because my father was a veteran and a cowboy

 

dad (left) and his friend Joe.

dad and friends from the army.

 

dad (left) and army friends out for a ride.

 

more friends join the group for a ride.

 

dad's favourite cowboy.

 

dad, Helene on dad's horse Jetty, and Kenny.

   

Marie the sheep, Sporty the mutt, Harold, Grandma, Clara, dad (15 yrs old), and Helene.

walking down memory lane for my dad.

moot or hooey?

memory is magical.

Nosbeeratu

this is hilarious!!

moot or hooey?

Nosferatu's real name is Graf Orlok.

before you vote

TheStar.com Party Game

hey check out the link above. if you're unsure of who to vote for, it might help, or not...

moot or hooey?

40% of the population closes their eyes when they vote.

have a look at this fabulous video!

HISTORIA DE UN LETRERO (THE STORY OF A SIGN)

aint this a corker! for the first time in 28 years a Canadian film will be opening the Cannes Film Festival !

It was six years in the making for Canadian script writer/actor/director Don McKellar (The Red Violin, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, Highway 61) to adapt Jose Saramago's "Blindness" .

Brazilian Fernando Mereilles (City of God, The Constant Gardener, The City of Men) directed the film starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. If there was ever a year I would shave my head to attend... !!!

I have misgivings about Moore playing the role of "the woman" though. For me she just doesn't carry enough weight to do it justice. ouch! I apologise. But this story almost made me puke it was so intensely good. The only other book that has had that affect on me was John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath".
Anyway, I would have liked to see them really work hard to cast it a little... more accurately. It would have been a lot truer to the dialogue in the book, as well as the vulnerability and ferocity that emerge from that character, if that role had been filled by someone like Shohreh Aghdashloo , Meryl Streep, or Glenn Close and while we're at it why not Christina Ricci or Mila Kunis as the young girl...

Regardless, I will wait with baited breath until its theatrical release!!

moot or hooey?
In the film "Michael Clayton" George Clooney gets his character's age wrong.

green green bags of home

Everywhere you look these days, people are getting on the hydrogen train to planet organic!

It's awesome watching people opt for reusable mugs, trade in their plastic bags for recycled, reusable grocery bags, take the bus or ride their bikes instead of drive, to name a few.
There's an incredible palpable pulse of change happening in the lower mainland these days.
Of course there has always been a small percentage of people doing these things for years, but recently these simple yet environmentally fundamental changes seem to be spreading like wild flowers, positively beautiful !

This year on Earth Day (Apr 22nd) the concentration seemed to be on eliminating the use of plastics bags.

Starbucks offered free coffee and a cloth shopping bag in exchange for using your own coffee mug. Safeway offered a free cloth shopping bag if you brought in your old plastic ones. Capers/Whole Foods were giving out free cloth shopping bags and basil seeds. Everywhere you looked people were making a difference!

It's been interesting talking to people about what they've been doing as individuals. Most people seem to be right into getting rid of their plastic bags, however, one of the most common dilemmas heard from people re-using plastic shopping bags as garbage bags, has been "if not plastic, then what".

There are indeed alternatives as some of you may know, but for the average layman, they aren't always obvious or clear. And it seems that somewhere during that train ride to petroleum-free euphoria, someone neglected to blaze the sister trail to the shelves of alternative household supplies.

One of the solutions to the dilemma is biodegradable garbage bags. They can be found at most grocery stores, anywhere from Safeway to Choices, and come in all sizes for all purposes.

So, to top off all the fabulous efforts by all participating establishments and ice the organic carrot cake this Earth Day, and every day for that matter, it would have been fabulous to see a huge bin right next to those easy to reach gum and magazines, filled to the brim with bags upon bags of these biodegradable alternatives.

Perhaps then people might be more likely to reach over and pick up a green, green bag for home.

moot or hooey?

80 percent of "at the cash register pick up puchases" are spontaneous.

gone baby gone

Sergeant Thomas George Prince, who?...


Long Tack Sam, who?...


Lenny Breau, who?...


