Tag Archives: sharkboy

Howard Hughes Invented a Bra For Me

Personal Bits, Queer stuff

I just scanned one of my flickr friend’s weekend pics and it made me a bit nostalgic for the days when SharkBoy and I use to run around like spies, tearing up the town.

However, would I say that the honeymoon is over, headed into our third year? I would say no.

Yesterday, SharkBoy took me to a movie. That in itself sounds staid but it was a mystery movie.

We were up early and our chores done and he got me showered and dressed for the early shows at AMC ($6 before noon!). We get to the theatre and I think “Cool! JCVD! That will be fun.” But no, he instructs me to purchase Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

“Serious?”

“We’re getting into the Disney spirit,” He beams.

I can’t love him any more.

At 1130am, we had the whole theatre to ourselves. We made loud comments at the screen like Howard Hughes screaming at Jane Russell’s tits.

Halloween 2008

General
Jedis By RodTO

Jedis By RodTO

Halloween on Church Street. You will never find a more retched hive of scum and villainy.

The evening started out good with a group of us getting together at Casa RoboShark, slapping on layers of makeup while we sucked back beers during rounds of Guitar Hero and Mario Kart Wii. It sounds very involved but it was pretty relaxed. I wound up doing Dollar Store cuts on a few guys but the wax wounds didn’t last too long after leaving the apartment… I blame sweat and not having a proper sealant to make it stick. That and they wrinkled their faces too much. NO LAUGHING!

Here’s where I apologize for not taking any pictures this year. My lightsabre for my Jedi costume was a two hander. RodTO (Photog 2) took some amazing shots, as usual. Go see them and praise him highly.

We left the house at 9 and got to the street in full swing. It was busy as usual. SharkBoy felt there were too many drunk Ryerson students, but I thought it was a typical Halloween night: packed, pictures everywhere. Our outfits weren’t as attention grabbing as last year’s Luchadores, but with the Force FX sabres, we were well lit and did get into some photos. Here’s where I mention that lucha masks were out in force this year. We’re trendsetters.

We met up with Da, the Xbox Boys, FrankenSteve (nice fairies!) and got to do one circuit of up and down the strip before going home. Some of the costumes were amazing, some were the usual “Throw on a boa and I’m done” kind of WTF kind of effort. In all, I would say that a lot more people are getting into the spirit of dressing up, even if it’s just a dollar store jumpsuit with a cheap plastic lead-based mask. I say “bravo” for trying!

The thing that did mar the evening for me: I verbally abused a drunk asshole in a rather (un)Jedi like manner. We were walking in the crowd and came upon a small pocket, empty of people and I had stopped to wait for the other guys to catch up. As I did, a drunk guy came pushing out of the crowd, past me, screaming like a 9 year old child. “No! NO!” he was hollering. Chasing him was another drunk partyer who was making noises like he was going to catch him. Upon seeing my lightsabre, he lunged at me and yelled he needed it to “get that faggot.”

“Uh no,” I said and turned slightly from him.

He drunkenly clawed at the toy. (okay, the $130 toy, none the less)

“Fuck off!” I said. I was shocked: I don’t say this lightly in public, to strangers. But his total disregard for my personal space and property was appalling.

“Oh chill,” he said and tried to go for it again.

“Fuck. Off.” I said, stronger. And the surreal part was that I had my hand out, pointing a finger at his face. Like the Force was going to save me.

Exit drunk queen, muttering something, trying to catch up to “that faggot”.

Gay Jedi

Gay Jedi

There were other extremely drunken exchanges that bewildered me, like the 60-some year old woman wordlessly trying to grab SharkBoy’s lightsabre by the tube and me yelling “Lady! YOU DON’T TOUCH A JEDI’S STICK!” (yeah I said “stick” but she muttered “dick” back). Or the three Ryerson tarts wanting to play with the sabres for themselves and when we refused, asked for a kiss. Wha?

I love Halloween, but I was kind of cheesed off by the overly rowdy drunks. We were out pretty late and the worst of it did happen well after 11pm so I shouldn’t be surprised, really.

Next year, more thoughtful planning, I should think. Something not so attention grabbing, yet attention grabbing.

A Night of Art-ness Pt 2

General

Last night Sharkboy, Mom and a couple of her friends were treated to A Chorus Line by my brother Michael, who I thank with all my cultured heart.

