials III class), and, as a result, went to Aaron's place for a while and tried out some of the sports games on his new Wii. I must say that I was impressed. It was nothing like I'd experienced before. The physics of the Wiimote were dead-on; I couldn't believe, for instance, how accurately my actual bowling tendencies translated into the virtual medium. (Normally I have a natural tilt to my wrist that nudges the ball ever-so-slightly to the left, which I compensate for by aiming slightly to the right. The game reproduces this perfectly.) Tennis was a riot. We had to move furniture out of the way in order to simulate the feeling of holding rackets and whipping them around. Although I foresee accidents happening with more people, the gameplay itself was undeniably fresh and engaging in a way that's only possible with that kind of motion-sensing equipment. It was also the first time I could genuinely claim to have been physically exhausted from playing a video game.

Playing the Wii was a bad idea in retrospect, but more on that soon. The next day, imagining myself to be on the road to recovery, I binged on Indian food, and finally got to rehearse with Esther the new flute and piano piece I'd written a couple weeks ago. The day after that I had lunch with a bunch of people at this Japanese restaurant on Charles St., which I actually didn't like very much. It was my birthday, and Alexa made me a custom-made coupon for Casino Royale, but we didn't end up seeing it because 1) I was still rather sick, and 2) no one else seemed to be free at the time. So I wound up playing Twilight Princess for about an hour at Aaron's, before my cough suddenly sprung to life again...

And then hell truly began. Heavy fever set in the next day. I tried desperately to work on my opera piece but only got a few pages done, and my appetite was starting to dwindle. The next day I had to go to Sheridan again. This was a nasty, nasty day. I had the chills (I kept alternating between feeling extrmeely hot and cold), the cough was worse than ever, and I had no appetite. We stopped by a burger joint to get food, but I couldn't order anything except a hot chocolate. On the way home we were stuck in traffic for about two and a half hours (damn 401!) Upon getting back, I threw up (despite not having eaten), called in to cancel teaching for Saturday and accompanying Sunday....and then proceeded to go to bed for the next two days. Somewhere around this time I scribbled in my private journal -- something about wishing I could trade some of my compositional inspiration for any semblance of a healthy body. I take it back now, but I meant it then...it was pretty bad...

At some point into the weekend I became rather pissed about my situation -- more so than I'd already been. I called Esther and asked if we could rehearse Sunday night. She thought I was insane -- she was expecting me to cancel the concert -- but she agreed anyway. We were scheduled to play in concert on Monday, and I refused to budge on this one. Too many sacrifices had already been made...I was well behind on my academic work, and my actual work -- not only my teaching and accompanying but my extensive TA duties at the university -- was suffering. I just couldn't admit defeat on this one last thing.

And so we somehow performed on Monday. It was Nov. 27, and at last I started to feel some genuine recovery taking place. The piece we played seemed to generate a very strong reaction, for whatever reason. Among the people in attendance were Bryan (who I think has been to more of my concerts than anyone else I know!) as well as an assortment of new people who had never been to any of my concerts before. So that was very encouraging.

We played the same piece again just this past Wednesday (the 29th) at the Arts and Letters Club. I made a brief blog about it at my website. It was a really great day, actually, but I must share this story with you because it represents my first-hand experience of the kind of pettiness that my dad faces everyday at his workplace. Essentially, the head committee member of the Arts and Letters music division, a former professor at the UofT Faculty of Music (he retired in 1999) named Walter Buczynski, felt it necessary to criticize my piece while standing on a podium addressing the whole audience. No, criticize is the wrong word. 'Demean' would be more accurate. In pretending to deliver his opinion in a tasteful, polite manner, he effectively dismissed both myself and the work. Quote: "There is something to be said for economy of materials. I felt this piece had far too many ideas and was going in too many directions at once. I liked the beginning, and the ending, but the middle was a mess. You call this a sonata...but a true sonata must obey certain tenets of sonata form, unless you are redefining the form...not that I heard any of that today either." He then proceeded to say nothing but nice things about the rest of Esther's program, which consisted entirely of actual standard flute repertoire -- no other student pieces were on the program, that's for sure.

What was this, a masterclass? No. This was a volunteer recital -- Esther's recital, to be specific -- for the benefit of old music connaisseurs who pay a membership fee to attend pleasant music-filled luncheons every Wednesday. After we finished playing, the audience applauded for so long we had to bow twice, an honour that they accorded only to our piece. And this has-been dares to get up on his horse and voice his negativity in front of this same audience, while we musicians are still at the piano, waiting to be fed?

Think of the meaning behind his words. "You're just a student...your music MUST have flaws...and not only do I have the authority to back up my opinions, I will EXPRESS these opinions in public instead of keeping them to myself, because everyone else seems to like the piece, and they have to be put in their place." Sounds pretty insecure to me.

Esther and Mark were immediately sympathetic, calling him "old-fashioned" and "a dick" (respectively.) So were members of the audience, including Buczynski's wife, who actually apologized to me on behalf of her husband. I soon realized that this tirade, far from being damaging to myself, was actually very flattering. This was my first taste of bad publicity, and it had been handed down to me from higher up, so to speak. It gave me great pleasure that my music could stir such an inappropriate response from someone so well-established -- it proved that it was worth something!

After that I ate the biggest meal I had since the sushi on Nov. 3 -- a plate of chicken swimming in some kind of creamy mushroom gravy. Three hours later I was having dinner at a Greek place on the Danforth with Aaron and a guy who lives in Haifa but is currently studying composition with us at UofT. For the next little while he shared his experiences from his hometown with us, and I considered those two hours the most profound I've had in a long while. It is hard not to come away from something like that without experiencing some change of perspective. This was a person who attended the funerals of his friends and family members on a regular basis, and yet who remains currently one of the most jovial presences in our faculty. Go figure! (His family, I noted with some relief, is moving to Toronto permanently. Not a bad idea, I have to say...)

Each time I recover from a long illness I seem to undergo some shift in values -- not unlike last January, where I ended up rearranging my life's priorities after returning from New York with the flu from hell. I really kind of wish I didn't have to go through these periods in order to grow, though...

On that note, I think I'll adjourn for the night. I apologize for the length of this -- I really will try to update more regularly, with shorter entries. But it felt good to type that out!

I'm back

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 07:20:18 GMT

Oh livejournal, how I have neglected thee...

Well, it has been a busy year and a busier summer. I haven't had too much time (or energy, rather; there's always time!) for posting much. There are a few entries I want to finally get under the door; but before I do that, I need to write about what I've been doing for the past couple months, to (in part) justify my absence but also to give some context to future entries. Which (I hope, I hope) won't be long in coming...

So...at around the time school was finishing up in April, my friend Aaron got hired by another composer to co-score a PC game. A year ago, this composer interviewed a bunch of us, hoping to find an assistant to score "Land of the Dead" for X-box (which apparently ended up being a horrible game). Aaron got the job, and since then has maintained a healthy working relationship with this person.

Anyway, about a month into Aaron's new gig (some kung-fu style demo for PC), I received a phone call from Aaron's employer asking me to join their team. I was thrilled, of course, and over the next few weeks Aaron and I managed to produce a total of 12 cues. It was all very exciting, as we both hoped this gig would open up new doors for us. See, the PC game is a relatively small venture -- an online-only release, not much mass market publicity, designed solely for multiplayer use -- but it was to function as a demo for a much bigger project in the works, to be eventually released on Xbox 360 by Groove Games (the publisher of Pariah, Warpath, and yes, Land of the Dead.) If we did well on this demo, the idea was that we'd land the bigger gig as well.

Things did not end up working out quite so well. First off, production on the game stalled, so that throughout the months of June and July we were sitting on our asses just waiting for new instructions. Secondly, the big Xbox title ended up going to Tan Dun. Tan Dun, the guy who wrote (and won an oscar for) the music to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"! On the one hand, it's amazing to think that we were even in the running for something like that...but that doesn't change the fact that we lost the gig...

Acting on our frustrations, we decided rather spontaneously to form our own company, create a demo reel from scratch, and send it out to every major video game company in Canada. Our plan was to flood them with demos every few months in an attempt to piss them off (and hopefully get their attention.) We spent some time creating a concept for the demo, as well as a company name. Brainstorming for that one was fun. I wanted to go with "Hans Zimmer For Half the Price" but eventually Aaron thought up "Lightmotif," which was probably the better choice.

It took us a while to get started. You see, at this time, I was trying to date someone...and so was Aaron. This killed our collective productivity for about two weeks. Perhaps what is amusing in hindsight is that we both ended up getting rejected, within a day of one another, which I suppose finally allowed us to get cracking on the demo.

Meanwhile, my musical -- which I'd finished writing in the beginning of May -- was being rehearsed like crazy. Four days a week, four to five hours per rehearsal. I always knew theatre was demanding, but it's one thing to know it and another to experience it firsthand. Fortunately my work was technically done so I didn't have to attend every single rehearsal, but still...as a composer you want to be present to make sure things are going all right; plus this has the advantage of stroking your ego, hearing your own music performed over and over again :)

Beginning of July, things really started to pile up. The musical was starting its run; Aaron was booking performers to record for our demo; I had a job interview for a part-time teaching position in the fall; and my friend, Richard, was getting married. That last item was very important, because I was Richard's best man, and I had been -- to put it frankly -- neglecting him. After some discussion about this Aaron agreed to shoulder most of our recording and mixing duties, for which I'm very grateful for.

The week before July 16 was quite possibly the busiest non-academic week of my entire life. All in all, though, things went well. The demo reel got finished. Meanwhile, I attended three out of seven shows for my musical. Although we received some mixed reviews (a *** review from EYE that was admittedly reasonable, and a 'negative' review from the Toronto Sun that was ridiculous), the audiences were big and enthusiastic, and we did end up making a profit, albeit one that has to be split 15 ways. To this day, the musical remains my most fulfilling compositional achievement, in part because of my friends who came out in such numbers to support it. No, really. I love you guys ^_^

As for the wedding....it was wonderful and inspiring. Everything ran smoothly. And the bachelor party, which consisted of only four of us (me, Richard, Mark, Aaron), was riotous. But more on all of that in another post.

After the wedding, the show, and the finalization of our demo reel (which all happened on the same day), there appearead to be a mass exodus -- Mark left for BC, Aaron for Kansas, Richard and Michelle for Cuba. I, too, left with my parents -- for Hawaii! And *that* definitely deserves a post of its own, if only for the pictures.

I'm back now, with a relatively light workload. I still need to finish the Kung Fu game, not to mention put together a curriculum for a course I *may* have to teach in the fall. Today I discovered I'm about $7000 in the red (ok, so most of that is tuition, but I do have an annoyingly large outstanding fee on top of that), and I'm not getting nearly as much funding as I thought I was for next year. Stupid fine print.

In conclusion: I think I'm doing pretty well, spiritually if not financially. After four years of being stubbornly jobless it's good to see things finally start to pick up...we'll see how things go from here.

More to come soon...

Finally....

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 22:52:10 GMT

What? Story

Who? Robert McKee

When? published in 1997

Where? In my room, on the subway, and two hours in the living room of Aaron's house while he was having his Mandarin lesson.

How'd I get it? Borrowed it from Aaron

Why? Although geared towards screenwriters, "Story" promised to reveal insights into the universal art of storytelling in general. As someone who loves writing but has always struggled with it, I found this impossible to resist.

Length? 419 pages. I read it in two days, which is (for me) a feat of tremendous proportions.

First Bit Imagine, in one global day, the pages of prose turned, plays performed, films screened, the unending stream of television comedy and drama, twenty-four hour print and broadcast news, bedtime tales told to children, barroom bragging, back-fence Internet gossip, humankind's insatiable appetite for stories. Story is not only our most prolific art form but rivals all activities -- work, play, eating, exercise -- for our waking hours. We tell and take in stories as much as we sleep -- and even then we dream. Why? Why is so much of our life spent inside stories? Because as critic Kenneth Burke tells us, stories are equipment for living.

My Thoughts I devoured this book like chocolate. Almost everything in it struck me as true, but in a way that was unexpected and revealing. It puts all your gut feelings about good vs. bad storytelling into crystal-clear and convincing reasoning. This is no dogmatic "writer's guide" book, but a penetrating look into the unconscious elements that unfold between the storyteller and the audience.

After reading this, I felt that I possessed a much deeper understanding of why audiences enjoy certain things and detest others. Some may not want to explore that level -- they would prefer to simply feel, and not analyze. That's cool -- especially since what passes for analysis these days is really just pseudo-philosophical crap that has nothing to do with the point of the film (or book, or whatever). But as someone who aspires to create, I feel an inherent need to learn about what works and what doesn't -- and this book gave me just that.

***

I should note that within a few days of reading the book I watched the movie "The New World" and absolutely hated it. I have no doubt that my feelings were influenced in part by reading "Story", and since "The New World" apparently conveys its substance not by story but through images (at least, according to the people I saw it with, who liked it a great deal more than I did), I was in some ways doomed not to like it.

However, not long after that I read "Great Expectations" and played (well, watched) "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater", and loved them both. The great thing is that they're completely different -- one's a classic Dickens novel, the other a first-person-shooter set in the Cold War! -- and yet they can both be seen as prime examples of Mckee's principles in action.

Snake: "That's damn good!"

more books

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:51:46 GMT

This seemed like a pretty cool idea so I'm doing it.

What?A Storm of Swords, Vol. 3 of "A Song of Ice and Fire"

Who? George R.R. Martin. There's tons of info on him on the net. I have him on my friends list :P

When? It was published in 2000. I read it over December and January and finished it about two weeks ago. (Note: Vol. 4 just came out last fall. Must have been one hell of a wait for those poor sods who read the book when it first came out...)

Where? 40% on the subway, 10% in New York / Washington / Dulles Airport, 50% on my bed at home.

How'd I get it? I bought it. :P

Why?Because I'd just read "Clash of Kings" (Vol. 2) in the fall. I was going to spread the series out a bit -- who knows when the next book is coming out? -- but addiction won over and I couldn't help but plunge straight into the next book.

Why?Sometime ago last year (late spring/summer?), when Josh and I were trying to get our writing chops back (and, for the most part, failing), Josh began reading this series, and he couldn't stop talking about it -- or rather, couldn't stop trying to persuade me to read it, since he couldn't actually spoil the book. One random day, after an MSN conversation, I leapt into the car, drove to the nearest Chapters, and picked up a copy of "Game of Thrones" (vol. 1)....and that's how it all started.

Length? 1128 pages. It's a beast.

First Bit: An east wind blew through his tangled hair, as soft and fragrant as Cersei's fingers. He could hear birds singing, and feel the river moving beneath the boat as the sweep of the oars sent them towards the pale pink dawn. After so long in darkness, the world was so sweet that Jaime Lannister felt dizzy. I am alive, and drunk on sunlight. A laugh burst from his lips, sudden as a quail flushed from cover.

My Thoughts: This is a fantasy book, though "medieval fiction" might be a better way to describe its genre (at least, at first). The series as a whole eschews the traditional "reluctant heroes battle against dark lords" formula of romantic fantasy in favour of a richer and more complex tapestry of clashing motivations and interests. I love how the enormous cast of characters, big and small (and in between), reminds me of real life, in the sense that you meet tons of people and most of them, no matter how small a role they play in your existence, are intriguing in some subtle way. Each chapter of "A Storm of Swords" is dedicated to one major character's point of view, and this is Martin's secret weapon: he never allows us to see the world objectively, as it is always coloured by the character's perspective (another way of looking at it is that he never gives any character an objective point of view.) So characters you thought you hated end up being dangerously endearing when you get inside their heads, and characters you sympathized with begin to show their shortcomings when viewed from another's eyes. This doesn't always happen, of course -- and the book is full of clear-cut examples of good and evil -- but it challenge your assumptions and make the dynamics between good and evil more complicated.

One other aspect about this book (even more so than the first two volumes) is that it is provocative. By that, I mean that it has the ability to stir up some very strong emotions in the reader -- including anger and frustration. These emotions result not from poor writing but from the ruthless exploitation of our sympathy and thwarting of our expectations. Aaron and I were discussing the power of scenes that do this, which -- for lack of a better term -- I will label as "holy fuck" moments. "A Storm of Swords" contains several such moments, each of which are designed to make you want to hurl the book across the room (and then pick it up again to find out what happens next.) So, in a way, I don't recommend the book if you're looking for pure escapism (especially if you're in the middle of studying for exams or something -- the book might create more stress, not reduce it!) On the other hand, this is the stuff that good drama is made of, and I'd much rather be made to feel something than to read about Egwene moping around a city for a hundred pages or Nynaeve tugging at her braid for the hundredth time (who DOES that, anyway??)

"A Song of Ice and Fire" also contains scenes of violence, coarse language, nudity, sexuality, adult situations, AND mature subject matter (for those who scrolled down just to get to the good stuff.) Viewer discretion is advised.

I am now reading Charles' Dickens' "Great Expectations" in order to get my blood pressure back to normal.

the other convention (canadian national anime expo)

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 02:53:46 GMT

In August, the weekend after Mark's wedding, I was invited by Lainey and her friends to a sci-fi/anime/comic-book convention, where I was absorbed deep into the wonderful and at times disturbing world of cosplay (costume playing). This convention took place at the Metro Convention Centre downtown, and was crowded, raucous, and generally infused with the kind of desperate energy you only find in communities of previously repressed geekdom. I had an extremely exhausting day, so you can guess what it must have been like for the cosplayers. Imagine not being able to get from one side of a room to the other because people keep asking you for photographs!

