"exmass" or United Cheesecake Day
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Everywhere,
United States
Saturday, December 25, 2004
(more non Rochester pics to follow)
"I've been everywhere, man..."
I've been to a lot of places with "M" in the last couple months - Missouri, Montreal, Minneapolis, Michigan (well, just flew from Detroit)....
I was in Rochester for 10 months at the George Eastman House doing the film archiving program. It ended in June and *I* ended up on my rump. Nothing to do but find a job and a home.... I'm still looking...
I tooled around Southern Ontario for a while visiting Michele (who's on the cover of the current Broken Pencil don't ya know! Brokenpencil.com) and Sarah in Guelph, Jonathan in Beamsville, my parents in Windsor, my favourite sand dunes in Grand Bend, Ben in Toronto (I squeeze in and out of that place so quick because it just makes me anxious)...
Jonathan and I took a trip to NYC to hang out and visit Dave and Robin. I went swimming at Coney Island! Not such a good idea in terms of pollution I think, but I thought it wouldn't kill me to do it just once. Rode that big old ferris wheel. Saw Sammy Davis Jr.'s glass eye and some shrunken heads. Ate good food... you know the gist. Always hanging out in the lower east side where Abc No Rio, Moo Shoes , that community garden with the huge sculpture of junk and Kate's Joint is... Saw the most fantastical carrousel made up of characters kids drew...
In August it was time for me to go LA as I won a fellowship through the Eastman School to follow a film through the preservation process for a month. My mentor was a guy my age named Jeff and he was fantastic. My film was a peculiar little full colour short musical with bad production standards. I grew to be very fond if it after I figured out what exactly what it was. Technicolor gave me a car, some money and a nice little apartment with everything I needed from towels to a blender. Classmate Jen stayed on my couch the whole month while she looked for a job. I selfishly did not share my cool Murphy bed with her. I hope I didn't cause her a lifetime of back pain... I was planning on driving around LA and checking out the whole huge city as I kept finding myself in the same areas, but it didn't work out. On my last weekend there I drove to San Diego on my birthday to see the Che Café which I've wanted to check out for like 10 years. That night the show was solo musicians screaming into microphones with prerecorded music. When I ordered a BBQ tempeh sandwich the worker said "chill." I asked "So the sandwich is served cold?" before I realized I was just an old square and he was a young punk dude. Oi. Most of our free time was spent at the beach , watching Spongebob Square Pants (well I watched Spongebob. Jen preferred The Amazing Race.) and looking for work. Every weekend we'd go to some new beach... so warm and wonderful. You can actually go into the ocean and not freeze your tush off... I went to the Smell and saw Cut the Shit and Career Suicide. I love the Smell so much. Half the LA scene is Latino punk kids. It's terribly cool... so refreshing after so many years in the Toronto scene. I met Jackie Joice again, and had another Laguana Beach trip. I got the most elaborate caramel apple in the world...
After nice warm LA I spent two weeks in Portland visiting Marcus. There it was often cold and rainy. ..especially the day we drove 3 hours to the sand dunes - when we got drenched 10 seconds after exiting his big orange truck... Besides the lack of warmth and sun Portland is a fabulous place. I didn't even get a glimpse of the punk scene and it's still a fabulous place. I did a little vegan desserts potluck at the OTSU vegan store and met lots of nice people. Veganmart.com Beside the store is Food Fight - the vegan grocery store. They promised that if I came up with a vegan twinkie recipe they would do the papers to get me a job there ;) So just with those two places, Powell's Books, being somewhat close to the ocean, figs and apples and cherries everywhere, and pizza cinemas, the town is paradise. Just before I left I saw a poster up for a Dislose show (my favourite Japanese band. This comes into play later) - wow - I was in heaven.
But I left heaven and came back to Ontario. Bad move. After my father blew up I went to Guelph. There I got the idea to go to Missouri...
So I went to Missouri. But first I stopped in NYC to see Disclose. Found out from Felix Havoc that they had canceled with east coast tour FOUR MONTHS previous! Argh!!! Was so devastated I couldn't properly enjoy my time in NYC. Dave took me to Burritoville where I had the most delish soy concoction ever.... And Horchata! Hurray for Horchata! Thought "well, here I am with my super 8 camera and no Dislcose. I might as well go shoot that kid's carousel. But I got there and it had closed for the season. Argh. But shot some footage of Uncurbed and that was very good...
So I went to Columbia Missouri to learn how to project 35mm at their micro cinema Ragtag. But when I got there I found that there was only one projector which meant it was like projecting 16mm - which I already know how to do. Ragtag takes the film and spools them onto two big reels and has an intermission in between. Oh well. I learned their system anyway. I also ended up vegan baking at the Main Squeeze veg restaurant. It was the best job I ever had. I just went in for a few hours about every second day and baked whatever I wanted. I came up with some nice new recipes including a shitload of tofu cheesecakes and a chai spice cake that has tea in it! I also helped Christie shoot a doc about the election (oh why oh why did you guys vote for BUSH!?!?) and practiced some more claymation. It was 5 years since I'd been at the Ranch and it had changed a lot. New people, new schemes, David has a new car with these crazy automatic seatbelts. They changed the back woods a little bit too. I got lost walking home one night. Turns out I'd spent 3 hours walking in circles just a few hundred yards from the house... We had a couple days of 70 degree weather and then less than two weeks later in SNOWED! Luckily I was smart and had my winter jacket because I had to make a detour to...
