Filed under: feature story, vancouver | Tags: chilling out in Vancouver, stating cool in summer, ways to beat the heat
You know what’s better then having one fan in a hot apartment?
Having TWO fans in a hot apartment!
So, Doozy and I have been sweating to the oldies for the past couple of days since the mercury has been hovering in the mid-to-high 20s, and we’ve been looking for some answers to our severe lack of fans. We had only one fan, it wasn’t cutting the mustard. So we found fan answers. We found the fanswer to our prayers.
There’s a sale on fans at Sears.
Anyway, what are some ways to hack your fan cooling capacities?
For one thing, there’s the ol’ college bucket head method. Now, I’m not talking about that couche tard who provides guitar wankery for Axle Rose. Because he’s not cool in the slightest.
The Bucket Head method is as follows:
First you get a reasonable sized bucket, or plastic waster paper basket. So long as vessel is not water permiable, you should be fine.
Fill said bucket with ice to the top, or if you’re looking to save on watery mishaps, try filling some empty 2 litre water bottles with H2O and freeze those bad boys instead.
Now set your frigid booty in front of the airflow of the fan and now you’re getting chilled air instead of pushing round warm air.
Well, I guess that’s the only tip I have really…
what else…
oh yeah!
SPAIN WON THE CUP!
Filed under: feature story, vancouver | Tags: fiction, people watching, writing practice
I’m sitting in a different coffee shop than usual today for a change of scenery. Usually I sit with my back to the window because it’s the most comfortable spot with close access to the electrical outlet (my MacBook’s battery is farked and can only go for about 15 minutes unplugged before loosing consciousness)
But today that spot has been usurped by a middle aged dude who appears to be drinking lemonade and working hard on some paper work.
So now I’m sitting in a near by seat with a great view of the window.
One of my favourite past times is people watching. I like to observe the march of life go through it’s paces and wonder about the people who walk by. Where are they going? What are they doing? What is their story?
As a journalist, one of the perks is having an excuse to go up to complete strangers and get in their business. But from this vantage point, behind two pane of floor-to-ceiling window, I can only imagine what people are up to.
Let’s make up some stories. I’m going to describe someone that walks by and then make up a history for them. Apparently, this was one of my grandfather’s favourite pastimes when he was a younger man.
- A younger man in his mid ’20s stanfs at the lights waiting for the red hand to change to a white walker. He’s looks to be taller than me, maybe 6 feet tall. He has a buzz cut and is wearing a black tank top and blue jeans. The fellow is sporting some of those god-awful “racing” shoes that have become oh-so popular in the last couple of years. You know the ones; they look like slippers, but with a large Puma stripe down the side. I think they look like leather socks. The guy looks to be in pretty good shape, and has a full sleeve of black-ink tattoo work up his right arm. His shirt has decals with crappy red tribal inspired artwork on them and the words “FUCK YOU” printed in old English script at the base of his neck.
Let’s call his Carlos. Carlos is the youngest of five brothers and was beaten everyday by his older silbings just for the sake of it. Even though he’s a grown man, Carlos’ voice has yet to bottom out, making him nervous everytime he has to speak. By spending all of his time in the gym, getting tattoo’s, and wearing offensive clothing, Carlos has put up a tough shell around him. This way no one will every think about picking on Carlos. He hangs out with the tough guys and goes to all the great clubs. Carlos bangs all the hottest skanks and has jagger bombs for breakfast. But he doesn’t tell anyone that he’s scared to death of the dark and secretly wants to be baker.
- A slender girl with toned arms walks by with with two dogs. One is a Yorkshire Terrier and is cradled in her right arm next to her breast, along with her shiny gold-hued purse. The other is a Jackrussle that is walking at the end of an long, extendable pink leash. The Jack’s haunches shiver when it stands still. It might be uncomfortable or sick. Who knows. The girl, well more a woman than a child, is wearing a flowing dress, both loose and tight at the same time. Little is left to the imagination, and her figure is almost too thin. She is wearing large black sunglasses with gaudy metallic embellishments along the arms, just above her temples. She’s chewing gum with her mouth open.
Let’s call her Becca. It’s short for Rebecca, but she doesn’t like being called by her full name because it make her feel old, and old people are totally gross. She doesn’t work, but why should she have too. Her daddy promised that he’d take care of things until she graduated from University, which makes sense because that’s her parent’s job; to take care of her. When she’s done school, she hopes to marry rich, but not an old guy, because that’d be gross. No, Becca is hoping to meet a nice guy at the bar who wears expensive shirts and has a shiny watch. He’ll have a nice car and drive her to expensive restaurants. Because she deserves it. Becca is on her way home to drop off her pups before she goes to Yoga-lates. They’re so cute. Except when they poop. That’s gross. The Jack Russle, who she names Jack Sparrow, has been pooping a lot lately and it stinks, a lot. She hope the cleaning lady managed to get the stain off her blue yoga mat, because that’s the one that matched her new Lu Lu Lemon pants that she’s going to wear to class and if she has one of her other mats, that’s totally going to suck because she’s going to have to find a different outfit to wear.