Impressive...most impressive:

Lainey, as a character from the Ragnorok manga:

Kevin Sorbo, as...Hercules :P

No-Face, from Spirited Away:

One of the more impressive dealers' tables sold hand-made dragon statues; this is one of them:

Mike (a friend of Lainey's) and Young Jae, dressed in some very spiffy armour:

Young Jae, Lainey, and Mike, the Ragnorok team:

The next pic was taken outside the con while we were deliberating on how we were going to have lunch. It seems like a simple and rather silly question, but at the time it stirred up quite a bit of controversy. The cosplayers, you see, didn't want to have to wander far to eat. Dining at a restaurant was clearly an impossibility, but even the food court options weren't looking too appealing, since they were across the street -- the sky was looking ominous, and the cosplayers didn't want to risk ruining their costumes. (I think I was a proponent of the food court idea, but I got shot down.) In the end Victor (Lainey's cousin, who is about as absent from these pictures as I am since neither of us were provocatively attired) and I lined up to get lunch for everyone from a burger truck stationed just outside the con. I remember ordering something like seven cheeseburgers and feeling like a doofus, but we got over that.

Young Jae, Elise, Lainey, and Mike:

Contrary to popular first impressions, that girl *is* wearing something...

And here it is...the one time I actually managed to squeeze myself into a picture. I think we can all agree that I had the best costume...

At around 5:00 the cosplayers went to get ready for the masquerade, which is apparently an annual event. They compete on stage and are judged by a panel of experts (ie. frighteningly experienced cosplayers) on things like Best Costume, Best Routine, and so forth. This was the line-up for the masquerade:

It was at this time where I desperately wished I had a deck of cards (preferably one of the ones I just acquired yesterday) to pass the time with Victor. Victor's a cool guy and we got along just fine, but we were sitting in that line for THREE hours, and after less than an hour or so we simply ran out of things to say to each other. There was a welcome break in between when I offered to grab 'dinner' for the both of us -- dinner in this case consisting of potato chips, chocolate, and coke. And, of course, I continued religiously snapping pictures of random cosplayers.

These were apparently from the movie Battle Royale. As Mark said to us yesterday: "The first thing you have to do in order to appreciate any sort of anime whatsoever is to acknowledge the fact that Japan is, quite simply, fucked up."

After what seemed like a really, really long time, we were finally let into the theatre. Apparently this was the same theatre where Canadian Idol is held. As usual, everything appeared much smaller than what we'd expected after seeing it on TV.

The masquerade itself was great and incredibly amusing, but it was loooong and I desperately needed to use the washroom. There were something like 60 contestants in total. Here are some of the highlights. Of course, because the theatre was utterly dark and flash was not permitted, I only managed to obtain blurry renditions of the performances.

Harley Quinn and the Joker who, in one of the most jaw-dropping moments of the night, proposed to her at the end of the performance:

Sub-zero and another Mortal Kombat chick, doing something spectacular:

...and, of course, Lainey's group, who ended up sweeping the awards that evening:

The victory pose:

After this I went home, uploaded the pics onto my computer, then forgot to post them for three months... :P

birthday week and convention (con no baka)

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 00:24:45 GMT

Another year, another birthday. I'm 23 and I feel like 13, which is both nice and a bit depressing if you think about it. At least this time around my recent life has been a whirlwind of resoundingly non-academic activity, and that's a GOOD thing (although the next two weeks are going to suck plenty, again.) Thank you to all of you who contributed a little something to my relaxed and happy state this week. I realize that not everyone is in a similar state (mine's about to evaporate pretty soon) but I'll always do my best to help. You know who you are (especially since most of you are reading this anyway) and I love you all :)

This entry is going to be about an anime convention (Con no baka) I went to this weekend. It is really an excuse for me to post my pictures so I have a link to send others. Check the next entry as well for pics from the previous anime-related convention I went to (Canadian National Anime Expo) in the summer, which I realized I never uploaded.

On Friday Richard and I met up at Mark's place, where we proceeded to Lawrence West station and hopped on a bus that would take us to the DoubleTree Hotel (same site as Toronto Trek). If you recall what Friday was like at rush hour, you will understand how incredibly frustrating it was to be sitting (standing? I can't recall) on a bus that crawled forward like the TTC on Monday mornings. Ride the Rocket my ass! Anyway, we arrived only to discover that there was no schedule for the evening's events, so everyone was wandering around aimlessly in confusion and dismay. So we did the only thing any sensible person would do in our shoes: head to the dealer's room and buy ourselves a bunch of crap. Extremely addictive and sumptuous-looking crap.

After eating and pouring cups of water and ice cubes from the second floor onto the first floor fountains, we stumbled into a room where a competition of AMVs (anime music videos) was being held. This, incidentally, was the *only* anime we ended up watching all weekend. There were some tedious entries, but for the most part it was a great contest. After that we wandered around some more, and I showed Mark and Richard pics from the previous convention on my camera.

Mark: Why didn't I go to this?
Kevin: You were on your honeymoon.
Richard: Why didn't I go? Oh well, I'm definitely going next year.

Somehow we roped Richard into coming on Saturday, even though he was teaching the next morning. We then headed home. I was a bit disappointed with the lack of organization, not to mention the rather small attendance, but I can't say we didn't have a good time. On the way back we had a rather memorable conversation about the advantages of begging forgiveness versus asking for permission (regarding our purchasing policies) which even cracked up the bus driver. Not having a wife, fiance, OR girlfriend, I can't say I experienced any inkling of moral dilemma in this particular area :)

The next day I got up bright and early and headed to Mark's again. He had donned his costume (Johnny from Guilty Gear X):

We bused back down to the convention and arrived to find that it a bit more crowded (still nothing compared to CNAE, though). We also began to see a few familiar faces.

This is Liz's brother Mike as Sephiroth (refer to my wedding entry to see what he actually looks like) with Mark. The fangirls certainly had an affinity for him:

Mark with a random ninja dude:

Mike (Sephiroth) and his girlfriend Tiffany (???):

The schedule finally got posted. So the first thing Mark and I did was, of course, head to the dealer's room to collect yet more irresistable crap. Actually, I'm quite proud of my purchases. I ended up with two decks of anime-themed cards, three posters, two keychains, and a bootleg of FFAC with special features. The documentary has a poor subtitle track, but is worth it for the line "We weren't trying too hard to make the fight scenes realistic." Mark ended up with a whole lot more that I can't quite remember off the top of my head.

Random cosplayers in the dealer's room:

A particularly sinister pose by Sephiroth:

At around noon we met up with Aaron, who is a composer-colleague/friend whom I had somehow roped into attending even though the only anime he knows is Miyazaki. Shortly after we met up with Elaine (or Lainey, as we call her), who is the sister of Michelle (Richard's fiancee), and her boyfriend, Young-Jae.

Elaine in a costume she made in one day before the convention:

Elaine and Young-Jae (dressed in the same uber-cool Ragnorok outfit he wore at CNAE):

Mark, Aaron, Richard:

Despite the fact that this was an anime convention.... :P

Somehow we ended up spending our entire afternoon either in the dealer's room, wandering aimlessly, or playing cards:

Random pics of Lainey are never a bad thing:

We played a card game called Big Two, which is a Chinese (or generally Asian, I'm not certain) variant of Asshole. The differences are: 1) you're allowed to trump each other with poker hands, not just single to four-of-a-kind cards; 2) you can trump a card with the same number, as long as the suit is higher (therefore, only the two of spades reigns supreme); and 3) you can't nuke a hand with a single two.

I haven't played this game since I was ten, with my cousins; but of course, if you've grown up with Asshole, it's not difficult to re-adapt. As it happened, I won every game we played. This is either because I rock ass, or because, much like playing "Dead or Alive", everyone was too distracted by the pictures on the cards to really care about winning or losing.

At 5:00 pm there was a monumental event; or, at least, it was monumental for a certain Aaron-like someone. You see, this event was a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament. The tournament was organized into fourteen different rounds, each of four players. The two winners of each round would then compete in the semi-finals, and so forth, until a champion was declared. Now, I reckon we have all played Super Smash Bros. at some point in our lives, and we all stand at various skill levels. I'm decent if I play with Yoshi, horrible with anyone else. I know some of my friends are pretty good. But none of us dared to participate in the tournament....that is, except for Aaron, who is the self-professed god of this game. The designation does not come without justification; I know because I've played him and he kicked my ass real good. He is *so* good, in fact, that he was extremely nervous about playing the other contestants (who all seemed to be much worse), in the same way that someone might feel intimidated by someone else of a lower skill level. In any case, nothing prepared us for the crashing disappointment of him getting eliminated from the game almost immmediately, due to a variety of factors which I won't detail here. Basically, it jus wasn't his day.

Spectators look on at the tournament:

Beside us, a DDR tournament:

The menu screen:

Aaron selects a character:

Aaron prepares to die:

Mayhem ensues:

After the traumatizing defeat, we tried to console Aaron by playing more cards...or at least, going through our decks and engaging in a semi-professional judging process to determine who was the hottest girl in each deck:

After this I attempted a 'photoshoot' for Lainey and Young Jae, but I couldn't figure out how to use their camera and my own camera was dying, so the whole thing ended up a bit rushed. Still, I think I took a few good shots, such as this one:

(I took a whole bunch; you can see the rest here.)

We also draped Aaron in Lainey's wig and took a few pictures, but they're far too disturbing to post on a public forum such as this.

We then headed to a sushi restaurant for dinner, where I took a final pic of everyone (except Richard who had to leave early) sans costumes:

Aaron drove Mark and I home. At the last minute Aaron and I decided to head to his house; we played Super Smash Bros. and an oddly fun game involving beach volleyball and female teams.

Stay tuned for more convention pics...three months late!

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:48:56 GMT

(Tagged by linden_tree)

Write down five days that you are a looking forward to in the next month (in chronological order), and then tag 5 people to do the same.

1) Friday, November 18: Hawwy Hawwy Potter Potter! Wheee~ (also, I get to see my friends and play Mario Kart)

2) Saturday, November 19: I get to see my friends and play taiko!

3) Tuesday, November 22: My birthday...which, more importantly, means 1) the release of John Williams' "Memoirs of a Geisha" soundtrack, and 2) SUSHI

4) Friday - Sunday, November 25-27: Con no Baka (anime convention). I'm hooked on anime. Also, I went to a convention in August and travelled with some rather eager fans. Eager female fans. Dressed up as female anime characters. (Liberally clad) female anime characters make me happy. Lalalalala~

5) Friday, December 9: release of "Memoirs of a Geisha" AND "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe"! Holy crap. Narnia obviously has me bouncing around like a pogo stick in anticipation (all a result of one fantabulously made trailer), but it's hard to say which film I'm more excited about. Memoirs, after all, has that freak-awesome cast...

Tagging cognoscente, lindodles, agentrain, wootaameron, violingirlinto

So....

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 02:25:42 GMT

In belated response to being tagged (with of course the utmost unwillingness) by the resident High Priestess, here are Five Things That Make Me Happy:

1) Coming home from school on Wednesdays, because I know I won't have class again till Monday afternoon. And no matter how much crap I have to do, I almost always veg out on Wednesday evenings.

2) Watching a movie I really like with someone who hasn't seen it before. Even in the rare situation when they don't actually end up liking the movie, I still enjoy it because I *assume* they're liking it (until they inform me otherwise and deflate my mood :P).

3) Spontaneously coming up with ridiculous analogies, and then having a good laugh about it. For example, in a conversation today: "Good, you're starting to think outside the box. To poke your head through the lid, so to speak, like a perisocope, or R2D2 after falling into the swamps of Dagobah."

4) Being able to turn an otherwise frustrating driving experience into something constructive. For example, dissecting every driving manouevre, no matter how trivial. "What a magnificently understated left-turn. I am awe-struck by the sublime beauty of that curve." Then launching into a modified version of the Strongbad Techno Song. In canon. ("The Left Turn is down!") Or pretending to have an arsenal of red shells you can toss out the window to unsuspecting vehicles. And insulting jerkwad drivers using the names of flowers. "You goddamn hibiscus!!"

5) Cheering someone up, or inspiring them in some way. Couple weeks ago a friend spent three hours telling me about his novel. The total number of sentences I spoke during this time, excluding the phrases "Right", "Okay," "Uh-huh", "Huh...", "Cool", "Neat", "Sweet", "Hardcore", and "That's freaking nuts dude", was about two. Later this person remarked that I had inspired him to resume work on the novel, which had been on hiatus for a while. I said, "But I didn't say anything the whole time." He said, "That's exactly it! You didn't tell me to stop talking, and that was inspiring." So there you go.

There are obviously other, slightly more well-documented things that make me happy as well :)

I tag...um...anyone else who wants to be tagged? Anyone who's already been tagged but hasn't responded? Anyone who's responded and wants to do the quiz again? Anyone? Everyone? (And no one!)

It's not summer anymore...

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 03:40:23 GMT

...but I keep thinking it is. I should stop that, considering my workload. Occasionally I'll chip away at the block, and a whole pile of new crap gets dumped on me. So I just dropped a course...that'll teach 'em!

So here's what's left:

The Symphonies of Shostakovich - We analyze each of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies, all in the context of his political background. Tons of assignments, most involving research (so at times it feels less like a music course than one in Soviet history.) Shostakovich is one of the most interesting composers of our century, mainly because 1) his political beliefs were ambiguous as hell, seemingly to the point of contradiction, yet 2) his music is clearly shaped by the political forces around him (but how??), and finally 3) the music itself kicks ass. Our prof is Sasha Rapoport, my third year composition teacher; part Brahms, part Santa Claus, and 100% awesome :)

Composing for Percussion - My prof is Christos Hatzis, who's my comp teacher this year (and the last). The course itself is pretty self-explanatory. Some of the extended technqiues are bloody cool. Did you know you can make a bass drum sound like a fog horn just by rubbing your thumb against the surface? I didn't either...

Extended Tonal Techniques - My prof here is Mark Sallmen, the latest in a long line of eccentric geniuses who happen to teach music theory at UofT for a living. Self-described as "insane", he can be seen hurrying around the school grounds as if on some urgent errand, even if none exists. He's like the human embodiment of a V chord, or an electron that refuses to go back to ground state. Although he laughs a lot, I was, for a while, unable to tell whether he was reacting to a joke or...just...laughing. Anyway, the class is cool, but we get some pretty scary shit to analyze -- the kind of stuff that's so complex it doesn't sound tonal, but isn't atonal, either.

Composition - Me: "Yeah, so...I promise I'll write some music for next week." Christos: "I am not terribly opposed to that idea."

Christos actually took me out for lunch today, which was very nice. We had dim sum. We ordered a bunch of stuff and ate it all. He talked about being shortlisted as the composer for the (then) Baz Luhrman film "Alexander", before rotten luck sank the whole production. (The movie got resurrected, by the way, with Oliver Stone at the helm and Vangelis behind the score, to apparently catastrophic results. But the DVD is supposed to be much better than the theatrical release and the Vangelis score is still better than Horner's replacement music for "Troy.")

My parents just bought a new car, finally replacing our loyal, 15-year old Honda Accord with another Accord of the new/used variety (2003 model). Whee! I'm happy at our new acquisition, but at the same time sad to see the old one go. It was a really great car...a lot of happy memories :)

In other news, I attended an anime club with Mark last Friday. The audience was as disturbingly obsessed as I'd expected, although their enthusiasm heightened the cinematic experience of the screenings. We watched a bunch of episodes from shows whose titles I can't remember, but I enjoyed them all. For the finale we watched "Steamboy". Although it's being sold as a film "by the makers of Akira", it doesn't feel like Akira at all, except for the character designs. For one thing, there's something very North-American-PG about it (and Akira was most definitely NOT that.) And the editing feels Miyazaki-esque. Anyway, I really liked it, even though I'm starting to get sick of these Metropolis rip-offs (I think we *all* know what's going to happen to the big tower at the end that's a symbol of military/scientific progress/decadence, etc. etc.)

On Saturday: handball, and FFVII: Advent Children (again). Sunday: The Constant Gardener, which I hope everyone who gives a damn will see at some point or other in their lives.

You are a
Social Liberal
(76% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(20% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Socialist

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Huh...I guess I *do* have a political opinion after all :P

Back to school

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 17:20:53 GMT

I’ve been too lazy to write entries for a long while, but I’m going to try to get back into the habit of updating regularly. Wish me luck... :P

First, I should mention that I have a new blog. Well, actually, I am the partial contributor to a blog that has been in existence for a few months, but I forgot to plug it until now. Anyway, check it out:

Lion’s Den

Josh is the proud originator and Bryan and I pay our occasional respects. It’s not meant to replace my current journal. We haven’t quite figured out what it’s for, really. I suppose that in theory this one’s dedicated to more personal, day-today stuff, while Josh’s is a place where we can rant about movies, politics, and whatever else happens to fly within the radar of our overly journalistic instincts. So go have a peak. [poke]

I was prowling around the net and saw that the Mississauga Symphony Orchestra has put up their concert schedule. Scroll down to March 25. Yup, that’s right. I hope some of you will show up—I’m only giving a six-month warning, after all ;). It’ll be fun — like Hamilton, but way closer.

Last week wasn’t much fun. On Tuesday and Wednesday I wrote three masters’ entrance exams—diagnostic tests, instituted by the composition department to gauge our weaknesses and apply the appropriate remedies (in the form of extra courses.) I can’t fault the logic of the department, as every composition grad student except me did their undergrad somewhere else, and you learn different things at different schools—but that didn’t mean I had to enjoy the nine hours spent in a room with nothing but a desk, a piano, and the distant echoes of happier musicians for company as I struggled through the questions. Which were hard. I might add that the situation was ripe for cheating, as I was completely unsupervised the entire time, but there was really no point as we weren’t being marked. Besides, a music exam is hard to cheat on. It’s like a cross between writing an essay and doing a math test; there is a framework of definite rules, but within it you need to manouevre with some creativity.

