The Theater! How Elegant and Fancy! And...Brainy!

(Full disclosure: this blog entry has been sitting in my documents folder, unposted, for a month.  Sorry!)

We had quite a bit of fun in May attending a couple of plays put on by local groups.  The first was called Red and we saw it at the EPCOR Centre.  The play is based on the life of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, a contemporary of Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still. [Side note: I just realized Collin and I have visited Rothko's 'Black on Black' paintings at the National Gallery in D.C., and were not impressed. At all. And there is a story behind that, but I won't get into it now.  Here is a better blogger's take on the exhibit and the paintings.]

  It doesn’t really sound like the makings of good theater, but it was excellent.  With just two actors on a one-set stage (Rothko’s studio) it was made riveting by emotionally-charged scenes and thought-provoking dialogue:  

"Everything becomes everything else and it's all nice and pretty and likable.  Everything is fun in the sun!  Where's the discernment?  Where's the arbitration that separates what I like from what I respect, what I deem worthy, what has...listen to me now...significance?"

 Rothko's assistant, Ken spends a lot of time on stage building frames, stretching canvass, mixing paints, and mopping the floor.  The kinetic high-point was when the two artists primed a 5’ x 7’ canvas with brilliant red paint, to the time of classical music blaring from their record player.  For one moment, the audience got to feel the joy that these artists (on their good days) must experience.  It was marvelous.  

We enjoyed it quite a bit, and it gave me a smug, fuzzy feeling to leave the theater and engage in a conversation about the purpose and function of art.  I felt super fancy.

We also went with some friends to see a live stage adaption of Night of the Living Dead at the Pumphouse Theater.  We’d decided beforehand that, 1) Eating a large meal was a good idea, and 2) the Pumphouse was located within easy walking distance from the pub.  It was nearby, as the crow flies.  As it was, we had to cross the river, cross the train tracks, cross the train tracks again, get lost, cross the freeway, walk along the train tracks again until we finally stumbled across the parking lot for the theater. 

This is Ben.  He was a badass.

 It would have been a five minute drive, but it took us forty-five minutes of brisk trotting because the mapping app on Collin's phone is STUPID.  By the time we got there, we were sweating, out of breath, and nervous that we’d miss the beginning.  We were in perfect shape to watch a zombie play.

 The play followed the plot of George Romero’s original 1968 Night of the Living Dead pretty closely, complete with 1960s setting.  The majority of the actors were students at Mount Royal University, and their inexperience was evident for a lot of the play.  One of the clearly more veteran actors played the character of Ben with a new twist - he was a returning Vietnam vet on anti-psychotics medicine.  This was a detail that wasn’t played up in the first half of the play, and only becomes a major plot point toward the end, when we get to see that the only character with any level of competence in this situation is slowly unravelling.  

The gore was pretty convincingly and revoltingly done - entrails and fake skin being ripped apart by zombie extras.  The most brilliant bit of gore was the final headshot at the end, wherein the only survivor Ben is mistakenly gunned down by a state militia officer.  It was startling and shocking, even as I was expecting it.  The actor timed it perfectly.

It was a good way to get pumped for our upcoming 5K - the Zombie 5K race and obstacle course.  Collin and I started the ‘Couch to 5k’ training regime (boy, am I out of shape!), and if we don’t die in the training, should be able to dodge zombies with ease adequately by the end of July.  The obstacle course, however...well, I can only hope the course will be populated with slow zombies.  

Briefly recapping before returning to our regularly scheduled (late) updates

Well, it's been an unusual couple of weeks.  Collin and I (and Kowalski the Cat) did end up being evacuated for three days when the Bow River broke it's banks and started flowing up Crowchild. While our apartment was untouched, many nearby neighborhoods were hit pretty hard.  I spent last week working with various groups to help people dig mud and gunk out of their houses, remove drywall and insulation, and treating the bare bones with bleach before things started to rot and mould too badly.

