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The Hallowe’en Tally

Posted on by Patrick

Hallowe'en tally

For those that can’t read my scrawl:

  • But­ter­fly [A lit­tle girl in pur­ple. It was her first Hal­lowe’en, I’m guess­ing, since her mom was video­tap­ing the whole thing, and, as she walked away from my door, I heard her say, I got can­dy!]
  • Princess w/ par­ka [because this is Canada]
  • Bun­ny
  • Clown
  • Pup­py
  • Lion
  • Spi­der­man
  • Baby [ie, no costume]
  • Par­ka-clad werewolf
  • Spi­der-witch
  • Nerd [with a big wad of tape hold­ing her glass­es togeth­er at the nose — oh, the memories]
  • Zom­bie
  • Bat­man
  • 2 witch­es
  • Black Queen [Spades? Clubs?]
  • Zom­bie
  • Blue Man
  • Bur­lesque Hat Gal [Could­n’t see much cos­tume — par­ka — but she had one one of those minia­ture top hats bur­lesque per­form­ers wear (fas­ci­na­tors?)]
  • Princess in parka
  • Creepy Clown
  • Zom­bie [These last two were quite a bit old­er — late teens — and showed up just before 9 o’clock]

At 9:45 PM I shut off the out­side lights and called it a night.

And now, if you’ll par­don me, there’s a Wun­der­bar with my name on it. Mmm­m­m­m­mm, left­over candy.

Today’s writing lesson

Posted on by Patrick

…cour­tesy of an io9 arti­cle about Hell­rais­er.

[…] I think what the mon­sters in movies have to say for them­selves is every bit as inter­est­ing as what the human beings have to say. That’s why in stalk and slash films I feel that half the sto­ry is miss­ing. These crea­tures sim­ply become, in a very bor­ing way, abstrac­tions of evil. Evil is nev­er abstract. It is always con­crete, always par­tic­u­lar and always vest­ed in indi­vid­u­als. To deny the crea­tures as indi­vid­u­als the right to speak, to actu­al­ly state their case, is perverse—because I want to hear the Dev­il speak. I think that’s a British atti­tude. I like the idea that a point of view can be made by the dark side.
—Clive Barker
(empha­sis mine) 

I think it’s a Cana­di­an atti­tude, too. Or maybe I lean more to the British than the Amer­i­can point of view on such matters.

I’m not par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of hor­ror films, and so I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly seen Hell­rais­er. Now I sort of want to.

Intruders & Prowlers

Posted on by Patrick

Yes­ter­day I saw this great pho­to of two Lego jets, the A‑6 Intrud­er and the EA-6B Prowler:

Grumman A-6E Intruder and EA-6B Prowler updated

…which remind­ed me of my hal­cy­on days as an Air Cadet, attend­ing Air Stud­ies1 Camp in Pen­hold, Alber­ta. My Air Stud­ies flight2 was named “Prowler Flight” for the EA-6B Prowler, which was the Elec­tron­ic War­fare ver­sion of the A‑6 Intruder.

Back then I did­n’t think any­thing of the nomen­cla­ture, but now it strikes me as a lit­tle… creepy. I have to won­der, is there a plane out there code-named “Stalk­er”?

  1. Think “Flight School Lite”. ↩
  2. A flight is pret­ty much the Air Force equiv­a­lent of a pla­toon. ↩

Overheard on campus

Posted on by Patrick

Walk­ing behind two students:

1: Let’s kick this thing! [Super-enthu­si­as­tic]
2: Sor­ry, what? [Slight­ly confused]
1: Nothing.
2: Did you say some­thing about cake?

Then both of them cracked up.

Then, later…

As my cow-ork­ers and I were head­ed off for cof­fee, one of the Library staff said, “There’s free cake in the board room fridge. Help yourselves.”

Full cir­cle, man.

August Aurora

Posted on by Patrick

I head­ed out of town, hop­ing to catch Mars and Sat­urn before they set. I did­n’t have a lot of time, and when I got to a decent dark spot, the view was­n’t great, and high­way traf­fic to the south would have out­shined the plan­ets in any event.

Then I turned around, to face the north.

One of those nights

My dis­ap­point­ment fad­ed away.

Scent and memory

Posted on by Patrick

They’re tar­ring the roof of the West­man Cen­ten­ni­al Audi­to­ri­um. I bike past it every day on my way to work, and again on my way home. It’s actu­al­ly on cam­pus, so it’s near enough that I can smell the tar from my office if the win­dows are open.

WMCA

I don’t like the smell of tar. I don’t think I’m alone in this. But I’ve noticed, the last cou­ple days, that when I’m still about a block away, it does­n’t quite smell like tar. It smells like the grease my gram­pa Hrushowy used on his tractors.

Which makes me think of the farm, and about my grand­par­ents, and all the hap­py mem­o­ries well up.

Grandpa and Grandma

Black Bottle Man — the play

Posted on by Patrick

20140706-160339-57819910.jpg

We attend­ed the pre­mière of the stage ver­sion of Craig Rus­sel­l’s Black Bot­tle Man. The play, like the nov­el, was quite enjoy­able. I was impressed at how the cast almost all took on mul­ti­ple roles. This was helped by the sto­ries-with­in-sto­ries fram­ing of the play.

The sto­ry held the same heart­break and hope the nov­el did. The good-vs.-evil strug­gle remained the core of the sto­ry; the strug­gle of a family–of many families–torn apart was just as wrench­ing. The trans­la­tion to stage was well done.

Compare & Contrast

Posted on by Patrick

Years and years ago we showed a film at the Evans called Hard Core Logo, a mock­u­men­tary about a punk band that reunit­ed for one last tour, and spent the bulk of the tour re-hash­ing all the rea­sons they’d called it quits in the first place. (Spoil­er: It does­n’t end real well.)

The sound­track was a “trib­ute album” to a non-exis­tent band (the epony­mous Hard Core Logo), and as such it con­tained some great com­pare & con­trast moments, where two bands with rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent sounds cov­ered the same song.

My favourite con­trast was the two ver­sions of “Son of a Bitch to the Core”:

Lugen Broth­ers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg0nte_VbL8
Headstones

I love both ver­sions. If pushed to pick a win­ner, I’d prob­a­bly give the edge to the Lugen Broth­ers’ country/roots ver­sion — their ver­sion of the char­ac­ter seems more bad-ass than the hard-rockin’ woe-is-me one in the Head­stones’ ver­sion (I think the defin­ing moment is “If you take me on, you’re gonna lose” vs. “If you take me on, I’m gonna lose”).