After the exams was the TA interview, which by itself went well (even according to my theory prof who was on the panel), but I didn’t get the position. Too many union rules working against me and the hordes of other hopefuls, according to him and Gary. The ones who’ve TAed before are guaranteed placement, and they all applied this year, which leaves no room for the newbies. And unlike, say, any other graduate field, we’ve got a surplus of applicants and a shortage of positions. Ah well...here’s looking forward to the next year’s exodus of PhD students :P

As for this week...well, things don't seem all that different from usual. I’m sure that has something to do with the fact that I am, once again, in the same building that I’ve been in for the last four years, learning from the same profs with (more or less) the same colleagues. The workload hasn’t changed much either. Despite the fact that my schedule looks light as a feather — no courses on Tuesday and Thursday, a class each on Monday and Friday — the assignments are more intense, which evens everything out. One of my classes today was even a tad overwhelming (“Extended Tonal Techniques.”) Our prof zipped through a ‘review’ of Materials III that I had to struggle to keep up with. I understood the material on an intuitive level, but the terms, the classifications, the whole official process was foreign to me. Maybe this was because I had been taught, in Materials III, by the female incarnate of Willy Wonka (Liz gets credit for that disturbingly apt comparison) and as you can imagine, she didn’t bestow much in the way of wisdom upon me, or if she did I don’t know where I put it. (Ms. Wonka was, at the very least, really entertaining to watch...)

One thing I like about the music faculty at UofT is that even though there are tons of people and a serious shortage of opportunities like...hmm....academic job positions (nothing new in music I guess), there’s still this sense of intimacy I find unique among most disciplines. Today, for example, I went out for coffee with my prof, Christos Hatzis. We always go to the law faculty next door to grab our coffee, since they serve crap at ours. After our lesson we discussed film music en route to Radioshack (he needed a new mouse). Then, later, Scott and I went to another prof of mine's house (Sasha Rapoport). He turned us loose on his old PC, then served us tea while we raided his CD collection and burned his Shostakovich discs.

What else? I watched the leaked copy of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children today. (Fret not; I will be buying the legit version when it comes out.) For the uninitiated, the film is a 95-minute cinematic sequel to the game that took me 40 hours to (almost) beat, and would have taken me more had I bothered to uncover all the secret plot points and side quests. For me, FF7 was one of those intense, life-affirming experiences that no one else is likely to take seriously because, dude, it’s just a video game. Watching the movie pushed my buttons and triggered my emotion ducts in a way that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t played FF7 (especially as the movie makes, like, NO sense on its own.) If you *have* played FF7, you'll know what I mean once you see AC.

Is the movie good? Did it live up to our (insanely high) expectations? Did I watch the film with my eyes glued to the screen and my jaw glued to the floor even as my higher brain functions contemplated what might have filled the gaping hole of a screenplay? Find out next time, or not, depending on whether I feel like rambling at the expense of schoolwork. For now, it’s back to studying for me....

P.S. Convention pics next time...really!

Wedding pictures

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 01:08:47 GMT

Hello everyone,

Here are, as promised, selected highlights from Mark and Liz's wedding. I would normally write a nice, long entry to go along with the pictures...but this time, you'll just have to content yourselves with the occasional caption :). Blame the summer, or what's left of it.

Blame the pictures too. Some are just too beautiful to sum up in words.

from left to right: Diedre (maid of honour), Lex, Esther (bridesmaids)

I've done my job :)

[sniff]

Me, signing the registry thingy

It's a lovely day outside the church. Not too sunny, not too hot -- which was a relief because we were already boiling in our tuxes.

Clockwise: Me, Scott, David Arcus, David Federman (friends of the groom). Notice Scott's traditional Chinese garb...very snazzy ;)

My friend Michelle, who's *also* getting married next year...dang, I feel old.

The two guys to the left are Mike (Liz's brother) and Neal (Mark's brother).

Reception was held at Trinity College, which is a part of UofT. Esther remarked that it was an odd experience for her since Trinity College was her student residence!

Quite possibly the most half-hearted "kicking" picture I've ever been in...(not that I've been in many)

That's a bit better

Inside Trinity College, the hall on the upper floor. After the main reception a concert was held here. Mark, Liz, their siblings/parents, me, and a whole bunch of our colleagues performed here. It was one of the best concerts I've ever been involved in; unfortunately, there are no pictures of that event as it went well into the evening, and the photographer was probably not booked for then.

The wedding party table, which included Diedre's finacee Aaron and Mike's friend/girlfriend (we're not sure - it's one of those situations) Carissa.

The musicians' table: made up entirely of pianists, violinists, and composers! The gentleman beside Scott is Scott St. John, a nationally renowned violinist.

Uh-oh...you guessed it, that's my toast they're responding to.

Yup, that's me, soapbox and all

"Well, *that's* something I didn't know about Mark..."
Ah, you gotta love these reaction shots... :D

Chris and Carissa, married last year, both pianists.

***

Well, that's a sample. Aren't they lovely? If you can believe it, there are at least a thousand more from where that came from:

More Pictures

Insane, I know.

Coming up: Convention Pics. Be afraid....

Nova Scotia

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 01:51:04 GMT

Hello all! I thought I would finally make a return to livejournal with my much-delayed trip entry — this time detailing my six-day excursion to the east coast. So, without any further delay, I will plunge right in...

Day One - The Arrival (May 18)

My flight was at 6:15 pm. Since I didn’t have a ride to the airport, I had to go to Kipling Station (the last subway stop on the west end of the Bloor line) in order to take a bus to the terminal. Being paranoid about time, as always, I left home at 2:00 pm. Of course I was ridiculously early, arriving at the airport at around 3:45 pm. I spent my two hours or so buying snacks, sleeping, developing characters and plot for "Empire of Paradise" (in its zillionth incarnation), and listening to Gabriel Yared’s "Troy" soundtrack. On the plane I made more character sketches. I also ate a bag of ruffles sour cream & onion chips (loudly) while politely refusing the snacks offered by the flight attendants.

Somewhere over Mississauga:

Upon arrival at the Halifax airport I...disembarked. [The writer pauses to ponder why it took him so long to bridge the gap between "I" and "disembarked."] Josh was nowhere in sight, so I headed straight to the baggage conveyor belt. Fortunately, he and Elyse arrived shortly after I picked up my suitcase. And then we were off.

On the way to Wolfville I got my first taste of a peculiar acoustic phenomenon that was to arise again during our many ensuing road trips.

Josh (driving): [muttering something unintelligible]

Elyse (shotgun): [muttering something else unintelligible]

(Josh or Elyse turn to me with a questioning look)

Me (backseat): What?

Well, it wasn’t quite that bad. But I really had trouble hearing what either of them were saying unless I leaned forward in my seat, and that only worked if they were actually talking to me. Consequently I spent most of the trip to Wolfville in silence, but it wasn’t for lack of anything to say!

We arrived in Wolfville about an hour later. I knew Wolfville was a small town (population 6000) but I still found myself adjusting to the bizarre proportions of everything. One moment we were on a country road, enveloped in darkness (there were few lights), and the next in the middle of suburbia — albeit one that was really spacious. Josh and Elyse live on the same street, which lies on a gentle slope that ends in a crescent at the top of the hill. Elyse’s house happens to be one of the two that occupy the crescent, and as a result has a fantastic view of the town.

I can’t recall exactly what we did later that night — I know we were at Josh’s place at one point and Elyse’s at another, and there was Scotch involved — but I do recall what happened on....

Day Two - The End of a Saga

Josh had to get up and do a photoshoot early in the morning (I think it’ll be funnier if I choose not to elaborate on that one). When he got back, a full three hours later (noon), I was barely awake. Little did I know that this would be one of our earliest rises...

During the day Josh took me on a tour of Wolfville (which didn’t take very long), as well as some of the neighboring towns, including New Minas and Kentville. We had lunch at a diner in Kentville called Paddy’s, where I ordered some kind of fish meal (I think it was halibut.) The food tasted absolutely heavenly, though this may have been due to my enlarged appetite (I’d missed out on dinner the night before). We discussed our very preliminary story ideas, including my obsession with trying to incorporate flying cities into everything I write.

While we were in Wolfville Josh showed me around Acadia University, all the while pointing to every single person who entered our field of vision and telling me exactly who they were. This was another facet of life in a small town that made perfect sense and yet I was surprised to actually witness.

The tour over, we headed home. On the way, I decided to snap a couple shots of Josh’s house and the surrounding area. Note the overcast sky; but hey, at least it remained dry.

Josh's house:

Josh's street - you can just make out Elyse's house at the very end:

The other way:

We still had a couple of hours to kill before The Movie. And what better way to spend those hours than by playing video games? We started with Mario Kart DDR for Gamecube. This was our official start to the many gaming sessions which followed. Afterwards we enjoyed a bit of Kraft Dinner (I was still hungry at that point, and KD never tasted so good in my life), picked up Elyse and her brother (Alex) and sister (Margo), and headed to New Minas to see "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" at a cinema chain called Empire Theatres.

We arrived about an hour before the movie started, and commenced the obligatory line-up. At this point things got a bit confusing for me. You see — New Minas, being essentially the commercial equivalent of Wolfville, consequently attracts tons of Wolfville residents, and so the entire lobby was crammed with people who knew one another. Josh and Elyse got to talking to some people in a parking lot (I never quite figured out who), so Alex was sent ahead to hold the line for us. Unfortunately he ended up joining some random group of friends he met up with; Margo and I had to rush in to take his place after we realized he wasn’t saving us a spot in line. In the end, there was nothing to worry about; we got decent seats. The theatre was packed, as expected, and there were even a couple lightsabers swishing about, which is always a healthy sign (for the theatre, anyway.)

And then the lights dimmed...and the excitement began! People were laughing a lot during the trailers, often at inappropriate places, like the title appearance of "Cinderella Man." Not that I have any desire to see that movie, but...it’s really not *that* funny, people! Thankfully, though, everyone quieted down as the real movie began...an atmosphere of hushed anticipation (skepticism? boredom?) descended upon the audience.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away...

STAR WARS
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

War! .....

Sweeeeet. (Shove that up your tax-burdened-behind, Phantom Menace!)

Starry silkiness. Two fighters, flying in perfect, graceful synchronization with one another, gliding across the hull of the Coruscant mothership, then clearing it to reveal the biggest f***ing space battle ever seen on celluloid, set to John Williams’ war anthem rendition of the Force Theme — oh, how could I maintain my skepticism in the face of such sweet sights? How could anyone?

(Two and a half hours later)

Alex: Well, that was a BIG disappointment.

Elyse: You were actually *expecting* it to be good?

Okay, I guess some could. And yes, they have their reasons, and they’re not invalid ones. Josh and I weren’t among them — indeed, Josh was so speechless with amazement that he wouldn’t even talk about the movie afterwards! (He did, however, go online and surround himself with various comments about the film, I suppose to better elucidate his own thoughts. His consequent insights into the film’s political subtext were particularly cool. I just really dug the cinematography :P)

Day Three - Bad Weather

We were limited by what we could do today because it was raining outside, and I didn’t bring my umbrella to Nova Scotia (although I did bring a whole lot of other things I didn’t end up using.) That was all right — I was counting on an indoors day anyway so that we could catch up on the little things that make life sweet.

For a long time, those little things all seemed to revolve around the word "sleep." I woke up at noon, again. Josh woke up earlier, but he didn’t actually get up till well afterwards. Oh well. We soon got used to this arrangement. It was at this time that I got a bit of story work done. At some point fairly late in the afternoon we made some instant noodles. The rest of the day seemed to pass rather quickly, although I’m not entirely clear on all that we did. We may or may not have watched an episode of Stargate SG-1, and we definitely did play some SNES, although I fail to recall which games we played in particular.

In the evening we had takeout from Pizza Hut, and then went over to Elyse’s, watched the tail end of "Shallow Hal", and then watched one of Margo’s school plays on DVD with her friend, which was a rather odd experience. The play was some kind of musical based on Dr. Seuss, but the sound quality of the recording wasn’t sufficiently good enough for me to actually figure out what was happening most of the time.

Exhausted from our long, productive day, we eventually retired to our respective homes to spend another restful night...

Day Four - Halifax

One aspect of Josh’s living habits that I found pretty neat was his insistence on opening the bedroom window on rainy nights. No, it’s not as wonky as it sounds. Leaving the window slightly ajar gives the whole room a kind of rain ‘ambience’ that’s very soothing, like listening to one of those nature tranquillity tapes on a $5000 stereo system. Very lovely.

Anyway, after another late rise, we decided to take a trip to Halifax. The sky was overcast and the temperature a bit too cold for comfort, but at least it wasn’t raining. Josh’s dad, who had many an errand to take care of that day, drove us. En route to Halifax we had lunch at a funky burger joint. Without a picture to go by the details are a bit fuzzy, so all I remember of the interior is that there were a lot of greens, reds, and metal. The food was really good (mmm, chicken burger.) We also stopped by a funky supermarket in a town called Bedford. Inside the supermarket there was, among other quirks, a guy sitting on an extraordinarily high ledge (well above our heads), playing an upright piano that was probably designed deliberately to sound as though the keys were about to fall off. He sang as he played while turning his head this way and that and surveying all the shoppers below him in a somewhat creepy manner.

Me: (after a while) Where’s your dad?
Josh: I have no idea.
Me: Maybe he went back to the car.
Josh: Okay, I’ll check. You stay here.

So while Josh went back to the car, I wandered around the front of the supermarket until I found Josh’s dad at one of the cashiers.

Josh’s dad: Where’s Josh?
Me: He went to look for you at the car.
Josh’s dad: Oh. Shall we wait here then?
Me: Let’s go look for him. He’s probably waiting at the car.

So we went to the car, and of course, no one was there. Five minutes later, standing at the car, we saw Josh emerging from the supermarket.

I can never figure out how these things happen.

Anyway, we went to Halifax. Josh’s dad was a very good tour guide, talking a great deal about the history of the places we passed by and so forth, but unfortunately much of what he said was lost to my ears because I couldn’t hear him properly from the backseat. Anyway, after a bunch of starts and stops which I won’t detail here, we finally ended up walking on a trail by the peninsula (near the Halifax harbour, I believe.) It was a bit sad, actually, because much of the forested area by the trail had been swept away by the hurricane some months before, leaving in its wake a lot of dead trees.

After our hike Josh’s dad took us out for dinner at a wonderful Japanese restaurant, where we had, as expected, tons of sushi. The only thing that disagreed with me was a spicy tuna handroll — it was just WAY too hot for me, and I made the mistake of trying to eat the whole thing, believing that I could somehow dilute the effect of the spice by eating more at once. A theory that bears remarkable resemblance to my attempts at diluting the effect of alcohol by drinking large quantities of it at once. Neither works, really. (I can’t imagine why — they’re brilliant ideas...!?)

I would have a picture of my death throes for you, except that while I was dying, Josh snapped a shot of this cute little lemon instead, which was evidently more interesting.

After dinner we headed back to Wolfville, where we tackled the Super Nintendo once again. We played "Turtles in Time", beating the game on hard in — what was it again, Josh — 23 minutes? Then I started playing "Mario: Lost Levels" (from the Mario All-Stars cartridge.) Unbeknownst to me at the time, this game would become a significant side quest that would seize me in its obsessive grip for the rest of my vacation.

Finally, we watched "The Rock", which is always a pleasant experience. I noted, with some pleasure, the immense plot hole that exists in the middle of the film — why exactly does Mason need his rolling-through-the-tunnel-of-fire-that-has-no-purpose routine when he can just open the door from the inside? — but we both dismissed it as irrelevant, albeit funny.

And that was that.

Day Five - Another Rainy Day

Once again, the rain kept us indoors all day. We made good use of our time, however. First, we slept through the whole morning. In the afternoon, I read a bit of Josh's Miyazaki book. We watched more Stargate SG-1, played some Mario DDR, and took turns on the exercise bike while watching the end of "Star Trek: First Contact." Later, Josh attempted to install Rebel Assault (a really old Star Wars game that has great nostalgic value for us) on one of his computers. While he was doing this, I was playing "Mario: Lost Levels." I had made it as far as 4-4 (world four, level four) but I was stuck at this ridiculous nightmare of a castle. What made it worse was that I didn't have to be there — goddamit, I *know* the princess isn’t in this one!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Lost Levels, by the way, it’s essentially the same as the first Mario game, design-wise. The difference, of course, is that the levels are exceedingly more difficult (and more inventive as well, in my opinion.) It’s a game where you’re more likely to step on a poisoned mushroom than a real one, or encounter "bonus" warp zones that take you *back* several worlds instead of forward (I once had to kill Mario by timing out in order to avoid warping); where obtaining firepower is a luxury, and extra lives a near impossibility.

After dying about thirty times, Josh finally managed to get Rebel Assault up and running.

Josh: *Why* are you still playing this?

Me: I have very fond memories of getting extremely frustrated by a video game, and I wanted to relive them.

Meanwhile, Josh was playing the first real combat level in Rebel Assault, where you get to attack a Star Destroyer. It’s a pretty silly level, actually. Your ship basically flies around on a set course, over and over and over again, until you destroy the Star Destroyer’s shield generators. Problem is, it takes a lot less time to wipe out all the guns on the Star Destroyer than it does to take out the shield generators, so half the time you’re just sitting there with nothing to do until your X-wing clears one part of the ship and you get a bunch of TIE fighters attacking you in oddly predictable formations. Still a fun game, though.

In the evening, after catching the last half hour or so of "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones," we played two rounds of chess. During the first game Josh had the lead for a while, until I surprise-checkmated him. The second game I won in a slow and painful manner (for him, anyway). The same can be said for "Hotels", a Monopoly-styled game, except that it was he who won this time. The difference was that unlike chess, I was not allowed to resign until the end of all things, when I had sold all of my property, and anyone who’s played Monopoly knows how painful that can be.

Victory is Josh's:

All the while we had the "Goldeneye" DVD playing in the background (and I would pause to oggle each time Ms. Onatopp appeared.) All in all, it was one of our best nights.

Day Six - Peggy’s Cove

Today was Victoria Day. Josh’s dad, who is awesome, decided to take us to on another sightseeing adventure. The sky was, once again, grey and overcast, but at least it wasn’t raining. Yet.

After a few rounds of Star Trek: Voyager (the Voyager marathon was on) we hopped into the car and headed to Peggy’s Cove, one of Nova Scotia’s most famous tourist locales. On the way there, it began to rain.

Me: (optimistic as usual) Well, at least it isn’t pouring.

And then it began to pour. Figures!

