You might have heard I’m doing the ScotiaBank AIDS Walk in a full Sandtrooper armor.
Why not sponsor me today?
I Know Absolutely Nothing About Birthing Babies
Stay for the whole thing. Turn up your sound.
That I Can Do, Too!
I took postbear’s words to heart and thought I should start out small – I’ve decided to walk (march?) in the Scotiabank AIDS Walk, this Sept 25th. I don’t think, however, I will be selling off space on my suit, unless I’m offered some ridiculous sum of money. Hint Hint PrideFM?
Within a few hours of tweeting my decision, long time internet friend (and one embarrassingly drunk pick up attempt night at the Eagle) “Bark” aka Steve K dropped $50 into my sponsor jar!
I’m off to a great start!
Here are the details:
My Sponsor Page: My goal is low – this is my first time doing anything like this, but secretly I’d love to crest $2000. Expect some aggressive tweets and boring blog posts. Why not donate now to shut me up early!? Plenty of payment options!
If you want to make a PayPal donation, my account is “deadrobot” At “rocketmail” dot com. Every little bit helps!
The Event: Starts around 11am and I’ll most likely get there early because who doesn’t want to get a photo with a Sandtrooper?
I’ll keep you posted on how I’m doing.
Wish me luck!
You Damn Disco Apes!
It’s making the ’rounds.
When Deltoids Meet Drag
Mike Ruiz, the humpy photog made famous by his appearances on Tyra Banks’ America’s Next Top Model will probably never get to be a serious drag queen in his lifetime.
But we can hope, right? You gotta have a dream!
That I Could Do
Paul Kane is walking across a a big chunk of Australia for charity. Seems altruistically normal enough. Thing is, he’s doing it in a Trooper suit.
When people started to send me links about this via Twitter or email (or even a co-worker over my cube wall) that there was this guy doing this thing in a Stormtrooper suit and did I know about it, I had one of those gut wrenching “I should have/could have thought of that” moments.
Sort of like seeing the trailer for “The Beginners” (wow a movie about a dad who comes out of the closet – the same idea I’ve had in my head for the last 10 years or so).
Anyway, so I started to think hard about how I could plus this up if I were to do something with my suit:
Just steal borrow the idea. Nothing is new – there are no original thoughts. One might argue that our Aussie boy got the idea from Terry Fox. Yeah! Where’s your originality now, Mr Kane? Huh?
Then the whole logistics of doing something like that comes into play. How am I going to pay rent if I take the (approximately) 3 years it would take for me to walk across Canada? I doubt I’d have a husband to come home to, as well. So no, short and sweet seems to be the tonic.
Do a different kind of strenuous activity. Basically wearing a trooper suite more than 30 min in this summer heat would result in me fainting like a Dickensian character. So that’s particularly limiting. Unless I do something in the fall/winter. Then I would need a Snowtrooper suit.
I thought of maybe climbing the tower but since Joe Eppele was denied the right to do so in a Sasquatch suit, then that’s out of the question.
Any ideas?
Uncanny Valley
Great brief explanation of the Uncanny Valley:
Couch Be Gone
Click to see all the horrid stains!
Good bye couch. You were never really mine, I only came into your life purely by marriage.
I’ll never forget the times I spent sitting on you. From the first time I went over to SharkBoy’s house to watch a movie I knew that I’d be spending a lot of time on you. You know I use to sit not ON you but in front of you as a sneaky way to get close to SharkBoy when he had a lot of people over for movie nights.
One time, during a viewing of Lord of the Rings, while sitting on you, dear couch, I turned to SharkBoy and said “You know how they made the waterfall effect in this movie?”
“No,” SharkBoy says.
“Chickens,” I dead pan.
We laughed for ours, couch. Remember?
We also played a ton of video games, couch. You held my ass down while I went through Infamous, Infamous 2, Bioshock, Bioshock 2, all the Gods of War, Mario on Karts, in Galaxies, and the odd Red Ring of Deaths, a couple Fallouts and lots of Vice. Vice City. In fact I spent the last hour on you playing a video game. Pretty fitting.
You were comfortable up until the last year when your stuffing shifted and you would make my hip hurt after an hour of watching TV. Time to go.
So thank you couch for bringing me much fun with the man I love.