Portia White, who?...

moot or hooey?

even brain damage doesn’t seem to affect semantic memory, so why... i’m just saying...

back to the future...

well after all my moping and hum/hawing about how much i missed the south of france, (see tuscany calling) it looks like i’m destined to return.

out of the blue a man i used to date through those glorious french summers tracks me down by googling me... thanks google... i mention this not because it’s a good thing. more to vent my exasperation. the last time i saw eric i spent the better part of the day dodging around buildings and stone walls (below) trying to escape.

the second to the last time i saw him he had casually invited me to coffee during a break in classes and i spent the next two days his captive in the forests of god knows where. ah those french!

this time around i’ve been accepted to a writers’ workshop/retreat in a small village just outside of avignon (scarily close to eric). i’m hoping the angst will come in useful when approaching the second plot point.

moot or hooey?

the difference between an obsessed partner and a stalker is that in the case of the latter, the person at the receiving end is their "prey". 

mr right

A girl I know at work has stated several times that there simply aren't any good single men in Vancouver. She's been single since I've known her, which is creeping up on eight years now.

I recently got back from an extended trip to Ecuador. There was anything but a lack of great single men there, of all ages. I'd consider myself a pretty average looking woman but I couldn't go far without someone sitting down beside me and striking up a good conversation. And age didn't seem to matter. Young ones, older ones, it just didn't seem to be an issue. Some of them would blatantly hit on you sure, but some just wanted to talk, and they all seemed to have a way of engaging you that made you feel beautiful, interesting, and desirable.

I'd experienced a similar thing in other countries as well. Spain, Cuba, Chile, France… all very different countries with very different standards of living, lifestyles and etiquette.

Ecuador is a particularly friendly country, with particularly lovely men. And what finally occurred to me, was that the fundamental difference with men in Canada was that they never engaged you. Oh sure, you could probably go to a bar, slam back a few drinks and talk your face off to someone itching to get in your pants and I'm sure they'd be willing to "engage" you all night, but generally speaking, men simply never,well, en-ga-a-a-a-ged you… in any way. Blank stares, no conversation, what does she want? can't get too close or make eye contact for too long or she'll assume...
There always seemed to be this unconscious psychoanalysis as they looked at you trying to sum you up without the effort of words… (sigh).

And just to kind of balance things out here a bit. It's not like the women in this country make it any easier for the guys. We're just as bad ladies. Maybe even worse. How long does it take a girl to roll her eyes, yawn, giggle to her friends, or cut someone off if she thinks for even a nano-second he might not be "the guy"? we're not exactly inviting. whatever happened to just communicating, for the sake of communicating...

So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't agree with the girl at work. There are plenty of great single guys in Canada… Vancouver even… we just need to pull out our mighty snow shovels and after we've cleared a nice safe path to our front doors, take those same shovels and scrape away some of the shit that's been piling up between us.

moot or hooey?

A good conversation is a powerful aphrodisiac for most women.

tuscany calling

i'm here in one of the most beautiful places on earth and i don't want to leave. La Fortuna, Costa Rica. i could curl up in one of the hammocks and forget the rest of the world with little trouble. so, why do i feel so restless...

read about a million books these past few weeks. the latest is a book by Frances Mayes called Under the Tuscan Sun. my friend Sandy produced the film of the same name so i was curious to see how closely they'd followed the book.

i remember a few years ago when i'd spend summers in the south of France in a little village called Chantemerle-les-Grignan.



stone buildings set on a small mountain overlooking rolling fields of lavender and sunflowers.

my friend Matthew had convinced me one year to hop a train over from Austria for a weekend 'fete'. the fete lasted for four glorious summers, dining in open fields, traveling to Sete et Nime for the oysters, wine and mussels on the sandy beaches, and l'amour... we simply cannot forget l'amour... some the best times in my life were during those summers.

so i crack the cover of Tuscan Sun and at once am transported back to that glorious place.

i know, it's Italy not France, but the stone houses, the small villages filled with friendly locals, fresh produce, rolling fields... the ambience seems so familiar. i read through the first few chapters and am hit with a strange sense of longing. a longing to return to Europe, to the countryside and disappear into the hills.

so here i am in a Costa Rican Shangri-la dreaming about somewhere else. go figure.

moot or hooey?

"the grass is always greener on the other side" is an expression invented by someone with way too much time on their hands. that, and an extreme lack of perspective.

