I ran into more Amazing Race people today. I saw the hot guy and his friend running down Bear Ave. As they ran by me in a group of about 10 people, all wearing these yellow tied on Amazing Race signs, he yelled "Fucking Franki!" and tried to high five me. I can't believe he recognized me, though I guess I'm the only one in town with a pink down jacket.
This caused R, from the other evening, who was walking down the other side of the street, to run over to me. We ended up having tea at Starbucks. R suffers from arthritis, and was taking some kind of meds that made his pupils really small. He blew off his volunteer shift so we could go drinking, and I imagine it would have been something more potent had I not warned him I had a client telecon to attend to in a few hours.
I had a fun time listening to his stories of eating hash in Morocco (he said you know the buzz is kicking in when you hear the wind in your ears) and traveling through Africa with a guy from the French Foreign Legion. Between the two of us we managed to remember, in Latin, the first three paragraphs of Caesar's Gallic wars, the first 10 lines of the Iliad, and, in a total latin geek moment, we recited our favorite silly Latin poems (mine "Latin is a language, dead as dead can be / first it killed the Romans, now it's killing me").
The two interesting travel tips I learned from R are the following:
-if you are in an explosion open your mouth so that your ears won't get blown to bits; in addition, if you pull into a village and see all the kids standing around with their mouths open run away quickly because something is about to get blown up
-to find out the status of a country, change some money every day because the money changers really know what's going on - once in Algeria R was changing money and the guy offered 10 times the going rate if R would give him american dollars instead of whatever the french currency was at the time - a day later there was a coup - he said the CIA should have figured this out years ago, but hasn't
I started the day off at 630 am because I went to a publishers' workshop. I didn't learn a whole lot but did get inspired to put together a pitch for my next book which will likely be published way before my first book (or, not published at all, but I can dream can't I). The talk of the festival, which kept getting mentioned in the workshop, is some woman who got on the Oprah show. I sat in on her lecture yesterday. It's funny because to her face everyone says how great it all is. Then when she's gone they talk about how bad her lecture was (I agree), how she just used other people's material to write the book (just bought the book so can't say if that's true or not), and how she isn't that good of a writer so why did Oprah pick her. It's funny how two faced most people are here about stuff like that.
It's true especially of the women. There is a woman here who wrote a book about her husband dying; she ended up marrying his best friend. Packs of women were standing around talking about the book, and personal details about this woman's life, basically shredding her.
As the recycling nazi today I guess they felt comfortable saying these things around me. I mean, who would worry about talking in front of someone wearing a big green apron yelling "that doesn't go in there! it goes HERE!" as people try to throw their trash away. I had one little dude cower and scamper off with his trash rather than deal with me (this is 6 hours into my shift as a recycling ambassador, after only 5 hours of sleep, I was perhaps being a cranky bitch). This pack of old dudes, who I swear are stalking me, kept showing up with cups and asking "where would you like this to go, your highness?" even though they knew damn well where to put their coffee cups. I yelled at Jim Donini for trying to put a cup made of potato starch into the plastic recycling bin when it was supposed to go into the organic recycling bin. I ended the shift with my apron tied around my neck like a super hero cape, mostly because I was fucking bored, and also to shake the interest of a Banff Centre worker who, after hanging out with me for an hour, told me she thought I was "so juicy" and proceeded to ask me a question that isn't fit for this blog. The answer to the question was "NO!"
That woman was replaced with a woman named Betty that I worked with yesterday. We talked about cruisers and our obsession with walking. She told me the most interesting factoid about Banff. Apparently no one ever gets murdered here, except for once a few years ago. The police ended up going door to door to canvass the neighborhood (something they would do in my 'hood if they gave a shit). They discovered that 40% (Betty's number) of the people living in Banff were on the lam from the law! Great place to hide, I will admit. Of the people on the lam most were murderers from, according to Betty, Ontario. She told me to stop walking in town by myself at night. She should have come to visit me in Baltimore to experience what it's really like to live in a city of murderers.