- A guy wearing a beige tilly hat, camouflage shorts, white socks, a brown shirt and black cross trainers is walking past Steamrollers. He has glasses with a modst wire frame. He looks to be in his mid 20’s and is kind of frumpy. He looks at the ground when he walks.
His name is Kevin. He works for one of the videogame companies in Yaletown. Usually he doesn’t leave the office for lunch, but he’s out of redbull and ramen, so he needed to make a stop at Choices Market to pick up some supplies. Kevin has been working in the industry since he go out of school and thinks it’s the best job in the world. He gets to roll in whenever he feels like it and there’s a foosball table in the office. He does coding, which is fine by him. He could program in his sleep. One of his favourite things to do is to find bugs that other people left behind doing a messy hack and fix it. He’s the bug terminator. Kevin wished people called him the Terminator. But people in the office usually just call him Safari Man because of his lucky tilly hat. The guys in the creative department give him a hard time about his Camouflage shorts. The artist say stuff like “Where are you legs, Safari Man?” and “How’d you manage to float over here?” But Kevin doesn’t mind the art guys too much. Keving doens’t mind, because he knows that he makes at least twice as much as they do. That, and he’s the Terminator.
Maybe 5?
I wasn’t really paying all that much atttention to the news when they were saying when the next season was supposed to start for certain.
So yeah, Doozy and I went to Osoyoos last weekend for short while.
One reason why I like Osoyoos so much is the fact that it looks like it could be the setting of an Clint Eastwood movie. Like one of the old Spaghetti Westerns, something with the Man with No Name.
You could almost hear the pan pipes playing in the distance staring out at Canada’s only true desert.
Not a lot of people know this, but this part of BC is acutally the Northern most point of the Sonora desert chain, with summer temps hanging in the high 30’s.
We weren’t there for very long so make way for the metrics because here’s a quick rundown of our trip by the numbers:
859 – the number of kilometers Doozy drove during that weekend
6 – the type of Mazda we were upgraded to from the rental agency
1 – times Winston barfed in the Car
2 – bears we saw on the side of the road. At the same time as when Winston barfed
12 – hours spent of the road
36 – hours spent actually in Osoyoos
70 – the spf of Doozy’s sunscreen
15 – the spf of my sunscreen
2 – number of shins and feet I managed to burn because I forgot to apply any to my legs
30 – the amount of time in minutes it took Doozy to burn her back on the morning we were leaving
3 – number of kids who wouldn’t leave me along when I was trying to play badminton with my gf
4 – number of tennis balls I managed to send sailing over the fence and across the highway when doozy and I tried to play
3 1/2 – number of steaks I ate at dinner when doozy’s sister and niece couldn’t finish their meat
4 – number of ducks that came up to us at the beach and ate from out hands
1 – number of kids who thought it would be a good idea to take a leak in the hole they dug in the sand and to smell and through sand from said hole
2 – number of bikinis we saw doozy’s mom in. (she’s a grandma!)
2 – number of speedos the german guy at the beach had worn.
4 – number of golf balls found in the water
2 – number of kids who tried to kill the ducks with golf balls
100 -how awesome I looked standing on a surfboard, using a paddle to get around in the water. On a scale of 1 – 10
100 – roughly how much we spent on gas
at least 8 – pieces of homemade beef jerky I ate on the trip home
1 – number of times my glasses broke and number of times doozy fixed them, holding on to her title as best girlfriend in the universe
1 – number of post cards I forgot to get for my friend in japan
When you add it all up it you get 1268.5 or a great trip.
Filed under: feature story, vancouver | Tags: father's day, growing up fatherless
Every year at this time, fathers across the country are basking in the joy of affection from their beloved children. Gifts of ties, BBQ accessories, and the ilk fill the den as families recognized the importance of the Father.
For me, June 16 is nothing more than a yearly reminder of what I don’t have. That is to say, a Dad. A pop. A padre, papa or pater. You see, for the last 11 years of my life, I have not see my Father, and not until as recently as a month ago, has he made any effort to contact me or to be a a part of my life.
Having grown up in the ’80s and ’90s, divorce has never been really a new subject. Many of my friend came from homes where their parents had split-up. Usually their Fathers stayed in the picture. I had one friend whose Dad actually bought a condo in the same complex as is ex-wife so he could be close to his sons. Weekends with Dad meant walking a few doors down.