Amnesty International: Signature spot commercial ad

Amnesty International, along with Doctors Without Borders, were two of the very few organizations that helped the Rwandans during the genocide in the nineties.

moot or hooey?

our server at work has been down for three days now.
one might ask "what can happen in three days"
apparently, 160,000 emails!

two computer geniuses and hours of sweat later and the server is apparently up and running again… sort of…

picture a single mom of eight, all under the age of seven, sprawled out on the living room couch. it's 10am, no one's been fed, changed, or cuddled, and they're all vying for that elusive coveted lap time.... you get the picture
like swimming in a sea of bread dough. thank god for those semophore lessons in Brownies…

moot or hooey?

some software actually comes with bugs that can crash your computer.

the elephant man cometh

165,000 pounds for 3.3 pounds. sound like a fair exchange?... that's £s for lbs.

this is a big fat truffle that was dug up by Luciano Savini's truffle dog Rocco, near Pisa Italy. what i'd like to know is how long they figure it'd been buried there. sheesh, this thing is so big i could have dragged my grandfather out of a smoke filled pub after a three day binge and he'd have been able to sniff it out.

moot or hooey?

a classic report in the 1960s noted that California-gas-company repair crews found leaks in their lines by watching for circling turkey vultures attracted to the carrionlike scent added to the gas as a safety alert. (ah, those Americans)

Hall of fame

this is Jeff.
Jeff is one of the most incredible people i have ever met. i fell in love with him instantaneously. not as in "i really liked him and you would too" fall in love. more like "would you like to run away with me to the caribbean tonight and live on coconuts and moonlight" fall in love. that kind.

i'd often heard of people meeting and falling in love at first sight and spending the rest of their days together in marital bliss(oxymoron?) but until this fateful night, it was all just phenomenon.
then Jeff comes along and it's wtf just pulled my pulsing, hot blooded heart from my chest, into my throat, and out onto a platter with a euphoic splash and a little sign that says "consume rapidly"...

Jeff's story is amazing.
he's a an extremely talented dancer. one night a few years back, while attempting an inverted tango (dancing upsidedown suspended from the ceiling) in front of a packed audience, the wires snapped and he crashed to the ground breaking bones, some in his back, which left him paralyzed.
a few years and a lot of determination later, he was walking again.
when i met Jeff, it was at the "Passion" exhibition of a friend, Tony Hauser which celebrated an array of extraordinary Canadians. Jeff was one of them.

so i'm standing there, platter in hand, believing in god again, when i hear the faint voice of my friend Tony penetrate the blissful amouric mist, tripping me mid stride, telling me alas... he's a vegetarian...
vegetarian in the form of a long term relationship that wasn't about to end anytime soon... oohh!

i felt his words step out before me like the padded body of Lafleur flinging me through the air in slow motion landing spread eagle across the floor as the pulsing platter of love sailed un-noticed swirling this way and that, through the crowd, down the stairs, out the revolving doors, into the street, where it was promptly flattened by a taxi cab.

i never got to confess to Jeff, and today i found this photo as i was cleaning up my desktop. so Jeff, wherever you are, you've made a believer out of me. not in god(though i did keep all those promises)... in love!

moot or hooey?

It's reported that more than 10,000 marriages a year now are directly traceable to romances which begin during coffee breaks.

let me guess, you're a gemini...

this year I was fortunate enough to be a jury member for the Gemini awards. even more fortunate, was being invited to the awards themselves as well as a few choice parties and events surrounding the big day. wasn't sure what to expect. knew a grand total of two people, and one of them was an old boyfriend I'd left naked in a hallway in a flurry of feathers a gazillion years ago so wasn't sure how that was going to go…

stayed at the beautiful, historical Hotel Saskatchewan and barely had time enough to unpack my bags before being whisked off to an event. the incredible vibe in the room was unlike anything I'd experienced at any film event in Vancouver. maybe because it wasn't a film event. I had to keep reminding myself that this was TV. there's such a crossover of people in the two industries it can get a little confusing.