I worked part of the morning with a kid named Sam who is from Australia. He wasn't good as a recycling ambassador (he couldn't keep the bins straight and showed up late; he kept telling people "I'm tired, so please take your trash somewhere else") but he was entertaining to talk to. My favorite thing he did was shake out his long dreds and then put on his hair band, right at the busiest recycling time, blocking people from throwing their trash away. I was like "dude, move!" and he just smiled at me and said "must look pretty before all things!" He tried to talk me into ditching my ambassador role at 1030 to go have a beer with him but I declined.
I should also mention, on the subject of guys, I finally had an encounter with the wine guy. I was walking down the street last night around 930 after a perfectly boring slide show, looking for food, when I saw him coming the other way. First of all, he was wearing these weird shoes and socks. And also wearing these shiny black pants that looked like basketball shorts but way longer. Ugh. And if that isn't bad enough, a green and black flannel shirt, but not cool flannel, just a shirt with one box of black next to one box of green, ad naseum. It was hideous. I tried to make small talk with him while not getting blinded by the street lights shining off his pants, especially after he mentioned having an entire case of cab that needed to be eradicated by Monday, but I couldn't get past the shoes. I mean, if I went to drink wine with him, at some point he would probably want to get comfortable and take his shoes off, then I would have to look at them in all their unsightly glory, and would surely lose my buzz.
I rounded the day out with a walk to Lake Vermilion. I'm supposed to go to Bruno's this evening because it's open mike night or something and Sam is going to be playing his diggery doo. Not sure I'll make it though. It's so warm in my room, I have writing to do, and it's cold outside.
A closing thought - at Topher Donahue's slide show last night he was talking about a parent-child relationship evolving to "dad as buddy" through climbing. Funny that I've been thinking about that a lot as it perfectly describes the relationship I have with my dad. He's a great buddy, totally reliable, enthusiastic about having adventures together, and someone I will never mind doing a 24 hour hike with or getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning to hang out with.
And I'm not just saying that because it's almost Christmas :D
Friday, November 7, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
hostess cupcake
This morning, at 8 am, while I was mulling over my plans for my day off from the festival (gondola ride and a hike) I received an email asking if I could be a hostess for an author event this afternoon. I immediate said yes, and imagined myself grandly meeting guests as they entered the event, yelling at waiters "bring more canapes!" and having everyone tell me "thanks for inviting me to your party, your theater is so beautiful" to which I would reply "yes, we like it".
Turns out being a hostess here isn't the same as being a hostess in, for example, an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I had to rip tickets, check tickets, direct people to the washroom, deal with one corybantic author who wanted to make sure all her relatives distant and close got into the event for free and felt the best way to do that was to scream at me while trying to put post it notes that listed their names on my badge. I also had to keep people from slamming doors, and shush the annoying people who left their cell phones on. My favorite person was a woman who unplugged camera equipment so she could plug her iBook in and type loudly during one poor author's presentation.
My favorite presentation was by this guy who tracks megafish. Those are fresh water fish that get really big. There was one carp thing that weighed 500 lbs. I also learned that there are freshwater sting rays. The author, Zeb Hogan, showed a video of himself getting drunk with Malaysian fishermen in an attempt to get them to respect him so they would listen to him and stop killing all the megafish. After doing many shots he had to play cards with the fishermen, and he commented that he wasn't sure if he was winning or losing, only that the fishermen kept punching him. The next scene shows him in the early morning after the drunkfest, standing in the rain in water up to his knees, looking like he was dead. Funny.
I also bought four books on accident (well, it's better than shoes). I'm hoping that when I repack my suitcase everything fits...I also managed to squeeze in a 25 minute shopping trip at the Gap to get clothes for monday since I'm not going to have time to go home before my consulting engagement starts. It was a great experience. I walked in, explained to this girl that I needed professional clothes to wear for next week, and asked her to put together some outfits for me while I answered some work emails on my crackberry because I hate shopping. She did make me try everything on before she would let me buy the clothes, but what she picked out was perfect. It turns out she is the niece of the guy who runs the Banff Centre, and she said she would shop for me anytime. I would actually fly her to Denver so I would never have to shop again. She is going to track down some shoes for me to try on tomorrow in between my work schedule, which is going to be very busy.