Walkies!
Prior to my surprise trip to Disney (which I will get around to writing about soon, promise!) SharkBoy and I purchased a pair of Vibram’s Fivefingers shoes. As you can see by the picture they’re a bit unconventional, and have a tendency to make people react in some way.
Before I go on, I will answer the three main questions I get all the time when people see them:
• Yes, they are comfortable. Imagine wearing flip flops that surround your feet. But with better support.
• I do walk differently. Because you virtually walk “barefoot”, you find yourself rolling from heel, to outer foot to pad to toes. Is this better? I can say that last year about this time I was suffering from a knee that would “give out” when doing simple things like going up a sidewalk curb. I’ve been to a physiotherapist since then and have taken his advice on how to properly walk – meanwhile, these shoes have been helping me maintain the small walking “tricks” he suggested. I have not had any issues with my knee since.
• It is odd having your toes separated, but I’m now able to grab onto subway car poles like an ape. It does take me a little longer to put them on, my pinky toes seem to have separation anxiety and usually wind up in with it’s neighbour’s slot.
Now on to the general public’s reaction:
At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, I was crossing in front of a family of 4 to get a shot of a monkey so I had to scoot a bit to avoid collision. As I pass the mother of the group blurted out (in what I thought was an angry manner) “What is up with those shoes?!” I didn’t look back – I was too scared.
On the subway home I had a slightly eccentric dude sidle up to me while waiting for the doors to open. I say “eccentric” because he looked like a 35 year old skateboarding guy who looked like he was in between jumps and beer bongs. He looks down. “DUDE HOLY SHIT THOSE SHOES!!” He announces to the entire car. It was like pulling the cranium off a fresh kill amongst a crowded zombie apocalypse. Everyone turned towards me. “Yeah, they’re…”
“FUCKING COOL!!” And so on. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise through the declarations of awesomeness.
Generally people are nice and most will come right out and ask me about them. But there are the Torontonians who don’t want to directly acknowledge your difference. I would be walking with SharkBoy somewhere and if the sidewalk was crowded around us I may notice ambient conversations. I would also notice the sudden absence of conversation as people drop their register and whisper “Look. At. His. Feet.” This happens more than people coming right out and asking, which kind of saddens me.
Like many things that are different, I have a feeling that they will become the Crocs of this decade (when we were buying ours, there was another gay couple at Europe Bound purchasing them too – Gays! Fore-bearers of trends!) but for the time being, I’ll enjoy wearing them without caring what other people think.
Cars Poo
Who can forget the first ten minutes of UP, where a kid’s movie emotionally punched you in the nutsack so hard you woke up at the talking dog scene?
Or how about the feeling of longing brought about when a little robot, alone for 700 years and surrounded by garbage, dreamed of just holding someone’s hand by clasping his own two together while watching Hello Dolly?
Who could forget the look of calm defeat that flashes across the faces of life long toy friends when they realize they’re going to die a fiery meltyplastic death, and with no rescue coming, one by one accepted their fate and stopped struggling?
Pixar has taken some big risks in the past. Literally they’ve reinvented movie making (arguably by re-hashing European film techniques with solid scripts – see Ratatouille) and created some incredibly beautiful, striking movie moments like the ones above. They boldly and successfully play with their audience using themes thought to be taboo in kids movies: death, loss, alienation, nostalgia, etc., and in the process have created the best American cinema in the last decade.
Cars 2, from what I am understanding from all the reviews, does nothing to help that last statement. When Pixar set out to make Toy Story 2, fanboys worried that they were selling out to the monster Hollywood cash machine, but were surprised when they got a solid, touching story that was just as good as the first – and then outdid themselves with a third movie. Pixar proved that you could continue a franchise without selling out.
However, I can glean not one thing from the reviews I’ve read, or from the trailers I’ve seen, that this movie is nothing but “oil=pee” and “muffler=fart” jokes.
This is why I’ll not see Cars 2 in the theartre. I don’t want to tarnish Pixar’s stellar reputation. Sadly, however, Cars 2 exists, like a steaming pile of cat puke, left carelessly from a loved one, outside your bedroom door. Eventually you’ll step in it.
Bah! I was in a horrid mood all morning until I saw this: