Whooo!
Up, packed, and away to Toronto by 9:30am. Not only have they changed the Greyhound ticket procedure -- requiring you to go outside and buy them from a surly woman wearing wrap-around shades -- but the bus also stops at a giant inflatable bus station near Sportsworld Drive. It's a "Commuter Connection," but it looks like a bouncy castle. Only bus-shaped.
I got the type of seatmate that I usually end up with: the guy who doesn't brush his teeth.
Arrived at Jason & Craig's to gain access to their apartment. The two of them are in the middle of an intensive campaign, and they also have new kittens. Somehow they manage to maintain their composure. I am thrilled that one of the kittens is named "Barrowman," and I bet he's a better actor than his namesake.
In order to let J&C prepare for their first show (of three that day) without the distraction of a visitor, I went for a short downtown Toronto wander. I thrilled myself, walking diagonally across the Yonge/Dundas intersection with the rest of the liberated pedestrians. I bought another book about Objective-C.
Leisurely preparations to attend the last half of the show at Gladaman's; small crowd but fun, and great to see Lady Butterfly with her big pregnant belly. Then a walk back to Zelda's, whose stage and dining room invite a wonderful cabaret atmosphere that I wish I could enjoy more often. In the change room -- which was also the women's bathroom -- a constant stream of mothers came in to change their baby's diapers. "I apologize for what I'm about to unleash," said one as I was touching up my makeup. This was a first.
My numbers went over well, and the crowd was totally into the diversity of the performers. Annie Drogyny showed up, the first time I've seen her in months, and fortunately I was wearing the outfit she made for me. A professional puppeteer gave me tips on how to better handle Schnaaps the Seal: in short, treat him like he's an actual animal, not like he's a mitten on the end of my arm. I thought the mitten-thing was funny, but apparently the animal-thing is even funnier.
A mad-dash rush with Craig back to J&C's house for de-dragging, then a rush to catch the 9:30 bus back home...and the line up was HUGE. Even with a second "backup" bus called to transport the overflow, I still was one of the last ten inside.
But before that, while waiting to get on the bus inside the terminal, an extremely disturbed man put something in his mouth and tried to wash it down with Mountain Dew. After choking it back up again and examining his teeth in the reflective glass, he wandered slowly down the line, bobbing and weaving, and when he passed me I was amazed to see huge gashes on both of his cheeks from his mouth to his ears...like, gashes so wide you could see partway into them. He was removed by security guards shortly afterward.
When I got onto the bus, the guy I sat beside was the guy before whom the disturbed man had staged his performance. This guy in the seat was enormous and daunting, talking on the phone with his girlfriend, saying that the disturbed man had "razors" in his mouth, which he was apparently trying to swallow. We talked a bit and he said that he was absolutely terrified...that after the recent stabbings in Greyhound buses he figured that he'd be the first person to stop the attacks...but when this disturbed man came up to him he just froze.
He wanted to know what was going on in the world. This obviously upset him, and I agree, it was absolutely surreal. I put off giving myself an insulin injection until he'd calmed down a bit. I was afraid he'd take it as an incipient attack and break my neck.
Showing posts with label Big City Muffy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big City Muffy. Show all posts
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Upcoming Show at Zelda's!
I'll be in Toronto for Morgan James' "Pink Flamingo Party" this Sunday at Zelda's, and I'll even get to do a number or two! You should come and say "hi," and also cheer Morgan on in her quest for major Empress-ossity!
It's early too -- 6 to 8pm -- so you can still get to bed on time.
It's early too -- 6 to 8pm -- so you can still get to bed on time.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Daily Muffy: "Maid of the Mist"
Season six, episode three of The Daily Muffy -- "Maid of the Mist"-- begins tomorrow! A new picture in the journey will appear every day...click here to watch the drama unfold!
Special thanks to Jenn Wilson, not just for taking the pictures but also for driving hours through a torrential downpour. A trouper!
PS: Ever since I started using a new computer -- and a new version of iPhoto -- my Flickr pictures have appeared strangely pixellated. Fortunately, by adding an extra step to the uploading process, this issue appears to be licked. Whew!
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Diary of a Daily Muffy
During the blizzardy winter of 2008 Jenn Wilson and I made a plan: we would go to Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort and take pictures of me wearing my Ann Miller "bumblebee" outfit. Since it takes almost two hours to get there we decided we must go during the summer. To avoid traffic we would have to decide on a weekday, preferably around noon hour.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 7:20 am: We are aiming to make a head-start on the day so I have already done my ironing and planning and worrying the day before. I have cereal for breakfast and begin to get into drag.
I had tried to be blase about this adventure, but perhaps I was a bit TOO blase when it came to choosing my drag timetable; due to a simple miscalculation I have lost twenty minutes of prep time. There is a lot you can do -- or, in this case, CAN'T do -- in twenty minutes. My hair and makeup is done in record time. I forget my gloves.
9:10 am: We're off! Almost immediately we are surrounded by cars; it would seem that everybody is going to Niagara Falls on the same day as we. They want to see us succeed in our crazy endeavour. They are slowing us down and getting in our way.
10:00 am: Somewhere around Lincoln I begin to feel uncomfortable and anxious and I need to go to the bathroom.
I generally try to avoid bathrooms while I'm doing a Daily Muffy. Drag bathroom-etiquette is difficult at the best of times, and THIS time I'm wearing an outfit that takes time and subtlety to get in and out of. We pull into a Tim Horton's because I'm hoping that the bathrooms have a single stall.
On my way through the door a man asks me if I have a gas can. Then he notices that I am wearing a bright yellow '50s tap-dancing dress that is cut up to my crotch. He recoils.
By the time I'm finished in the bathroom I realize that I was suffering a form of anxiety due to the way the morning has gone: I got out of bed, jumped into drag, and then rushed into Jenn's car...then we drove non-stop through an alien landscape toward a place I'd never been before. I had felt a bit like a fish, yanked out of the ocean, dropped into a fishbowl, and then rocketed off without yet having a chance to get a grip on the environment.
Now that I have stared down the clientele of a roadside Tim Horton's, I have finally "decompressed." Damn it, Niagara Falls, I'm ready for you!
10:30 am: We park at a pay lot and walk toward the casino. We'd been worried about the weather, but the black storm clouds have all cleared away. We are proud that we remembered to bring umbrellas, but of course we leave them in the back seat of the car. We will regret this.
We are well aware that we cannot take pictures near the resort casino, but we plan to run totally amok within the mall and its surroundings. We befriend the man who appears to be head of security and with his blessing we duck into nooks and crannies that we'd otherwise be too scared to explore.
The mall is mostly full of middle-aged tourists and "casino types." They avoid us and are polite when we block their access to brutally expensive posh-stores. One older man walks up to me and shouts "What happened to your skirt? THE FRONT IS GONE!" but before we can be friendly we are interrupted by yet another security guard, who is feeling us out.
We go outside and begin to walk around the mall. It's beautiful! From a distance I get my picture taken with both the American and Canadian falls (another goal achieved!) The Canadian side is WAY prettier. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the war of 1812 was fought entirely due to falls-jealousy.
Then, thunder. We have become very accustomed to thunder this summer...but I'm standing outside in a fragile dress and Jenn is carting around a ton of very expensive camera gear. Terrified, we rush back to the mall.
12:30 am: It is POURING. We sit in the food court and watch the rain. As I said previously, we'd left our umbrellas in the car, which is a five-minute walk away.
We hatch a devious plan. We walk through the resort's parking garage until we find the exit which we assume is closest to our parking lot, and then Jenn darts out the door to get her car while I huddle in the stairwell and guard her stuff. I realize that the door is identical to all the other doors on that side of the building, and also that I don't remember what Jenn's car looks like, and I don't have her phone number, and that this was a really silly idea.
Then Jenn pulls up and we drive away; she is soaked, I am not.
1:00 pm: Sensing how much I want to take the restrictive "bumblebee" outfit off, Jenn pulls into a covered parking garage behind a hotel and I jump out to get changed. The rain is pouring down. I strip to my underwear just in time for a bunch of tourists to wander into the parking lot with me. Then a car pulls in. The tourists and the car shuffle back and forth as I crouch, virtually naked, waiting for them to sort their crap out and go away.