Every basement I visited was destroyed.  This is especially tough because in Calgary, basements are the most affordable apartment options.  Their tenants (lots of students, and single parent households) don't have money to spare.  These apartments lost most of their belongings - mud and contaminated water soaked clothing, destroyed electronics and books.  So sad.

  My favorite place to walk, Prince's Island, was under water for a good chunk of the flooding.  We went to investigate the damage last Monday - full-grown uprooted pines, washed down river, have lodged in the trees on the island.  Benches were ripped out of the ground and the banks have been eroded and undercut.  Many of our favorite bike trails along the river are unsafe, and the city is still requesting that everyone (despite the recent scorching temperatures) stay out of the river until the tons of dangerous debris can be removed.  And the zoo - oh!  The poor zoo!

One of the bridges to Prince's Island completely
washed out.  

In short, Calgary is kind of a mess right now, but it's getting better.  The message sent out by the Mayor is basically: help your neighbors when they need it, and spend spend spend!  The Stampede starts tomorrow and will, hopefully, inject desperately needed revenue into the city's business to help rebuilding efforts.

Calgary Flooding

It's been a rainy couple of weeks, and it turned out the rain was more that the ground at the headwaters of the Bow River could take.  I turned on the TV Thursday evening to see an emergency message flash - areas of Calgary were being evacuated.  What?

Well, not our area, as it turned out.  What do you do if part of your city is flooding?  We had a very nice steak dinner, cooked perfectly by Collin.  It was surreal - we could hear sirens in the distance, and helicopters overhead.  The rain had stopped, briefly, and suddenly I couldn't get out the door fast enough to see what was going on.

We live about three city blocks from the river, in a neighborhood called Hillhurst.  Our neighborhood was (and is) fine.    Here's what we saw at 8pm on Thursday, June 21st.

10 Street Bridge

Poppy Plaza - the jogging path below is submerged

Poppy Plaza

Part of the memorial on the south side of the Bow

Waters almost touching the Peace Bridge

Memorial Drive, closed, and traffic leaving the Downtown area over the 10th Street Bridge

We were evacuated around midnight on Thursday/Friday, and fortunately some friends of ours in the northwest of the city were willing to put us and our cat up for an indeterminate amount of the time.

Because Calgary is built around the confluence of two rivers, the Bow and the Elbow, when they flooded it impacted huge chunks of the city.  There was a bad flood in 2005 that Calgarians called "The Flood of the Century".  As of this morning, flood waters had risen four times higher than the highest water of 2005, and are now the highest on record.  Authorities are not anticipating anybody being able to reenter the Downtown Core until Wednesday at the earliest.  The Stampede is due to open on July 5th and the entire Stampede ground is under water.

Our apartment and belongings are fine, but there were a couple of images that made me very sad.  The first, an arial photo of Prince's Island.  It's one of my favorite places to walk, and two weeks ago Collin and I celebrated our engagement at the River Cafe.  The second was a photo taken of a trussel bridge at the confluence of Nose Creek and the Bow River.  I believe one of the first photos I posted on this blog was of the same place (but the photo was taken from the north bank).  It's startling to realize the path I was on is now at least five feet under water.

I've learned a lot about Canadians during this event.   When I remarked on how orderly and sensibly the evacuation went, my friend Bill had some insight to share.  "Well, we're used to really bad storms here.  If a storm is so bad the government tells you to do something because of it, you know it's really, really bad.  So you do what they tell you."  I'm honestly shocked by how calmly residents complied with evacuation.  So calmly, in fact, that as far as police know there have been only four fatalities (and they occurred in a town upriver, High River, when then the river first surged).  That takes a lot of faith in your governmental agencies to do their job.  (That faith was justified)

There's been a complete lack of histrionics.  Mayor Nenshi (who deserves Mayor of the Year, as far as I'm concerned - if that award does not exist, it should be invented and given to him) has remained calm and organized, and done an excellent job communicating with the public.  There hasn't been news stories with sweeping patriotic music and a flag waving gently in the background, while pictures of devastation scroll across the screen (you can bet there would have been if Calgary were a major American city - in fact, I've seen this emotionally-manipulative shlock so many times).

