So I’m back from a fabulous Hallowe’ekend in Seattle but more about that tomorrow as I had a rather harrowing dream experience thismorning that resulted in disastrous morning tears.

I don’t remember exactly how this dream began, but what I do know is that I died and was a ghost. I was in a room with a bunch of people that I know, friends and family – some composites. Anyway, I’m dead and I’m wandering around the room and people can’t see me but I realise that some people can feel my touch. So I hold up someone’s arm and write my name down the inside of their forearm (this was Jo-ann, I think). So now she realizes that I’m there and obviously we’re crying and then eventually I somehow end up in a diner booth with my parents. I’m holding my Mum, and my Dad’s on the other side of her and we’re all just crying because we know that at some point I’ll have to go, unable to stay in limbo as a ghost.

It’s at this point that I wake up and realize:
a. that I’m not dead; but
b. that I am crying.

It was a terrible morning and one from which I only recovered because:
a. it was 11am and I’d had a fabulous sleep; and
b. that owing to the time it was perfectly acceptable to jump right into lunch, skipping breakfast, and thereby enabling the inclusion of the fantastic lays limon chips i had purchased south of the border.

Seriously, it was a very strange dream that I am continuing to dissect but those are some AMAZING potato chips.

lonnie gordon’s “happenin all over again” is a classic. FACT! not only is it an early 90s / late 80s dance-pop masterpiece it also brings me back to sitting in the backseat of my parents car when i was 7 or 8 years old, singing along all the way. at the time my dad had bought “the right stuff 2: nothin but a house party” which quickly jumped into my top three favourite tapes of my parents. the other two were the eurythmics greatest hits and pet shop boys, actually.

one wonders at this precipitous point in life if my parents were, in fact, trying to make me gay (if so, significant parenting win). anyway, the right stuff 2 was a double tape set (!) and had some killer songs on it also including black box’s seminal “ride on time” which is AMAZING! here’s black box performing at a 1989 chart show in celebration of hitting number one.

listening to “been around the world” (attached below) at the time i remember thinking that lisa stansfield was the height of cool, what with her curled sideburns and all. i also remember dancing my gay ass off at a christmas party in a vain attempt to win the 7″ single. (watching it just now made me think she looks exactly like isabella rossellini)

oh, and some girl ended up taking the dance competition.

bitch.

i was at work the other day and a woman came in, saw the above michael buble album (crazy love) at our fabulous point of sale display and was all “oh my god! you have the new michael buble album! have you heard it? i love him!” externally i rather politely replied, “oh yeah, it’s new, i haven’t heard it yet,” but in my mind i was screaming at the women: “MICHAEL BUBLE!? are you fucking kidding me? of course i haven’t heard it because i don’t want to die choking on my own vomit or staining my shirt as my ears drip blood down my shoulder!” aside from resurrecting my recently dormant hatred for michael buble – he’s absolute shit, beyond cheese, ruins CLASSIC songs (feeling good, save the last dance), and is apparently a douche to boot – it also got me thinking of the disconnect between what is coming out of my mouth and what is going on in my brain.

i am often serving people at the counter and wondering to myself why they thought they could pull off mixing patterns or what causes them to lash out at harmless baristas for minor mistakes or a lack of splash sticks. all too often i’m thinking that someone should just fuck right off while maintaining the cool and poised air for which – i assume – i have come to be known. this got me imagining the outcome if random strangers could hear what i was thinking about them at any given moment. this would not be a good thing.

strangely enough – or not, as my heart is black as night – this didn’t get me thinking that i should stop thinking bitchily but rather that i should steer clear of situations in which my thoughts might somehow – via some sci fi conceit or experimental drug – come spilling out of my mind for all and sundry to hear. i think we can all agree that this is probably for the best.

ugh, MICHAEL FUCKING BUBLE!? seriously…

so yesterday was an amazing day. i’m going to try and distil its amazingness into a blog post here but i doubt that i can fit that much amazing into one blog post being perfectly honest. although in fairness yesterday morning i probably would’ve doubted that one day could contain the amount of amazingness that yesterday did indeed contain.

first of all i got up and decided that a haircut was in order. i’d previously had my haircut at a place on denman but i wasn’t particularly thrilled with the results so in my ongoing search for a new barber i ventured to the barber shop on burrard street. i went in and sat down waiting for the next available barber among the 5 or so older gentleman already tending to customers. but when it came my turn to sit at the barber chair a cute young man appeared as if from nowhere to tend to my every need. then he was irish and kept responding to everything i said with “grand.” and i looked amazing. and he seemed super-appreciative of a $2 tip. in short, BEST HAIRCUT EVER. grand.