Finally we are back on the Queen Elizabeth Way and we are heading home.
1:30 pm: The black clouds descend and the traffic slows to a crawl.
Due to an evil brew of construction, weather, car accidents, and the other people's desire to interfere with our shit, our next ninety minutes on the QEW are spent in impenetrable gridlocked traffic, inching forward mile after mile. Then a truly fearsome hailstorm reduces visibility to nil, which is particularly terrifying when you're stuck on the Garden City Skyway. Jenn pushes us through one jam and into the next; we struggle, we fight.
3:00 pm: When the weather clears we are still creeping along the QEW...but we no longer recognize the landmarks. We wonder why the hell we're driving through Oakville. When we start to see "Airport" and "Mississauga" signs our worst suspicions are confirmed: during the storms we missed a crucial turn-off into Hamilton, and spent an hour DRIVING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.
My mind snaps. I am being driven through a strange area, very far from home, and I am in drag. That alone would be fine except that my face is steadily disintegrating and I have no "boy clothes." I cannot (or rather will not) exit the car in this stage of degeneration, and we've ALREADY spent hours driving in the car...it will take at least another hour to get us back, and we are getting perilously close to rush hour (which would add an ADDITIONAL hour to our journey).
In the face of my emotional-mental meltdown, Jenn is the rational one. We stop and get directions, which are: follow Winston-Churchill Boulevard until we hit the 401. It's a long way home from there but at least we KNOW that area.
Making the best of it, we turn around and resume our journey.
4:20 pm: Home at last. I greet the cat, wash my decaying face, and happily look forward to seeing the pictures we took (you'll see them as part of the next Daily Muffy, if you're interested). I am suddenly cold and I huddle up under the covers, reading Morley Callaghan short stories and enjoying my return to stability.
I realize that the horrific drive home has almost completely wiped out my memory of what we did in Niagara Falls. Thank goodness we'll have pictures to remind us!
Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 7:20 am: We are aiming to make a head-start on the day so I have already done my ironing and planning and worrying the day before. I have cereal for breakfast and begin to get into drag.
I had tried to be blase about this adventure, but perhaps I was a bit TOO blase when it came to choosing my drag timetable; due to a simple miscalculation I have lost twenty minutes of prep time. There is a lot you can do -- or, in this case, CAN'T do -- in twenty minutes. My hair and makeup is done in record time. I forget my gloves.
9:10 am: We're off! Almost immediately we are surrounded by cars; it would seem that everybody is going to Niagara Falls on the same day as we. They want to see us succeed in our crazy endeavour. They are slowing us down and getting in our way.
10:00 am: Somewhere around Lincoln I begin to feel uncomfortable and anxious and I need to go to the bathroom.
I generally try to avoid bathrooms while I'm doing a Daily Muffy. Drag bathroom-etiquette is difficult at the best of times, and THIS time I'm wearing an outfit that takes time and subtlety to get in and out of. We pull into a Tim Horton's because I'm hoping that the bathrooms have a single stall.
On my way through the door a man asks me if I have a gas can. Then he notices that I am wearing a bright yellow '50s tap-dancing dress that is cut up to my crotch. He recoils.
By the time I'm finished in the bathroom I realize that I was suffering a form of anxiety due to the way the morning has gone: I got out of bed, jumped into drag, and then rushed into Jenn's car...then we drove non-stop through an alien landscape toward a place I'd never been before. I had felt a bit like a fish, yanked out of the ocean, dropped into a fishbowl, and then rocketed off without yet having a chance to get a grip on the environment.
Now that I have stared down the clientele of a roadside Tim Horton's, I have finally "decompressed." Damn it, Niagara Falls, I'm ready for you!
10:30 am: We park at a pay lot and walk toward the casino. We'd been worried about the weather, but the black storm clouds have all cleared away. We are proud that we remembered to bring umbrellas, but of course we leave them in the back seat of the car. We will regret this.
We are well aware that we cannot take pictures near the resort casino, but we plan to run totally amok within the mall and its surroundings. We befriend the man who appears to be head of security and with his blessing we duck into nooks and crannies that we'd otherwise be too scared to explore.
The mall is mostly full of middle-aged tourists and "casino types." They avoid us and are polite when we block their access to brutally expensive posh-stores. One older man walks up to me and shouts "What happened to your skirt? THE FRONT IS GONE!" but before we can be friendly we are interrupted by yet another security guard, who is feeling us out.
We go outside and begin to walk around the mall. It's beautiful! From a distance I get my picture taken with both the American and Canadian falls (another goal achieved!) The Canadian side is WAY prettier. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the war of 1812 was fought entirely due to falls-jealousy.
Then, thunder. We have become very accustomed to thunder this summer...but I'm standing outside in a fragile dress and Jenn is carting around a ton of very expensive camera gear. Terrified, we rush back to the mall.
12:30 am: It is POURING. We sit in the food court and watch the rain. As I said previously, we'd left our umbrellas in the car, which is a five-minute walk away.
We hatch a devious plan. We walk through the resort's parking garage until we find the exit which we assume is closest to our parking lot, and then Jenn darts out the door to get her car while I huddle in the stairwell and guard her stuff. I realize that the door is identical to all the other doors on that side of the building, and also that I don't remember what Jenn's car looks like, and I don't have her phone number, and that this was a really silly idea.
Then Jenn pulls up and we drive away; she is soaked, I am not.
1:00 pm: Sensing how much I want to take the restrictive "bumblebee" outfit off, Jenn pulls into a covered parking garage behind a hotel and I jump out to get changed. The rain is pouring down. I strip to my underwear just in time for a bunch of tourists to wander into the parking lot with me. Then a car pulls in. The tourists and the car shuffle back and forth as I crouch, virtually naked, waiting for them to sort their crap out and go away.
Finally we are back on the Queen Elizabeth Way and we are heading home.
1:30 pm: The black clouds descend and the traffic slows to a crawl.
Due to an evil brew of construction, weather, car accidents, and the other people's desire to interfere with our shit, our next ninety minutes on the QEW are spent in impenetrable gridlocked traffic, inching forward mile after mile. Then a truly fearsome hailstorm reduces visibility to nil, which is particularly terrifying when you're stuck on the Garden City Skyway. Jenn pushes us through one jam and into the next; we struggle, we fight.
3:00 pm: When the weather clears we are still creeping along the QEW...but we no longer recognize the landmarks. We wonder why the hell we're driving through Oakville. When we start to see "Airport" and "Mississauga" signs our worst suspicions are confirmed: during the storms we missed a crucial turn-off into Hamilton, and spent an hour DRIVING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.
My mind snaps. I am being driven through a strange area, very far from home, and I am in drag. That alone would be fine except that my face is steadily disintegrating and I have no "boy clothes." I cannot (or rather will not) exit the car in this stage of degeneration, and we've ALREADY spent hours driving in the car...it will take at least another hour to get us back, and we are getting perilously close to rush hour (which would add an ADDITIONAL hour to our journey).
In the face of my emotional-mental meltdown, Jenn is the rational one. We stop and get directions, which are: follow Winston-Churchill Boulevard until we hit the 401. It's a long way home from there but at least we KNOW that area.
Making the best of it, we turn around and resume our journey.
4:20 pm: Home at last. I greet the cat, wash my decaying face, and happily look forward to seeing the pictures we took (you'll see them as part of the next Daily Muffy, if you're interested). I am suddenly cold and I huddle up under the covers, reading Morley Callaghan short stories and enjoying my return to stability.
I realize that the horrific drive home has almost completely wiped out my memory of what we did in Niagara Falls. Thank goodness we'll have pictures to remind us!
Monday, May 12, 2008
"Love and Truth" at the TICOT St. Patrick's Day Fundraiser
In March I went to Toronto to participate in a St. Patrick's Day TICOT fundraiser. I've already blogged about the joys of the trip, but here's a snippet of one of the numbers I performed ("Love and Truth" by Mother Mother), filmed by Craig and uploaded by Morgan James.
Those two ultra-sweeties also send me a DVD containing a full version of the other number I did (which I'll upload soon), along with a collection of additional cool and surprising stuff. Do you have friends who unselfishly send cool things through the mail? I hope so, especially if they send them to me!