You would think that rain in itself would ruin a trip, but as it turned out, the rain was merely the icing on a particularly nasty, bitter, er...weather-themed cake. Upon arrival at Peggy’s Cove, I knew we would be facing cold temperatures (the car thermometer read 6 degrees C). I was unprepared, however, for the sheer physical assault we experienced the moment we opened our doors. From the moment we left the car we were attacked by some of the fiercest winds I have ever encountered in my lifetime. It was the kind of wind that hurt your eyes and made you lose your footing. Gale winds, Josh explained to me (I didn’t know what they were), ranged from 70 to 100 kilometres per hour.

That sounded about right. Anyway, the first thing we did (upon exiting the car) was make a run for the gift shop. Inside, I took the opportunity to buy myself a couple souvenirs — a fridge magnet for my mom, since she loves those, and some decorative dolphin thingy for myself. I was seriously tempted to buy a rain jacket (I envied Josh’s hood) but I was worried about the price. Bracing ourselves, we then headed out again to brave the winds and attempt a brief walk onto Peggy’s Cove.

I don’t really know how to describe Peggy’s Cove beyond the fact that it’s a basically a big pile of stones, overlooking the ocean, with a lighthouse in the middle of it all. On a sunny, warm, dry, non-windy day, the place would be teeming with people. Now, only a few courageous (or mad) souls dared to venture forth onto the treacherous rocks.

Most of us didn’t get very far. Josh, his dad, and I made it to about the lighthouse. At this point, Josh’s dad announced his (rather sensible) desire to head back to the car. Josh, also rather sensibly, agreed with him. I, on the other hand, chose to remain, for reasons beyond my capacity to articulate at the moment.

Saruman: (voiceover) You have elected....THE WAY OF PAIN!!

So while Josh and his dad returned to the parking lot, I plunged on ahead, past the lighthouse, toward the open sea. The tide was heavy, the surf furious. Huge waves like great white beasts crashed upon the shore, foam dribbling down the necks of the rocks. The whole ocean writhed and belched like some living animal. I kept on, leaping from stone to stone. The wind was so strong it was difficult to see properly; it whipped at my face and combined with the surf to create a tumultuous din. At this point I was completely alone — which made sense, as I couldn’t imagine anyone who would be crazy enough to share my peculiar fascination with being pummeled by nature’s wrath. I got as close as I could to the surf as I dared, found some cover, and snapped more pictures.

The lighthouse (on the way back):

To me, there is a great comfort, almost an exhilaration, in experiencing some of the more awe-inspiring facets of the natural world, even if it’s only for a moment. Sometimes, though, I forget that my body isn’t quite up to my mind's task. When I returned to the car I felt faint, light-headed, nauseated, and had trouble breathing. I don’t really remember much of what happened right afterwards (possibly because I fell asleep.)

Later that day we stopped at Chapters, where I bought three books — "Absolute Friends" by John LeCarre (for Josh), "War of the Flowers" by Tad Williams, and "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden. Josh bought a book about game theory, I believe.

About an hour later we were home, and doing what we did best — play video games! I finally managed to beat 4-4 of Lost Levels and was making my way through the latter half of the game. We had, for dinner, a massive order of Kentucky Fried Chicken (we saw the commercial earlier in the day and couldn't stop salivating ever since). It was an extraordinarily satisfying meal. Afterwards we ditched Lost Levels for some good old-fashioned Mario 3. We made it up to the Sky World (World 5) until Elyse joined us, whereupon we switched to Mario Kart (both the SNES and Gamecube versions.) I don’t believe I fared very well against either Josh or Elyse, who are both extremely good — Elyse beat Josh consistently on the SNES game, which is quite a feat in itself.

So...this following picture has three degrees of awkwardness -- Elyse wanted to be left out, Josh was making certain he *wouldn't* be left out, and I was sprawled across the floor ;)

After a couple episodes of Seinfeld, it was time to retire for the night. And retire we did (at about 3:30 am, our latest hour yet.)

Day Seven - The Final Chapter: Cape Blomidon

I woke up with a sore throat, which could only bode ill for the next little while (as it did.) Gee, I wonder what was it I did yesterday that could possibly have made me sick....

Anyway, Day Seven was notable for a few reasons. For one thing, it was the last day of my vacation, and I was sad to leave, though staying longer would probably have driven both me and Josh batty (just kidding ;)). It was also the day where I managed to make it to 8-4 of Lost Levels. 8-4! I have never been so proud of any feat.

I mean, you don’t understand. This game is insane. Like, fried pancakes on a rabbit insane. On one of the levels, I have to jump on a spring that catapults me off the screen, and then somehow navigate my invisible Mario so that he lands on this tiny strip of land in the middle of nowhere. Then I have to repeat that four times throughout the level, with the strip of land getting smaller and smaller each time round. Then there’s this other level (8-3, I believe) where I get to the end, and there’s a pipe that leads me back to the middle of the level! After dying about a dozen times (this was *after* making it alive to the end of the level) I finally discovered that in order to beat the level I have to hit a block which triggers a beanstalk, but in order to hit the block I need to use a flying koopa suspended over an abyss for leverage, smack the block, land safely on the head of another flying koopa, and use *that* koopa to grab the beanstalk. Madness!

Then there’s 8-4, the last level of the game, which I couldn’t beat — hell, I had to spend five lives just to make the screen scroll.

Ah, fun times, fun times.

But anyway, to answer your (unspoken) question, we did not spend my last day in Nova Scotia playing Lost Levels, for something happened on this day that we did not foresee: the weather was good! It was bright, sunny, and relatively warm, with only a few clouds streaked against a very blue sky. In other words, it was a perfect day. So when Josh’s dad came home, we immediately set off to explore one of Wolfville’s ‘local’ sights: Cape Blomidon. (Did I mention Josh’s dad is awesome?)

We reached the cape and walked along the beach, kicking stones around, climbing the large, red mounds that supported the cliffs, and tossing my camera back and forth to take pictures. It was all quite wonderful.

I tried to clean my shoes under this waterfall. It didn't really work, but at least I got my socks soaked in the process:

Don't crawl in there!

Josh took the next few:

Can you spot me?

Back in my hands...

We found this interesting white stone on the beach that shattered easily upon impact, and brought some home:

After the cape we headed home, I said goodbye to Josh’s dad, and then Josh drove me (with Elyse, who was marking tests in the back seat) to Halifax. We had dinner (which we referred fatefully to as "The Last Supper" for no good reason other than to make a silly pun) at an Italian restaurant in Bedford whose name escapes me (all I can think of is Il Mercutio), near the funky supermarket we went to a few days back. I ordered something that looked incomprehensible on the menu, but it turned out to be just lasagna—albeit really, *really* good lasagna. The subjects of our dinner conversation included my achievements in Lost Levels, Elyse’s hatred of Tom Cruise, and the fluctuating weight patterns of certain celebrities. It was great.

[EDIT: I was just talking to Josh on MSN and the restaurant’s name is Il Mercato, which makes a lot more sense.]

Then it was time to go. We headed to Halifax; Josh and Elyse accompanied me to the airport. We said our goodbyes, then I was off.

In summary...well, what can I say? It’s the trip Josh and I have been discussing for at least four years (although, in the true spirit of the way we do things, there was virtually no planning involved until the last couple weeks before my flight.) And it was exactly the trip I’d been looking forward to — a chance to relax away from home for a week, see some cool sights, get acquainted with the lovely Elyse, and of course, to bond with my best friend.

And beat Mario: Lost Levels. (Well...almost.)

Ep. III

Fri, 20 May 2005 04:11:13 GMT

Kevin: What did you think?

Josh: I told you what I thought.

Kevin: Rrright. Well...

Josh: What did you think?

Kevin: I thought it was quite incredible, actually.

Josh: Mmm. Yeah.

Kevin: I guess the main thing is that I actually *felt* something this time.

Josh: Indeed.

Kevin: I mean, putting aside all the flaws for a moment -- and yes, there were flaws...but this time they were more just...details...

Josh: Yeah. And, let's be honest...it's not like the original trilogy was completely without flaws.

Kevin: Certainly.

Josh: And if you want to know what I think about the original trilogy's flaws --

Kevin: Yes?

Josh: Ask me again sometime.

Bumpity-dum.

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 05:27:29 GMT

Since the lack of friends' entries is making me batty, I shall update, so as not to be batty. Also, to delay working on film stuff. And I have decided that I will no longer score films unless I am paid -- reasonably -- to do so. Or if my friends ask me. (Hmm, I guess that's not much improvement, is it?)

I don't really know what to write about. Life has been progressing as usual -- in fact it's been as hectic as ever, but I don't have the energy to recap everything. So...perhaps I will start with some random things.

I was listening to Elliot Goldenthal's ballet, "Othello", earlier today. Goldenthal is one wacky composer. He is married to Julie Taymour, who directed the stage version of "The Lion King". She was also the mastermind responsible for the movie adaptation of Shakespeare's "Titus", which I watched till 4 am on last Friday. Thankfully on an empty stomach. It's a pretty sick movie. But good. Really good.

I had a

...and some of you were in it. I only managed to catch a fragment of the dream -- I know there was more, but it's gone now. We were on a road trip in B.C. somewhere, our group taking several cars as usual. At the foothills of a mountain ridge, in the middle of some wildneress, we decide to take a break. Some of our company go off and start swinging on the swings and playing on the playground nearby (everyone knows there are playgrounds everywhere in the middle of the mountains!) I, however, decide that I would rather take a ride on Buckbeak, who is conveniently standing nearby. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get him to fly unless I start playing Buckbeak's theme on the piano (which is *also* conveniently standing nearby), so I do just that. And when I start playing the theme, Buckbeak takes off, but I have to keep at it, or else he lands. It was like operating an extremely bizarre version of a wind-up toy.

How I manage to fly through the air on the wings of a Hippogriff while playing the piano (which I'm pretty sure is firmly rooted to the ground) I'll leave to your imagination...

I finish the theme, and Buckbeak lands. A great deal of time has passed, even though Buckbeak's theme is only two minutes and eight seconds. (Maybe I was a tad rusty?) Two of the three cars have already left, and the passengers in the remaining car are waiting for me to quit mucking around. So we get in the car. I get in the driver's seat. (Did I mention that I was dreaming?) We then proceed to drive up the most godawful slope to ever have a road built on it. I'm not even sure we *were* on a road most of the time, since all I remember is ploughing through endless clusters of dead vegetation. All I know is that we could see our destination -- a round dome and a series of buildings at the top of the ridge, like some kind of paradisical university campus, as spiritually remote from UofT as one could get, I suppose, and as physically distant as that restaurant on top of Killington peak in Vermont, which is quite possibly the most obscure reference I could have made in this context. Oh well...c'est la vie.

The 'road' (or path, or whatever it is) now veers sharply to the right. I drive stubbornly through more branches and ferns and messy undergrowth, then emerge on a (relatively) clear, rocky path. The road is now about twelve inches wide, with a sheer drop to our right and a cliff looming above us to our left, but for some reason our vehicle doesn't tumble to death and destruction. And it was all due to my uncanny capacity to rev tires and shift gears like a madman. God bless the miracle of traction. Anyway, my passengers, who are I believe Debbie and Shaun at this point, seem more annoyed than terrified out of their wits, which they should have been. Debbie says something like, "Are you sure this is the right way?" and Shaun makes some smart-ass comment about my driving skills, which I'm sure was perfectly valid, even if I *was* single-handedly defying the laws of physics in order to keep us alive.

Eventually we make it to the top, and we see a neat little parking lot at the crest of the mountain. There's a guesthouse of sorts at the far end of the parking lot, looking suspiciously like a Swiss bed & breakfast, except that it's connected to the building behind it, and the building behind that....I realize that we are way, way off course. Our 'destination' was supposed to be the big round dome we saw earlier, which is symbolic of the eden-like university campus, but we are about a mile east from that dome, and in order to get there we have to somehow make our way through the longest building ever built (which happens to be straddling an incredibly inaccessible mountain ridge.)

I go into the guesthouse and 'check in' with the concierge. I inquire about the difficulty in getting here, and showed the lady my map as proof. "See? The road is supposed to go straight up the hill, but I could have sworn it kept swerving and looping."

"Ah," the lady says, smiling. "Well, you see, we designed those maps ourselves. We purposely drew that road in a straight line so that it would look easy to travellers. If we made the road look the way it actually was, we wouldn't get many customers up here, now, would we?"

"I can't argue with that," I say.

I return to our convoy. Debbie and Shaun have now been replaced by Robert, Bryan, Judy, and Josh. If you have played Final Fantasy, you will know why this metamorphisis is perfectly natural. I simply switched parties. (There was no other way of cramming everyone into my Honda accord, okay?) Anyway, they are now playing cards at one of the round tables in the chalet. I think Jon and Jenn or Veejay are phoning us on our cell phones or walkie-talkies or whatever the hell we've got and asking us to hurry up. We, however, feel content to sit around, relax, and order some dinner.

And that's when I woke up.

Well, that took up more time and space than expected. Oh well, good enough. Adieu for now.

So the rumours were true.

Fri, 18 Mar 2005 21:23:13 GMT

In case you haven't heard yet...

The Lord of the Rings: A Musical

Want quotes?

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 03:03:03 GMT

I have a Canadian Fiction essay due Wednesday. In preparation for writing this essay, I first procrastinated. Then I began checking my email accounts. Technically this falls under the umbrella of procrastination, but I've chosen to put it in a separate category all by itself since it occupies an unusually large percentage of my time (sort of like LJ-updating). While I was checking my UofT account, I noticed a rather nifty "Quote of the Day." They always have these whenever you log in, I just never paid much attention to them till now. I went to reload the page so that I could copy it (and then probably paste it in an email and send it off to someone like Josh, who gets random things from me all the time.) But when the page reloaded, the quote had changed. I did this a few times, logging in and out and in again, and each time there was a different quote.

Well, as you can imagine, this led to a whole new form of procrastination, the results of which you can see below.

It's not terribly exciting, really. Just a

Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!
- The Seagulls, Finding Nemo

In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing.
- Van Morrison

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

There is a great disturbance in the force.
- Obi Wan

Okay, we have 48 hours to make this tank dirty. So I want everyone to think dirty, disgusting thoughts.
- Gill, Finding Nemo

There's quite an abundance of Finding Nemo quotes. Whoever designed our email system really loved that movie.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
- E.F. Schumacher

Movie sequels, anyone?

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
- Leo Tolstoy

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
- Helen Keller

Chance favors the prepared mind.
- Louis Pasteur

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
- Alice Walker

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
- Mark Twain

I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

But I like twisting facts...it makes recorded history so much more fun!

The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.
- Albert Einstein

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
- Albert Einstein

If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.
- Margaret Thatcher

If your heart has peace, nothing can distrurb you.
Dalai Lama

Somewhat self-evident, but yes, I'd go with that...

You proceed from a false assumption: I have no ego to bruise.
- Spock

Climb into the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into the trees.
- John Muir

Just have some backup ready in case your arm gets trapped under a boulder.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
- Joseph Addison

My soul...block of marble....I don't get it...

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
- Will Durant

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.
- Robert Frost

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one¹s work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- Winston Churchill

To tell you the truth, in California I missed the wildness of the Canadian winter. There is something stirring about a blizzard, something elemental about pitting oneself against driving, stinging snow in below zero temperatures. I often think it accounts for the general peacefulness of the Canadian character, all the aggressive energy has been used up in battling and surviving nature.
- Blanche Howard

And in writing Canadian literature. It's exhausting just to *read*.

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
- Indira Gandhi

Ah...so *that's* my problem!

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.
- Edward Everett Hale

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
- unknown

It is better for the emissaries returning from the wilderness to record their marvel, not to define its meaning.
- Loren Eiseley

I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.
- Jane Wagner

Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway.
- Mary Kay Ash

Lucky bastard.

But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
- Richard Feynman

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

To teach is to learn.
- Japanese Proverb

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
- Albert Einstein

Eintstein's pretty popular on here, and with good reason.

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.
- Ann Landers

To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject.
- Albert Einstein

You don't see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it.
- Robert Stetson Shaw

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
- H.G. Wells

Science is the century-old endeavour to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualisation. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.
- Albert Einstein

I am chicken. I am in all films.
- Chicken

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
- Oscar Levant

When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half.
- Gracie Allen

Me too. But I was surprised for longer, so nyah.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.
- Helen Keller

I shall call him Squishy, and he shall be mine, and he shall be my Squishy.
- Dory, Finding Nemo

The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.
- Gloria Leonard

The mind is the limit.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger

Schwarzenegger *said* that?

I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.
- Bill Bryson

Ooh, I like that one.

When you reach an equilibrium in biology you are dead.
- Bernardo Huberman

That should be the new catch phrase for death in video games. "You have reached....equilibrium. GAME OVER!"

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.
- Ethel Barrymore

I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research.
- Albert Einstein

When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
- Kikuyu proverb

I like that one too. (Except I just can't see elephants fighting.)

I seldom think of my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.
- Helen Keller

What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

He's dead, Jim.
- Star Trek: The Final Frontier

This is the one that prompted my quote-collecting frenzy.

Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
- Albert Einstein

One ought, everyday, to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
- Goethe

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
- Albert Einstein

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
- Annie Sullivan

I did that the other day and my socks were wet for hours!

Remember you are unique... just like everybody else!
- Guru Stu

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
- Harrison's Postulate

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
- Jean-Paul Sarte

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
- T.S. Eliot

You'll come to learn a great deal if you study the Insignificant in depth.
- Odysseus Elytis

Getting there isn't half the fun - it's all the fun.
- Robert Townsend

No, no, it's half the fun, dammit!

PRESENT, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
- Ambrose Bierce

My dictionary begs to differ...

317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.
- Godfrey Hardy

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
- Albert Einstein

I would have made a good Pope.
- Richard Nixon

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation.
- Jean Kerr

Yup, that's me.

Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away their old clothes and things they don't want.
- Myrtle Reed

What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do during our leisure hours determines what we are.
- George Eastman

I'm a lazy procrastinator who watches way too many movies. (Hey, it works!)