met some incredible, talented people, everyone asking
"what brings you here?"
(gulp!) "jury member, but not for any of the categories up for awards this weekend"
was so grateful the category I'd been a juror for had already been announced in the big smoke the week before. next question
"what do you do?"
"well, I have a day job which really doesn't have anything to do with anything that's happening here, and um, I make films and act."
"nice, what kind of films do you make?"
"dark comedies."
"oh really? give me an example of what you'd write about"
"well, one might say I have a bit of a morbid sense of humour but I really think it can be funny when say, someone slips on a rotting corpse or…" (huge pause)
"ok then. Nice talking to you"…

clothes say a lot about a person, so when I came upon a couple of women dressed in flamboyant dresses and coats, I just had to stop and introduce myself. I spent the rest of the evening laughing my face off with Phyllis Ellis
and Louise. they didn't mind my dark side at all. Phyllis later won a well deserved Gemini for best comedic performance, and after the previous crazy night it was pretty obvious why.

the writers, Paul Bates et al, from The Hour came up with the opening sketch and the buzz around the room afterwards was incredible! The Best Geminis Ever etc…
watching the host, George S, zip back and forth across the stage and through the audience it was clearly evident that this man was extremely good at what he does.
at a party the night before, he seemed (a bit surprisingly so) a little less impressive than what was presented on The Hour. (sorry, until I can deal with my elephantitis there'll be no details)
however, about thirty seconds into the conversation he stepped in a little closer and zap, I thought he was going to kiss me… (reality check)… I thought I was going to kiss him… (snap) ok, but there was this charisma thing that just made me feel so at ease.
I got it. that's what it was. this guy just oozed charisma!

Regina was an impressive city. everyone I spoke with, from the staff at the hotels to the servers at the events, were friendly and welcoming. one taxi driver said this was due to the size of the city and the fact that if you pissed someone off they'd most likely know where to find you and send guido over with a large wrench to rearrange your dental work.
all in all it was a great time spent with some amazing people, and I certainly hope to cross paths with a few of them again some time in the not so distant future.

moot or hooey?

before Regina was named Regina, the city's name was "Pile of Bones"

those darned dogs...

did you hear the one about the hunter who…

today's paper… "Surrey Mounties find dynamite, shotgun near tree", read read read un huh… guns, trees…
three quarters of the way through the article i'm so captivated (yawn) that my gaze drifts to the much smaller, scrunched in between ads headline (again, guns and trees) which is, one can only assume, an error in syntax… or an exercise in dyslexia.

"hunter shot in leg by dogs"

"ha ha ha!" i snort. "yo, editors!!?"

it gets better. turns out it's right on the money. some guy (James Harris from Iowa) goes out hunting one day, shoots a pheasant, lays his gun on the ground so he can hope a fence and retrieve the bird, and his pack of hunting dogs (coward) jumps on the gun and shoots him in the ass…. ok, the leg.
talk about biting (well, shooting) the hand (um, leg) that feeds you.

moot or hooey?

four of the dogs held the gun while the fifth pulled the trigger.

new pad

computer key pad that is. actually the whole set-up. mine came to a screeching halt a few weeks ago so I'm getting a new lap top. between that, being ill for a week, and general laziness, I've been pretty slack in writing this blog.

my new computer has all the bells and whistles. can't wait to get at it. it'll be hooked up to Skype so I can talk to friends in Cuba and Chile, and the graphics programs are breathtaking... now I can ramble on and on in technicolor!

moot or hooey?

the word "blog" is made up from the two words "blah" and "dog" and originated with stories of people's pets.

long tack sam

my friend ann marie made a fabulous film a few years back and has just released a book under the same title.

it's an incredible memoir about an even more incredible man.

moot or hooey?

Long Tack Sam was the greatest Chinese magician in the history of vaudeville

bumper to bumper

fifty minutes in an enormous bumper to bumper line-up to get over the Lions Gate Bridge, not moving an inch in three minutes, when bonk, the guy behind me rear-ends me. 

geez, for the love of... are you serious? boy oh boy oh boy oh boy! 

i throw my car into park, pull the emergency brake, get out of the car, put one hand on my hip and gesture towards my bumper like a Bob Barker girl with the other.

he just throws his arms in the "i don't know" pose then backs up a couple of inches. 