Incidentally, this clip uses a new relativistic video process...since it travels near the speed of light you'll notice that the colour of my dress changes depending on my motion relative to yours. I've always wanted to be red-shifted!
Those two ultra-sweeties also send me a DVD containing a full version of the other number I did (which I'll upload soon), along with a collection of additional cool and surprising stuff. Do you have friends who unselfishly send cool things through the mail? I hope so, especially if they send them to me!
Incidentally, this clip uses a new relativistic video process...since it travels near the speed of light you'll notice that the colour of my dress changes depending on my motion relative to yours. I've always wanted to be red-shifted!
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Last 24 Hours
No I'm not being stylistic, I just can't bring myself to write this in "prose" (which requires some sense of meaning, direction, and endings).
* Greyhound bus terminal, standing in the cold, wondering why bus drivers only arrive at the last minute. This route to Toronto is the "molasses" run, which stops at all of Guelph's most picturesque locations along the way. The 130-minute trip should give me lots of time to find an iPod soundtrack but for some reason I can't choose one.
* I have decided at the last minute to bring Thomas Pynchon's novel "Mason & Dixon" with me, because I am so involved with it that I can't picture myself reading anything else. But it weighs at least ten pounds and is huge and unwieldy, and difficult to concentrate on when the guy in the seat behind you is talking about his favourite "keggers." "Dude, Cathy was GREEN, man. I mean GREEN. What? Like, she was SICK, man, Cathy was GREEN."
* At the Toronto Bay Street terminal I pile up all my luggage and begin the trip to Chez J&C. It is very cold, Sunday afternoon, downtown Toronto relatively unpopulated. In the lobby of J&C's apartment, two parents are trying to wrangle a stroller, an infant, and a toddler into the elevator, meanwhile retrieving the mitten that a man had dropped while exiting. Their hands full and their baby-equipment blocking access to all but the smallest person, they send the toddler in to find the mitten, which he is unable to do. The doors keep closing, the parents lunging in to knock the doors open again, the man with one mitten stands with me and we watch the show.
* Jason greets me and we begin the relatively mechanical process of getting into drag. Fortunately the Chez has two bathrooms. Both have been newly renovated in honour of the night, and the hard-working renovator -- Craig -- soon joins us to mix the cocktails. Craig doesn't fool around with cocktails. When Craig makes a cocktail, it is "a glass of vodka with a shot of Diet Pepsi." This explains why, when we leave the apartment, I tell the cab driver to take us to "Queen on Play."
* At Play on Queen -- the venue for the night -- I make myself comfortable in the change room and re-meet both Teran Blake and Fahrenheit. Not only do I not instantly recognize Fahrenheit, but I happily tell her that she "made fun of me once," failing to provide context or explain that I wasn't lodging a complaint with her. This is why my Facebook "agreeableness" score is at 25%. Setting up a sort of Marx Brothers situation, the bar staff begin to pile tables and chairs within the change room. Soon the room contains two small islands, each with a mirror, tenuously connected by a narrow path. When the flock of hispanic queens arrive this becomes particularly surreal.
* Still coming out of a week of insecurity and general "off-ness," I perform two shoe-in numbers that I know I can ALWAYS do well: "Don't Tell Mama" and "Love and Truth." The response is good, as far as I can tell through the blazing spotlight, though the crowd is hardly demonstrative. I make the silly move of trying to pick up tips while wearing well-worn gloves, which results in a spray of coins on stage. Craig cheerfully documents this with his video camera.
* As a whole, we raise a substantial amount of money for the TICOT charities. This is a good feeling indeed. My blood sugar has remained PERFECT all night. Plus, through some accident, I get not one but TWO free drinks. My good feeling knows no bounds.
* After the wonderfully-brief show I begin to understand the bar dynamic a bit more: at 11pm the TICOT performers are followed by a regular show put on by 10,000-volt hispanic queens, a subculture notorious for its crowd loyalty. While watching their show I have my second great bar-stranger conversation of the night, followed finally -- on the way out -- with a nice chat with Michelle DuBarry, who recommends that I improve my diet.
* Back at Chez J&C we review the night's documentary evidence, and Jason informs me that I do a trademarked maneuver with my bum but I'm not sure yet exactly what that is yet. Pizza at 1am. The John Barrowman Experience. A tranquil sleep only once interrupted by the garbage man.
* 8:30am, I assess the situation; Jason has gone to work and Craig is still asleep. I suffer typical morning restlessness and decide I should at least transport my luggage to the Greyhound station, leaving all future possibilities open. As usual when I visit J&C, I exit the apartment with more things than I came with. It's like magic!
* Another cold walk with lots of luggage. A suitcase full of feathers is surprisingly heavy. At the bus station I realize the only "good" breakfast option is an eggs & bacon thing at "Kramden's Kitchen," which I'm sure Michelle DuBarry would berate me for. Nevertheless it is good. My bus will not arrive for ninety minutes.
* I sit and read "Mason & Dixon." This book, along with the constant lifting and pulling of my luggage, is turning my hand into a burning witch's claw. The old lady beside me is very angry about the pigeons, which appear to spend their entire lives inside the terminal. Pigeons are very individualistic. They make coordinated "sweeps" periodically across the floor, and though they look intelligent they keep pecking away at the same specks of indigestible dirt.
* I decide to find a bathroom so I can get some paper towels to wipe my nose with. I take the elevator down to the terminal basement and discover that the bathroom there is a "closed for cleaning." A sign directs me to use the bathrooms in the adjacent Ainsley terminal. I take the elevator back up and pull my luggage across to Ainsley -- which is always deserted, disgusting, and post-apocalyptic -- and discover that the bathrooms there can only be reached by going downstairs. I will not carry my luggage down and then up again. My hand would not survive. Instead, my nose must drip.
* My iPod soundtrack is easier to choose for the ride home: The Fall's "Infotainment Scan." The bus takes a strange and unexplained detour through Mississauga via the mostly-vacant toll roads. The outskirts of Mississauga are surrounded by lakes, barely frozen with patches of rotten ice. These lakes are everywhere and they do not look natural or healthy. Trees are buried within them, their branches poking out. Beyond the lakes, the biggest and most generic suburb of semi-detached houses I have ever seen. I suspect that the lakes are just house foundations waiting to sprout.
* As always when I drive past the Niagara escarpment, I wonder what that huge gouge in the rock is, which you can see going west on the 401 past Halton Hills. Some sort of footpath appears to cross the vast canyon, but it's so far away that you can't see what's really happening. I vow that when I get a car I will investigate this.
* Home. A feeling of goodness, both from the going away and the coming back. My hand will ache for days, burning while I work. The cat is aloof at first, punishing me for leaving her alone for the night, but soon she has come around and we are watching "Constantine." Even she dislikes Keanu Reeves, but she's too polite to complain.
* Greyhound bus terminal, standing in the cold, wondering why bus drivers only arrive at the last minute. This route to Toronto is the "molasses" run, which stops at all of Guelph's most picturesque locations along the way. The 130-minute trip should give me lots of time to find an iPod soundtrack but for some reason I can't choose one.
* I have decided at the last minute to bring Thomas Pynchon's novel "Mason & Dixon" with me, because I am so involved with it that I can't picture myself reading anything else. But it weighs at least ten pounds and is huge and unwieldy, and difficult to concentrate on when the guy in the seat behind you is talking about his favourite "keggers." "Dude, Cathy was GREEN, man. I mean GREEN. What? Like, she was SICK, man, Cathy was GREEN."
* At the Toronto Bay Street terminal I pile up all my luggage and begin the trip to Chez J&C. It is very cold, Sunday afternoon, downtown Toronto relatively unpopulated. In the lobby of J&C's apartment, two parents are trying to wrangle a stroller, an infant, and a toddler into the elevator, meanwhile retrieving the mitten that a man had dropped while exiting. Their hands full and their baby-equipment blocking access to all but the smallest person, they send the toddler in to find the mitten, which he is unable to do. The doors keep closing, the parents lunging in to knock the doors open again, the man with one mitten stands with me and we watch the show.