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.
- Scott Adams

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
- Unknown

The sky is falling.
- Chicken Little

Fish are friends, not food.
- Bruce the Shark, Finding Nemo

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
- Albert Einstein

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
- Arthur Honegger

The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.
- Anonymous

Actually the difficulties of life are totally random, but I agree with the essence of the quote.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
- Virgina Woolf

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
- Elbert Hubbard

I never let my schooling interfere with my education.
- Mark Twain

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
- Anna Freud

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
- Anonymous

Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.
- Yoda

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
- Bill Gates, 1981

Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?
- Lily Tomlin

You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do.
- A.J. Kitt

There was also some quote I saw a while back about quotes being useless, but I couldn't find it.

See? UofT has its perks.

Ottawa Trip: The Entry

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 23:25:10 GMT

About 80% of the pictures taken are mine; the rest I lifted from 'other' sources (mainly Debbie's pics), but generally to supplement my own experience. Obviously, this entry represents only a fraction of what actually went on during that trip.

There are a lot of pics, so the page might take a while to load, but hopefully it's worth it.

Day One

It's 11:00 am and everything's packed. It took me, by the way, fifteen minutes to pack my belongings, and thirty minutes to choose my CDs, most of which I knew weren't going to get played anyway. Old habits die hard, I guess. Anyway, my mom dropped me off at Robert's -- she was in a somewhat foul mood, and I don't recall why exactly, only that it had something to do with me telling her that we were leaving town late and then me getting upset at her getting upset and throwing (whipping) my unopened vitasoy on the floor of my room, which exploded, spewing soya milk all over my desk, chair, computer, piano, etc. -- but that's a story for another day. Suffice to say, I arrived at Robert's safely, and we killed a good three hours playing video games and watching "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". At 4:00-ish we picked up Matt and Debbie and visited Debbie's mom's place for a bit; at 4:38, we were off, to a good start no less, crashing into Debbie's snowbank on the way out of the driveway.

Much fun was had on the trip there, most of which was recollected in linden_tree's entry. As for the musical selections, all I can really remember is singing (loudly) to songs from The Lion King, interspersed with impassioned pleas of "O wheeeeeeeeere is my hairbrush???" along with that lovely piece of musical superglue,
"Naaaaaaaa na na na na naaa naaaa naaaaa na naaaa naaaaa na naaaaaa naaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."

Not far from our starting point, we glimpsed a very faint rainbow in the distance. Both Deb and I had to take multiple shots before we were able to capture it:

Later, at the gas station:

About two hours in we made a pit-stop at a joint Tim Hortons / Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, where I was criticized by my fellow agents for my (what I consider to be impeccable) taste in food. Hey, just because *your* food is real...

So anyway, we opened Judy's mysterious package, had some yummies from there (still waiting for the poison to take effect), read her lovely personalized cards, and took pictures. (That last item will become a recurring pattern throughout the trip. Just you wait and see.)

At this point I was coerced (okay, nobody asked me to, but I still felt coerced) into singing Princess Leia's theme in my rich, full-throated falsetto. Sort of like what bird does when it's being choked, but louder and considerably less tolerable. I don't know where my friends got the idea that I was imitating opera (maybe if chickens learned how to sing?)

On a related note...Josh, if you're reading, you'll be happy to know that I have rediscovered my inner Artoo!

Anyway, with that embarrassment out of the way, we headed to Ottawa, arrived, and found the hotel without too much incident. We met with the rest of the gang, just in time for a 'roll call' in the lobby. At this point I should take a bit of time to praise Jon and Jenn for their efforts -- where would we be without people to organize our fun? The meeting reminded me of summer camp at first, but the plan turned out to be extremely reasonable -- meet in the lobby as a group at 10:00 am the next day, proceed to the Rideau canal, go our separate ways, then meet at 8:00 pm for dinner. Then Jenn (and Debbie I think) read Judy's group letter in front of all fourteen of us and everyoned "Awwwwed".

We then proceeded to the bar, which was a twenty minute walk away, a long stretch given how cold it was. Everyone was freezing their butts off, but I had nothing to complain about. My insistent wailing of "Are we there yet?" was just a formality, really. When we arrived, some people ordered beer (Robert managed to get a free one after his water failed to arrive):

But the truly in-crowd fellows among us (myself included) went with something more hip, like hot tea. Mmm. After a while, some of us decided to return to the hotel. This was around the time when an interesting and very drunk woman in her thirties who called herself Cougar began hitting on Shaun. Surely, if there was any doubt that Shaun's legendary reputation was an exaggeration....there isn't any now!

So while me, Robert, Dan, Shoshy, and Matt were getting pizza from the store across the street (and I believe Debbie and Moran were getting a cab back to the hotel) Shaun was having his little adventure in the bar, which ended (for better or worse -- probably for better, actually) sometime after the following conversation reportedly took place:

Cougar: [to Brian] So do you think Jenn is pretty?
Brian: Sure...
Cougar: [to Adam] Do you like Jenn?
Adam: [Don't really know what he said, but I'm going to assume he said they were friends]
Cougar: [to Adam] Are you gay?

To make a not-so-long story even shorter: Shaun loses whatever shred of respect he might have had for her, their little adventure comes to an end, and everyone lives happily ever after, except for all the innocent bystanders permanently scarred by the event. Meanwhile, on the way back, I took the following picture, amid much protest (something silly about our hands freezing if we didn't keep moving, I'm sure):

Back at the hotel, we lounged (in the lounge) while waiting to get our pizza delivered --

-- and then, once it finally arrived, took it up to Debbie's and Shoshy's room. There was a bit of flute 'playing', and an attempt by Debbie to make tea using a coffee machine that spewed its contents out in a manner very similar to someone puking. Everyone was feeling somewhat tired at this point (though I can't imagine why -- all we did was sit around and drink!) so we all went off to our respective rooms and had a good night's sleep.

Or...DID WE?

[insert conspiracy theory music here]

Day One Point Five

Well, we did, actually -- at least, everyone else did. I myself had the less than ideal issue of NOT BEING ABLE TO FALL ASLEEP to contend with, but you know, all's good, all's good...

So I'm lying there, awake, and Robert is snoring away pleasantly. And when I say pleasantly, I actually do mean it. He's a light snorer. It doesn't bother me at all. Anyone who thinks he's loud clearly has not heard my dad.

When my dad snores, I want to drill holes into my brain and then launch the pulp into a planetary explosion, like that one arcade in Pacific Mall...mmm...Pacific Mall....

Okay. Here I am, lying awake at 4-something in the morning, probably because of that blasted tea -- who drinks tea at a bar anyway?? -- but slowly, oh-so-slowly, dozing off -- still half-conscious, but groggy and unfocused, and probably about to fall asleep -- when the most piercing, godawful noise starts sounding from...somewhere. For the first ten minutes or so of this wretched pulsing I have no idea what it is. It wasn't the fire alarm -- at least that would wake *everyone* up and I wouldn't have to feel so bad about enduring it alone. This noise was only loud enough to irritate the poor souls who were still awake. About another five minutes later I got out of bed, probably still half-conscious, and tried to locate the source of the sound. It seemed to be coming from the wall opposite our beds....I felt for the walls, and found a door leading into our neighbour's room. I opened it, and the sound immediately got louder as I did so. There was another door in the way, with no doorknob on my side.

Then it hit me. It was a bloody alarm clock -- goddamn piece of @#$&*~

I left the room and walked out into the hallway. Sure enough, some doofus's alarm had gone off in the middle of the night, and there was no one there to turn it off. So I headed down to the lobby, where I politely asked the concierge person, would he be so kind as to go up to the eighth floor and shut that goddamn piece of @#$&*~ off, thank you so much. He sent someone up, and minutes later I was back in the comfort of my own bed, no alarm to disturb me.

***

Small aside here. Later that day, when I was relaying this story to more fortunate souls, I got an eerily consistent set of responses.

Jenn: Why didn't you just call the concierge?
Shoshy: Well, why didn't you call?
Shaun: You know, you could have just used the phone.
Brian: Hotel, phone, concierge.
Moran: Etc., etc.
Robert: How come you didn't call? I was fast asleep.

Because that would have been the *easy* thing to do, fools!

***

Cut back to the present. Half an hour later, the alarm goes off. AGAIN. At this point I give up praying to the gods to smite the clock and resign myself to an impossibly exhausting day ahead. But then, miraculously, it stopped. I was free!

At that point I *finally* managed to fall asleep for maybe an hour and a half. Then, joy of joys, the alarm goes off, but this time it's ours. You see, Robert had the brilliant idea of setting the alarm to 8:00 am (did he actually think we'd be able to get up then??) while I had the equally brilliant idea that we would both enjoy the process of waking up better if the alarm was set to FINAL FANTASY music. Uhh......no. On top of that we *both* decided to crank the volume up as loud as it would go, because that would for sure wake us up, right?

So Final Fantasy 7 battle music is cranking away, and from across the room I hear Robert bellow "Music....ANNOYING!" before ducking under the covers for shelter. I considered leaving our 'alarm' on just to see if Robert would actually wake up (and partly because I felt responsible for getting up before breakfast), but then I said to hell with it and shut it off. It was at this time that I got a *really* good nap, although I had a nightmare just before Robert woke me up at 9-something. (Robert apparently also had a nightmare, and it was while the FF7 track was playing. We both ended up hating that particular FF7 piece.)

And that is officially the end to Day 1.5.

Day Two (The Longest Day)

You know at night, when you can't sleep, it can be so boring and depressing, but by morning you forget it all? That was kind of what happened -- I felt happy again; the problem was that I also felt completely un-recharged, like Seven after an alcove malfunction. After a wonderful breakfast we set off to do battle on the canal in three separate convoys, communicating with one another through walkie-talkies like agents in a Bond spoof. Robert, Shaun, and I rented skates. At the rental place I chanced upon an acquaintance from several of my classes, which was pretty cool and random. He seemed more surprised at my own lack of surprise, however. What can I say? I was functioning on extremely low batteries. (Later, in class, I made up for my lack of energy at the canal with lots of belated surprise and enthusiasm.)

With our skates on, the canal journey begun. Each group had their own idea of what they wanted to do. I, of course, wanted to do something resembling sanity, but I also tend to travel exclusively with the crazies, which presents a problem. Today, the crazies' agenda happened to involve skating the entire bloody length of the canal. They were, by the way, Matt, Robert, Debbie, Adam, Daniel, with an occasional sprinkling of Brian, who kept zipping in an out of our group like a zealous scout. (He has this strange ability to cover large distances in a significantly shorter period of time than the rest of us...maybe his skates give him Gandalf-like powers?)

Shaun made a cameo appearance as well, but, like Samuel L. Jackson in Kill Bill Vol. 2, you might miss him if you blink, as his arrival and departere were even swifter.

Although none of us had much skating experience, I was by far the most accomplished, which is why I spent the entire length of the canal far behind everyone else, making sure no one would fall, you see. Adam and Debbie and Matt would even drop behind once in a while, just to keep me company. And towards the end Robert dropped back a few times so he could push me closer to the front! (Incidentally, that was kind of fun.) I decided that this was very gracious, even though I had to insist I was staying behind for the greater good of the group and all that, etc. But everyone else seemed to think I was just slow. Hmph!

7.2 km and two million years later we reached the end. It looked much like the rest of the canal, only more so. At this point we rested, and some people went to get lunch (I wasn't hungry for some reason).

Me: So are we going to take a taxi or a bus back, or what?
Adam: Probably not. We're in skates!
Me: Sigh.

I was supposed to meet my Ottawa companion at 2:30 by the National Arts Centre. It was currently 1:15.

"Well," someone said. "Let's get going!"

So the journey began...again. Back along the canal to the starting point. I tried to follow Robert's suggestion about making bigger strides instead of smaller ones. It seemed to work somewhat, or maybe everyone else was just slowing down for me. Anyway, the return trip was more fun, even though I felt like I would die any minute from an overdose of lactic acid. Somehow we made it to the end (well, the beginning) of the canal in discrete human units. I collapsed on the ice dramatically, as if exhausted beyond belief (which I was), but actually there was just this crack in the ice that caused me to trip and fall and I was too lazy to get up afterward. (And I'm not lying about this one -- one might have had a smoother time, overall, skating on Steeles Avenue.)

We returned our skates nearly three hours after we'd rented them, and then I set off to find Alexa. Meanwhile, Debbie, Matt, Adam, and Dan went to grab some beavertails, while Robert joined another group that was going to the Rideau Centre. When the first group came back, she still hadn't arrived, so I borrowed Dan's or Matt's phone and called again. We actually met in a rather classic fashion -- both of us trying to figure out where the hell we were, and then glimpsing each other talking on cell phones!

ALEXA JOINS PARTY A [cue music]

The six of us now, after trying to figure out what to do next --

-- proceeded back to the Radisson hotel, where we got some much-needed rest. At this point I was starting to really get out of it. 14 km of frantic (for me!) skating + 1.5 hours of sleep = bad combination. You can tell by the pictures -- my body doesn't hold up well to cold weather, for one thing, and my eyes tend to get dry (yet watery!) and bloodshot very quickly. And when I'm tired it really shows. (Which is part of the reason I'm so uncomfortable in front of a camera. Of course, this discomfort just makes me look worse; I realize it's a vicious cycle, but it's hard to break it.)

At the hotel I gave Alexa her birthday present, which was about a month late, but that was because the post office hates me. It always seems to enjoy denying the existence of very real mailing addresses. The gift was the soundtrack to "The Village", which we listened to in the comfort of Adam's room, not doing a whole lot of anything except playing rock, paper, scissors and taking tons of pictures. But that's the life of a road trip, eh?

After an hour or so we decided to get up and do more Ottawa-related stuff. The second group had just arrived back at the hotel. Robert headed to our room to take a nap. Our group, in the meanwhile, went to the lobby and consulted with Alexa and the hotel-folk on what we should do next. We eventually decided to visit the Museum of Civilization, which was located across the river in Quebec. So we headed off, leaving Dan behind (who didn't want to come for some reason), walked to the bus stop, and waited for the bus that would take us there.

Adam, with his hawk eyes, would giddily inform us each time he saw a bus in the distance. *I* could never see the buses coming, of course. If you ask me, he was just making it up.

Kevin: Where's that bus you pointed out half an hour ago?
Adam: It turned.
Kevin: Sure it did.
Adam: It did! You're just blind.
Kevin: ...

We finally got on our bus, where Debbie, who has a talent for getting along well with complete strangers, managed to hold a conversation with the bus driver for the entire way there. And, of course, there's no better place to take pictures of the lovely ladies than while standing on the aisle of a swerving vehicle.

Once we arrived, however, we discovered that the museum was closing. We were told by the hotel that the museum was open till 6 -- in fact, it was open till 5, and it was now 4:50. Fortunately, another opportunity presented itself: the IMAX show! We were just in time for the next screening, so we bought tickets to "Forces of Nature" and spent the next forty-five minutes staring upwards at the most massive screen I've ever seen. We didn't get particularly good seats (way at the bottom and off to the side) but it was still a nice experience after such a long day, except for the scenes where the camera would pan sharply and I would feel like retching (a problem which I could fortunately solve easily by closing my eyes, though that almost made me lose consciousness once or twice.)

After the film we took a couple pictures of a canoe with people rowing, and a canoe with people rowing. Both are *representations*, of course, but I think they're equally convincing.

We then waited around some more for the bus (at this time it was *really* freezing), then hopped on, where Debbie managed to resume her conversation with the bus driver, who was the exact same guy we had on the way there. Then we went back to the hotel. Alexa had to go off to rehearsal (she was already late, but as she was paying her own accompanist, it didn't really matter) so we said our goodbyes. She asked me to call her after our dinner was over in case we wanted to get together afterwards. That never happened because 'dinner' lasted nearly as long as a Chinese ten-course meal, and I was already an intellectual vegetable through most of it. But more on that later.

Back at the hotel, we hung out in Shaun / Matt's room for a bit, playing a rather discouraging game of Mille Bornes (I think Dan and I were completely shut out the entire time).

This is me in the throes of death, looking all cheerful about it:

We then listened to excerpts from Shaun's make-out playlist. Although this session threatened to culminate in a rather disturbing photoshoot where Shaun posed in various stages of 'mating' for the camera, it soon transformed into a wacky jump-on-the-bed-and-try-to-take-pictures-of-us-in-mid-air game.

Then it was time for dinner. I went to my room to wake up Robert, and he gave me the scare of a lifetime (he was only pretending to be sleeping when I came in.) After my heart attack we went down to the lobby, where the entire group was assembled. Separate cabs came and hauled us away to Friday's (the restaurant we were going to.) Yes, you can use your imagination to fill in the jokes on that name.

In the cab (occupied by Debbie, Robert, and myself) Debbie tried once again to strike up a conversation with the driver, but unfortunately this particular man was not so forthcoming. He did manage to squeeze a dry joke somewhere, and it had something to do with Debbie asking whether he spoke French and him saying no and then responding seconds later with the phrase "C'est la vie", but I missed a portion of the context because by this time I was absorbing less than half as much information around me as usual.

A few minutes later we arrived at Friday's and settled down to dinner. Since we were the last cab to arrive, Robert and I ended up sitting at the two heads of a very, very long table. Jon and Jenn had originally opted for something classy, and Friday's did not disappoint: the room we were in, which was furnished with large paintings, chandeliers, and a roaring fireplace, had more in common with Bruce Wayne's dining hall than an actual restaurant. Light, piano jazz blended seamlessly with the tinkling of glasses. All in all the atmosphere was, as Hetal put it, incredibly mellow.

The food was fantastic, and I enjoyed the company of Brian, Moran, Veejay, and Hetal, who were closest to me. (I learned that Brian and Moran had the same cab driver today as they did last night, just like us and our bus driver. Coincidence? I'm not sure.) All the same, the day was beginning to take its toll -- I found myself drifting in and out of what people were saying, and when I think back to that particular meal I find that I am only able to recall such small things as the wonderful taste of the vanilla/chocolate ice cream that topped my prime rib (which itself was good, though a bit much) and the heat of the fire upon my face. I do remember Jon making a nice and simple toast: "To the WSS, to this trip, and to having a good time."