My folks ended their union in when I was six-years-old. My older brother was eight. Our Dad moved to Vancouver after that while we stayed with out Mother in Calgary. For the first few years we would see our Pop once or twice a year, usually around Christmas, Easter, or for a few weeks in the summer. By the time I was ten I had been on more plane rides than most adults.
But eventually the visits became few and far between, and then my Father met and married his new wife, a lady from Mexico City. My brother and I did not attend the wedding.
Together they had a child, a girl named Stephanie. She was named after me. After spending a summer in Mexico City with my new step-family when I was eleven, my father dropped a bomb on us.
He was moving to Mexico to be close to his in-laws. My father would now live a country away from us.
The last time I saw the old man was when I was 14 visiting cousins in Vancouver. He was there was his family and tried to get me to babysit my now three-year-old sister every night while he and his wife went out. After a series of refusals to comply, I had it out with the old man. Did you come to Vancouver to see me or your cousins, he asked. I told him both.
After that trip, I didn’t hear from him again for seven years. We knew he was in Mexico, but we didn’t know where exactly or what he was doing. His sibling in Vancouver, my aunts and uncles, said they were as much in the dark as we were. We had no contact information and had no idea where to start.
So it was left at that. My father dumped us. He had a new family.
Growing up in a single parent family was hard. Money was always tight and we had no family in the country to help us. All of my mom’s family lived in Ecuador and received no support of my father. Along with being a full-time teacher, my mother took on a variety of odd-jobs, teaching Spanish, selling products from home and the like.
I’m not going to go into detail of the hardships we had to endure due to the absence of my father, but they were many. Had my mother been any other woman, I don’t think my brother and I would have had the happy and fulfilling childhood we had. She had the strength to endure and the courage to take on all adversities that came her way, and for that I am a better person.
Thanks to the example she set and the hard work she put into raising two boys on her own, my brother and I have completed our post secondary education and are out making out mark in the world.
All with out the help of a father.
I was watching Barack Obama’s Father’s Day address on You tube the other day. He made a variety of points dealing with the importance of Men being Fathers in the lives of their Children.
In the African-American community, over half of all children grow up without a Father. And like me, Obama did not have a Dad in the home growing up.
Obama went on to say the Men who don’t take responsibility in the lives of their children are not acting like men. They’re acting like scared boys. Obama pointed out that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty.They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents.
That fathers need to realize that responsibility does not end at conception.
Now my Father is coming back to Canada with his family for a visit at the end of the month.
One of my uncles, against my wishes, gave him my phone number and now he’s calling me once every few weeks. I let the calls go to voice-mail.
With this thick accent he leaves short messages. My half-sister wants to see me, he says. He would like to spend some time with me when he’s in town, he says. He would like to meet my girlfriend, he says. He ends all of his messages with “Be good.”
Now I’m 25. I haven’t seen the man over 11 years. I don’t know what I have to say to him. I don’t even know him. He’s not my Father.
A Father is a man who spends time with his children. He is a man to takes responsibility and sets an example. A Father is a Man.
The man leaving messages on my phone is not my father. I can’t even be sure to call him a Man.
He is a stranger.
What do you talk to a stranger about?
Filed under: feature story, semi-celebrity, vancouver | Tags: Fake Tom Selleck, vancouver lookalike
After some casual reporter-digging, I’ve come up with some more info on Yaletown’s favourite mustache jocky.
His name is Steve Rappard and he’s a businessman or something.
He won a celebritey look-alike contest for Jack FM a while ago and was on their TV commercial.
Recently he was seen on the events pages in Vancouver View Magazine looking like a stone cold gangsta.
You rock, Steve
Filed under: Indie Music, feature story, music review, vancouver | Tags: menomena, rappin' hobos
That’s a picture of the littlest hobo, a friendly husky who would wander the great white north and help people in need. Kinda like Lassy, but Canadian and not lame. Which is actually kind of a stretch for something that is produced for Canadian television.
Anyway, I was walking up Robson the otherday with Doozy, going to some make-up store so that she could buy some new lipstick or nail polish or turlte wax or something, and along the way we encountered a series of Vancouver street people. Now, I have nothing against vagrants and those who live on the street. I think that they are beautiful people who have lost their way and need help getting back on their feet, or in some cases, assistance living.
Vancouver is rife with street folk. They’re everywhere and much more active than the one we used to encounter back in Calgary. In the paeries, they’re too busy trying to survive the weather to really be much of a nusance to anyone. But out here, it’s like they’re cold blooded or something, they’re bouncing around all over the place. Running across streets, climbing walls, scuttling about the busy sidewalks looking for spare change (or Spange, as I would call it in high school).
I swear the first time I drove into the city, we had to come in through East Hastings at night, and it was like cruising through a mad house run by the inmates. I saw one fella do a back flip off of fire hydrant by Pigeon Park.