* Jason greets me and we begin the relatively mechanical process of getting into drag. Fortunately the Chez has two bathrooms. Both have been newly renovated in honour of the night, and the hard-working renovator -- Craig -- soon joins us to mix the cocktails. Craig doesn't fool around with cocktails. When Craig makes a cocktail, it is "a glass of vodka with a shot of Diet Pepsi." This explains why, when we leave the apartment, I tell the cab driver to take us to "Queen on Play."
* At Play on Queen -- the venue for the night -- I make myself comfortable in the change room and re-meet both Teran Blake and Fahrenheit. Not only do I not instantly recognize Fahrenheit, but I happily tell her that she "made fun of me once," failing to provide context or explain that I wasn't lodging a complaint with her. This is why my Facebook "agreeableness" score is at 25%. Setting up a sort of Marx Brothers situation, the bar staff begin to pile tables and chairs within the change room. Soon the room contains two small islands, each with a mirror, tenuously connected by a narrow path. When the flock of hispanic queens arrive this becomes particularly surreal.
* Still coming out of a week of insecurity and general "off-ness," I perform two shoe-in numbers that I know I can ALWAYS do well: "Don't Tell Mama" and "Love and Truth." The response is good, as far as I can tell through the blazing spotlight, though the crowd is hardly demonstrative. I make the silly move of trying to pick up tips while wearing well-worn gloves, which results in a spray of coins on stage. Craig cheerfully documents this with his video camera.
* As a whole, we raise a substantial amount of money for the TICOT charities. This is a good feeling indeed. My blood sugar has remained PERFECT all night. Plus, through some accident, I get not one but TWO free drinks. My good feeling knows no bounds.
* After the wonderfully-brief show I begin to understand the bar dynamic a bit more: at 11pm the TICOT performers are followed by a regular show put on by 10,000-volt hispanic queens, a subculture notorious for its crowd loyalty. While watching their show I have my second great bar-stranger conversation of the night, followed finally -- on the way out -- with a nice chat with Michelle DuBarry, who recommends that I improve my diet.
* Back at Chez J&C we review the night's documentary evidence, and Jason informs me that I do a trademarked maneuver with my bum but I'm not sure yet exactly what that is yet. Pizza at 1am. The John Barrowman Experience. A tranquil sleep only once interrupted by the garbage man.
* 8:30am, I assess the situation; Jason has gone to work and Craig is still asleep. I suffer typical morning restlessness and decide I should at least transport my luggage to the Greyhound station, leaving all future possibilities open. As usual when I visit J&C, I exit the apartment with more things than I came with. It's like magic!
* Another cold walk with lots of luggage. A suitcase full of feathers is surprisingly heavy. At the bus station I realize the only "good" breakfast option is an eggs & bacon thing at "Kramden's Kitchen," which I'm sure Michelle DuBarry would berate me for. Nevertheless it is good. My bus will not arrive for ninety minutes.
* I sit and read "Mason & Dixon." This book, along with the constant lifting and pulling of my luggage, is turning my hand into a burning witch's claw. The old lady beside me is very angry about the pigeons, which appear to spend their entire lives inside the terminal. Pigeons are very individualistic. They make coordinated "sweeps" periodically across the floor, and though they look intelligent they keep pecking away at the same specks of indigestible dirt.
* I decide to find a bathroom so I can get some paper towels to wipe my nose with. I take the elevator down to the terminal basement and discover that the bathroom there is a "closed for cleaning." A sign directs me to use the bathrooms in the adjacent Ainsley terminal. I take the elevator back up and pull my luggage across to Ainsley -- which is always deserted, disgusting, and post-apocalyptic -- and discover that the bathrooms there can only be reached by going downstairs. I will not carry my luggage down and then up again. My hand would not survive. Instead, my nose must drip.
* My iPod soundtrack is easier to choose for the ride home: The Fall's "Infotainment Scan." The bus takes a strange and unexplained detour through Mississauga via the mostly-vacant toll roads. The outskirts of Mississauga are surrounded by lakes, barely frozen with patches of rotten ice. These lakes are everywhere and they do not look natural or healthy. Trees are buried within them, their branches poking out. Beyond the lakes, the biggest and most generic suburb of semi-detached houses I have ever seen. I suspect that the lakes are just house foundations waiting to sprout.
* As always when I drive past the Niagara escarpment, I wonder what that huge gouge in the rock is, which you can see going west on the 401 past Halton Hills. Some sort of footpath appears to cross the vast canyon, but it's so far away that you can't see what's really happening. I vow that when I get a car I will investigate this.
* Home. A feeling of goodness, both from the going away and the coming back. My hand will ache for days, burning while I work. The cat is aloof at first, punishing me for leaving her alone for the night, but soon she has come around and we are watching "Constantine." Even she dislikes Keanu Reeves, but she's too polite to complain.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Not Irish, But Game!
On Sunday, March 16th I'll be fleeing my winter cocoon in order to be part of the TICOT "Kiss Me I'm Irish" show.Princess of the Realm (and owner of the Jenna-Duck) Morgan James is organizing and hosting the night as a fundraiser for reign XXI.
It'll be at Play on Church (504 Church St) in Toronto, so if you're in the area you should drop by and see the show...and help us raise some money! It'll be the one night you can hand me a solid bar of gold and I won't be able to keep it.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Monday, December 03, 2007
Tommy Meets Muffy from Manhattan
Hilda has posted a "book cover" muh-leem: do an advanced title search for your first name at Amazon.com, and post the most interesting match you find.
Since I'm always interested in the cultural status of the name "Muffy" I decided to try it, and here's the best result by far:
I'm assuming that Muffy is the bad-hair dog at the top of the picture, and note that Tommy is paying polite but nonsexual attention to her. I think it's appropriate that Muffy is the more cosmopolitan animal -- obviously just returned from the salon -- and that she's using the rock as protection in case Tommy gets too frisky.
When I finally visit Manhattan I can only hope that I am this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Since I'm always interested in the cultural status of the name "Muffy" I decided to try it, and here's the best result by far:
I'm assuming that Muffy is the bad-hair dog at the top of the picture, and note that Tommy is paying polite but nonsexual attention to her. I think it's appropriate that Muffy is the more cosmopolitan animal -- obviously just returned from the salon -- and that she's using the rock as protection in case Tommy gets too frisky.
When I finally visit Manhattan I can only hope that I am this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Catching Up With (Happiness)
Sometimes you get an hour of total bliss, when everything comes together. You're finished work, you're looking forward to the year's first snowstorm, you have a DVD you're looking forward to watching (episodes of "Monty Python's Flying Circus") and a book you're enjoying (John Barth's "Once Upon a Time"). As if that wasn't enough, the songs you're working on are -- in your opinion -- the best things you've ever done (tentatively titled "Road to Avondale" and "Little Bit Out") and somebody just positively reviewed your latest CD collaboration with Infant Cycle:
An additional "catching up" point: if you like the "Daily Muffy" episodes (or you didn't know they existed), another oldie (from 2003) is getting underway. St. Mark and I try to defeat SARS in Toronto's Chinatown, and then tackle West Nile and Mad Cow as an afterthought.
St.Bernard’s four tracks give instead the idea of a mini-movie, as instruments, field recordings and pre-existent voices lead our brain towards the nowhere of significance. At one point, I was so mesmerized by the apparent nonsense of certain repetitions, I couldn’t decide if what I was hearing was too simple to accept a description or just nullifying my thoughts; one’s left even more anguished in the final minutes of the disc. Music that is intense and uninviting at one and the same time but, this notwithstanding, we all know that - aesthetic pleasures or not - if something stimulates a reaction, then it means that it’s good enough.I am oddly complimented.
An additional "catching up" point: if you like the "Daily Muffy" episodes (or you didn't know they existed), another oldie (from 2003) is getting underway. St. Mark and I try to defeat SARS in Toronto's Chinatown, and then tackle West Nile and Mad Cow as an afterthought.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
I Played the Game
Steve Hutton is working on a series called "Playing the Game," and on Sunday I went to Toronto for the filming of an episode called "Peter and the Wolf." I don't think I'm at liberty to say TOO much about the plot, so let's just say I play a drunk, out-of-control drag queen. In a fabulous outfit. And that there are a few pictures up on Flickr.Pre-filming, I spent a week researching "over the top" eyeliner techniques. I knew they wanted a deliberately draggy look, and that such a look helps sell the outfit they'd chosen (the Delirium Clothing "Freedom Turkey" get up). I went online to find handy "how-to" articles, and style guides, and YouTube videos. Every night I applied, fussed, erased, repeated.