Three hours later (11:30 pm) we headed back to the hotel -- once again we managed to get the same cab driver that took us to the restaurant! -- after I left a message on Alexa's machine apologizing for 1) calling so late, and 2) leaving a message so late. Back in Matt and Shaun's room, we put on "The Incredibles" (we watched it literally on the hotel wall, through a projector connected to Shaun's laptop). People left, others came in, and I think Shaun and some others were busy breaking even at a casino in Quebec, but I couldn't tell you who exactly was there because I can't remember.

Finally, it was 2pm, and we were off to bed. Robert and I made a few concluding remarks about how we hated the FF7 battle track with a passion and there would be NO ALARM set for the following morning.

The night passed without incident (at least, for me.) I slept like a log for at least six hours straight, till the alarm went off.

Instead of hitting the stop button, I yanked it as hard as I could till I'd unplugged it.

Day Three

Robert and I woke up nice and late and shared breakfast with Jon, Jenn, and Shaun at 11:30-ish.

I ordered the same thing as I did the night before -- the 5 egg meal, with no egg. The chef took pity on me and gave me a bit of extra bacon. But the real prize lay in the sausages. Delicious. Toast was lovely as well.

It was time to go our separate ways. But before that...we had to wheel Debbie around on the luggage trolley. Just for kicks.

And before that she spent a good deal of time conversing with the waiter. All I heard from the tail end of one of their conversations was: "Sure, send me an email, I'd definitely like to see you in a Princess Leia costume." How does she manage to reach such intimate topics in her brief conversations? Amazing.

Everyone left Ottawa at different times in their respective convoys. Upon leaving our hotel, Robert, Debbie, Matt, and I decided to indulge in a bit of last-minute fun at the Ice Slides and Snow Sculptures. Not much to add to these pictures, which say it all.

Then it was time to go home. We spent the trip back listening to music (of course), text-messaging Judy, perusing through our photos and memories, and eating delicious cream of mushroom soup at Tim Hortons.

All in all, it was a delightful romp, one that I feel fortunate to have taken part in.

Until next time....ciao! :)

(That's Robert getting his glasses stuck on a 'random bang')

(The obligatory final sunset shot. Bonus points to anyone who can guess what's wrong with this picture.)

Krang on a stick: A composing story

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 21:54:02 GMT

I haven't forgotten about the Ottawa trip entry. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to writing it either, and it's all because of this rather inconvenient (and horribly stress-inducing) thing called musical inspiration. You see, I'm entering a composition contest for the Mississauga Symphony Orchestra, and the deadline is March 1. The reward for winning is not huge, and the orchestra is non-professional, but any kind of experience counts, right? So I began preparing ideas as early as January. For some reason, though, when I actually sat down at my computer to write the score, nothing came out. I was stuck. The problem was that I had no faith in my ideas, and so I couldn't bring myself to commit them to paper.

Anyway, the weeks rolled by....February came, and I thought, if I don't start now, I'm screwed. So I began sketching more ideas, trying mainly to develop a really nice, lyrical melody that could function as a second subject while I tried to figure out a structure for the rest of the piece. It was going all right, but painfully slowly. On February 14 I was just about finished sculpting this melody when an entirely new theme rose out of nowhere and began demanding my attention -- and not only did I fall immediately in love with it, it was already complete, assembled, ready-made. I didn't have to tweak it, it was just *there*. In fact, I don't feel bad gushing about it, because I hardly feel responsible for its creation.

Of course, when this kind of thing happens (and it does, just not often) klaxons start going off in the back of my mind. The appearance of a complete tune from nowhere is usually an indication of subconscious theft, so I began perusing through my (internal) library of music, trying to find whatever it was that I might have been unwittingly referencing, but I couldn't for the life of me think of what it was, though it just sounded so....familiar. And there was also the problem of this other lyrical tune I'd created. They couldn't go in the same piece, I knew that much -- so I had to take one over the other. In the end, I chose the 'inspired' melody, and I'll be damned if I find out I've lifted it from somewhere else. (Actually, I'll just say it's an homage, but whatever.)

Here's a pic of the theme.

Anyone recognize it?

Later that day Robert and I went to Pacific Mall, had a blast at the arcade there, with its bizarre baby-competition games and aerial fighter simulator (the latter of which reminded me of a planet that never stops exploding), then went back to his house for a while. At one point I almost lost the tune (which I'd been humming in my head throughout the day), but then I recovered it. Then, on Tuesday (the 15th) I sat down at my computer to begin writing in earnest, but I *still* had no idea how to start. After all, the lyrical melody would come in about halfway through the piece -- I still needed a convincing opening.

It was then that I began thinking about that rabbit-hole entry I made a few weeks ago, as well as a conversation I was having with Debbie about music and colours, and then suddenly, I thought: why not write a piece based on that story, which has lots of 'colourful' visual ideas (at least, for me)? Suddenly, I glimpsed -- or heard, rather -- the first five seconds of a brand new piece, and knew immediately that I had to write it down. So in that moment I abandoned all my other sketches (except for the one tune I discovered the day before) to began anew, with the story in mind. It was slow going at first, because I had a very complex 'image' in mind -- after all, I was trying to write music that depicted flying rainbows and floating waterfalls! -- so I was only able to write about twenty seconds' worth of material over reading week. (On Thursday I was at Robert's again, with Judy and Brenda, and Friday was the Ottawa trip. Which I will write about soon. Really.)

So: Monday the 21st. I missed my morning class, then spent the rest of the day trying to whip the piece up into shape. Got about a minute's worth done, and had a convo with Josh in the evening. At this point I considered giving up -- I had a *week* left. This would have been the reasonable thing to do, but caught in the grip of feverish inspiration, I had no choice but to abandon my academic (and social) life for a week to focus my "Fountain of Dreams", so that's what I did. Between Tuesday and Friday of this week I spent a good ten hours a day just composing. I hardly ever stopped. The beauty was that I could see the whole piece, I had it in my mind's eye, it was like a drawing a map I was intimately familiar with rather than creating something out of nothing; the nightmare of it was the torturous, absolutely mind-numbing process of the actual drawing, of staring at a monitor for hours on end with a mouse just clicking notes into a program. How people ever managed to create great works of music with nothing more than pencil and paper still boggles my mind.

Yet in between all of this I somehow still managed to squeeze in two very important duties: purchase and watch the Disney dub of "Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind" (this was done on Tuesday, during sane hours), and watch "Raise the Red Lantern" before lending it to Scott (and this was done on Thursday, from 2 to 4 in the morning.)

I finished inputting the notes Friday night (at about 1:30 am), then spent about eight hours yesterday adding in dynamics and expression markings, and another four or so creating a decent synth mockup of the piece for the judges. The length of the resulting mp3 is 10:01. The rules say 5 - 10 minutes, but the last second of the mp3 is silent, so I should qualify :P.

So...another piece bites the dust. And I really believe in this one (more so than usual.) The personal investment factor is dangerous; if it doesn't make the finals, I will be very sad. But such is life. For now, I'm going to take a break before the oscars.

Oh, and if you're wondering what "Krang on a stick" means...I went to sleep at 5 last night, and for some reason my last thoughts before losing consciousness was an image of Krang (you know, the brain from the ninja turtles) impaled on a stick. Pretty weird, huh? Don't ask me how it relates to the rest of this entry.

The joys and woes of Pacific Mall

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:09:26 GMT

Argh. I think I'm finally addicted to this place. It's horrible!

Yesterday I was invited out to Pacific Mall by a couple of UofT people, where I blew a large chunk of my Chinese New Year savings on DVDs, bubble tea, sushi, arcade games, and more DVDs. Since there are about a dozen stores there dedicated to the art of DVD piracy, I actually spent more time scurrying between stores, sprinting up escalators, dashing down hallways, running out of breath, frantically trying to find everything I wanted before closing time, than I did actual browsing. Part of the reason for this was because I was with people who weren't obsessed, so I had to maximize my shopping instincts while still being 'social'.

See? Low prices induce panic and stress, not happiness. This is why materialism is bad. Baaaaad. We should all revert to some form of benevolent socialism for the sake of humanity's collective well-being.

In the meantime, though:

The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition - Perfect quality. (Unless you count the completely *useless* edits made in the Special Edition.)

Return of the Jedi: Special Edition - Perfect quality

Pirates of the Caribbean - Unfortunately, this DVD didn't work at all. It wouldn't even load. I'm going to try to exchange it, but I some doubts as to whether that will be possible given that it's Pacific Mall and I have no receipt...

Troy - Perfect quality. It froze on my laptop a a few times, but it seemed to work fine on the main DVD player.

National Treasure - Good sound, somewhat poor picture quality. Also, Chinese subtitles running through the whole movie that you can't turn off. This disc also seemed to have freezing issues with the laptop, while working fine on the DVD player.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - Perfect quality

Raise the Red Lantern - Picture quality's not great, but I can't tell whether it's because of the DVD or because the original movie was like that to begin with. Subtitles seem fine. Chapters don't work. And, while this doesn't affect the movie at all, it is interesting to note that the back cover contains, in addition to the normal synopsis from the film, the credits from "The Silence of the Lambs". Weird.

Kiki's Delivery Service - Perfect quality. Subtitles are good as far as I can tell (finally, an anime film that has *punctuation* in the subbing!)

Porco Rosso - Perfect quality, same as above

For a total of $55, I'd say that's a pretty good deal overall!

And, since I'm bored and evidently feel the need to gloat, I will give a rundown of the DVDs my parents bought a few weeks before:

Alexander - Poor picture quality, poor sound. Dialogue not synchronized properly to the visuals. Bad movie.

Before Sunset - Perfect quality.

The Bourne Supremacy - Perfect quality.

Hidalgo - Good quality, but full-screen. Lack of subtitles during the non-English bits. And here's a curious thing: when I turned on the English subtitles, I discovered that they were from the wrong movie. Specifically, "The Matrix Revolutions."

The Last Samurai - Perfect quality.

Spider-Man 2 - Perfect quality.

Howl's Moving Castle - Horrendous picture quality (clearly videotaped in the theatre), awful sound, ghastly subtitles. Which is all the more frustrating since the first five minutes of the movie almost put my head through the ceiling, I was so giddy.

***

Speaking of Chinese New Year...I was telling some people earlier this week that I had this great conversation with a 'friend' of mine back in HK, who is actually more of a stranger, since the last time we talked was...oh...fifteen years ago? So it's kind of hard to catch up with someone when you were both seven the last time you talked, but we managed.

Anyway, afterwards I was looking through some old photographs, and I found a pic of us, dated...a while back.

***

Sooo....Happy Valentine's Day. Here's a lovely link (stolen from ellinoora) that will set your spirits aloft. (No really, it's actually pretty funny.)

Things couples argue about

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 04:21:29 GMT

Had a fairly exciting weekend, beginning with a bit of beer-tasting at Mark's on Friday. I used to insist that all beer tastes the same against the protestations of my fellow beer connoisseurs, so it was nice to have enough variety present so that I could finally share their point of view. All the same, it's an acquired taste, and I'm afraid I still haven't acquired it. Maybe in a few years....

The theme of the week was DOOM: The Board Game. It's a concept bordering on sheer ridiculousness, and yet it works, somehow. Who knew that grenades and rocket launchers could be so satisfying, even when represented by dice?

I was at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga all Saturday for Ron's concert, and it was there that I made a couple great contacts. The first was cellist Shauna Rolston, whom I actually should have met a long time ago, considering she's teaching at UofT. She's awesome, she's fearless, and has one hell of a fashion sense. She agreed to trade an autograph next week for a couple music scores, which to me sounds like a pretty good deal.

The other person I met was Louise DiTullio, Ron's aunt. While we were driving she casually dropped the news that she'd been hired by John Williams to play flute in the soundtrack to The War of the Worlds. I flipped. Then spent the rest of the evening recovering from that flip.

So the insider scoop: twelve full days of recording time, interspersed between March and May, which is apparently an unusually large amount of time to record a soundtrack. According to Louise, "Jurassic Park" only had about six days, and that's one monster of a score. The implication is that The War of the Worlds is going to be a bitch to play. It's also going to really, really rock. At least musically.

After this entry I'm heading straight to my CD collection to rummage through everything else she's played in. That includes A.I., Minority Report, Hook (her favourite), E.T., Jaws....the whole gamut, really.

When I got home, I took out my belated Christmas gift, courtesy of Mark and Liz:

and attempted to make a sound on it. It took me about an hour to get my first note, and once I got it I nearly passed out. Since then it's been mostly uphill, though I still have difficulty staying conscious after about a minute or so of playing E and F over and over again. Who knows....maybe by the time Ottawa rolls by, I'll be able to master the Jaws theme.

And then I'll have fulfilled my lifelong ambition: to be a portable musician! :D

Music (what else?)

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 04:54:21 GMT

If anyone's interested, I've got some excerpts for download from the two concerts I've been blabbing about the past little while.

Me - In Search of Unicorns

Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2

Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians

Introduction
Section II
Section V
Section VI
Section VII

EDIT: I have the whole recordings as well, obviously. I can send my piece anytime via MSN, but the Reich is 67 MB, so.... :P

***

I'm falling way behind in my Counterpoint homework and I'm not ready for my CanFic test tomorrow, but things are not all bad. On Friday Chris, the pianist in Liz's trio, asked me if I wanted see the opera "Siegfried". He had an extra ticket. I did want to see it, so I asked what the price was. $92. Now, as much as I've been dying to see the Ring Cycle performed live for years, this figure did give me a moment's hesitation. Then he informed me that I wouldn't have to pay for the ticket -- he'd gotten both for free somehow. Well, that did it. I was on board.

So... It started at 2:00 pm, ended at 7:00 pm. And that's just a quarter of the entire Ring Cycle. Wagner was bloody insane.

His music is different from other operas in the sense that there are no arias (the equivalent of songs in a musical where everyone claps at the end) or recitatives (pretty much the equivalent of spoken dialogue in a musical.) It's just continuous music, which is either a love-hate affair.

The story? It's not nearly as complicated as I had imagined for years. All that really needs to be known is that there's a ring, and it's evil (like a certain other ring-related story). And there's a guy called Siegfried, who is the son of Sieglinde and Siegmund, who are in turn the children of Wotan, who is a god (yes, Sieglinde and Siegmund are siblings). Wotan is also a jackass. In the first opera Wotan steals the ring, then is forced to give it up to two giants because he won't give them the reward he initially promised (a goddess, I think) for building his sky castle. One of the giants kills the other for the ring, Smeagol/Deagol style, and turns himself into a dragon. In the second opera Wotan wants the ring back, but he's not 'allowed' to retrieve the damn thing because it would breach his contract with the giants....so he devises a loophole: if a man of free will could claim the ring and give it to Wotan freely, then all would be good. For complex reasons having to do with a sword stuck in a tree, that man is destined to be the child of Siegmund and Sieglinde.

Of course this plan fails spectacularly, and Wotan ends up being forced to kill his own son Siegmund (for committing adultery and incest) as well as unwillingly punish his Valkyrie daughter Brunnhilde for attempting to protect Siegmund and knock some sense into her dad. At the last minute he goes easy on her and, while still sentencing her to life on earth (mortality), does her a favour by surrounding her in a ring of magic fire that only a fearless hero will penetrate. Meanwhile, Sieglinde runs off into a forest, gives birth to Siegfried, hands her over to Mime, a despicable dwarf who happens to be Alberich's brother (and also wants the ring for himself), and then dies.

So then we come to this opera, which is about Siegfried bickering endlessly with Mime, and then going off to fight the dragon, claim the ring, kill the back-stabbing Mime, and get the girl, who happens to be surrounded by a ring of fire -- and, if you've been following the story closely, also happens to be Siegfried's aunt. Yuck.

I have to do the rest in dialogue. Trust me....

[Intermission 1]

Chris: I'm really liking the music so far.
Kevin: Same here. Great leitmotifs. Parts were a bit long, though...
Chris: Yeah, I dozed off a couple times, and each time I woke up I didn't seem to miss anything.
Kevin: You know, now that I think about it, very little actually *happens* in the Ring, plot-wise, given the duration of the operas. I used to think it was the opposite.
Chris: Could you imagine Wagner setting "The Sword of Truth" to music? It'd be a thousand hours long.

(We had enough Terry Goodkind arguments by this point so we didn't pursue that thought.)

Kevin: The whole first act would have been so much shorter if Siegfried had just realized earlier that he could forge the bloody sword himself.
Chris: Well, Siegfried is not very bright.
Kevin: Noooo, he's not.
Chris: You know who else isn't very bright? Wotan. I mean, what kind of god hires two giants to build his castle for him, and then doesn't pay them?
Kevin: Think of it, the Ring Cycle might have been only an hour long...
Chris: Also, I found the sets really sparse. What did you think of the staging?
Kevin: It was...strange. I didn't really understand the big spider-web thing with all the stuff hanging from it.
Chris: I could have sworn I saw bits of City Hall in that web...
Kevin: I thought I saw a computer monitor. And some styrofoam boxes.
Chris: And those poor, poor people. I feel so sorry for the chorus in this production.
Kevin: Were they real people?
Chris: Yeah, some of them moved occasionally.
Kevin: Even the one that was hanging upside down the whole time?
Chris: That one might have been fake.
Kevin: And let's not forget the Bear.
Chris: The Bear!
Kevin: I've never seen a stage character who has no lines, and who does nothing but walk around the stage tied to a rope, or go to sleep for long periods of time.
Chris: I wouldn't be surprised if the person who plays the Bear actually did fall asleep...

[Intermission 1 ends. Act 2 begins. Act 2 ends. Intermission 2 begins]

Kevin: Wow, that was cool.
Chris: WORST.....DRAGON....EVER.

(The dragon was comprised of nine people, three standing on the bottom, three on top, and two in the middle -- the latter five suspended from wires -- all dressed in white, forming something vaguely resembling a wobbling cheerleading squad.)

