Priscilla, Queen of the Musicals: Prologue

Celebs and Media, Toronto

I’m standing outside the Princess of Wales Theatre, awaiting limos with glitzy drag queens to pull up for the opening night of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert with SharkBoy and CuriousJ when a young chap shoves a camera in our personal space. I seen him earlier and had warned SharkBoy and CuriousJ to back off if he came over. They slink away behind the camera man.

“What do you like about the movie!?” He enthusiastically asks.
“I love how it’s set in the Australian Outback! It’s a fantastic road movie! Great costumes, some funny lines, super action… I love the post-apocalyptic movie genre. Oh and I love how everyone chases each other in 70s style chop shop cars.”
“Whut?” His face falls a bit from behind his popped out LCD screen.
“Yeah! When he finds out the road gang kills his family he goes after them in his Interceptor.”
Pause. “What about the stage show… do you know anything about that?”
“I hear they toned down the bus.” (I was actually being serious. I had heard that the London show was plagued with serious tech issues)
“Toned down the bus…? Hoookay. What about the songs? Any song you like?”
“Didn’t Tina Turner do the theme song? Thundersomething?”
A limo full of drag queens does actually pull up and the camera swings away from my face.

I bet I don’t get used in those shouty “THIS IS THE BEST MUSICAL IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND” kind of ad on TV.

Oh Girls, I think we're lost!

Thanksgiving Cooking With Robots Part 1

Robots

In all cases, click to enlarg-o

Do I just throw this in?

Wait. No. Stuff to do first.

Get Your Shit Together

Rosemary Potatoes - Soak 'em in rosemary, water, salt

Please be careful.

Makin' bacon for the Stuffin'

More stuffing ingredients

You know it's an epic meal when the mandolin comes out.

Keep it clean as you work. You there. Get busy.

What Dreams May Go

Personal Bits

Since my father’s death I’ve not been sleeping well.

I’ve been replaying his last moments over and over again in the half sleep I’ve been having for the last couple months. His pain and confusion burned forever into my memory, fueling my anger and sadness.

His last words: “You have to make the money.” Spoken to my brother and I after he asked a confused question.

My nightmares have been of those last moments, the actual details I don’t wish to relate here, but they play out in my head either in my dreams or like a eroded echo in the small hours of the night. I don’t try to decipher what he means but the words reverberate.

Yesterday yet another payout from yet another overlooked policy came in.

When his father died and it came time to clean out his 4 car garage, Dad and his siblings found well over 14 lawnmowers in various states of dismantlement. The garage sale was epic and while I was living in England at the time, I got to see tons of photos of all the things leaving the property. Grandfather was a trendsetting hoarder.

14 lawnmowers.

At what point would Grandfather say “Fuck it, I need another.” and gleefully bring another home? And what did Grandmother think of this? Or had she ignored his obsession with her own hoarding?

Dad was his father’s son, but not by hoarding mechanical things. It seems more like financial, which was what Grandfather drilled into his head at an early age. “You have to make the money.”

Now, don’t think I can retire and live in Mississauga or anything, no. But the last “find” (sent completely out of the blue from the insurance company from a policy we had not discovered in his piles of papers) was a kiss on the lips and a punch in the gut, simultaneously.

I dreamed this morning that my father and I were at the cottage and we were bringing in groceries out of his silver LTD. The summer sun was bright and I can vividly remember the green on blue of the trees against the sky in the dream. I knew it was a dream, but there was my father and I was excited to see him. I tried to ask him questions, ask him if he was ok but he kept a neutral face and refused to make eye contact. He would hand me paper bags (this dream firmly seated in the 70s – the cottage, the LTD and the Steinberg grocery bags were all temporal markers for me) and I would defer them to the pick nick table just outside the cottage door and running back to the car, eager to get him to respond to my questions. No answers. I was getting frustrated but I still knew it was a dream.

I changed tactics. I said thank you, putting a lot of weight behind it, obviously not meaning helping with the groceries. He turned and with no expression he held out another bag. But his face had changed to how I remembered him at the cottage: he looked young, in hi s late 40s, goofy porn star mustache, his father’s eyes. He hands me the last bag and looks right at me. We turn and head towards the cottage and I wake up.

I woke up happy. First time in a long time. Thanks Dad.

Beasty And the Beaut

Celebs and Media

Hay LaaaAAAdies!

A day early, SharkBoy’s copy of Beauty and the Beast (Special Edition) arrived and we sat down last night to watch it.

There are moments when I thank the TV gods we bought HD and invested in a BluRay player. Last night was one of them. The opening sequence when the camera multi-planes through the forest to Belle’s home was so saturated I felt like Dorothy coming out of a shattered gray Kansas farmhouse. The transfer is gorgeous! I’m hesitant to buy 2D classical animation movies on BluRay because at that high resolution and image quality you notice how some animation cells have shadows behind them, not to mention the drop in animation quality when the lead animator hands off a minor scene to an apprentice or intern (see the scene right after the big opening number with Belle and the villagers, Belle’s face goes a bit… un-Belle-ish).

The reason this transfer is superior is because Disney started to use their CAPS line and colouring system for the first time with this movie (instead of the traditional ink and paint on cell form of animation). While the movie is stunning at 1080p, you can tell the software was in it’s infancy if you look close at the lines. The points where lines join up were a tad bit blotchy and the long stroke lines were a bit thinner than they should be – any graphic designer who has converted a drawing to vector format will recognize this flaw. Something to do with early conversion algorithms, but to the vast majority who’s never operated Illustrator, you’ll be fine watching this. Don’t worry.

Two items of note: the re-insertion of the musical number “Human Again” was done seamlessly. The song was made popular from the stage show and removed from the movie because it was too similar in grandure right after “Be Our Guest”. The animation recreated for the disk was equal in quality as the rest of the movie, instead of some horrid “Beauty and the Beast Christmas Special” crap they could have done. The song also bridges the seasons of winter to spring in the story, sealing up that weird timeline jump. Bravo!

And Best Menu Interface Evar. Sure it’s captured video of the characters doing stuff from the movie, dancing around in recycled movements, but they’re interspersed around the castle as you explore. Damned fun!

Enough with the tech, here are some story observations I had while viewing Beauty and the Beast:

How is it that Lumiere hasn’t burned down the castle after all that time with flames for hands? Especially when he’s fraternizing with a highly flammable feather duster behind velvet curtains?

How is it the cutlery create a Eiffel Tower during the dinner number, when it hasn’t been invented yet?

How did I not know Joanne Worley (from TV’s Laugh In) was the voice of the wardrobe?

Mrs Potts must have been super old when she had Chip. Like… dry old. She looks 60 as a human. If you think about it, she might have had Chip as a teapot. If that’s the case then she has lots of children. And what happened to the husband? Was he a serving platter and was dropped? Smashed into 1000s of pieces?

How horrid is it to be turned into an enchanted spoon and for years spend your time in a drawer, not get used and then suddenly you’re repeatedly jammed into the mouth of some poor French peasant girl for weeks on end? I am sure there was no modern dentistry back then.

Not every inch of Gaston is covered in hair. Look at his forearms. Shame.

If all the courtiers and attendants became magical chairs and tables and carpets, etc., what happened to the original chairs and tables and carpets?

What does the footstool leave behind when he poops? Upholstery tacks?

Who finally got the triplets? LeFou? I hope so.