so now i’m on my way to the library and it’s raining so i’m wandering up seymour ‘neath my mini rainbow umbrella and what do i see coming towards me but a woman holding a giant rainbow umbrella. so rainbow umbrella lady and i share a brief but decidedly noteworthy moment and both smile and giggle at our matching manner of wet weather protection. also grand.

the library was amazing, too. mainly just because i love being at the library. the central branch of the vancouver public library is the kind of building that is a pleasure to visit. it’s got this huge indoor courtyard and i love it. also, when i departed the library the heavens had parted and it was suddenly sunny and clear outside which allowed me to enjoy my hot dog al fresco after my subsequent trip to the amazing downtown costco. (it’s underground right downtown!)

after my delicious hot dog i headed home only to find my upstairs neighbours returning from the liquor store, so obviously – despite the fact that it was only 4pm – it was time to start drinking. at this point fallon and i headed upstairs to get down to the business of drinking at jon and val’s apartment. while there we also decide to order pizza and create what can only be described as a near perfect pizza combination from megabite. steak, bacon and mushroom. it was literally grand. delicious.

so after a few hours of drinking fallon and i headed to the dragonette concert which was held at a place called venue, which despite serving overpriced drinks – not that surprising in fairness, – was amazing. i decided that before the show kicked off i needed to get in a quick slash and slipped off to the men’s room to do just that. so there are two others guys at the urinals and now we’re spaced evenly across six urinals, with me at the far left, with one lady – for some reason? – in stall at the end.

anyway, one of the dudes on my right mentions something about “to the left” and the lady in the stall breaks into a quick “to the left, to the left” so i promptly follow-up with “everything you own in a box to the left” and pretty soon we’re all belting out a rousing bathroom version of beyonce’s “irreplaceable.” AMAZING!!!!

after that very exciting bathroom experience i went back to fallon and we enjoyed the amazing DRAGONETTE! IT. WAS. EPIC!!!! dragonette are just f*cking killer live. they’re amazing. like all their songs are amazing and somehow become even more amazing live. everything about dragonette is perfection. it was an incredible night which was followed by a few more drinks, a bit of amelie and an episode and a half of destroyed in seconds back in the upstairs neighbours’ apartment. seriously, a near perfect day.

grand.

1. my roommate fallon washes and saves any and all plastic food containers leading to our cupboard being full of cream cheese tubs and safeway deli containers. i find this very endearing and it also somehow makes me feel like less of an old man for watching wheel of fortune and jeopardy almost every day. (i LOVE jeopardy)

2. i was at work today and, like yesterday, it was extremely slow so my co-worker cheryl and i were playing hangman. we have been waging a bit of a hangman war that started last night and continued to stalemate today as we’ve each lost only one round (me: vatican city, her: indira ghandi). alas, all of the preceding information is somewhat inconsequential to the pay-off in this story except that it was revealed via a gripping game of hangman. it is that cheryl thought stone henge was in fact called “stone hedge.” AMAZING! this instantly reminded me of the time that salloum thought that a “blimp” was the same thing as a “blip” or the 22 years of my life during which i thought that a “moot” point was a “mute” point. the latter was – rather gleefully, it has to said – pointed out to me by dan who took an immense amount of pleasure in constantly reminding me of it for months, if not years, afterwards.

3. in response to yesterday’s post mentioning skype dan rather excitedly pointed out his superior technogical ingenuity in the comments section.

SIDENOTE: my blog has clearly shone a light on a rather worrying and obviously deep-rooted nasty streak within mr. hale who has presumably been burying it for years under his insufferable, and endlessly earnest, niceness.

anyway, this reminded me of a time when dan thought having a wireless card in his laptop meant that he could just get onto the internet for free anywhere in the world at any time. i actually felt rather bad that i had to burst his bubble on that one. DAN HAS SEEN THE FUTURE AND IT IS THE INTERNET EVERYWHERE!

i’m going to go ahead and do this in ever-popular list form.