Kevin: I liked how the dragon 'exploded' when Siegfried stabbed him.
Chris: I also liked how the dragon had more lines after he had been killed than when he was alive.
Kevin: At least he had lines. Not like the Bear.
Chris: Did you like Mime's little moment of schizophrenia?
Kevin: Oh yes. That's the kind of thing you can only do in theatre. "What? I didn't say I wanted to kill you. Whatever gave you that idea? I merely want to chop your head off!"
Chris: Have you noticed that every single character in the Ring Cycle is a jerk? I mean, Mime's a jerk, Wotan's a jerk, Siegfried is the mother of all jerks...
Kevin: What about the forest bird?
Chris: She's okay I guess.
Kevin: And the bear.
Chris: No main characters.
Kevin: I think Brunnhilde's a good character.
Chris: But she dies at the end, doesn't she?
Kevin: Everyone dies. It's the Ring for god's sake.

[Intermission 2 ends. Act 3 begins. I would really love to sprinkle some witty dialogue through Act 3, but there wasn't any since nobody talks during an opera, so the post-opera commentary will have to suffice for now.)

Kevin: Is it just me, or did the 'sea of gods' remind you of a big slumber party?
Chris: Or a toga party.
Kevin: Seriously, when I think of the Ring, I think of a fantasy setting with rich/detailed costumes, lavish sets, etc...not some bizarre post-modernist interpretation where everyone wears white pyjamas.
Chris: And the sets. They were so bare. "Hmm, this mountain-top looks suspiciously like Siegfried's cave..."

Overall, though, the opera was an amazing experience. The music was nothing short of incredible, and the performances were all astounding. My two favourite scenes were the prelude to the Dragon fight, where Siegfried sits in the forest by himself trying to imitate the 'birdsong' on an out-of-tune reed (one of the more intentionally hilarious moments), and an absolutely spine-tingling moment where Siegfried kisses the sleeping Brunnhilde and, instead of the typical swelling strings, there's this sparse, lonely, almost melancholy minor chord in the horns, as if to foreshadow their eventual fate.

Some of the dialogue/libretto was a bit much, I'd have to say, to the point of absurdity -- the last twenty minutes or so admittedly tried my patience. "Make up your bloody mind already!" I was thinking as Brunnhilde swings back and forth between declaring her (somewhat arbitrary) love for Siegfried and despairing at the loss of her godhood.

The staging was really the only disappointment. Hopefully "Gotterdammerung" will be better. But, all in all, definitely worth the price of admission :)

***

What else? I had a lesson with Kelly-Marie Murphy. Josh and Bryan may remember her as the composer of "This is the Colour of my Dreams" and "And At Night I Paint the Stars", both exquisite works. The lesson went pretty well, although I realized about fifteen minutes in that what I really wanted was to hear her talk about her own music rather than mine. She had many helpful comments about my "In Search for Unicorns", as well as a few 'taste'-oriented ones that didn't quite work for me. ("No, I will not put a suspended cymbal at the climax of this piece....I like it the way it is!")

Eighth Blackbird (an American new music ensemble that I worked with while I was in California two years ago) was at UofT for a couple days, and they did a marvellous concert. I got to talk to them again, but it was really brief. They literally had a plane to catch.

Christos has given some strong indications that I might be the one to break UofT's composition graduate 'policy'. I won't say anymore until I get the official word. Dad says that I should still apply elsewhere, just to see if I'm worth anything at other universities. I guess that's probably a good idea, but it's hard to keep asking the same people for references (each university seems to demand a different format, so I can't keep using the same letter.)

Soo......

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 04:43:40 GMT

I haven't done this in a while. But it was fun.

Let me know what you think :)

Something odd happened this morning. I woke up squinting, covering my eyes against a blinding light. Did I forget to draw the blinds last night? Then I realized I was staring at the open sky.

It was a lovely day, all things considered, tiny wisps of cloud mingling with pale smoke rising out of the neighboring condos, bathed in splendid sunlight.

But where did the ceiling go?

Puzzled, I sat upright in my bed and looked around me. I couldn’t see anything, so I reached for my glasses, which were resting on my desk, and tried again. My room was still intact. That was a relief. Someone was going to have to come and fix—well, replace—this ceiling. There was no way I could sleep with this ridiculous draft.

I was about to lie back down and shrink under the covers, but first I decided to peer over the edge of the bed, just to make sure everything else was indeed normal. It wasn’t. The floor was gone, for one thing. An abyss lay between my bed and the ground ten storeys below. I glanced around in panic. The walls had vanished. All my stuff was gone. I was in bed, floating without support, spinning awkwardly, dangling in the middle of nowhere. From my vantage point I could see the single files of TTC commuters, small and insignificant, like ranks of weary toy soldiers departing for some distant engagement. If they bothered to look up they would see me as well, and it would have been a strange sight indeed. As it was, their eyes were fixed on their dreary surroundings, and thus failed to notice my bed drifting over their heads, disappearing above the snow-covered roof of the station.

Yes, my bed was drifting. Slowly, like a canoe in a light current...but alarmingly, since there was nothing pushing it and no way of stopping. Where were the bloody brakes? I hung on tight as it began gliding faster and faster. I thought: I’m going to be sick.

And so it was that I found myself sailing over the city of Toronto, borne by a bed with a mind of its own. I risked a peep over the edge and saw buildings, houses, stores, tennis courts, parks, all whisking by, faster and faster, until I became dizzy and stopped looking. The experience should have been exhilarating, except that I was freezing, and all I could think about was how I wished I’d grabbed my sweater and warm pants before they dissipated along with the rest of my room.

"Of all days," I muttered. "Today had to be this freaking cold."

Feeling nauseous, I slipped under the covers (which were tucked securely beneath the mattress, thank goodness) and somehow managed to fall asleep against the howling wind.

***

When I woke up, the wind had died down considerably, and the temperature had lifted. I rubbed my eyes. I desperately wanted to wash my face and brush my teeth. I looked around me. Toronto was gone; we (the bed and I) were soaring over an entirely different terrain. The landscape beneath me was unlike anything I had ever seen. Grassy mounds the size of several football stadiums, towering, hard-edged cliffs, lofty plateaus that ended abruptly in sheer cliffs, rivers that transformed into cascading waterfalls. As we glided through the upper walls of a forested canyon I glimpsed valleys nested within the canyon itself, and even more distant valleys nested within those. How high up were we? I looked around. A few clouds drifted above me, alarmingly close. And there were clouds up ahead at my level.

There were also clouds below. They were small, but they looked so substantial as to appear solid, like marshmallows, or puffy white rabbits.

I was far from home. I was in a place devoid of human life, yet somehow more alive than anywhere I had ever been. I was in a land that had been sculpted by vast, invisible hands, molded from the fires of a celestial passion.

I was in one messed up place.

The bed began to descend. Or was the land was rising, sloping upwards? I couldn’t tell. The hills and waterfalls not too far below now. And then we were in the thick of it, gliding through a severe chasm, sheer mountain walls flanking us, dyed red in the glow of the sun. Waterfalls roared on both sides, plummeting into—

Into nothingness. The ground had fallen away, and below lay an infinite abyss masked by fog and vapour. I ducked under the covers, partly in terror, but mostly to avoid being drenched by the spray of the falls. The sound of rushing water was not simply deafening—it had a kind of physical presence, a sonorous weight. It was like standing at the edge of the world, watching, hearing, feeling the surge of an entire ocean plunging into eternity.

I lost track of time. Several minutes passed; perhaps they were several hours. I was shivering, and cold again. My comforter had survived the onslaught of the falls, but just barely, and its dampness clung uncomfortably to my skin. I noticed that the sound of the falls was now a distant thunder. Tentatively I poked my head above the covers, only to discover that night had fallen. When did this happen? The black sky was sprinkled with tiny, gleaming specks. Suddenly I felt an acute loneliness. I longed to have someone by my side who could marvel at what I was seeing, who could share my sense of wonder. Who could point out the constellations. I was lost in a sea of stars and could not decipher their meaning.

The moon is as blood. I go in search of unicorns.

I glanced around me. The falls that I had seen earlier were still there, but there were less of them, and they seemed now to be supported by nothing at all. Some swooped downward and became rivers, trickling across the black void as if on invisible bedrock. Others plunged only to rebound upward, making complex arcs and spirals in the air, sometimes splitting into tendrils like liquid fingers, darting away in all directions. Some were brighter than others; some had different colours. Soon they were no longer waterfalls but ribbons of light, dancing in the darkness, a shower of rainbows. Underneath it all lay a carpet of cloud, stretching towards the horizon on all sides. Just how far below, I could not tell. I could not even feel the movement of the bed anymore; the space that surrounded me was too vast for me to measure myself against.

Yet we were moving; there were shapes in the distance, and they were getting closer, though maddeningly slowly. I finally extricated myself from the covers and crawled cautiously towards the footboard of the bed. In the fiery moonlight I was just able to make out the silhouettes of what appeared to be colossal, monolithic structures, pillars rising out from the clouds below towards the night sky. Dozens of them loomed in the horizon. They could not have been made by man, for they were the size of cities. But surely they could not have been a part of nature’s design.

And then we were there, though it seemed like an eternity later, weaving between these great columns of—of stone, I decided. They were not monolithic as I had first thought, but seemed comprised of many subtle varieties of texture, with hundreds of regular lines like tiny fissures etched on each.

I lay back and rested my head against my pillow, feeling more content than I had ever been.

Without really being conscious of it, I sensed a gradual change in the night sky. The stars above me were disappearing one by one. A darkness, blacker than the night, took their place. Strange shapes swam above my eyes. Deep, guttural noises began to surround me. I heard thunder, but it was not the sharp crack that follows a lightning storm, but a deeper, prolonged sound, the sound of the earth breathing.

I stole a glimpse over the edge of the bed. The sea of clouds had solidified into something with a silvery, crystalline quality. It was an enormous pond, tranquil beyond any body of water I have ever seen, not a single a ripple to break its eerie stillness. Through its nearly transparent texture I could make out what appeared to be giant roots, plunging deep and vanishing into the watery depths.

It dawned on me then. I was no longer surrounded by pillars, but by tree trunks. And miles above me, obscuring the night sky, was a vast ceiling of giant branches and leaves.

I slept.

***

The first whisper of thought that sprang into my mind, even before I was fully awake again, was that I was hungry. Very hungry.

In fact my dreams were, paradoxically, rather mundane. I dreamt about my parents, my friends, my apartment (my bedroom!), even my university. And in between all those dreams I dreamt about food. Lots of food.

Sushi. Chicken terriaki. My mom’s potatoes. McDonald’s.

I dreamt about returning home and telling everyone about my remarkable adventure.

That made me ache. The desire to share my story with others. After all, what was all this worth if there was no one else there to experience it, however vicariously?

Reflexively I reached toward my desk for my glasses. The desk wasn’t there.

Neither were my glasses.

I got up, pulled out the covers, pulled out the sheets, searching frantically with my hands and the faint eyesight I had left. I could not find them. I searched again and again, but they were gone. They must have fallen into the abyss while I was asleep.

I started to panic. Then I calmed down. I could still see, but everything was blurry and indistinct. The vast spaces did nothing to help, only making me feel smaller and more alone. If I had company then being not able to see wouldn’t be so bad. Suddenly I was quite homesick. The irony was that I could not even yearn for the comfort of my own bed, being virtually trapped in it! I wondered what would happen if I flung the covers away and threw myself into the sea of water, or of clouds, or of nothingness. Would I fly, like a bird, and enter some new, magical world? Would the dream cease to exist?

For the first time in the journey I rose to my feet. I did so slowly; I could not imagine how fast the bed was flying, but the sheer openness of my surroundings invited caution. Then I was standing, balancing myself on the mattress by extending my arms outward, the sharp wind lapping against my hair.

It was so tempting; everything else defied physical reason, surely I could do it and all would be well. I could just imagine it, the feeling of flying, the freedom of it....

But of course that was madness. I wanted merely to trade one kind of freedom for another. My defensive instincts won out. I had to see the dream through. So I crouched back onto the mattress and sat down, cross-legged, wrapping the covers around me, shivering in the wind.

The sea below was now, in fact, a sea of greenery, as we were now soaring high above the giant forest we had entered the night before. It was dawn; the first rays of light were beginning to emerge from the east.

The air smelled different. There was activity in the skies; I could hear it, but couldn’t discern the sounds. There were a few shapes in the distance, floating in the air. What were they? They looked like hazy orbs of some kind. No, wait—islands. Islands in the sky. How I wished I had my glasses!

There were more of them now. They were clustered loosely together like a fleet of ships. Some looked like natural islands; others were floating cities. Some appeared to bear the designs of ancient architecture, but many appeared completely out of this world—silver, black discs peppered with a kaleidoscope of details that I could not make out. And directly ahead was the biggest of them all. I could not tell if it was a mountain-shaped city, with vast towers that resembled cliffs and archways like karst monuments, or an artificial-looking mountain, with streams winding across and around the mountain like roads or canals—but it seemed to cover the entire sky before me. In the distance it had a transparency about it, as though it were not a physical object but an image, a mirage. Yet as the bed drew closer the mountain not only seemed
to solidify in texture, but to shrink as well, until it became just another great island in the sky. White streams curled around the mountain—waterfalls!

Surrounding those waterfalls were tiny dots, from which emerged the distinct sound of laughter.

And then I knew what the buzz of activity was. Beds, beds...beds were flying everywhere! As my bed approached I could see that they were ‘manned’ by people, mostly children, some sound asleep, others bouncing wildly on their mattresses or pursuing one another in vigorous game play. Somehow they had managed to gain control of their beds, as though they were steeds, and were steering them in and out of the waterfalls without a care in the world.

As I approached the gates that led into the mountain-city, a bed drifted close to mine, and the person on the bed extended his hand. "You dropped something," he said.

I knew him. He was my friend. He was giving me my glasses back.

I wanted to ask him how on earth he'd managed to rescue my glasses from certain oblivion (maybe it was an identical pair?) but I figured that could wait. When I put them on, I realized that many of the children were in fact also my friends. They were having the time of their lives.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"This? This, my friend, is the fountain of dreams."

The End.

a long, looooong entry

Wed, 26 Jan 2005 05:49:07 GMT

Exhausted, relieved, and feeling the typical mixture of emotions that follow an intense period of prolonged stress, I now embark on a quest to define my role in life and reflect upon the meaning of my existence.

Nah...screw that. I'll just update.

So: Friday. Mark, Scott, and I scooched over to McDonald's for lunch, then headed to Scott's, which felt like an eternity even though it was only five minutes away. There, Mark checked his email while Scott showed me ways I could protect myself from back problems in the future, as I've begun experiencing some early symptoms already. Lately I've tried to follow his exercises, the most effective of which simply involves trying to flatten out your spine on a carpeted surface. At three Mark and I rehearsed David's piece with the percussionists. At five we met up with Bryan, who had just come in from Hamilton, then proceeded to the Eaton Centre, where we ate at the food court and did some serious board-game browsing. After that Mark had to practice and I had dress rehearsal. And then it was time for the concert.

Most of that hour, from 8:00 to 9:00, was just pure bliss. We'd rehearsed the piece so many times that I was able to just relax, soak it in and enjoy the moment (and it was a nice, long moment too.) Even the piano quartet section went well. I sacrificed a bit of comfort by sitting on the right side of the piano even though my pattern was mid-range, and I was glad I did so; it's amazing what a difference just a few inches can make in terms of the acoustics. This time I could hear the on-beats as clearly as the off-beats, and so we were never in any danger of phasing. (The fact that the on-beat xylophone's strings were slightly loose, and so gave off a barely audible yet distinct rattle each time the pulse was struck, also helped.) Some phasing did occur toward the end of the piece, but because I was essentially a follower at that point, I didn't care too much -- whatever happened wouldn't be my fault, and at that point we couldn't stop the momentum of the music even if we'd wanted to!

About forty minutes in I felt a huge chill go up my spine. It was great. I think it might have been a combination of the music and me thinking about Bryan, Mark and Scott in the audience enjoying the experience. As it turned out, Scott didn't actually enjoy it at all, but since I could only find out afterwards it didn't spoil the moment. (At least he didn't hate it as much as "In C", which he said was something like "being stuck in a torture chamber for hours and hours.")

None of us could celebrate after the concert, unfortunately, since Mark and I had to rehearse my piece next with Gary Kulesha and the rest of the ensemble. It went pretty well: I could see that the players were starting to 'get' it. Each time Gary cut them off the musicians would start laughing, either from the adrenaline rush or from the sheer ridiculousness of what I was asking some of them to do. After rehearsal the taiko players, wanting more practice, asked me to conduct them, which was a sad, sad affair as they eventually just ended up conducting themselves.

The next day I got up early and couldn't get back to sleep because I was nervous. I headed downtown to the Bay near Eaton Centre to purchase goodies for my performers, then hopped back to the faculty to rehearse David's and my pieces. At dinner, in between wedding talk, Liz -- after hearing my piece being rehearsed -- had some questions about my well-being, not to mention my sanity. So did Mark, come to think of it. Evidently they perceived (not incorrectly) a discrepancy between me and my music, but I reassured them that I was a well-adjusted individual precisely because all of my violence and aggression is released through art. I doubt that this is entirely true, but it is at least partially true.

The concert was beset with problems. The programme had been changed at least twice, each time getting shorter and shorter, until there were only four pieces left. Composers kept cancelling their pieces for various reasons. The audience was pretty good considering the miserable weather and insane road conditions, but without the storm it would have been better. Bryan couldn't come as a result of the snow, which was understandable (and I was happy enough that he could make it to the Reich.) Nor could my teacher or anyone else outside of the music department. Liz and Scott were there, of course. And my parents were there, too, although I didn't realize this till after the concert!

The first piece was an improvisation, deliberately un-jazz-like. It had some cool moments, but it suffered from being too long. This was not entirely the performers' fault -- the group was essentially told to elongate their piece in order to make the total concert length respectable. In the middle of the second piece, a rather relaxing jazz composition, Adam (one of my trombonists) came running down the aisle, tapped me on the shoulder, and beckoned me to come out, so I stumbled out onto the aisle and followed him. In the lobby, he delivered the good news.

