Activities And Asides

I Am John – Loney, Dear

Recent events have been touched upon here and there, but I suppose it falls upon my shoulders to recap some of the more notable events of the last week. Before I begin, I just want to say that I’d never listened to anything by Imogen Heap before watching that SNL Digital Short and now I cannot stop listening to Hide And Seek. It haunts me and I feel like shooting someone (or being shot) and then looking around in a confused, yet dramatic fashion.

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On Saturday, I finally saw 300. Okay, that was awesome. I caught it on IMAX, but I’ve been watching a downloaded copy over and over again ever since and I get the feeling that there wasn’t too much lost on the standard big screen. I love this movie. Love it. It’s so simple and beautiful and violent and sexy and…geez, it’s all been said, hasn’t it? My favourite film of the year so far. Then again, I’ve only seen, like…five? Six? I’d write more, but I’m sure there’ll be more than enough time to gush about it the next time we’re all chilling out in our robes and loin cloths.

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I’ve been going on and on lately about all these great ideas I have for Will Ferrell movies like him playing a washed up domino master or him playing a washed-up Price Is Right game designer and I thought I was being so funny and clever. Then Max sent me this little gem and took a big shit in my cereal.

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Sunday was a loooong day boy, let me tell you. It woke up a lot earlier than usual (that’s about nine in the morning for me, heh heh) so that I could make it to the Canadian Idol auditions. I had to wait for Angel so I sat around in front of Sears listening to hardcore hip-hop for about an hour, pumping myself up. I decided that I wouldn’t listen to any pop music that day, especially the song that I was singing. When she finally showed up, we approached the Idol tent, which was surprisingly devoid of activity. There were maybe, eight or nine people there at 12:00. Apparently the big rush was in the morning and the day before. I realize now that it was best to show up early because the later you show up, the better you have to be to convince them that they should take you since they’ve given “golden tickets” to about a hundred people by the time Sunday afternoon rolls around. I began to make small talk with the others in my group (you’re put into groups of five) as we waited in line and later when we were in the waiting room. There were two young girls, 16 and 17 who seemed pretty nervous. I tried to calm them by reminding them that they had a lot of time left to develop their voices and act and pursue other things, but it didn’t seem to help. The other girl was about my age, a friend of Angel’s. She seemed calm. The last guy looked a bit older than I was and said that this was the fourth time he was auditioning. He’d made it as far as the celebrity judges before, so he was a pro. Quiet, though.

The way the first tier of auditions works is you go into this really small room and stand in front of the producer and her assistant. They have duct tape on the floor to show you where to wait and where to stand when you sing. It was all low-key and relaxed. I didn’t feel nervous, but my heart was beating with noticeably rapidity. The pro went first, singing Your Song by Elton John. Strong performance, which made me a bit more nervous. “I’ve made a huge mistake,” I began to think. Next was Angel’s friend, she sang Summertime by…uh, I don’t remember. Not the Mungo Jerry song. She was good too. The 17-year girl went next singing Home by Michael Bublé. An unorthodox selection, but she had the voice for it. However, her nervousness was obvious. She went through a verse and chorus in about ten seconds. I went next, but I’ll tell you about the girl who went last first. She did an Alicia Keys song, can’t remember which one. She had a nice voice too, but she did way too much with the song. Lots of unnecessary vocal fluctations and she got a bit screechy at times. She’s only 16 though, so there’s tons of room for improvement.

How’d I do? Well…

Now that she’s back in the atmosphere
With drops of jupiter in her hair, hey hey hey

Yeah, I went with old reliable there. My honest opinion? I was good. I was damn good. I’ve never heard myself sing that well before. That said, noone in our group got picked. See what I was saying about showing up late for the party? She said that noone in the group had the “total package”. In other words, we were as ugly as sin. In my case, I was probably like Zoolander to the star struck producer’s Natalie Portman: He’s almost TOO good looking. That would be my… my main deterrent to you know, considering him for Canadian Idol.

Angel’s group went after mine and apparently she didn’t make it because she didn’t look comfortable singing without her guitar. Then why did you let people bring instruments this year? Ugh. She’s a great singer.