Mike had “arranged them”. So I had to get them from the press desk at the theatre, which resulted in this conversation with the two most bitterest press desk employees ever:

Me: “I’m here to pick up tickets”
PD1: “Name?”
Me: “They’re under Michael Healey.”
PD1: “You’re not Michael Healey!”
Me: “I’m his brothe–”
PD2: (finding the tickets during all this and thrusting them at me) “CONGRATULATIONS. NEXT!”
Me: “…And his mother is coming too, you really don’t want to cross her.”

Bitter cow. Not even giving me the satisfaction to gloat over my brother’s success.

Every ten minutes after the show, Mom would turn to me and ask who paid for the tickets.

“Mirvishes,” I would say, which wasn’t far from the truth.

At this point, I would like to state that since I got the last two days of theatre tickets for free, my brother and I are now even for all those times I had to get up at 2am to go get his asthma medicine in the 70s. I absolve you of this debt.

Prior to the show, Sharkboy and I split up to try to intercept Mom as she arrived at The Canon Theatre. Who makes two entrances to a popular theatre on two different city blocks? I am sure many of dates are destroyed because the simple statement “I’ll meet you there” turns connecting outside the theatre a mood killing process. Anyway, Sharkboy took the Victoria Street entrance in case her cabbie took her to the “box office” while I stayed on Yonge at the “Main entrance”.

I see my Mom and her friends after a while and we greet each other with hugs. As this is going on, none of us notice the huge black SUV pull up to the curb beside us. I tell Mom to go to her seats while I go collect Sharkboy from the other entrance and we’ll be together soon. I turn to head around the block.

Wham. My nose makes contact with a solid wall of suit covered beef.

I hit a body guard.

One of David Mirvishes‘ body guards.

“Excuse me!” we respond simultaneously, politely.

I’m spinning around to see David Mirvish again but they’re swept into the theatre. I wanted to thank him for the tickets and insist that he continue to commission work from my brother.

By the way, I loved A Chorus Line. It was schmaltzy, self centred, self deprecating, navel gazing musical theatre that had me humming it’s tunes even as I type this.

A Night of Art-ness

Celebs and Media, Distractions, Personal Bits, Toronto

Da At Art With HeartLast night was a busy one for me. Da and I decided to do some Father/Son bonding while hobnobbing (what the hell does that word mean, anyway?) with Toronto’s art elite at Art With Heart.

Da’s never been in the Carlu and was curious as to it’s grandeur. It didn’t disappoint. It’s a beautiful deco setting and the art that was placed throughout was amazing (the website doesn’t convey the demanding presence some pieces command). I have to comment here that the volunteer staff were clockwork perfect. Pleasant, informed docets docents (Andrew helps me spelling!) cheerfully provided information on the art and never patronized. In all, a very organized successful event… I hope. I haven’t heard any numbers back yet, but the joint was packed, and considering Fashion sCares is this Saturday, I hope they made their target numbers!

Find My Brother!Then we shuffled down to Canadian Stage to see my brother in Frost/Nixon. I have to admit that due to some of the reviews coming out of Vancouver, I wasn’t hopeful for this production. But when the curtain fell, I can tell you I was very entertained and greatly surprised. They have worked out all the problems mentioned in previous reviews, except the worrisome opinion that Len Cariou’s Nixon was not satisfactorily mimicking enough, which I tend to agree. I yearned to see the Nixon I remembered as a kid but got a sketch of that ideal. Not saying he did a bad job, he was captivating, but there was no jowly “Rich Little” kind of character play (which my brother does rather spookily at one point).

Oddly enough most of the cast and crew had been in science fiction TV shows (Battlestar, Stargate, RoboCop), including my brother, at one point in their career. Does this say something about Canadian culture?

Tonight, Sharkboy and I are off to see A Chorus Line with Mumsey! I’m being exposed to more culture than an open chest wound in an emergency ward!

Weekend Roundup

Distractions, Hobbies, Toronto

Dan rocks outOn Saturday, SharkBoy and I had a dinner for my brother, The Professor, who was returning to England on Sunday. We made veggie chili with chocolate, in consideration of Emma, who I just learned last week has become meatless. Dumping a fist full of semi-sweet chips into chili may sound odd, but it brought out a “depth” to the taste as well as a dirty, naughty feeling. SharkBoy made a blazingly tasty salad and a somewhat mushy cheesecake pie, which we all decided was delish, but needed a few more hours in the fridge.

After dinner, we all retired to the media room for a rousing game of Guitar Hero, which the Professor sucked at (love him dearly, but you’d think of all those years at discos would give him more rhythm), and then on to Mario Cart, which he did exceedingly better at. See you again soon, Professor!