Tonight I go see Tabin and Topher Donahue talk about...something. The book awards are tonight too. I might try to crash that party by using my publisher's name in vain, or maybe R from last night can sneak me in. I keep getting invited in to stuff, I think because I'm the only one in this town that smiles and talks to people. Most of the female staff at the BC run around like world war 3 has started and they keep yelling at people, especially me, because I do things like let some little old dude into a talk even though he can't find his ticket. They even fucked with Jim Donini for not having his ticket last night for the party I worked. Really...
Turns out being a hostess here isn't the same as being a hostess in, for example, an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I had to rip tickets, check tickets, direct people to the washroom, deal with one corybantic author who wanted to make sure all her relatives distant and close got into the event for free and felt the best way to do that was to scream at me while trying to put post it notes that listed their names on my badge. I also had to keep people from slamming doors, and shush the annoying people who left their cell phones on. My favorite person was a woman who unplugged camera equipment so she could plug her iBook in and type loudly during one poor author's presentation.
My favorite presentation was by this guy who tracks megafish. Those are fresh water fish that get really big. There was one carp thing that weighed 500 lbs. I also learned that there are freshwater sting rays. The author, Zeb Hogan, showed a video of himself getting drunk with Malaysian fishermen in an attempt to get them to respect him so they would listen to him and stop killing all the megafish. After doing many shots he had to play cards with the fishermen, and he commented that he wasn't sure if he was winning or losing, only that the fishermen kept punching him. The next scene shows him in the early morning after the drunkfest, standing in the rain in water up to his knees, looking like he was dead. Funny.
I also bought four books on accident (well, it's better than shoes). I'm hoping that when I repack my suitcase everything fits...I also managed to squeeze in a 25 minute shopping trip at the Gap to get clothes for monday since I'm not going to have time to go home before my consulting engagement starts. It was a great experience. I walked in, explained to this girl that I needed professional clothes to wear for next week, and asked her to put together some outfits for me while I answered some work emails on my crackberry because I hate shopping. She did make me try everything on before she would let me buy the clothes, but what she picked out was perfect. It turns out she is the niece of the guy who runs the Banff Centre, and she said she would shop for me anytime. I would actually fly her to Denver so I would never have to shop again. She is going to track down some shoes for me to try on tomorrow in between my work schedule, which is going to be very busy.
Tonight I go see Tabin and Topher Donahue talk about...something. The book awards are tonight too. I might try to crash that party by using my publisher's name in vain, or maybe R from last night can sneak me in. I keep getting invited in to stuff, I think because I'm the only one in this town that smiles and talks to people. Most of the female staff at the BC run around like world war 3 has started and they keep yelling at people, especially me, because I do things like let some little old dude into a talk even though he can't find his ticket. They even fucked with Jim Donini for not having his ticket last night for the party I worked. Really...
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
cabs, crashers, and can't leave
This evening I was a "hostess" for the writer and film documentary dinner. Don't ask how I finagled that, suffice it to say I listened to a Banffian who had control of the volunteer schedule talk for over an hour about his nervous breakdown and got the gig, even though there was already a volunteer assigned to it. I would like to note that my pink long sleeve volunteer t-shirt was taken away from me (full disclosure - it was a bit small) and was replaced with a short sleeve light blue t-shirt (not that I'm complaining, but I was kind of psyched on the pink - I know, I'll live).