Minneapolis! The Association of Moving Image Archivists were having their annual conference in freezing Minneapolis. Met up with Jen and Dave and Mark. Some good panels and discussions but the archival screening was a bit of a let down. Last year there was a film by Orson Wells that seemed like it could have been shot in the 60's but was actually the '30s, a full colour 3D short from the late '30s, news footage of an invention which was suppose to help cyclists signal but just ended looking like a big orange dick inflating in all directions behind them, etc. I of course could not be in Minneapolis without visiting Extreme Noise and hooking up with entrenched sXe crustie Felix Havoc. He picked me up in a big blue and silver truck and we road around looking at city sites - too bad it was pitch dark... Extreme Noise is one fine record store I must say... sigh...
Back in Columbia I baked and surfed the internet pretty much all day looking for jobs. Davy from Found Magazine came by Ragtag one evening. I saw found his website by accident a year ago and was tickled that someone else was so into stuff found on the street that he started a webpage. Little did I know there was also a magazine and a book! Foundmagazine.com. There was a big Deerhoof show in the basement and I made many trips to the healthfood store to get these great vegan chocolates sweetened with barley malt. Unfortunately, just before I left I bought like 6 to take on my journey only to find that they had CHANGED the ingredients on me, just in a few days, and put MILK and sugar in everything. Argh. One of the three broken pinball games started to work and every Thursday there was poker (which I half scorned). The Leah Quinelle Allstar grrls where always being crafty and talking about boys, Mary was scoring with boys and getting great funded internship offers, Simon the cat was always on his box, Christie was running ragged with the True/False film fest, her own film, her other job and all her million other projects, David wasn't around all that much but he was always a good sport about eating my vegan food. I left on thanksgiving to find myself in a hotel room with only junk food to eat...
In Montreal I stayed with Malcolm and Stacey while I did a sound edit on their documentary about Gordon Thomas. Two years previous we had gone to NYC to look for this lost "outsider" musician. On a second trip we found him and the documentary's been in the works ever since. Gordon played trombone for Dizzy Gilespie in the 40's and started recording his own sweet simple songs in the 60's. Gordonthomas.com The sound edit required me to be at the National Film Board in nowheresville in an overnight shift from 6pm to 6am. It was a little grueling. I tried to make myself fit those hours but it didn't work. I had to take 3 different naps during the day... It was weird walking around that place at 4am... I went to the punk record store soundcentral and picked up a few items including a SIX dollar NEW Cluster Bomb Unit cd... I got a couple of maple sugar bricks and wanted to grate them into powdered maple sugar but in doing so I created maple butter. While maple butter is wonderful - it was not what I wanted Malcolm as World Provider went on tour for 19 days around Texas and had a horrible start but I think things started to get better... or maybe he just really lowered his expectations. Stacey and I watched two bad recent Canadian films by people we knew. Oi. It's time to start funding GOOD scripts, Canaduh ... Missed a good $2 punk show but finally got some Damned Dollies from Dana Damneddollies.com Wow are they great! The Montreal Metro is so god damned hot! What are they doing!? People are bundled up for -10 degree weather and it's like 21 degrees down there!
Back to Ontario ("gee mom I wanna go home" But where is home??) More time in Guelph (baby town) and a couple short visits to Toronto (new doctor! She better have some good specialist connections!) Quick "hi's to Helen, Ben, Lisa and Jonathan. No time even for a "hullo siue" dinner. Jonathan showed me his new amazing film called Deathmask which is made up of stills and virtually unrecognizable Loogan Bin riffs. The temp went down to MINUS TWENTY!!! And then we got 10 inches of snow in a few hours! My back still aches from shoveling Michele and Sarah's driveway.
Now I'm back in Windsor for exmass. I've got a whole tofurkey I have to eat myself. I still feel a little uncomfortable around my father. Mom bought me yet another pair of pajamas. If you've seen me in pjs you know how odd they can be. One is some Japanese version of baseball advertising... another is my big blue snowman pajamas which I cherish because they are so warm. The new ones have a skewed heart (how fitting) on them and a HOOD with some kind of silkish material on the inside. You will hee hee if you see them... Cousin Brian came over last night and cha cha chatted his way till 12:30 am. When I inquired about his Korean wife's immigrant status it launched an hour story about how they were screwed by evil people in Asia... The rest of the family (all the kids!) will be here soon. Nap is needed to save some energy...
Other bits: Jonathan and I broke up. We are both sad. Remember that computer company I sued? Well I won and what's more I actually finally got the money! They were in contempt at the end and a police officer went over and told them to pay immediately or they would be put in jail. Ha to them. I've been searching for an American to marry so I can get a job in the states. I have sent over 75 resumes without ANYTHING in response. I figure it would have to be someone I knew quite well and could trust, someone I've had previous affection for, or a gay man. Everyone is telling me it is quite difficult .... Everyone else says the easiest way to live and work in the states is to get married. Looks like this one might be a losing battle. I bought my first pair of new pants in about 11 years. I'm letting my hair go natural for the first time in probably years. Am I going grey?? It's hard to tell right now...
Ben's first feature The End of the Year, which I did sound on, is playing at the Royal at 7pm on Jan 15th. By donation. It is also his birthday and he will have a party afterwards. You should totally check it out. You've never seen anything like it - I can guarantee it!
I'm back in Columbia in Feb doing print traffic coordination for the True/False Documentary Film Festival Truefalse.org It is a fine festival so I've heard - anything David Wilson gets his hooks into is fine - if you can get your butt to Missouri you should attend. After that my life is an open book. Don't know where I'll be or what I'll be doing.
I made some fab nuts for xmas. The first 5 folx to email me and mention these Sour Creem Cinnamon Walnuts will get some!
Luv to you