Political BraiiiinsSunday was the Zombie Walk 2008. After some scouring of dollar stores for props and cheap makeup, we came up with (cue theremin) Zombie Mechanics!! oooo! We didn’t want to rip up our original Halloween costumes so we chose this last minute switch. I think we did quite well, considering it was 90% improv on the day of makeup application. The Mailman joined us and found the day …interesting. When we got there there was the added surprise of a Cardboard Battle – two teams made of elaborate costumes made of only cardboard and duct tape battled each other for …supremacy? Bragging rights? Either way, some of them were pretty cool. One of the best costumes was a Tonka truck yellow, digger handed teddy bear, who fought like a trooper. With that going on, it was easy to see that the event had grown exponentially since last year. I think the Toronto Zombie Walk people need to consider they have a monster on their hands. A cheap $5 megaphone doesn’t convey much information to 1500 people. I bet there will be more organization next year because the cops were getting a pit pissed at the size of the crowd spilling out onto Queen Street.

Gallery of some zombies here… my camera’s batteries died half way through the day.

Family, Secrets. In Repose and Response

Personal Bits, Queer stuff

Weekend Pictures Here

What can you learn of someone within 3 minutes? 30 minutes? 3 hours? 3 days?

This long weekend, we ventured up into the Gatineau area to visit SharkBoy’s “Summer Place” – Notre Dame Du Pontmain to be exact.

It’s a tiny village nearly smack dab in the middle of a massive amount of small lakes about an hour and a bit north of Ottawa, in the Gatineaus. NDdP makes it’s living on the one hotel, the one depanneur and one boat launch and a lot of video rentals. I’ve never been before and I hope I go back. A lot. Mountains rise up out of so many lakes it’s like visiting BC but without the weed. Every morning and evening the sun puts on a display of colours you become drunk with the spectacle. Deer peer at you with those creepy eyes from the sides of the road. Bears have been seen. It truly is one of Quebec’s hidden treasures from the English.

We left late on Friday night to a wall of traffic that spanned downtown Pickering to Brockville, where after 6 hours in the car at 2am, we desperately tried to look for a hotel. All the details of the travel can be found on Sharkboy’s blog. One thing I did enjoy was playing “Senator and the Hooker” in the divey-est hotel on the outskirts of Ottawa that had stucco swipes as wall decoration and other 70s Swiss Chalet motifs (“Spank your bottom? That will be $5 extra, Senator!”).

On the drive we talked a lot about family. The one we started ourselves (cat included) and the ones I was going to meet. As usual, but not so much this time, I felt the apprehension of meeting up with the in-laws and not being able to communicate as much as I’d like. But that always disappears within moments of getting past the front door because SharkBoy’s mom is always so welcoming and friendly (inbetween the “tabanac” and “câlisse”) and we generally communicate in elaborate hand gestures, drinks and the odd translation assistance from SharkBoy’s sister, Syl.

We did eventually meet up and make our way over to SharkBoy’s uncle’s extremely secluded compound after a long drive up, down, through, along swamps and riverbanks. Oddly enough we could see the house we were staying at from his dock, which would have taken 1/100th the time it took to get there if we had walked directly from door to door. Unfortunately the two places are separated by a large river, so unless you’re Jesus, that’s not possible. Visible but secluded. For a reason. He owned the entire mountain behind his house.

Leasing the road to the top of the mountain for a cell phone tower, he’s sitting on a developer’s wet dream of prime cottage land that overlooked the lake. But he wants to keep it to himself for now. That kind of power you don’t come by easy. As we were to learn when the pictures came out. Images of SharkBoy’s dad and his two uncles were presented in all their black and white glory and I got to learn how Romuald became the person who gave me SharkBoy. We also learned of some other stuff that I will respect a certain person’s embarrassment due to certain childhood behaviour, but let’s just say that it involved a chicken and a horse.

Later, SharkBoy’s cousin and her girlfriend piled us into their lesbian truck (who knew it was rampant in his father’s side?) and took us 1/3rd the way up the mountain on the maintenance road to the cell tower. Then we walked the rest of the way. Nearly straight up. For a solid hour. That’s right, this fat, office cube chubbo walked up the side of a mountain to get utterly drenched in sweat (thank god they’re all family now). I also got to spend my first really private moments with Syl and we discussed ex-boyfriends and how sometimes a family’s responsibility is not to mention that we’re dating a jerk. Nothing new or shocking but she managed to make me feel like a brother in those few moments. I also snapped a few shots:

After bombing around on ATVs, we went tubing. First time for me behind a boat where I didn’t fall down within the first couple of seconds of it taking off (I suck at waterskiing).