The other volunteer, well, let's call him R. He's a Banffian who claimed to be interested in my book, though he never really let me get in a word edgewise about it. We, R and I, were supposed to be taking tickets at the door of the dinner. I was supposed to check people off on a list. The list was incomplete, most people didn't have their tickets, R was letting all the riff raff through because he knows everyone, and at the end I just gave up and decided to let all the crashers in. In between the flux of people arriving I was instructed on terrorism, politics, and gossip about the writers, film makers, and the National Geographic staff.
Then a woman from the Banff Centre invited me in to the dinner because everyone had more or less arrived (Tabin was absent). R followed me (he was invited too, but not necessarily to follow me). We showed up at the bar (R checked out the food first, I was like "tourist!") only to find out they were out of wine (and I was so looking forward to a glass of the cab, which might suck, but which has a cool poster, which I know because I put up a million of them yesterday). Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the hot guy from the wine sponsor, who was making his way over to me. Hooray! I thought. HE can get me wine, and, more importantly, he's hot.
Ah, but R, still mentally entangled in some comment I had made about the middle east, proceeded to get us some water (ech) and then shuffled me off to a corner so he could hear me better. I met a few of the writers in passing as they came over to pay their respects to R. I had my picture taken about 100 times by this photog for what ever reason, while R looked on and said (I swear I'm not making this up) "I'm NOT posing for a photo. This is NOT the way to do this at all! Just circulate and catch us speaking naturally!" Then as an aside to me he said "She OBVIOUSLY doesn't know her job. I don't know where [name redacted] is getting his interns!"
The wine guy approached twice but was turned away by R as I sat there like the biggest fucking idiot on the planet and let it happen. I've lost my game, what can I say...
Then, when it seemed things couldn't get any more bleak (loss of t-shirt, loss of wine guy flirting op, pic taken with old dude that might end up on a web site somewhere) R's wife showed up. Turns out she's one of the people I met yesterday who works at the Banff Centre. She was NOT HAPPY when she happened upon R and I in a "secluded" corner, discussing in what probably appeared to be a suspicious manner the Joseph Conrad book The Secret Agent (thought I was the only one on the planet who read it). She came over, gave me the look, gave R the look, and stormed off. I was like "Dude, um, why don't you go see where your wife went?" and he was like "I have the car keys." Power. Makes the world go round.
The evening ended with R offering me a ride home (I declined because I'm pretty sure his wife wanted to stab me), the wine guy leaving with his friends, and then coming back only to find me STILL talking to R, and then leaving again, and then me finding out R is on the book review committee and (wink wink) if the book ever gets done...yeah, please invite me to Banff again. Time of my life.
I retired to my hotel room, where the thermostat reads 72 degrees (liar), and I tried to change my flight reservation to fly out Saturday instead of Sunday since I have to be at a customer site on Monday, in DC. It was not to be. I now am flying from Calgary to Denver on Sunday, then to Dulles, getting in at 1 am Monday morning, appearing at the customer site 6 hours later. And I have to buy some clothes and shoes since I have nothing work related with me.
Fuck extreme sports. Bring me the skiers. Those bitches would cry after living my life for a month...
Quote of the evening, from Timmy O'Neill: "I didn't recognize you at first because I'm sober."
The other volunteer, well, let's call him R. He's a Banffian who claimed to be interested in my book, though he never really let me get in a word edgewise about it. We, R and I, were supposed to be taking tickets at the door of the dinner. I was supposed to check people off on a list. The list was incomplete, most people didn't have their tickets, R was letting all the riff raff through because he knows everyone, and at the end I just gave up and decided to let all the crashers in. In between the flux of people arriving I was instructed on terrorism, politics, and gossip about the writers, film makers, and the National Geographic staff.
Then a woman from the Banff Centre invited me in to the dinner because everyone had more or less arrived (Tabin was absent). R followed me (he was invited too, but not necessarily to follow me). We showed up at the bar (R checked out the food first, I was like "tourist!") only to find out they were out of wine (and I was so looking forward to a glass of the cab, which might suck, but which has a cool poster, which I know because I put up a million of them yesterday). Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the hot guy from the wine sponsor, who was making his way over to me. Hooray! I thought. HE can get me wine, and, more importantly, he's hot.