So as we were walking up Robson we saw a few hobos trying their best to get some cash to get by. One guy was on his knees at the corner with his hands out, still as a statue. On big guy, like my buddy John big, was on a wheel chair in front of the Robson and Thurlow doing a puppet show with stuffed animals. The voices he was giving his plush players were in decipherable, and it sounded mostly like a series of moans and Bllaaarghs. There was one fella (or lass, I can tell. Doozy says it was a dude) who looked to have leprasy. He was missing a hand and only had patches of afro-like hair jutting out asymmetrically of his otherwise bald head.
But the one who got me the most was the other guy in a wheel chair. He had a sign asking for fund and in a sad, muppet-like voice he asked “does any buddy hab any change pweese?” It was pathetic in the most literal sense of the word. It felt like my heart got kicked in the balls.
It got me thinking to the Hobos that come into my life regularly. There is one who sits by the exit doors of the shoppers drug mart by my building. He doesn’t ask for change, or beg or anything. He just sits there with his cup and makes pleasent conversation with people going in and out of the store. Sometimes people will have him watch their dogs while they’re shopping and he seems to get a kick out of it. One day I saw him petting some rather tall greyhounds while they were licking his gray beard. He’s such a good spirit that I feel bad when I have not change to give him, so on my last three visits I’ve given him popsicles, some doritos, and last night, a can of pepsi. He really liked the popsicle.
Then there was the Rappin’ Hobo. I was working at a coffee shop one morning on the corner of Granville and Smtih and in from the rain come a younger hobo with a plastic bag. He started to, well, rap at me about how he needed to use the washroom. I tried to tell him that it was for customers only and that the cheapest drink he could get would be a small coffee, but it was like he couldn’t hear me as he kept on going spouting his off-cadence non-rhyming lyrics at me:
I need to use the washroom so / I can wash my hair and give my teeth a rinse / then I can talk to people properly / out there on the street / and you have to know that I’m no fool / and that I’m here to keep it real / and that love comes from within / and the so does energy too .
Or something like that.
We let him use the washroom so he’d leave. I tried to give him a cup of water on the way out, but he wasn’t having it. “Hey, I don’t know what type of game you’re playing but… I don’t fall for that / ‘cuz I’m seeing clear with my two eyes / and I can’t take what you’re giving / and …”
And so on.
What else…
Menomena! Right
The other day Dan was driving Doozy and I around kits and there was some awesome song on on his iPod. I said, “Hey man, what’s this?” he said “dude, this is Menomena. and it’s awesome.” and he’s right!
I’ve been listening to Friend and Foe pretty much non-stop for the last few days and it’s possibly the best album for 2007. I feel like an ass for not getting into it sooner, but I’ve been busy. But this is pretty much the same thing that happened with the Postal Service. You think that I would have learned my lesson then.
They’re probably the best thing to come out of the Pacific Northwest since Harvey Danger or Bionic Bigfoot.
Better late than never.
google = “menomena” site:megaupload.com
Filed under: Indie Music, feature story, hipsters | Tags: driving through alberta, summer colds., wolf parade
So I got back from Calgary last week without incident, it was a nice trip, I ran into a few friends and got to take in to the sights of Alberta, like this:
That’s pretty much what Alberta looks like. Well at least from the Car when you’re driving from Calgary to Lethbridge at 5 in the morning.
I did manage to spend sometime on the illustrious 17th avenue. The Red Mile. The hip cultural hub of Cowtown. The dirty little grease spot that I once haunted on a regular basis. I don’t know what it is, but every time I go back there, it seems smalled, dustier, more packed with pseudo-hipster types trying to be the thinnest kid at fat camp, if you know what I mean. Like, kid, you live in Calgary, not New York, so quit dressing like everyday is Halloween. There were too many ironic mustaches on teenagers to count, and too many deep-v’s on skinny kids when it was way too chilly to do so.
Too think I used to be one of those denizens. Reminds me of when I used to be Punk.
I guess the coast is leaving it’s mark on me.
I ran into a fiend from Calgary in the airport on the way down and she told me that I’m a lot more laid-back now. Maybe I am. Who knows?
But my trip wasn’t all fun and excitement, I also caught a cold when I was down there. I think it’s that summer cold that’s been going around the North of American for the last two months or so, but I don’t really mind all that much. It was a quick burner and I’m feeling better already.
Right now I’m listening to the new Wolf Parade album, set to release something in the upcoming few months. So far so good. I’ve yet to form a full opinion on this offering, but I’ll be sure to throw that on here as soon as my mind grapes are finished germinating a refreshing thought drink that you all can enjoy. I’m pretty sure that analogy didn’t make any sense.