What did I learn? Colour, blending, and carefully-placed white splotches...and even that wasn't enough; their makeup artists suitably exaggerated me (and even touched my secret spot: under my eyes!)
Even though the series is a relatively small, independent production, I still got an eyeful of the Real Movie Experience. Professional actors who really know their stuff. A lighting, set, wardrobe, sound, and camera crew who actually use clappers and measuring tapes and ladders, and say stuff like "sound ready" in the most non-chalant way.
Most striking is the division of labour: everybody has a job, there are implicit lines of communication that should not be messed with, and an actor's job is to be ready, to listen carefully, and to be made comfortable and pretty while waiting for the next take. Oh yeah, and "play to the camera" does not mean to literally LOOK at the camera. I think.
It was tough work and a long, hot, exhausting day. Walking back to the bus station in the driving rain was actually a relief. I enjoyed myself and have a great deal of respect for the people and the process, and I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing how it all turns out!
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Photojourney 2.0!
Updating the old Photojourney was an incredible pain in the butt. Photos had to be cropped, resized, exported, uploaded...then the numbnails needed to be copied and cropped and overexposed and...geez, it's no wonder I got tired of it!
So I got myself a Flickr account. In fact, I've spent all weekend figuring it out and uploading the 90-some pictures from the last few months, including some odd stuff that I wouldn't have put on the old site. Go on over and have a look, and feel free to comment or whatever else you can do.
Based on my limited experience, Flickr is super-cool.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Big City Muffy in Minneapolis (May 18)
This entry is for Friday! To view the previous five days, see May 13th, May 14th, May 15th, May 16th, and May 17th.
I warn you...this was a long and busy day!
My big fear about this trip was that I'd get so intimidated by the environment that I'd huddle away in my hotel room, reading books and watching TV, fearful of going outside and actually EXPERIENCING things. Fortunately that wasn't happening, and Friday especially was scheduled as a "do stuff day."
Breakfast at Hell's Kitchen again, but this time I tagged along with Joshua and Cindi. It turns out that Cindi actually has a well-worn list of funny things about Canadians, one of which was simply the word "hoser." I'd like to point out that the legacy of Bob and Doug MacKenzie got more mileage in the USA than it ever did in Canada, as evidenced by this band poster that I snapped later on in the day.
Other than the "pop vs. soda" and "pencil crayon vs. coloured pencils" thing, we also went over the well-travelled "about / ahbaht / awboot" territory. During this trip I finally got REAL opinions about what my "about" SOUNDS like: "sort of British," apparently, which is good because I'd thought I sounded either silly or like a bumpkin.
Joshua and Cindi had a playful debate about the role of St. Paul in all this. Cindi described Minneapolis as the good-time girl that never sleeps and St. Paul as the stoic career woman you end up marrying. Joshua didn't object to this but he stuck up for poor St. Paul, partly because he lived there.
South, south, south I travelled. I wanted to find the "cool shopping street" that Jamie and "Cleo" had pointed out to me the day before. Determined to explore, I took a new route to Uptown and got gradually more lost. I couldn't find the street they'd recommended, and I REALLY couldn't find Vera's Cafe again. I had broken all the rules and done what I'd been told NOT to do: I'd gone past K-Mart. Twice.
Walking along, looking in shop windows, I grew more and more aware of the "gun ban" signs. Tim had first pointed them out to me in downtown Minneapolis, but none of us had gotten around to actually asking anybody about them. You shouldn't trust anything a native says anyway, because they sometimes make sport of tourists by telling them -- for instance -- that all the stores are legally required to close when the temperature hits 20 degrees. The Lone Writer from Salt Lake City believed this story and told us all about it on Tuesday night. He'll never be allowed to forget it.
Anyway, The Mind Wobbles DID ask a concierge about those signs, and he said that such businesses were opting out of Minneapolis' concealed weapons laws. Did he offer any insight into the famous "20 degree" prohibition? We'll never know.
A schoolteacher carrying a potted plant finally directed me to Vera's Cafe, where I realized that I was sweaty and sunburned. Minneapolis had been sunny and hot almost the entire week, and even though I'd been changing my socks regularly...well, I only had one pair of shoes, and let's just say I didn't want anybody to get too close to my feet. I could feel a puffy burning in my face and that strange lethargy that comes from too much sun.
So I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where I'd still need to walk (a lot) but at least I'd get out of the sun...and it was free! Their statue of A Lady Who Stands on Wolves Before Slaying Them seemed a bit barbaric, though.
I'm not much of a museum-goer, I guess because I'm not a very visual person. I am awed by the STORIES behind artifacts but I'm rarely impressed simply by LOOKING at them.
But maybe I just hadn't spent enough time trying? I tested this hypothesis by walking -- gently, deliberately, slowly -- through random exhibits on the first floor. I enjoyed their collection of 19th century pencil crayon sketches by Native Americans, depicting historical battles in a traditional style. The fabrics left me flat. I was impressed by the breasts and hips of the Hindu goddess. I saw no mummified cats.
Their exhibition of Minnesota artists was interesting and I wish I'd taken a program...one room was devoted to selections by a "painting-a-day" artist who had a scrambled-eggs sort of style and a good sense of humour.
I was also able to get some context out of the pop artists. The psychedelic posters made me a little bit queasy, but for whatever reason the name "Country Joe and the Fish" has always annoyed me on a basic, primal level.
I was most impressed with Ruth Orkin's "American Girl in Italy." I find out now that it was part of a series called "Don't Be Afraid to Travel Alone." Significant indeed.
With swollen feet I returned to the hotel to prepare for another complicated night out!
10:30 pm - "Ground Zero." I deliberately extended my stay until Friday so I'd have a chance to see Ground Zero, which seemed to be right up my alley. I crossed the Mississippi for the first time and entered the bar, looking forward to dancing to SOME kind of music that I liked.
The bartender wasn't friendly. The small groups of people weren't friendly either, gathered in little pockets and looking furtively around. The music was dull and repetative...not even Fellini's "Satyricon" showing on the big screen could save the atmosphere. I decided to make a request, so I walked over to the stairway that lead to the DJ booth...only to see that the stairway was ROPED OFF. A little pad of paper was there for writing down requests. Well, screw that...if the DJ can't even be SPOKEN to, I'm gone.
Fortunately I'd run into Paul, who also wasn't having any fun. He assured me that "The Saloon" was the place to go. As anxious as I was to avoid ANY place called "The Saloon" I agreed that Paul knew more about it than I did, and I made him the designated leader of our little expedition.
But there was a problem: Paul had a bicycle with him. After wandering away from Ground Zero and waiting for a bus that never came, Paul pointed me to a cab and rode away, promising to meet me at The Saloon. When the cab drove right past me and left me on a deserted street all by myself, I got a little nervous.
Along came "Zippy" (for lack of a better name). He also had a bicycle, and looked exactly like Paul Bartel, except for the tiny shirt that couldn't stretch over his hairy belly. He wasn't wearing shoes. "A boy's just been raped and I think we should help him," he said. He couldn't pinpoint exactly HOW he knew the boy had been raped, except that he saw a kind of "look" on the boy's face.
I explained to Zippy that I'd be happy to help out if something definite was going on, but after the craziness of Wednesday night I was a bit wary about going on a wild goose chase based solely on somebody's unqualified hunch. I said I wanted to go to The Saloon, and Zippy said he'd show me a good place to get a cab.
So we started walking. It became obvious that Zippy was a little slow in the head. We passed the suspected rape victim on our way -- just a teenager sitting on a bench and waiting for a bus, as far as I could tell -- and before long we were crossing the Mississippi on a long, terrifying bridge with a tremendous wind blowing us around.
I was getting a little fed up with Zippy but I DID want a picture of myself on the bridge, so I asked him to immortalize the moment for me. I had that look on my face because Zippy had trouble figuring out my camera, and the wind was getting awfully scary, and my sunburn was starting to hurt.