Ah, but R, still mentally entangled in some comment I had made about the middle east, proceeded to get us some water (ech) and then shuffled me off to a corner so he could hear me better. I met a few of the writers in passing as they came over to pay their respects to R. I had my picture taken about 100 times by this photog for what ever reason, while R looked on and said (I swear I'm not making this up) "I'm NOT posing for a photo. This is NOT the way to do this at all! Just circulate and catch us speaking naturally!" Then as an aside to me he said "She OBVIOUSLY doesn't know her job. I don't know where [name redacted] is getting his interns!"
The wine guy approached twice but was turned away by R as I sat there like the biggest fucking idiot on the planet and let it happen. I've lost my game, what can I say...
Then, when it seemed things couldn't get any more bleak (loss of t-shirt, loss of wine guy flirting op, pic taken with old dude that might end up on a web site somewhere) R's wife showed up. Turns out she's one of the people I met yesterday who works at the Banff Centre. She was NOT HAPPY when she happened upon R and I in a "secluded" corner, discussing in what probably appeared to be a suspicious manner the Joseph Conrad book The Secret Agent (thought I was the only one on the planet who read it). She came over, gave me the look, gave R the look, and stormed off. I was like "Dude, um, why don't you go see where your wife went?" and he was like "I have the car keys." Power. Makes the world go round.
The evening ended with R offering me a ride home (I declined because I'm pretty sure his wife wanted to stab me), the wine guy leaving with his friends, and then coming back only to find me STILL talking to R, and then leaving again, and then me finding out R is on the book review committee and (wink wink) if the book ever gets done...yeah, please invite me to Banff again. Time of my life.
I retired to my hotel room, where the thermostat reads 72 degrees (liar), and I tried to change my flight reservation to fly out Saturday instead of Sunday since I have to be at a customer site on Monday, in DC. It was not to be. I now am flying from Calgary to Denver on Sunday, then to Dulles, getting in at 1 am Monday morning, appearing at the customer site 6 hours later. And I have to buy some clothes and shoes since I have nothing work related with me.
Fuck extreme sports. Bring me the skiers. Those bitches would cry after living my life for a month...
Quote of the evening, from Timmy O'Neill: "I didn't recognize you at first because I'm sober."
Amazing Race
Walking to work today the most interesting thing, so far, of the festival happened. I was walking up to the Banff Centre, listening to my mp3 player, when two guys coming down from the centre started waving at me. I ignored them until one of them, who was pretty hot, walked up to me and pulled my head phones out and then shouted "Where's the fucking bicycle obstacle course?"
I then noticed he was wearing this weird Canadian shirt, and his companion (who was nice, and also an explicit user of the f word, but, unfortunately, not as hot) was wearing a Tony Roma's apron over his back. While I was processing that the hot guy explained to me that they are on the Amazing Race, which is a TV show about something, and they had to find the course. I looked in my backpack for my map but hadn't brought it, so I suggested to them that they try this bike trail I've been walking on. It turns out I guessed right, and hopefully will see them again so I can collect the offered drink that I couldn't accept when I ran in to them because I was on my way to work.
I might watch the Amazing Race but I don't know how to find something on TV.
I then noticed he was wearing this weird Canadian shirt, and his companion (who was nice, and also an explicit user of the f word, but, unfortunately, not as hot) was wearing a Tony Roma's apron over his back. While I was processing that the hot guy explained to me that they are on the Amazing Race, which is a TV show about something, and they had to find the course. I looked in my backpack for my map but hadn't brought it, so I suggested to them that they try this bike trail I've been walking on. It turns out I guessed right, and hopefully will see them again so I can collect the offered drink that I couldn't accept when I ran in to them because I was on my way to work.