1. i was at lunch the other day with my friend eli – at the templeton on granville which, incidentally, was amazing – when we were reminiscing about the big onion: the city of champions that is edmonton. now, to be clear, i rather love edmonton and, particularly, its people, many of whom i consider among my best of friends. i remember last year that the city was looking for a new slogan as “city of champions” lost its ring sometime in the early-90s and clearly needs to be retired. anyway, somewhat obviously from the above picture, we settled on “the hangover city.”

in fairness, it sounds a lot more derisive now that i’m putting it in writing when it was not necessarily intended to be pejorative. there is just something about edmonton and it’s fabulous summers followed by months of winter cold that seems to fit this nomer. i do think it would at least generate some interest in the city and is at least five thirds better than calgary’s “heart of the new west” slogan, which being blunt is crap. TRUTH!

2. catch phrase (the game) is on sale at toys r us this week for 25 bucks and i recommend that everyone go and purchase it. it is amazing. basically words come up on the embedded screen and you have to get your team to guess the word without saying it. it is incredibly simple but equally fun and i’ve never played a bad round of catch phrase. part of it’s charm has to be that the whole thing is one hand-held electronic device so there’s no pieces to lose and it’s super easy to break out.

one night we played catch phrase and jo-ann had to make ryan say “the unsinkable molly brown” so she said “the fat woman from the titanic” to which ryan replied “kate winslet.” GOLD! during another game of catch phrase – which i did not actually witness first hand but am now going to shamelessly re-tell as though i did – the word was “baby” so someone said “what ramona and josh would have if she were pregnant” to which emanual blurted out “an abortion.” THIS GAME IS LIKE AN AMAZING MOMENT MACHINE LITERALLY TURNING DRY EVENINGS WITH CRUSTY CANAPES INTO THE STUFF OF LEGEND! seriously, 25 dollars. BUY IT!

3. the dragonette album is amazing. AMAZING! i will probably write more about this later but i just wanted to note it now.

4. i have just discovered the amazing-ness of skype. HOW DID I NOT ABOUT THIS? it’s free, easy and amazing. how is it free? amazing.

5. there is a commercial on right now trying to encourage people to see an optometrist and one woman says she has poor night vision and her optometrist figured out that she actually has cataracts despite being young. somewhat obviously i’m now worried that i have cataracts. DAMN YOU TELEVISION!

(click to enlarge)

so in case you hadn’t already guessed from the wonderful image above, this post is about roman polanski and why anyone thinks he doesn’t deserve to be extradited back to the US for his statutory rape charge from the 1970s. seriously. he drugged a 13 year old girl and had his way with her. when charged he fled the country and has since evaded authorities until recently when he stepped into switzerland who reprimanded him for american authorities. now, there is speculation that switzerland only got involved to curry favour with US authorities because they’re reticent to open up their secretive banking system but being honest that is neither here nor there in my thinking.

i really just can’t see any reason that people could have for not wanting this man to face justice. i get that he’s a fantastic film-maker but that is in no way related to what he did. he slipped it into a 13 year old girl after loosening her up with champagne and quaaludes and he should be judged for his crime regardless of his talent or fame. let’s not pretend that if anyone else had forced themself onto a minor people would be anywhere near as lenient. PLEASE! there would be outrage and without the means to evade authorities for so long i’m sure a similar individual would by now have done a nickel in the joint for their crime.

in conclusion i think it’s totally ridiculous that anyone is defending this case. roman polanki should have done his time back in the 70s but he chose to evade authorities despite committing a serious crime and he should very much still be held accountable when within the reach of US authorities.

and finally, STEP OFF celebrities defending roman polanski. (i’m looking at you whoopi et al.)

when i was a child i used to love things from television shows. like not mugs with the name “friends” emblazoned upon them, but items actually used on television shows. i once purchased a flintstone’s alarm clock that looked as if it was hewn from a boulder and i cherished that alarm clock and the little bird that rang the bells atop it’s – in actual fact plastic – body. i also used to love melrose place.

it’s strange that these two seemingly divergent thoughts should come together in my adult life but cleave they have – sidenote: did you know that cleave means both to bring together and to separate? the past tense of the former is cleaved and the latter is cleft, but i digress – and it is in fact in the fantastic twitter campaign created for the new melrose place.

the new melrose place has started off a bit so-so but it’s slowly been getting better storyline-wise, including the appearance of the bitchier than ever jane, sister of the now re-deceased – and presumably deader than ever – syndey. amazing. anyway, i’ve been keeping up with the goings on of 4616 melrose place, including the occasional tweet. then, out of the blue, i noticed today that a certain @iamellasimms was following me. ella is my favourite character from the show and being honest i assumed some crazy fan-girl (or gay) was following me due to a positive tweet re: ella. lo and behold i was wrong!

it turns out that fox has created twitter profiles for the main characters of the melrose reboot that are written as if from the characters themselves. IT IS GENIUS. a quick sample of ella’s tweets:

Hey stubborn hangover, it’s 6pm. You need to step off. It’s Saturday night and your petty intimidation tactics don’t stand a chance.