"I hate this bridge," said Zippy as we continued walking. "I saw a guy fall off it, and another guy in the river who tried to get down the falls and fell out of his boat..."
Back on dry land we finally spotted a cab...a VAN, in fact! The driver was sure that we could fit the bike inside, but he hadn't figured on Zippy's limited spatial abilities. I had a terrible feeling of deja vu: I was frustrating a cab driver by trying to accomodate a difficult person. I pictured myself paying for torn upholstery. I convinced Zippy to drive his bike to The Saloon and meet me there. Sound familiar?
12:30 - The Saloon. Finally at the rendezvous and Paul was nowhere to be seen. The bar was certainly NOT a place where you expect to see a drag queen...it was very much a boy pickup bar. Twisty corridors with multiple smoking areas. Another guy wearing a diaper* in a cage. Boys on the make, everywhere, everywhere. And then me.
So I found myself a quiet corner and moped a bit. I practiced my "happy face." The Amazing Dancing Bartender cheered me up, and then two sweet guys (whose names I tragically forget!) hung out with me and made fun of my accent. The Amazing Dancing Bartender took this picture, and I look deshevelled because I had just walked across the Mississippi River in a gale-force wind. And I felt an enormous heat in my face.
After some much-needed down-time -- and a tearful reunion with Paul -- I decided to end the night at:
1:30 am - The Brass Rail, which was once again the PERFECT place to be. A fabulous DJ (who you could TALK to, by the way!) and bar-bouncer "Cleo" (that's us on the right), a bunch of people from Copenhagen (one of whom was named Helga), a request for Parliament fulfilled, and a big "Price Is Right" wheel that you could spin if you wanted to but you probably shouldn't.
A sweet, up-and-coming bar dancer offered to walk me home after the bar closed. We walked down Hennepin arm-in-arm, the night beautiful and warm, the people staring at us. My trip was wonderful. It was ALL WORTH IT.
* I'm just kidding about the diapers. These go-go dancers wore white underwear but were so endowed that they LOOKED like they were wearing diapers.
I warn you...this was a long and busy day!
My big fear about this trip was that I'd get so intimidated by the environment that I'd huddle away in my hotel room, reading books and watching TV, fearful of going outside and actually EXPERIENCING things. Fortunately that wasn't happening, and Friday especially was scheduled as a "do stuff day."
Breakfast at Hell's Kitchen again, but this time I tagged along with Joshua and Cindi. It turns out that Cindi actually has a well-worn list of funny things about Canadians, one of which was simply the word "hoser." I'd like to point out that the legacy of Bob and Doug MacKenzie got more mileage in the USA than it ever did in Canada, as evidenced by this band poster that I snapped later on in the day.Other than the "pop vs. soda" and "pencil crayon vs. coloured pencils" thing, we also went over the well-travelled "about / ahbaht / awboot" territory. During this trip I finally got REAL opinions about what my "about" SOUNDS like: "sort of British," apparently, which is good because I'd thought I sounded either silly or like a bumpkin.
Joshua and Cindi had a playful debate about the role of St. Paul in all this. Cindi described Minneapolis as the good-time girl that never sleeps and St. Paul as the stoic career woman you end up marrying. Joshua didn't object to this but he stuck up for poor St. Paul, partly because he lived there.
South, south, south I travelled. I wanted to find the "cool shopping street" that Jamie and "Cleo" had pointed out to me the day before. Determined to explore, I took a new route to Uptown and got gradually more lost. I couldn't find the street they'd recommended, and I REALLY couldn't find Vera's Cafe again. I had broken all the rules and done what I'd been told NOT to do: I'd gone past K-Mart. Twice.
Walking along, looking in shop windows, I grew more and more aware of the "gun ban" signs. Tim had first pointed them out to me in downtown Minneapolis, but none of us had gotten around to actually asking anybody about them. You shouldn't trust anything a native says anyway, because they sometimes make sport of tourists by telling them -- for instance -- that all the stores are legally required to close when the temperature hits 20 degrees. The Lone Writer from Salt Lake City believed this story and told us all about it on Tuesday night. He'll never be allowed to forget it.Anyway, The Mind Wobbles DID ask a concierge about those signs, and he said that such businesses were opting out of Minneapolis' concealed weapons laws. Did he offer any insight into the famous "20 degree" prohibition? We'll never know.
A schoolteacher carrying a potted plant finally directed me to Vera's Cafe, where I realized that I was sweaty and sunburned. Minneapolis had been sunny and hot almost the entire week, and even though I'd been changing my socks regularly...well, I only had one pair of shoes, and let's just say I didn't want anybody to get too close to my feet. I could feel a puffy burning in my face and that strange lethargy that comes from too much sun.
So I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where I'd still need to walk (a lot) but at least I'd get out of the sun...and it was free! Their statue of A Lady Who Stands on Wolves Before Slaying Them seemed a bit barbaric, though.I'm not much of a museum-goer, I guess because I'm not a very visual person. I am awed by the STORIES behind artifacts but I'm rarely impressed simply by LOOKING at them.
But maybe I just hadn't spent enough time trying? I tested this hypothesis by walking -- gently, deliberately, slowly -- through random exhibits on the first floor. I enjoyed their collection of 19th century pencil crayon sketches by Native Americans, depicting historical battles in a traditional style. The fabrics left me flat. I was impressed by the breasts and hips of the Hindu goddess. I saw no mummified cats.
Their exhibition of Minnesota artists was interesting and I wish I'd taken a program...one room was devoted to selections by a "painting-a-day" artist who had a scrambled-eggs sort of style and a good sense of humour.I was also able to get some context out of the pop artists. The psychedelic posters made me a little bit queasy, but for whatever reason the name "Country Joe and the Fish" has always annoyed me on a basic, primal level.
I was most impressed with Ruth Orkin's "American Girl in Italy." I find out now that it was part of a series called "Don't Be Afraid to Travel Alone." Significant indeed.
With swollen feet I returned to the hotel to prepare for another complicated night out!
10:30 pm - "Ground Zero." I deliberately extended my stay until Friday so I'd have a chance to see Ground Zero, which seemed to be right up my alley. I crossed the Mississippi for the first time and entered the bar, looking forward to dancing to SOME kind of music that I liked.
The bartender wasn't friendly. The small groups of people weren't friendly either, gathered in little pockets and looking furtively around. The music was dull and repetative...not even Fellini's "Satyricon" showing on the big screen could save the atmosphere. I decided to make a request, so I walked over to the stairway that lead to the DJ booth...only to see that the stairway was ROPED OFF. A little pad of paper was there for writing down requests. Well, screw that...if the DJ can't even be SPOKEN to, I'm gone.
Fortunately I'd run into Paul, who also wasn't having any fun. He assured me that "The Saloon" was the place to go. As anxious as I was to avoid ANY place called "The Saloon" I agreed that Paul knew more about it than I did, and I made him the designated leader of our little expedition.
But there was a problem: Paul had a bicycle with him. After wandering away from Ground Zero and waiting for a bus that never came, Paul pointed me to a cab and rode away, promising to meet me at The Saloon. When the cab drove right past me and left me on a deserted street all by myself, I got a little nervous.
Along came "Zippy" (for lack of a better name). He also had a bicycle, and looked exactly like Paul Bartel, except for the tiny shirt that couldn't stretch over his hairy belly. He wasn't wearing shoes. "A boy's just been raped and I think we should help him," he said. He couldn't pinpoint exactly HOW he knew the boy had been raped, except that he saw a kind of "look" on the boy's face.
I explained to Zippy that I'd be happy to help out if something definite was going on, but after the craziness of Wednesday night I was a bit wary about going on a wild goose chase based solely on somebody's unqualified hunch. I said I wanted to go to The Saloon, and Zippy said he'd show me a good place to get a cab.
So we started walking. It became obvious that Zippy was a little slow in the head. We passed the suspected rape victim on our way -- just a teenager sitting on a bench and waiting for a bus, as far as I could tell -- and before long we were crossing the Mississippi on a long, terrifying bridge with a tremendous wind blowing us around.I was getting a little fed up with Zippy but I DID want a picture of myself on the bridge, so I asked him to immortalize the moment for me. I had that look on my face because Zippy had trouble figuring out my camera, and the wind was getting awfully scary, and my sunburn was starting to hurt.