I might watch the Amazing Race but I don't know how to find something on TV.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Radical Reels
So today I completed my first day of "work" as a Banff volunteer. I went from having 2 hours of assignments to working the whole day (guess it's hard to find competent volunteers). I knew things would work out when, upon showing up at the Banff Centre, they put me in charge of the wine. The rep for the wine was super hot (the free wine hookup also foremost in my mind) but I was bitch blocked by some bleach blond tramp who kept following the guy around. I also put up a bunch of posters and decorated the room where they're setting up all the vendors. I was given a volunteer shirt that hooray! is pink.
Then tonight I went to Radical Reels, which is a collection of extreme sport movies. The show opened with Timmy O'Neill, more sober than usual, going off about something that made no sense, followed by these kids from the audience jumping on stage and playing Eye of the Tiger in some game called Guitar Hero. It was fairly retarded and was a waste of 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
The films this year were exceptionally good, especially compared to last year's kind of boring documentaries. My favorite was either Crux, which had such a good sound track that I'm going to download it (http://cdbaby.com/cd/corduroykid) or Massive, an amazing ski movie. The Sonny Trotter movie came partially thanks to Will Gadd who apparently organized some funding so he could finish his movie If You're Not Falling.
After the intermission we had to suffer through another song, this time Blondie, though the kids were around 14 (how do they know these songs?). There is a way to "win" Guitar Hero though I'm not sure how. And it was kind of gay to see some kid jumping around on stage with the equivalent of a plastic toy. Like, dude, those aren't the kind of plastic toys that get a girl hot. Goes to show how little 14 year old boys know...
Then there was this weird Mountain Idol contest thing. These kids got $100 for being "ambassadors", what ever that means. Some kayaker guy won the Mountain Idol contest and was given $1,000. Didn't get what that was about at all.
As for victims, so far I've racked up three. I heard from Tami Knight, illustrator and author extraordinaire, that Banff is a huge hook up opportunity. Since I've been slacking around doing my own thing today was my first interaction with the male species hanging out here. Most of them are Canadian (read: timid virgins with no game that likely only get laid because some events have alcohol).
My first encounter was with a sound engineer who is two inches shorter than I am (and that's an even bigger number in centimeters) who kept following me around today while I was trying to decorate. I had to hide in the women's bathroom for 5 minutes and then lock the room I was working in to lose him. Then there was the documentary film maker who thought he was sneaking a picture of me with his camera phone while I was having a smoke (it was about as subtle as a shark attack) and then texting his friends about me when he was standing RIGHT NEXT to me and I could see the messages. Lame. I ditched him in the crowd going into the auditorium to watch Radical Reels. Then there was the guy, kayaker, age 25, who thought I was 23, and who seemed overly excited about the fact that I have a job. Ech.
I did, oddly enough, end up sitting next to a guy who works for New Belgium who lives in Ft. Collins and who knows some people that I know. I am supposed to meet him and his friends out for a drink later this evening but it's almost 1130 and, hell, I'm old.
If I could transport myself anywhere right now, it would be to a ski slope with 2 feet of fresh powder and with my new skis, and maybe one of the guys from Massive to give me ski lessons. Then, back in my hotel room, if someone brought me sushi I would think I had died and gone to heaven.
The sushi in Banff...well, that's another story.
Tomorrow I work until 9 PM and will hopefully get myself invited to some parties. Not that I'll go, I just like being invited places, especially if I also get a badge to get in to the parties.
Then tonight I went to Radical Reels, which is a collection of extreme sport movies. The show opened with Timmy O'Neill, more sober than usual, going off about something that made no sense, followed by these kids from the audience jumping on stage and playing Eye of the Tiger in some game called Guitar Hero. It was fairly retarded and was a waste of 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
The films this year were exceptionally good, especially compared to last year's kind of boring documentaries. My favorite was either Crux, which had such a good sound track that I'm going to download it (http://cdbaby.com/cd/corduroykid) or Massive, an amazing ski movie. The Sonny Trotter movie came partially thanks to Will Gadd who apparently organized some funding so he could finish his movie If You're Not Falling.