That night, after saying our bon soirs, we discovered that seclusion has a price: the road back to the highway was washed out in a freak flash flood that came down from the side of the mountain after a short rainfall. Who knew that a mountain could “retain water”? This is where SharkBoy’s family shone: they all came out to the site on their ATVs and trucks to see the damage and within an hour, we had “rebuilt” the road, moved a down tree and scouted ahead the 3 miles to the highway on the ATV to make sure that the road was clear. It was an adventure, to be sure (we could have been at that part of the road during the flood), and his uncle and cousins were actually apologetic for the delay.

The next day the “kids” (without Sharkboy’s mom and aunt) set out to discover the waterfalls at Windigo, a swanky time-share like resort that I’d love to spend a week at some summer time (hint hint). There I saw a frog. Hold your Quebecois jokes. But before leaving, I was struck with the biggest stomach pain right between breakfast and the time we got into the car, which I kept mostly to myself until it started to subside. I wasn’t too chatty that morning. But it passed and I don’t blame anyone’s food…

At this time it was becoming quite evident that one of the guests was not feeling the same emotions for being away for the weekend and would not put down their cell phone for all the texting that was going on. I kept on remembering that when I was their age, I was yearning for not being at family outings either, and would sulk annoyingly over in some corner with a comic or tv show. Kids today (ugh. shoot me. I just wrote “kids today”) have better ways of sulking the fun from the moment by tapping messages to their friends on a small keyboard. I wanted to take them aside and tell them that family time is extremely precious, especially at 40something, and that they should savour the time they have. But of course, I kept my nose out of it. But I did felt old remembering how I behaved exactly the same (sans electroniques). This led to the weekend being cut short by hours (thankfully not by a day) and we managed to get back to Toronto at an extremely decent hour, so thanks teen angst!

In all, a good weekend. I’d love to go back again!

Birthday Comes Early

Distractions, iPhone, Personal Bits

Trends, my friends.

In the past SharkBoy has greeted the anniversary of the first day of existence with fun gadgets that fill up our empty relationship (holy crap I am so kidding…):

One year I got a PSP and a marriage proposal.

Last year was the iPhone (amen) and a Wii (bless me).

This year? A 50″ plasma TV. Okay I am paying for half but it’s a welcome purchase/gift none the less. Xbox will not be disappointing.

I guess next year will be our own satellite if we were to keep with/outdo the electronics theme.

Tonight, while going off to BestBuy to buy it bestly, we stopped in at Funland to check to see if they were really closing on Friday night, my actual birthday. Nope. They were closing this evening. Thankfully we took the time to check. We chatted with the change guy (He was actually smoking inside at the booth – what were they going to do? Shut him down?) and then pushed my way through the small crowd to the back where the ancient games were kept. SharkBoy was a bit skeeved at the lighting and a few sketchy patrons but was reverent with my memories.

VR Helmet Ted

VR Helmet Ted

Ghosts of my past. The arcade was full of hyper active Asian kids playing Dance Dance Revolution at speeds that made me physically frightened for the integrity of their ankles. I really wish the iPhone did video. Really not much different than when I use to go there – just using a different appendage to slap the buttons.

The one game we decided to play “stole” $2 from us.

Bye Funland! I’ll think of you often when I see dead technology.

Now we wait for the delivery truck. I am so going to get a catheter for Sunday!

Weekend, Live TV, Cow Tipping

Celebs and Media

I was remiss yesterday by not mentioning Da’s Outstanding Award for Community Service (story and pics at SharkBoy’s pages) Way to go Da! You’ll also be glad to know that we were on the same page about the MCCT service – the Church of Broadway – They sang the entire time. Who is the patron saint of Jazz Hands?

Geddit? Cant Face?

Geddit? Cant Face?

Today we went to the “live” taping of How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?” and had a great time! I’m writing this before checking out the PVR to see if they got us on TV.

Having Nun of it

Having Nun of it

The whole process was taped live before a studio audience with no slip ups. I love Gavin Crawford. I saw him once at an open Mic years ago and he was brilliant. But here he was 100% scripted (I watched the teleprompters), which is a shame. We tried to get his attention with our sign:

Cow Tipping Votes

Cow Tipping Votes

We waved it hard but he never noticed, Jenna did, I think. I was in a brief shot with a steady cam but they didn’t use the shot in the final show.

Sharkboy and Stage

Sharkboy and Stage