To loosely quote The Beatles: I get *off* with a little help from my friends.

To the *stud* in the yellow Hummer honking at me: it would take equal parts tequila and propofol for anything to happen between us.

My starlet’s E! appearance did not get Tivo’d @DrLaurenYung . At capacity with surgery reality TV. You don’t seriously watch that, do you?

i’m sure you can see why she’s my favourite. and that last tweet is directed at her roommate lauren, the prossy doctor, who i also enjoy, but whose twitter is frankly a little dull.

i wonder who is writing these tweets. i wonder if there are a group of newbie interns, 1 of whom will be given a permanent position at fox for garnering the most followers. that would be amazing.

tweet on melrose place, tweet on.

so i was at the library the other day and i took out a film i had been meaning to see for a long time: 49Up. first up some background.

49up is the seventh film in the up series that started with 7up in 1964. 7up was a documentary that examined the lives of 14 different children with the idea that you can see how a child will turn out based on their first 7 years based on the jesuit saying “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” the original looked especially at children from different social classes and backgrounds. subsequently follow-ups were released every 7 years, culminating up to this point, with 49up.

i cannot recommend a film more highly. i don’t believe that anyone could dislike watching this. the stories are not particularly gripping but there is something intensely fascinating about watching a life unfold in front of your eyes on film. it feels like something completely of our time, this strange ability to capture an entire life story. it’s a fascinating and intense experience.

there are people you like, and people you don’t, but what you’re really left with is a sense of both wonderment and self-reflection. these people are forced to examine their lives – both successes and failures – every 7 years which some see a blessing and some a curse. but in watching the film you are also pulled into that, forced to look at your own life, your goals, hopes and dreams – it is affecting in the best possible way. this is truly the zenith of documentary film-making. an amazing achievement of the past 50 years.

WATCH IT! you’ll not regret it.

so presumably everyone is aware that canadian politics are currently shit on a stick. it feels like we’re watching idly as our international friends are infused with optimism and excitement about their respective ruling parties, or individuals. specifically, last year we watched as barrack obama stormed his way to the white house on a tidal wave of change and goodwill. similarly, germans recently had the pleasure of electing angela merkel to a second term as chancellor there. and all the while we’re stuck with the wetnap that is stephen harper. while barrack obama may be the more newsworthy candidate, i believe what canada really needs is an angela merkel style prime minister that can bring the whole country together. i mean what’s not to love about angela merkel?

first of all, her name. pronounced |angle-ah| on account of being german, the whole thing has a wonderful ring to it. say it out loud: angela merkel. amazing.

second, look at her. she’s so lovely. how could that woman not have your best interests at heart? anytime i see her she looks so down to earth yet intelligent that i wish someone would follow her with a hills-style reality show so that i could enjoy watching more merkel goodness.

third, and more importantly for canada, she leads germany via a coalition government. why canadians can’t get behind the idea of a coalition government is beyond me, especially after the rally cries of working together after the last election. and yet when the liberals and NDP attempted to form a coalition government with the support of the bloc, it was as if a bomb had exploded in the houses of parliament. the conservatives cried foul at the help of the bloc, but we all know that any minority government is beholden to the quebecois and now the harper government has even had the gall to cut a deal with NDP to keep them in power at a critical confidence vote this week. WTF?!

you see, what canada needs is a great unifier like the fabulous mrs. merkel that can soften canadians to the idea of a coalition. to be perfectly honest, i can’t see us getting out of this annoying political quagmire for some time to come. it seems as if we’re in for many years of bickering and minority governments which is why we really need to get our heads, as a country, around the idea of coalitions. they can and do work in many european countries and surely politicians should be rewarded for working together to get our system moving again instead of stagnating it with ridiculous fear-mongering about an evil alliance of the left and the separatists. i’m looking at you harper.
bastard.

hmm… maybe i should run for office.

i might get to meet angela merkel.