After the intermission we had to suffer through another song, this time Blondie, though the kids were around 14 (how do they know these songs?). There is a way to "win" Guitar Hero though I'm not sure how. And it was kind of gay to see some kid jumping around on stage with the equivalent of a plastic toy. Like, dude, those aren't the kind of plastic toys that get a girl hot. Goes to show how little 14 year old boys know...
Then there was this weird Mountain Idol contest thing. These kids got $100 for being "ambassadors", what ever that means. Some kayaker guy won the Mountain Idol contest and was given $1,000. Didn't get what that was about at all.
As for victims, so far I've racked up three. I heard from Tami Knight, illustrator and author extraordinaire, that Banff is a huge hook up opportunity. Since I've been slacking around doing my own thing today was my first interaction with the male species hanging out here. Most of them are Canadian (read: timid virgins with no game that likely only get laid because some events have alcohol).
My first encounter was with a sound engineer who is two inches shorter than I am (and that's an even bigger number in centimeters) who kept following me around today while I was trying to decorate. I had to hide in the women's bathroom for 5 minutes and then lock the room I was working in to lose him. Then there was the documentary film maker who thought he was sneaking a picture of me with his camera phone while I was having a smoke (it was about as subtle as a shark attack) and then texting his friends about me when he was standing RIGHT NEXT to me and I could see the messages. Lame. I ditched him in the crowd going into the auditorium to watch Radical Reels. Then there was the guy, kayaker, age 25, who thought I was 23, and who seemed overly excited about the fact that I have a job. Ech.
I did, oddly enough, end up sitting next to a guy who works for New Belgium who lives in Ft. Collins and who knows some people that I know. I am supposed to meet him and his friends out for a drink later this evening but it's almost 1130 and, hell, I'm old.
If I could transport myself anywhere right now, it would be to a ski slope with 2 feet of fresh powder and with my new skis, and maybe one of the guys from Massive to give me ski lessons. Then, back in my hotel room, if someone brought me sushi I would think I had died and gone to heaven.
The sushi in Banff...well, that's another story.
Tomorrow I work until 9 PM and will hopefully get myself invited to some parties. Not that I'll go, I just like being invited places, especially if I also get a badge to get in to the parties.
IKEA epic - the corrections
After a, well, let's just call it a discussion, Con Way requested the following corrections be made to the IKEA epic story (see pic at left of CW punishing a wall that made fun of his driving):
He DID listen to me about closing the passenger door. What happened was he opened it to tie rope around it that was being used to hold the back door closed after we got everything loaded, and when he opened the door a box that had been resting on the arm rest fell and that's why we couldn't get the door closed and had to unpack. I did not realize that was what happened because I was at the back of the car and so I falsely assumed that he (being male) ignored me. He said he told me that he thought it was a good idea when I first mentioned closing the passenger door. I probably wasn't listening when he said that because I was busy cursing him in my head for buying so much fucking stuff at IKEA.
He is a good driver, even though he is Asian. He just occasionally forgets he's driving. For the record I rode to Brooklyn, the doughnut shop, and to the Flushing mall on the back of his motorcycle and only once feared for my life. I heartfully apologize for being racist regarding my comments on the way Asians drive.
(It must just be a coincidence that none of them can drive, and have nothing to do with them being Asian - I mean shit, if Asians could drive wouldn't Lucy Liu have had an Asian driver in Kill Bill? Con Way, I'm KIDDING! KIDDING!)
I did something bad, which I failed to mention. After we got everything packed up Con Way asked where the cookies were and I told him they were not accessible, when in fact they would have been very easy to get to.
I also forgot to add that earlier in the afternoon Con Way and I were giving piggy back rides to each other (CW's idea) to get in a leg workout. So by the time we got to IKEA we were both kind of tired, leg wise, though our piggy backs provided great amusement for at least one couple that was watching us act like total idiots in the park.
So, CW, the record is set straight, or straighter. Please don't be mad at me anymore...