Finally, (and I know this phenomenon is a human characteristic, not just a Canadian one) the rush of support for strangers has been staggering.  So many private individuals offered their homes to evacuated families that for the first night there were only 1,500 people in public shelters. That's out of 75,000 people evacuated.  A massive music festival, Sled Island, has been cancelled because of the flooding and the musicians are just performing concerts wherever they are to keep the displaced entertained.

The Red Cross is accepting donations for Alberta flood relief - more than Calgary has been affected.  Many family farms in southern Alberta have had their entire crop destroyed.  And now, as I write this, the Siksika Nation is facing rising waters with only a tiny fraction of the resources Calgary had at its disposal.

As for me, I'll be out with a shovel just as soon as they let me.

Advanced Nerdery: Part II

Calgary Comic Expo in a nutshell: it was worth every hour, and every penny to do the World of Warcraft NPC cosplay.

Out of the nutshell: We had a blast.  We went on Sunday and so (I discovered later) missed some of the more noteworthy costumes and panels, and Wil Wheaton giving Calgary Expo attendees another emotional Expo experience when he explained why it's so awesome being a nerd.  However, I regret nothing.  The lines were very long to get into those events - I spoke with one woman when we first got into the building at about 10:45, and she had to rush away to go stand in a line.  That line, she explained, was a line that would let her stand in another line that would let her into a room to see Nathan Fillion - at noon.  That seemed like a silly way to spend a day.

This was on a scroll handed
out to anyone willing to play.

We didn't completely escape the lines, though.  After getting our badges, we were led to a series of zig-zagging lines for about half an hour.  These were fun because they let us get a good look at each other's costumes as we passed each other again, and again, and again.  It also us the chance to make a big yellow sign that said, 'No, seriously: ask us about our quests!'.  Bill thought the enormous yellow exclamation marks wouldn't be enough to get people to actually talk to us.  He was probably right.

Once inside, Collin had to dash (as much as a six-foot man in a long purple robe and wizard hat can dash) off to a panel with the LoadingReadyRun guys, leaving Rebecca, Bill, and I to sort out the last minute details of our quest giving.  Bill knows some fabulous people at the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory and The Sentry Box who were game for holding onto some quest components for us.

Sadly, the boys had already left to go win a board
game tournament by the time I occurred to me
to take a picture, so this is just Rebecca and I.

As soon as we'd given the cocktail swords (for the Sentry Box, of course) and Gummy Bears (the gelatinous interlopers at the Observatory), we taped our exclamation marks to our backs and headed out.  Almost immediately, we had people asking us for quests.  Some people just came up to say, "Right on!  NPCs!  Great costumes!" and then got SUPER excited when we said, "Yes, and would you like a quest?  You look brave," and handed them a scroll.

One of the quest rewards - the epic
Saccharine Sash

One of the best moments was when a group of four or five teenagers came running - running - across the crowded convention floor when they saw our exclamation marks and asked for a scroll. When I suggested they make their "slaying" convincing, they earnestly reassured me that they were in the drama club and would have no problem with that.

 When they returned (running, of course), they crouched down on one knee and presented their trophies - gummy bears skewered on plastic cocktail swords.  It was amazing.

It was really cool doing something that made so many people at the Comic Expo - a gathering with a far higher level of per capita enthusiasm than anywhere else - so excited.  People wanted to have their picture taken with us (although that's pretty standard for comic conventions, I think), and we were even interviewed by a local radio program (none of us could remember which radio station, though).

Aside from the quest-giving, I had a lot of fun looking at the work of incredibly talented artists while there.  Just looking, though.  Neither Collin nor I had remembered to get cash before we got to the Expo.  I also saw Sylvester McCoy  and really wanted an autograph, but those cost $30 - and we had no money.  Boo.  Eventually, Bill and Collin left to play in a board game tournament (coming in 1st and 2nd, respectively.  Collin brought home a $50 prize), and Rebecca and I decided to head home.  We've already planned to do this again, next year, if Collin and I are still here next April.  If not, we may have to make a pilgrimage.  :)

To close out this incredibly nerdy update, here is a pic of graffiti left in our neighborhood last Saturday by an enthusiastic Star Wars fan :

With the awesome weather outside, I've got some interesting trips planned and will try to keep this blog more regularly updated.  Until then: live long, and prosper.