The whole experience was fun and quick. We didn’t have to wait in line and the Idol people were all polite and helpful. Really, there isn’t much to say about it. I enjoyed it and I haven’t ruled out doing again next year. We’ll see. Afterwards, Angel and I were emotionally exhausted (or maybe I just wasn’t used to waking up before 2:00) so we went back to her place and I crashed there until about 5:30.

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Have you ever got the feeling that earwigs are crawling all over your body? No? How about now?

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After I peeled myself off of Angel’s couch, I had to head down to the Distillery District to attend Miranda’s York Graduation Design Show. That’s not the official title, but you get the idea. It was about an hour walk from Angel’s place, which I enjoyed thoroughly. If you’ve never been to the Distillery District (I hadn’t before) it looks like a setting for a 1930s mobster movie. It’s all red brick and throwback architecture. I’m not qualified to properly describe it, so maybe we could all go down there one day and chill out. It’s got a great ambience. I wandered around there for a bit until I finally found the place. It took me some time to find Miranda’s work and when I did, she apparently didn’t notice I was there so I gave her a quick tap on the shoulder and a hug. She looked fantastic. Her work was incredible as well. Max has pictures on his, *ahem* Facebook page and I highly recommend that you give them a quick peek if you have the time. Those York design kids are some (pardon my French) gifted muthafuckas.

There was also a random celebrity sighting. Amanda Bynes was there. If your first response was “who?” then you understand how un-excited I was at this occurrence. I was talking to Miranda and her boyfriend, Jon, and she goes, “Alex, don’t look behind you, but that blonde girl over there is Amanda Bynes.” I immediately whip around to look. “What the the hell are you talking about, that’s not Ama…” Squint. “Wow, cool, it’s Amanda Bynes.” That was about it. It turns out she’s dating a guy who goes to York. Max and I later considered getting a picture with her, but then we realized that it would be too much trouble and even though Max thinks she’s really hot, I didn’t particularly care for her. A lot of those York girls were fine as hell.

Ms. Bynes’ presence did add to the ritziness of the event though. There were a lot of classy looking people standing around and appreciating the art and they were serving wine and cheese. For a minute there, it was nice to feel like I was part of that high life. Of course, any glow basking was quickly defused by Annia and Jess telling me to move out of the way so that they could take pictures of things.

The night began to drag a little. I can only look at so many different typefaces and symbolic anti-Bush displays before I begin to grow weary. I was talking to Jon about when it was going to be over. He said that he might have to stay around to help Miranda clean up. I felt for him. At one point, he and his friend were just sitting on some steps for, like, half an hour. Still, I’m sure we would all agree that it was a cool experience. I remain in awe at the work of these young lions. Go look at the pictures, please.

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After the show, I went to stay over at Max’s house and we played way too much XBox 360. There were a couple of decent runs of pick-up basketball on Monday and Tuesday night. I also watched him teach some kids how to draw perspective. If that description sounds scattered, understand that I spent about 70+ hours hanging out with Max from Sunday to Tuesday. There is no punchline.

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Rather than have a day to relax, I decided to have Annia over on Wednesday night. She wanted to catch-up on Idol stuff that she missed the day before because she was out with some guy named Drew at the opera. Excuse me for a moment.

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To paraphrase John Cusack in High Fidelity: WHAT FUCKING DREW GUY?!?

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Okay, I’m back. We sat around and watched Idol and it was a fun time for all. Whoa, I just realized that there is nothing interesting to be said about Wednesday night. It was fine.

I’ve been a bit chippy lately, partially because I haven’t had enough “me” time since finishing school and partially because I’m suffering from school withdrawal. There is something about being kept on a set schedule that keeps me sane, keeps my thoughts in order you know? I’m restless. I did take a day off today though, just chilling out and cleaning up my room and listening to Swedish indy music.

Tomorrow, I’m going to go for a walk.

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No man, Persian or Greek, no man threatens a messenger.
You bring the crowns and heads of conquered kings to my city steps! You insult my queen. You threaten my people with slavery and death! Oh, I’ve chosen my words carefully Persian. Perhaps you should have done the same.
This is blasphemy. This is madness!
Madness. This…is…SPARTA!