I don’t want to discourage the other guys to post up their own account of what happened (because I am a liar, and I may also have just blocked out or forgotten actual events that happened) but regardless, I feel at least my take on our weird, mind-warping odyssey to Kingston is something that needs to be written up, if only for prosperity’s sake.

I’ll get another write-up pertaining to the actual video up shortly, but for I’d like to just stick to the events of this past weekend.

So AL and I visited Sheep to finish off the editing of The Video, and I’d like to say that we did exactly that. I wish I could say that we engaged in all sorts of wanton debauchery and wild acts of alcohol related violence and emotionless sex while we rampaged through the countryside…but of the 60-something hours we spent in Kingston, probably all but five were spent bunkered up in Sheep’s room editing and rewatching the same haunting raw footage of that convention over and over and over again. It needs to be said that Sheep’s enthusiasm and energy for the project bordered on psychotic, and there is honestly no way we would have come out of that still alive without his frightening drive for survival. There’s only so much awkward and dry comedy a human body can take.

If you feel bad because you missed it, please don’t. Overall it was a fun and rewarding experience, but there were frequent occasions throughout the weekend where I just wanted to murder the two of them and hide their bodies in a place no one would ever find…and I know for a fact that we all felt the same way about each other. I don’t know if it was the cosplay overdose, cabin fever, or just plain old Kingston trip sleep deprivation…but the times I wanted to take an axe to both of their juicy, melon-like heads is not a number that could be counted on one hand.

I must have passed out like eight or nine times over those two all-nighters we pulled, and I was constantly drifting back and forth between consciousness and exhaustive delusion. Like I would be watching the footage and be completely aware of what scene we were editing and what we were trying to do…and then suddenly none of it would make any sense. Like at one point, I was completely sure that AL was shouting at Brian to put “more racing stripes on the car”…but then I suddenly came to, and I realized I had completely dreamt up the exchange and that there was absolutely no context in which that discussion would have fit into.

There is something weird about watching yourself on video and hearing your own, unfamiliar voice so many times over such a short and concentrated period of time. After the first night, my sense of reality was completely broken, and I had completely lost the ability to look at anything from an objective perspective. The 40 minute “break” we took to go down to the lake and film the intro bit…I’m not convinced at all if that actually helped us or not. For one, the sight of such a large unbroken horizon of water at sunset is not something I’m very familiar with back in Toronto. If anything, being there and doing all that weird stuff like skipping stones into the lake…it all seemed completely surreal to me – like we had died, crumpled up back in Sheep’s room, and we were now wandering the fields of Elysium, cast adrift in the timeless haze of the afterlife. In fact, we probably descended deeper into whatever insane state of mind we were while filming that Wes Anderson style shot (the middle frame of the video intro while we’re just standing there crossing and uncrossing our arms awkwardly).

Kingston by the lake at sunset is an absolutely gorgeous scene to take in though. In particular that old dried up log that just happens to exist in the perfect spot where you can just sit, stare out over the lake and the waves, and contemplate the meaning of life and the crushing failure that is your existence. AL and I shared a nice moment there, which I believe is unfortunately captured on video. I think we were actually going to use that shot for the intro instead, but we decided there was just way too much unspoken homoerotic tension in there, and that it would overshadow the explict homoerotic vibes of the rest of the video.

I’m also straight up hating on the fact that guys in Kingston (Sheep, Emu – I’m looking at you) could potentially (if they weren’t huge man loving queers – Sheep, Emu, still looking) bring like…girls there. You could go take a walk with her along the shoreline on a nice day, and then hang out on that stupid log to watch the sunset…and then it would get a little chilly so you could offer her your jacket, in a scenario in which you could have perfectly planned for…I mean you don’t need to be goddamn Batman to setup something like this.

I mean, hanging out on the swings in an abandoned playground at 4:30 AM in the morning is one thing. But this old dried up log is another thing entirely. IT IS SO RIDICULOUS. It angers me how thoroughly this one fucking log just completely breaks the game – it’s like using the Thunder Beam pause glitch that lets you kill the Yellow Devil boss in Mega Man with just one shot because the slow down from the pause menu duplicates the hit box of the beam like a billion times. I know I just made an absolutely insane analogy right there, but I can’t help it – IT’S RIDICULOUSNESS ALL OVER THIS BUSINESS.

If you couldn’t imagine how insane (in a bad way) that weekend was, then maybe you’re getting a sense of it now.

I also could not get Incomplete and the sheer awesomeness of the video out of my head…not that I would ever want to do. Sheep and I were absolutely obsessed with filming our own version for the CNAnime video, despite AL’s adamant objections to the idea. We had even compiled a list of must-have-scenes for the video, smuggled out a version of the song on Sheep’s ancient DS, and made plans to incapacitate AL if he continued to stand against us. But in a surprising moment of clarify and self-control, common sense shone through, and that project’s currently on the backburner, locked up safely in The Vault™. Still, regardless…fuck AL.

I won’t lie though, putting that monster up and watching it through the first time complete with the unabashedly self-indulgent credits rolling down…that’s a pretty sweet feeling. I’m not sure what else to say about it, but our celebratory dinner at that bear-oriented steakhouse was a strangely fitting cap to such an odd weekend. We got carded – all three of us – when we tried to order a pitcher of alcoholic drink. I don’t know if we were on a high off finishing this movie that had us strutting around with a renewed vigour and bounce to our step that somehow made us seem more youthful in appearance, or if just the overall awkwardness and hesitation of the entire exchange forced her to conclude that we were just a bunch of idiotic, really old looking freshmen…but I cannot remember the last time I had to show ID for something. (Even though they’re supposed to card everyone that looks under 25 whenever they serve alcohol.) Makes me feel young again.

And yes, all three of us simultaneously whipped that line out when our poor unsuspecting waitress asked for identification. It was a sad, pathetic, barely coordinated act that elicited a minor awkward reaction of humour…mainly from ourselves.

How fitting.

“Muhammad is the most commonly used name on earth, read a fucking book for once.”
“Fogell, have you ever actually met anyone named Muhammad?”
“Have YOU actually ever met anyone named McLovin?”
“NO, that’s why you picked a dumb fucking name.”