Advanced Nerdery

I'm cautiously optimistic about Spring.  It seems like it may be here, but I've been fooled before.  After the blizzard two weeks ago, one Calgarian remarked that Punxsutawney Phil is clearly defective (actually, that person was much more profane; I'm paraphrasing).  I've obsessively monitored neighborhood trees for incipient budding.  Our community center recently and optimistically presented a talk on "preparing your garden for planting."  I've inspected our bikes to make sure they're roadworthy, and Collin and I purchased new running shoes, ready for Going Outside.

On the upside, surviving a Canadian winter has served to deepen my understanding of why Calgarians lose their minds with festivals over the summer months.  I've spent two Julys in Calgary, and I feel confident that there was at least three major festivals going on each week.  Coming up first, though, is an event which seems to kick-off the season of sunshine: The Calgary Expo.

I cannot overstate how excited I am to be going.  I've never been to a comic convention before, but have heard enthusiastic accounts of the unique spectacles to be found therein.  In addition to sci-fi/fantasy television and movie actors appearing at panels to talk about their work, there are artists and writers, special effects masters (I'm hoping I get to hear Richard Taylor of Weta [the special effects company used in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies] speak at a panel), and really cool vendors.  And...okay, I'm not going to lie.  I would kindareallytotally like MacGuyver's autograph, too.

It's a unique opportunity to witness a huge rainbow of creativity - and I'm not talking about the professional talent that will be visiting.  I'm talking about the attendees.  Some people work all year on costumes, and they range from easily-identifiable Supermen and Wonder Women, to incredible esoteric geek "in-jokes".  This picture [credit: Lyle Aspinall/Calgary Sun/ QMI Agency] shows a gender-swapped Mario and Luigi, a guy from Tron, Catwoman, one of the Incredibles and, I think, a guy with a home-made Adventure Time t-shirt.

It would be funny to sit in the Expo elevator,
but that would probably get old after an hour
or so.

Collin and I were recently at dinner with some friends, and brought up our idea for couples-costumes.  I spend probably more time than I should thinking up ridiculous costumes (reason #24 why being an elementary school teacher is the only job for me).  While I still think my idea of being Hans Gruber and Dead Elevator Guy from Die Hard is, like, the best ever - wheeling a rolling desk chair around a crowded convention center would be difficult.  Alternatively, we'd been thinking of our mutual aggravated fondness for the grindy-goodness of World of Warcraft.  Personally, I found herbalism soothing.  Wandering around in simulated outdoors, darting off the path after shiny flowers is exactly how I behave in the non-simulated outdoors.  It's comfortably familiar.

Anyway, we thought "Quest giver" and "adventurer" would be great - Collin could have a great, big yellow exclamation mark over his head, and I could look harassed and have an overflowing backpack of junk.  Now, this idea has been done many times before, and pretty impressively.  But, we wondered at dinner, what if we actually had quests for people to do?  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could encourage strangers to come up and talk to us, go out and find things on a scavenger-type hunt, and give them a t-shirt that said '+4 armor' (or something)  when they returned?

The more we talked, the more fun it sounded.  We're looking into easy-to-make t-shirts, and I'm making some "quest scrolls" to hand out to strangers who play along.  Our friends are talking to a couple of the vendors to see if they're willing to be part of the scavenger hunt.  The biggest challenge may be figuring out how to make the floating exclamation marks stay upright, visible over the crowds, and comfortable to wear.

[source: de.wow.wikia.com]

Collin's decided to cop out and go as a human quest-giver.  Ha!  Go green or go home, I say, which is why I'll be dressed in a close approximation of my orcish hunter, Hattie.  Complete with purple spiky hair and fangs. Bwahahahahahaha!!