I turn so he can't see me laughing, and get back in my car.


moot or hooey?

the term road rage originated LA in 1984. George Orwell would have been impressed

stick em up

looking through today's "day in pictures" on the BBC site, i came across this photo. the caption underneath read "five-year-old Emmanuel Macasucao picks up broken plates a day after a tornado hit his family's home in northern Philippines." ... that's all you have to say??
so little Emmanuel is out in the street playing with broken glass. take a closer look. little Emmanuel is out in the street playing with his life.
ok, so it's most likely a fake, maybe... but who cares. he's five years old holding what looks like a pretty real firearm in a country known for its "Paltiks" who manufactor operable replicas of anything from simple revolvers to M-16s and AK-47s.
with a gazillion of these floating around and everyone and their dog purchasing these things, from politicians and military, to the Japanese yakuza, civilians, and "private armies", and everyone and their cats thinking they're real and defending themselves accordingly, couldn't you give him a lego set or something. so what if his isn't operable. who's gonna know?!... until...

moot or hooey?

the Philippine authorities and the military turn a blind eye to the production of these weapons even though they're obviously illegal, and are known to jam and explode, because they are unable to provide an alternative livelihood option. surprised there aren't more jobs available in funeral services

Euchred!

going through "24" withdrawal the other day, i decide to walk up to the video store and rent the last series. i get all the way up there only to discover it's gone. it's been rented and there'll be no sign of it for two whole days. 

well, you know how it is when an addiction sets in. it's one thing to know you've got a fix just around the corner. a completely different story when your dealer just rented out the last goddamned copy of season six. i'm just about to get medieval on this guy, when my phone rings… it's a friend of mine inviting me over to play Euchre. yes! the perfect distraction to keep me from crawling the walls.

i unchain the clerk and zoom home to get my cards.

we're sitting there at the table, pleasantly distracted, toes, eyes, nostrils, and eyebrows working out our secret codes when i look into my hand and see a bower… Jack... Bauer.
'oh cruel world'
so Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow et al were Euchre players, hmm.

moot or hooey?

the term "bower", in euchre, comes from the German word "bauer". it's also a word for "jack". and the "joker" was invented specially for the game of euchre non existant prior to that in a regular deck of cards

ps: Jack Bauer borrowed my gun for this photo shoot

bum-sicles

this is fabulous! renowned photographer Spencer Tunick took this photo of 100s of people on melting Aletsch glacier in Switzerland. apparently the photo shoot was commissioned by none other than Greenpeace as part of a campaign to raise awareness about global warming. 2,300m (7545 feet) but the temperature was between 10 and 15C. the Aletsch glacier is a protected Unesco World Heritage site.

moot or hooey?

the best bum scene ever filmed for the big screen is in the film "the cooler" with William H Macy.

honest, I just want to talk...

these are South Korean special commandos. they are staging a drill south of Seoul in preparation for an inter-Korean summit later this month. will they be attending?

Unification Minister Lee Jae Jeong and Vice Unification Minister Lee Kwan Se left for Kaesong, North Korea today for preparatory talks. at the eventual new summit-level meeting, if and whenever that will be, the parties will discuss the establishment of a peace regime and the settlement of the Korean Peninsula's nuclear problem, as well as ways of further implementation of economic cooperation projects between Pyongyang and Seoul.

sounds pretty friendly. peace, cooperation, no nuks... and 007 frogmen with waterproof sub-machine guns... hmm, something tells me there may be a better way to show the love. not to mention it's a bit like picking a fight in a Hell's Angels' bar armed with a big fluffy pillow.

moot or hooey?

the death tolls for Nagasaki as well as Hiroshima are still open

what are friends for

what do you think these guys are doing? playing poker yes? just taking a break? well sort of. their pal Christino Parian is in the little white box in the background. they've had the wake and now they're trying to raise enough money to bury him.

moot or hooey?

in North America a typical funeral with burial is about $7,000. a typical funeral with cremation, about $5,000. immediate cremation, $1,000. not including the pennies on your eyes.

eraser head

can you imagine having a pencil stuck in your head for 55 years? Margret Wegner can. she fell over when she was four and and one went right up her nose. she only just had it removed... 55 years later.

Professor Hans Behrbohm claims the 3.1 inch pencil had not been causing Ms Wegner any harm, so it was safe to leave it. um... she suffered headaches and nosebleeds for most of her life and had serious frontal sinus inflammation... a little lead poisoning never killed anyone though so...

apparently the pencil had narrowly missed the optic nerve and was too close to the brain to risk removing it 55 years ago... he went on to say "she now no longer has headaches and will be able to smell again"... well... that's just... amazing...

moot or hooey?

apparently Ms Wegner was able to sneeze out raunchy Freudian imagery for years