"I hate this bridge," said Zippy as we continued walking. "I saw a guy fall off it, and another guy in the river who tried to get down the falls and fell out of his boat..."
Back on dry land we finally spotted a cab...a VAN, in fact! The driver was sure that we could fit the bike inside, but he hadn't figured on Zippy's limited spatial abilities. I had a terrible feeling of deja vu: I was frustrating a cab driver by trying to accomodate a difficult person. I pictured myself paying for torn upholstery. I convinced Zippy to drive his bike to The Saloon and meet me there. Sound familiar?
12:30 - The Saloon. Finally at the rendezvous and Paul was nowhere to be seen. The bar was certainly NOT a place where you expect to see a drag queen...it was very much a boy pickup bar. Twisty corridors with multiple smoking areas. Another guy wearing a diaper* in a cage. Boys on the make, everywhere, everywhere. And then me.
So I found myself a quiet corner and moped a bit. I practiced my "happy face." The Amazing Dancing Bartender cheered me up, and then two sweet guys (whose names I tragically forget!) hung out with me and made fun of my accent. The Amazing Dancing Bartender took this picture, and I look deshevelled because I had just walked across the Mississippi River in a gale-force wind. And I felt an enormous heat in my face.After some much-needed down-time -- and a tearful reunion with Paul -- I decided to end the night at:
1:30 am - The Brass Rail, which was once again the PERFECT place to be. A fabulous DJ (who you could TALK to, by the way!) and bar-bouncer "Cleo" (that's us on the right), a bunch of people from Copenhagen (one of whom was named Helga), a request for Parliament fulfilled, and a big "Price Is Right" wheel that you could spin if you wanted to but you probably shouldn't.A sweet, up-and-coming bar dancer offered to walk me home after the bar closed. We walked down Hennepin arm-in-arm, the night beautiful and warm, the people staring at us. My trip was wonderful. It was ALL WORTH IT.
* I'm just kidding about the diapers. These go-go dancers wore white underwear but were so endowed that they LOOKED like they were wearing diapers.
Big City Muffy in Minneapolis (May 17)
This entry is for Thursday! To view the previous four days, see May 13th, May 14th, May 15th, and May 16th.
I apologize if you don't see a "comments" link in these posts...I think Blogger is a bit messed up at the moment as these links seem to come and go. Just comment in another post, or try refreshing the page!
Thursday morning and my vacation had officially started. No longer on an expense account, I made the paradoxical decision to start eating extravagant, non-complimentary breakfasts at Hell's Kitchen. People put great stock in their homemade peanut butter, but I didn't care about that! I wanted bacon and eggs and grease...no more Raisin Bran and CNN for me.
I had to stockpile some energy because I had a full day ahead of me. Yesterday both Jamie and Cindi had independently encouraged me to explore UPTOWN Minneapolis, a mysterious south-western realm beyond the highway and the convention center. Walking past these landmarks was significant: I was going where few STC Summit attendees had gone before!
And it was beautiful. I'd grown heartsick from too many skyscrapers, too much glass and steel, businessmen and panhandlers, parking garages and pavement. Within minutes I was walking down quiet, tree-lined streets where human beings actually lived. There was grass and blue sky, and people quietly going about their business.
I should pause and say that Minneapolis, as a whole, seemed to be a very liberal city. I followed Vanilla's strict advice never to talk politics while on vacation, but that didn't stop people from talking politics with ME...and nobody had anything but loathing for the Bush administration...at least nobody who brought it up, anyway. Either Americans talk freely about this issue amongst themselves as a way of letting off steam, or they like to talk about it to people from other countries.
I didn't see a single "Go Go Bush/Cheney!" sign until I left the city on Saturday, but I saw many anti-Bush and many more anti-Iraq signs, posters, T-shirts, and bumper stickers.
On an unrelated note I even found an official Mutation Research Technology truck parked in front of somebody's house, but since the truck's name was "Nebuchadnezzar" (according to a sign on the back) I assume they're less than serious about whatever it is they do.
It's not often that I find myself REQUIRED to kill time, so I wandered through parks and alleys, working my way down to Lyndale Street and spotting rabbits along the way. It was difficult for me to get a handle on Uptown's layout because it seemed to have several different arteries (Nicolette, Blaisdale, 24th Street) and these arteries were a jumble of residences and shopping areas and Wendy's restaurants. There was no single "center" of it all, but there was always something ELSE around the most insignificant of corners.
I made my rendezvous with Jamie Monroe at Vera's Cafe, the most laid-back meeting spot on earth. People wandered in and out of the patio, leaves dropped on our table, bouyant sparrows made social visits. We were shortly joined by the Brass Rail bouncer I'd met the previous night, whose name I shamefully forget and who I'll call "Cleo" (again, until I find out his actual name).
Coffee, relaxing, chatting, no schedule, revelling in laid-back bar/community politics, wishing their good friend a happy 21st birthday.
I'd originally planned to spend a bit of money on something -- clothes, shoes, kitsch -- but after last night's $60 "Bathroom Break and Scream-athon" I was less enthusiastic about depleting my funds. So I trailed after Jamie and Cleo as they showed me all the shopping hot-spots, and I even heard tantalizing rumours about a lake nearby. We looked at wigs and used clothing and novelty lingerie. Apparently the entire area was safe as long as I didn't go "past the K-Mart," so I decided to return on Friday and have another long look around.
Leaving my two Minneapolitan guardian angels behind I made the long trek back downtown. Here's one of the many instances I found of pervasive "Dumbum" graffiti: zero style but an A+ for fun!
Apparently the restaurants in town are packed with people even when the conferences are over, so I tucked myself in a corner of The Local, hemmed in on all sides by businesswomen with yacking laughs and belled-out pastel skirts.
The Local, like all the other Minneapolis restaurants I went to, had ridiculously powerful hand-dryers in their bathroom. This became a running joke during the conference. Even more disturbing were the toilets in Brits Pub, which warbled incomprehensible, quiet English phrases when you walked away from them, causing everybody to look around in alarm. The parking garages in Minneapolis also speak during rush hour, saying -- over and over again -- "Warning...car approaching." One of them said this to me in an East Indian accent.
I'd spent several days sitting in large conference halls full of people who coughed without covering their mouths. My Target vitamin C would only protect me for so long unless I spent a night or two in bed.
Looking after my health I returned to my hotel room, disposed of yet another newspaper that I'd forgotten to cancel, and lulled myself to sleep with logic puzzles and theories about The Big Bang. I was eagerly looking forward to my final night in town, and I'd already accomplished so much...I'd even found out what composer Paul Williams did with proceeds from The Muppet Movie.
I apologize if you don't see a "comments" link in these posts...I think Blogger is a bit messed up at the moment as these links seem to come and go. Just comment in another post, or try refreshing the page!
Thursday morning and my vacation had officially started. No longer on an expense account, I made the paradoxical decision to start eating extravagant, non-complimentary breakfasts at Hell's Kitchen. People put great stock in their homemade peanut butter, but I didn't care about that! I wanted bacon and eggs and grease...no more Raisin Bran and CNN for me.
I had to stockpile some energy because I had a full day ahead of me. Yesterday both Jamie and Cindi had independently encouraged me to explore UPTOWN Minneapolis, a mysterious south-western realm beyond the highway and the convention center. Walking past these landmarks was significant: I was going where few STC Summit attendees had gone before!
And it was beautiful. I'd grown heartsick from too many skyscrapers, too much glass and steel, businessmen and panhandlers, parking garages and pavement. Within minutes I was walking down quiet, tree-lined streets where human beings actually lived. There was grass and blue sky, and people quietly going about their business.I should pause and say that Minneapolis, as a whole, seemed to be a very liberal city. I followed Vanilla's strict advice never to talk politics while on vacation, but that didn't stop people from talking politics with ME...and nobody had anything but loathing for the Bush administration...at least nobody who brought it up, anyway. Either Americans talk freely about this issue amongst themselves as a way of letting off steam, or they like to talk about it to people from other countries.