Adam: Mike [the second trombonist] is still in Richmond Hill, and he's stuck in traffic. There's no way he's going to make it on time.
Kevin: Oh, that's just faaaantastic.
Scott Good [different Scott]: I can sub for him.
Kevin: Really? But I don't have his part!

During the next panicked minute or two, I asked Adam for manuscript paper and borrowed a pen from Sharon, one of the violinists. I don't think I ever gave the pen back. Then I began scribbling the part furiously onto the blank sheet. At intermission, I gave up. This was going nowhere. There had to be a faster way.

So I took Adam's bass trombone part and managed to write some incredibly short-hand versions of what I wanted Scott to play ON TOP of Adam's line. I was fortunate that, due to the nature of the piece, this wasn't as hard to do as it would have been in more pitch-based music. Still, it was a scary moment. Gary came over and said something or other that I don't recall. I only remember that it was the first time I'd seen him smile all year. That's Gary for ya...taking pleasure in the stress of students! It was comforting, nonetheless, to know that the conductor was so nonchalant about it all. Anyway, I did this throughout intermission, scrawling letters, arrows, and occasionally notes all over the part in blue ink, with Daisy scuttling back and forth to tell me how many minutes I had left. Finally I had no choice but to resort to verbal instructions, and then I was off to perform in the second half of the concert.

After the four of us (me, Mark, and the two percussionists) walked on stage and did our bow, I turned around only to discover that there was a distinct lack of a piano bench. I recalled a brief moment during intermission when David had come up to me timidly saying something like "There's no piano bench on the stage...we need one, right?" I figured the question was somewhat rhetorical, since I think David was a bit nervous too. I don't remember what I said in response (I was a bit out of it at the time), but perhaps I should have made it clear that, yes, I did indeed need a piano bench! :P (Not to blame David, of course -- he's an awesome guy, but we were all a bit jittery that evening.) Anyway, I ran backstage, hauled out a (really heavy) piano bench and lifted it to the stage myself, which was embarrassing but apparently hilarious to the audience.

The piece was "Axons and Dendrites." David had actually managed to suspend a ten-foot long copper pole in center of the stage, with the two pianos on either side and a battery of percussion in between. The music was nifty, in a signals-darting-around-the-nervous-system sort of way. We pretty much nailed the piece despite my heartbeat from hell.

Then my piece, "In Search of Unicorns" (bonus points to anyone who gets that title, though I have a feeling only one person will ;)) was up. Non-composers ought to know that it is actually more nerve-wracking to watch one's piece being performed than it is to play onstage, particularly when that piece has a high risk factor. Thankfully, the piece came across. Of course, there were a couple glaring glitches. During one hysterical (well, painful for me and those close to me, hysterical for others) moment we watched Gary wave his arms furiously to the sound of....silence. The trombones were a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Scott Good being in the trio really gave them an edge, and they just sounded freakin' awesome. On the other hand, they were playing all the wrong notes. Later I found out that Adam had accidentally reversed the first and second pages by accident. But I didn't care too much, because they sounded so freakin' awesome.

Audience reactions? Scott (Morris) almost had an orgasm beside me. I knew he would like the piece, but...man. After the concert he was on the floor, convulsing like...well, never mind. Others -- by which I mean everyone else -- exhibited slightly more muted reactions. I guess that wouldn't be difficult. The general consensus seemed to be that of surprise. I don't think people imagined I had it in me to aurally bludgeon an audience in the way I did. Afterwards it was agreed that my piece was possibly the loudest student composition ever performed in the faculty.

I finally saw my parents after the concert. They left in a hurry, but afterwards my dad told me he cried during my piece. This surprised me at first. Of all my pieces, this is the one where I *wouldn't* expect that reaction. I felt kind of bad, actually. I wonder what he's thinking, since he wouldn't really tell me. I know he's not having an easy time these days, and I think *anything* I wrote would have made him cry. I just hope they were good tears.

Since it was the last concert in the festival, all of us were finally able to get out and celebrate. Everyone headed to the Bedford Ballroom, where Dennis Patrick (the festival coordinator) had booked an entire room for us. We all got free beer passes. I didn't use mine. David bought me tomato juice. There was free food, but, just like last year, I failed to eat any of it (it was all gone by the time I reached the food table.) We spent several hours playing pool, and I got better and better as the night wore on. By the end I was almost not losing...

So those were the last two days of the new music festival.

On Sunday my parents woke me up early (gah!) because they wanted to go to Pacific Mall (hmm, not so bad.) We had dim sum, and then went on a startling shopping spree. Now I truly regret not insisting on a Pacific Mall trip over the winter break (sorry Josh...I didn't know what I was missing!) What we found were DVDs....lots and lots of DVDs, all pirated. So that day we bought Alexander (mom), Spider-man 2 (me), The Bourne Supremacy (dad), The Last Samurai (dad), Before Sunset (me), Hidalgo (me), and Howl's Moving Castle (me). All for something like forty bucks. And yes, Howl's Moving Castle, the new Miyazaki movie that hasn't even been released in North America yet...My only worry is that the subtitles will be less than ideal; if they aren't any good I'll probably wait till the theatrical release, but I just *had* to buy it. As for the others, I'm hoping that they will be high quality, of course. We shall see.

After that I headed down to York Mills station, where I was picked up by David. We were going to my teacher's house to watch Return of the King! In David's van were Scott and two others from our class, including Clay, the composer of the jazz piece, and Tim, the vibraphonist of the Reich. The drive was long, but fun, though I wasn't overjoyed with David's selection of music. I was amazed at just how far Christos's house was. How does the man commute? He lives at the foot of a ski resort, for heaven's sake. It's a lovely house -- freezing inside, but lovely. I'll have to bring my digicam next time (alas, there will only be one more time.)

Christos was evidently itching to show off his 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound system. First he put in the soundtrack to "A Beautiful Mind." Jaded music students that we were, no one was particularly impressed. Then he started to play the movie. Immediately I began to wonder how deaf my teacher was. The movie was louder than it was when we saw it in theatres. No one said anything (we were all too polite/timid), but I could see that people were uncomfortable -- you know something's not right when Deagol's fishing sounds like the coming of the Apocalypse. Finally, during the scene when the Nazgul emerge from Minas Morgul and Frodo and Sam cover their ears, Christos turned down the volume, realizing saw that many of us were doing the same.

Dinner, which arrived midway through the film, was 'fast Greek food' (salad, onion rings, 'Greek' fries, chicken, bread, etc.) picked up by Christos's wife from god knows where. Then it was back to the movie.

[The Riders of Rohan appear on the top of the hill and see, with horror, the massive armies laying siege to Minas Tirith.]

Clay: Okay, let's turn back.

It was pretty hard to have any sort of intelligent discussion about the music. At first Christos was muting (or pausing) the film to make comments, but after a while he just fell silent because no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. It's not the kind of movie one can easily talk about while it's playing. I suspect we'll have an easier time doing that at our second outing (where we'll be watching The Matrix: Revolutions.)

The following day (yesterday) I slept in and missed my conducting class. Either my alarm snoozed with me or I smacked it into submission without knowing. Either way, I got up at 11:00 and spent the next twelve hours finishing the big bad film score. The deadline was today, you see. Somehow I managed to get it done.

So things are relatively calm now.

***

Checklist: I have to fill out a grad application for Western, do Counterpoint homework, and study for Canadian Fiction. I still feel like I'm behind, but now, at least, I have time to catch up.

Update: Oscar noms! Wow. "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and "The Village" both got nominated for best musical score. Who'd have thought it? As for the best picture noms....meh. I still need to see four out of five of them.

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:38:31 GMT

A gentle reminder to all that I have two major concerts coming up: Friday at 8 PM and Saturday at 8 PM. The first is Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians", which will change your life, or at least make you go "Hmmmm. Most intriguing." The second is a student composer concert, featuring a piece of mine and another person's piece that I'm playing in. Bryan is coming to both. Yay Bryan! He's also the only one coming. Hmm, not so yay. Oh well; if anyone wants to / is able to come at the last minute, please feel free to drop an email.

Life has become a seemingly endless rehearsal. I don't mean this metaphorically; I simply mean that I have a crapload of rehearsals to deal with between now and Saturday night. Tomorrow it's rehearsal of my piece at 6, which I've spent the past week and a half organizing (it really does take that long when you're trying to get thirteen people's massively conflicting schedules to match up.) Then rehearsal of the Reich from 7 - 10. Friday I'm rehearsing David's piece from 3 - 5, doing the soundcheck for the Reich at 7, concert at 8, another rehearsal of my piece at 9:30. Then Saturday it's rehearsal all the way from 6 to the concert.

In between all this I've been desperately trying to finish off the comedy film score. I'm about nine cues away from completion. Another week and it should be out of the way for good. In the meanwhile, I can barely think about homework, much less do anything about it. I am about six assignments behind in Counterpoint. For some reason, though, I have time to write in this journal. Well, hmm.

Tonight we rehearsed the Reich in MacMillan Theatre for the first time. The reverb was insane. We spent the first forty-five minutes just trying to configure the acoustics. In the end we were finally able to realign the instruments, mics, and monitors in such a way that everyone could hear the pulse. Which is important. And then it sounded good.

I am psyched about this piece. I feel like I'm about to run a marathon. Most of it will be fine, but there's a section about half an hour in that features nothing but the four pianos and the pulse, and it terrifies me. If I mess up and begin 'phasing', the whole thing will fall apart. What is phasing, you may ask? (Or not, but I will tell you anyway.) Imagine a stream of steady notes at a fast tempo. Now imagine the stream is artificially divided into blocks of twelve. Every twelve beats, a new block begins, etc. Within each block, a player repeats a pattern. My pattern happens to be: 1 2 3 4 5 . . 8 9 10 11 12 (the dots indicate a rest the length of a beat.) Each player has a slightly different pattern. One of the other pianists, for instance, has the exact same pattern as mine, but shifted forward four beats. So his is: 1 . . 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. Yet another is shifted back four beats, to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . . 12, and so forth.

If the performer slows down or speeds up slightly, he may "phase" into a new pattern. His twelve-note block is then out of sync with everyone else. Thus, if I were to phase a beat behind everyone else, my pattern would sound like: 1 2 3 4 5 6 . . 9 10 11 12. If this happens, we are screwed.

Normally, this is easy to avoid. After all, pretty much anyone can tap a steady beat. But here's the catch: the pulse is not played by one person, but by TWO, each alternating a beat. Pulse A is playing 1 . 3 . 5 . 7 . 9 . 11 while Pulse B is playing . 2 . 4 . 6 . 8 . 10 . 12. So when they play at the same time, it sounds like a steady stream of beats. The problem is, Pulse B is *right behind* me, so I hear it much more clearly than Pulse A. The result is that I am constantly fighting the urge to lock onto Pulse B, even though I know that the 'true' beat, if you will, is provided by Pulse A. I'm not alone in this problem (hell, I certainly don't envy Pulse B's job!) but I am incredibly exposed at that point.

If anyone has begun to regret reading this entry, I apologize. Moving on...

I have two winter jackets. One is the regular one most of you have seen me in. The other is my super-winter jacket, which I tend wear in extreme temperatures, and for skiing. It's pumped full of goose feathers and it's big and fluffy.

I like it. I got to wear it on Monday and Tuesday, too.

I like bobbing around in it like a fat, inflated balloon, bouncing and bumping into random people. Two years ago someone used it as a pillow, while I went elsewhere to practise piano.

I have also taken to head-butting people for no reason. I did it to Daisy a couple days ago and even Scott was weirded out. Daisy is UofT's resident page-turner. She is really a good pianist in her own right, but for some reason her pianistic skills are overshadowed by her reputation as an excellent, reliable page-turner. So I asked her to play taiko drum in my piece. Naturally.

About once every year I find myself an accomplice in one of her shopping sprees. Today we hit a fancy-schmancy store in Yorkville, where she decided she needed a ring of some sort. She was trying to choose between a ring with a heart-shaped stone on top, or a ring that was really a steel spiral that you wind on your finger, making it look like three rings from above. I mumbled some stuff about the pros and cons of each, but I assure you I was of absolutely no help whatsoever in the decision-making process. Eventually she went with the spiral, because of its unusual-ness. The lady behind the counter was wearing similarly avant-garde rings on *each* finger. She was also damned attractive. Go post-modernism!

Scott: I don't get rings.
Me: [Shrug] It's fashion.
Scott: Well, that explains it. I don't get fashion.

Scott and I and everyone from our "Composing for Film" class are going to our prof's house on Sunday to watch "Return of the King." The extended edition. Yes, this is for a course. Our prof, Christos Hatzis (who is also my private teacher this year), lives way out in the country, and I am debating whether to make use of the location by bringing my skis...

Sun, 26 Dec 2004 07:50:37 GMT

I hope everyone had nice Christmas day, whether you were actually celebrating Christmas, celebrating Giftmas (me), or simply celebrating the fact that there will be no more Christmas songs on the radio for the next ten months or so.

A couple of emails have gone out about get togethers...I realize all of it's pretty short notice and a lot of people already have plans. Sometimes this can't be helped. Different parts of life do tend to intrude upon one another...In any case, I'm looking forward to the gatherings, and if I don't see certain people before the holidays are up, then...happy holidays! I'll see you another time in the hopefully not-so-distant future.

The past couple of days were nice, if not exactly relaxing. I caught a couple movies with friends, including "Closer" and "House of Flying Daggers." Neither movie was what I'd quite expected. The former had some great moments -- including a wild, wild turn by Natalie Portman, proof that she can really act when she isn't constrained by *cough* certain directors -- but also a number of moments that rang false. I appreciated the insights into the nature of trust and the idea of using brute honesty as a weapon....but I found most of the characters simply so nasty to begin with that none of it really resonated with me. My loss, perhaps.

Those of you who enjoyed "Hero" should definitely check out "House of Flying Daggers", whose first 80 minutes or so represent one of the most sumptuous, most beautifully photographed, and most viscerally engaging movie journeys I've experienced in a while. Somehow, though, things fell apart for me in the final act. I'm still not sure why exactly. If someone were to praise the movie as whole I wouldn't really know how to argue with them, just that the last 20 minutes or so didn't *feel* right to me. Still, as far as ratios go, this was still pretty high on the awesome meter.

On Tuesday night a bunch of us played poker (among other things) at wolfbite's. In retrospect I think it's funny that hardly anyone bluffed, even though we were using Monopoly money the whole time. I mean...we had nothing to lose! We also played Memory (Debbie creamed us all with nine pairs, and I think I tied with everyone else and managed to avoid last place through sheer luck) and Asshole (vicious fun as usual.) At some point during the night everything became extremely funny, which is a sure sign that we had to quit soon before someone hurt themselves. We watched one of the LOTR parodies, and then parted ways.

Speaking of LOTR....how was the marathon? I hope it went well (everyone survived?). Looking forward to hearing about it :)

Devoted two days to shopping madly and spending lots of money, most of which I magically recovered this evening. This is the first year I've actually given gifts to all my relatives, instead of just to my parents. Thinking of what to buy for so many people turned out to be quite the challenge, but it felt good to be 'creative' (at least, within the bounds of books, movies, and music -- I know of nothing else!) I got some pretty uncreative things in return -- mostly gift certificates and money -- but I did receive a jump suit, which fits well, and might even inspire me to exercise a bit more (ahem...how about to exercise, period!)

After one of the shopping sprees Josh was at my place writing an important email (school-related) at 1:00 am, with Bryan and I looking over either shoulder and refining his draft as though we were editing an essay. Sounds fun, doesn't it? But oddly, it *was* kinda nice -- one can take pleasure in the smallest of things, I suppose. (I do hope everything turns out okay with that email, Josh.)

I also attended a quasi-Christmas party at Norman's, which was cool. Norman is the one filmmaker I know whose work I truly admire, although I wish he was a bit less self-conscious and more business-minded, and that he would take more risks with subject matter and be open to more script ideas. Anyway, the party...I knew, within minutes of stepping into his apartment, that I was totally out of place. Most of the guests were younger than me, but they dressed and acted beyond their years. When I arrived, I was greeted by Norm's producer, whom I didn't know, and who took advantage of my gullibility by making me doubt whether I'd knocked on the right door....I was literally about to apologize and leave when she broke into a grin and invited me inside. So I was in the right place after all. Everyone seemed to know who I was when I came in, even though I didn't know anybody: that was because in the time it took me from buzzing Norm from the lobby to finding his apartment (I wandered down a few too many hallways) Norm had previewed one of his films that I'd scored to his audience.

I managed to find someone I could latch onto. From the moment Derek observed the Final Fantasy influences in my music, I knew I'd found my fellow geek. After complaining profusely to this guy about FF7's final boss ("The absence of music just crushed my spirit!") we decided to mingle a bit more, as more guests were filtering in. It was actually a good idea that I stuck with him, because we -- the two biggest nerds in the room -- somehow found ourselves in the company of the two loveliest ladies in the room, not for a moment but for the entire evening! I have no idea how we managed to hold their attention for that long in the midst of all these other interesting people, but we did, and I derived some shallow pleasure out of that fact. (They didn't flirt with us, though. Hey, I was disappointed too :P)

I got pretty tipsy, which is to say my physical condition deteriorated while my psychological state looked on from above in dismay. I witnessed myself turning bright red (as usual) and lost my balance a few times, but I would have been a more effective drunk if I had been as mentally screwed up as I was physically. I wasn't. As things stand, I still can't decide whether I should continue trying to build my tolerance, or just quit altogether. At my cousin's dinner tonight I avoided the drink completely and was delighted to see many of my relatives suffer the same consequences as I had a few nights ago. Meanwhile we watched highlights from ROTK on my cousin's gigantic TV and earth-shattering sound system, opened presents, and played Halo 2 for fifteen blissful minutes.

In between all of this I've been composing, composing, composing. I've written about 16 minutes of original score for the feature. Progress is steady but very, very slow. I'm looking forward to the day when all this will be finished. Hopefully that won't be too long from now.

Till next time.