Monday, November 3, 2008
the three Fs
At Bachtoberfest I started talking to a woman named Claire, mostly, to be honest, because she said she wanted to set me up with her son, a Marine Colonel currently serving in Iraq. Yum. But then she told me he's married to, as she described his wife, "a ding dong" that she was hoping her son would divorce upon return from Iraq (enter me, stage left, according to her plan).
I told her I wasn't interested in her little scheme, and then we started making fun of men (at a party where we were served 4 types of german wieners, it was hard to not chuckle every time we saw a guy), and discussing our bad behavior with them over the summer. She told me that she had a procedure for men, which she called "the three Fs": find him, fuck him, forget him.
Claire, I should mention, is 72 but looks 42. She was married, had three kids, drop kicked her husband, and has followed the three Fs since. I can't help but think she's right. As a woman, if you have a job and don't need a man for anything other than sex, why invest all the energy and money into a real relationship? You know the asspipe you're with is going to fuck someone else sooner or later. Wouldn't it be nice to have not wasted your resources on him?
A movie I watched recently, Romance and Cigarettes, had a line along this theme. Susan Sarandon finds out her husband is cheating on her and during an argument screams at him "It's just a hole!" Since the movie was written by a man I thought the line was very profound. That's the difference between men and women. When a man is fucking you, you are just a hole. For women (again, as in the movie) it's hard to think that way when you're having sex (for the record, I don't actually think the movie was about a guy who cheats on his wife - it was about a guy dying of lung cancer - oops, spoiler - and I think that's why there was an emphasis on "the hole", as in smoking even though you know it will kill you and maybe that's the equivalent of cheating on your spouse, which, now that I think about it, should somehow be a theme in the book I'm no longer writing, but with climbing instead of smoking...hm...I digress).
Likely women feel differently because, if you aren't careful, nine months after something goes in something comes back out. Men don't ever have to understand that or feel responsible for their actions once they have sex. This is why there are mis-understandings between the sexes that can never be resolved. I know people stay together, happy or unhappy, for reasons that usually don't make any sense, but can be boiled down to a feeling of security for the woman and a feeling of dependence on the part of the man. Yawn.
And they call it love.
I told her I wasn't interested in her little scheme, and then we started making fun of men (at a party where we were served 4 types of german wieners, it was hard to not chuckle every time we saw a guy), and discussing our bad behavior with them over the summer. She told me that she had a procedure for men, which she called "the three Fs": find him, fuck him, forget him.
Claire, I should mention, is 72 but looks 42. She was married, had three kids, drop kicked her husband, and has followed the three Fs since. I can't help but think she's right. As a woman, if you have a job and don't need a man for anything other than sex, why invest all the energy and money into a real relationship? You know the asspipe you're with is going to fuck someone else sooner or later. Wouldn't it be nice to have not wasted your resources on him?
A movie I watched recently, Romance and Cigarettes, had a line along this theme. Susan Sarandon finds out her husband is cheating on her and during an argument screams at him "It's just a hole!" Since the movie was written by a man I thought the line was very profound. That's the difference between men and women. When a man is fucking you, you are just a hole. For women (again, as in the movie) it's hard to think that way when you're having sex (for the record, I don't actually think the movie was about a guy who cheats on his wife - it was about a guy dying of lung cancer - oops, spoiler - and I think that's why there was an emphasis on "the hole", as in smoking even though you know it will kill you and maybe that's the equivalent of cheating on your spouse, which, now that I think about it, should somehow be a theme in the book I'm no longer writing, but with climbing instead of smoking...hm...I digress).
Likely women feel differently because, if you aren't careful, nine months after something goes in something comes back out. Men don't ever have to understand that or feel responsible for their actions once they have sex. This is why there are mis-understandings between the sexes that can never be resolved. I know people stay together, happy or unhappy, for reasons that usually don't make any sense, but can be boiled down to a feeling of security for the woman and a feeling of dependence on the part of the man. Yawn.
And they call it love.
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