The Calgary Expo is April 26-28th.  I will, of course, post pictures and report whether our scheme was successful.  

Quick Update

Just a quick update, today!  I don't know if Collin let people know already, but his contract at U of C has been extended for another six months.  Yay!  

Old News: Christmas In California

It has been a while, hasn't it?  Since my last post, we've been to California for Christmas, slogged our way through snowstorms, had many dinners with friends, and generally made our epicurean way around Calgary.

Armstrong Woods

First, Christmas!  Collin's family lives in Northern California, and we had a great time soaking up the sun/rain by day, and reliving Collin's childhood by playing Hero Quest with his brothers and high school buddies by night.

3/4s of the Trail Boys in
Bodega Bay

There was hiking, and a fun trip out to the shore.  We drove through gorgeous rolling green hills, dotted with adorable lambs (and shadowed by hawks and vultures waiting to make them lunch).  The shore was very windy and cold...but then, it was December, so it came as no surprise.  We looped through Bodega Bay, one of the filming locations of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.  Of course, there was a quick photo op (very quick - the townsfolk must be pestered to death.  The "No Trespassing" signs seemed particularly emphatic).  We stopped for lunch at the not-at-all ominously named Cape Fear Cafe in Duncan Mills.  No one was poisoned, thankfully.

One of the WPA
murals inside Coit Tower

Coit Tower atop Telegraph
Hill, next to a very macho-
looking Cristoforo Colombo

Later in the visit, Collin and I headed to San Francisco.  I'd been once before and had greatly enjoyed wandering its colorful streets.  Fortunately, the weather stayed nice for our trip.  We came in to the Port of San Francisco on the ferry, ate sourdough, watched sea lions, followed our noses to Ghirardelli Square, and climbed Telegraph Hill.  The WPA murals inside Coit Tower are gorgeous, and my camera actually cooperated enough to take some good indoor pics, for once!

The alley between City Lights
and Vesuvios

City Lights Books was its usual self-consciously off-beat self, and we browsed the shelves there for a while before heading next door to Vesuvios Saloon for a pint.  I seriously love that place.  Everything creaks.  Sitting upstairs, in one of the huge windows overlooking Colombus Avenue, it's unclear who's being put on display: you, the patron, or the characters on the street below.  I watched an old man and a young, Punk girl have an impassioned discussion about something for quite a while, down in that alley.

The desk from The Godfather.  [Insert joke here about offers you'll be unable to decline.]

There were also a couple of trips to wineries - did you know Francis Ford Coppola owns a winery?  I didn't!  The wine was...okay.  I thought the really interesting part were the displays of props from his movies.  It was interesting to see how detailed some of the props and costumes were.  Sadly, most of my pictures turned out very badly.  Looking at artifacts and reading anecdotes from the set of Apocalypse Now prompted Collin and I to add the documentary Heart of Darkness (about the making of the 1979 film) to our film cue.  

We went to Korbel Winery, as well.  I felt super fancy, sipping sparkling wine and nodding along to descriptors like, "medium dry" and "peachy", or "bright".  I discovered that Korbel Cream Sherry tastes like hugs and sunshine.  Sadly, they don't sell it in Canada.

Even if a lot of the outdoors we
explored was underwater.  Yay, Winter!

All of these fun activities, plus exploring Sebastapol and Santa Rosa, and going on marvelous walks.  As weather here in Calgary is still vacillating between "mostly acceptable for March" and "Who knew that nose hair could freeze?", I think fondly and often of being outside.

It was during this trip I discovered a new hobby: taking shaky, kind of blurry photos of fungus.  I blame the rain; everything looks better with water droplets.  Here, for your viewing pleasure - pictures of unidentified fungus (you're welcome).  If you know what any of them are, feel free to let me know!

Okay, moss isn't fungus, but I thought the
light was really pretty.  

It seems odd to close a blog entry about Christmas with pictures of mushrooms, but that's the sort of person I am.  Well, actually, I can do better.  Here's Collin, celebrating me updating my blog, finally.

Hurray!