I didn't see a single "Go Go Bush/Cheney!" sign until I left the city on Saturday, but I saw many anti-Bush and many more anti-Iraq signs, posters, T-shirts, and bumper stickers.On an unrelated note I even found an official Mutation Research Technology truck parked in front of somebody's house, but since the truck's name was "Nebuchadnezzar" (according to a sign on the back) I assume they're less than serious about whatever it is they do.
It's not often that I find myself REQUIRED to kill time, so I wandered through parks and alleys, working my way down to Lyndale Street and spotting rabbits along the way. It was difficult for me to get a handle on Uptown's layout because it seemed to have several different arteries (Nicolette, Blaisdale, 24th Street) and these arteries were a jumble of residences and shopping areas and Wendy's restaurants. There was no single "center" of it all, but there was always something ELSE around the most insignificant of corners.
I made my rendezvous with Jamie Monroe at Vera's Cafe, the most laid-back meeting spot on earth. People wandered in and out of the patio, leaves dropped on our table, bouyant sparrows made social visits. We were shortly joined by the Brass Rail bouncer I'd met the previous night, whose name I shamefully forget and who I'll call "Cleo" (again, until I find out his actual name).Coffee, relaxing, chatting, no schedule, revelling in laid-back bar/community politics, wishing their good friend a happy 21st birthday.
I'd originally planned to spend a bit of money on something -- clothes, shoes, kitsch -- but after last night's $60 "Bathroom Break and Scream-athon" I was less enthusiastic about depleting my funds. So I trailed after Jamie and Cleo as they showed me all the shopping hot-spots, and I even heard tantalizing rumours about a lake nearby. We looked at wigs and used clothing and novelty lingerie. Apparently the entire area was safe as long as I didn't go "past the K-Mart," so I decided to return on Friday and have another long look around.
Leaving my two Minneapolitan guardian angels behind I made the long trek back downtown. Here's one of the many instances I found of pervasive "Dumbum" graffiti: zero style but an A+ for fun!Apparently the restaurants in town are packed with people even when the conferences are over, so I tucked myself in a corner of The Local, hemmed in on all sides by businesswomen with yacking laughs and belled-out pastel skirts.
The Local, like all the other Minneapolis restaurants I went to, had ridiculously powerful hand-dryers in their bathroom. This became a running joke during the conference. Even more disturbing were the toilets in Brits Pub, which warbled incomprehensible, quiet English phrases when you walked away from them, causing everybody to look around in alarm. The parking garages in Minneapolis also speak during rush hour, saying -- over and over again -- "Warning...car approaching." One of them said this to me in an East Indian accent.
I'd spent several days sitting in large conference halls full of people who coughed without covering their mouths. My Target vitamin C would only protect me for so long unless I spent a night or two in bed.Looking after my health I returned to my hotel room, disposed of yet another newspaper that I'd forgotten to cancel, and lulled myself to sleep with logic puzzles and theories about The Big Bang. I was eagerly looking forward to my final night in town, and I'd already accomplished so much...I'd even found out what composer Paul Williams did with proceeds from The Muppet Movie.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Big City Muffy in Minneapolis (May 16)
This entry is for Wednesday! To view the previous three days, see May 13th, May 14th, and May 15th.
Eating my complimentary Raisin Bran on Wednesday morning I realized the basic flaw in my trip plan: I'd decided to stay on in Minneapolis so I'd have more time to hang around with good people...but all the people I'd met at the STC Summit would be flying out on Wednesday night! Then I'd enter stage two of the trip (exploration and nightclubs) where I'd meet MORE wonderful people...then *I* would be flying away on Saturday! So instead of somehow finding more time to hang around with new friends I would be meeting twice as many people and leaving them just as quickly.
"That's obvious!" you shout. For some reason I'd assumed that other Summit people would be staying in Minneapolis like I was...but none of them seemed to be, and I had yet to meet a Summit person from Minneapolis who was under forty and bar-hopper fun.
8:30 - "Distributed Writing: A Psychology of Social Computer Practices." This was one of those periods when I had to scrounge to find an interesting presentation, but fortunately Johannes Strobel gave the perfect early morning talk: relevant, friendly, and fun. I didn't take many notes because -- once again -- the session wasn't even remotely related to my line of work, but Strobel's point seemed to fall in line with the general Summit theme of forums/wikis/social networking sites being the "new literacy" in which many of the old rules no longer apply.
Sadly this session also had the highest level of "noise comments" from the audience, who constantly asked tangential questions in order to -- basically -- talk about themselves, their blogs, and their general web behaviour. Since Strobel seemed happy to answer any question regardless of its relevance, I compiled a list of question introduction warning signs...when somebody starts a question with one of these sentence fragments, you know it's time to take a bathroom break and grab a bottle of overpriced water in the lobby:
Alright, yes, the three presenters talked about their experiences moving content from one management system to another: from an HTML website to a more sophisticated web 2.0 style, from Framemaker to some sort of XML style, etc. Since our docs department is pretty happy with our tools (and we can't even upgrade our existing software, let alone move to an entirely new content management system) I didn't find this session very interesting.
1:30 - "If You're So Smart, Why Does Your Writing Suck?" Bonus points for an enticing title, Karen A. Schriver actually pulled the session together with some relevant (and entertaining) content. Once again we were reminded not to focus ONLY on design and "good English," but Schriver took a more optimistic and proactive approach than many of the other speakers who'd touched on this theme. She told us to avoid "knowledge telling" -- fact/data dumps that use "inside language" and which overestimate the audience's familiarity with a topic -- and be more sensitive to the audience. Good tips, and something we shouldn't need to be told (but we still DO need to be told).
3:30 - Closing Session. After some tastefully short presentations we were totally overwhelmed by Ze Frank, who was exceptionally funny. Much like Jean-luc Doumont he gave some lighthearted interpretations of "low context" signs ("lock your giant baby in a suitcase") before moving into an increasingly serious examination of social network sites.
I wasn't ENTIRELY sure of his final point, but he seemed to be a bit of an apologist for trolls, saying that (like the rest of us) they just wanted to be part of the communication, and that those people behave like trolls for various reasons...reasons that didn't seem to include MY theory, which is that trolls desperately want attention but -- for whatever reason -- just do it in an antisocial way (which Frank likened to doodling genitals at a social gathering). The same way that immature kids pull pigtails because they don't know how to express themselves, or because they're jerks.
He said that, yes, social-interaction technology is evolving at an enormous rate, but humans still have the same old social needs: intimacy, jealousy, egotism, etc. I'm not sure if he ever made a distinct and final point because I wasn't taking notes, and I'm definitely paraphrasing from what I remember of his talk.
Aha, dinner. It was time to budget, and since all of the restaurants in downtown Minneapolis were INCREDIBLY expensive (and since I didn't have any food appliances in my hotel room other than the coffee maker and the ice bucket) I resigned myself to the only food & booze convenience store in the area. I always find that the cashiers and fast-food employees in America are offensively rude, but I think it might be because I'm actually NICE to them; I say "please" and "thank you" and "have a nice day," and since I don't see anybody ELSE doing this, maybe it comes across as obnoxious or condescending to them. Or maybe they're jerks. Or they think I'm a jerk.
10:00 pm - The Gay '90s: Time for fun and adventure! I found myself in the large and complicated "Gay '90s" nightclub, which was apparently dead for even an average Wednesday night. A sad and lonely go-go dancer -- apparently wearing a diaper -- gyrated in a cage for an empty bar. The drag show upstairs was slightly better attended, and I found myself able to WATCH an excellent show without actually needing to PARTICIPATE.
After "Maurice" told me that I was "so pretty and naive!" I hooked up with a quiet New Yorker who politely listened to my sociological sputtering. Every drink seemed to be a bigger and more alcoholic one. Eventually, bored, I left the bar and moved down the street to:
1:30 am - The Brass Rail: Tiny bar! Tiny stage! But WONDERFUL people. Trying to regulate my alcohol intake I asked for a single vodka & diet in a tall glass, and the bartender gave me a Long Island iced tea instead. Jamie Monroe arrived to say hi and to invite me out for coffee the following day, which was the moment when my Minneapolis trip changed from "depressing" and "uncertain" to "fabulous!" But as the liquored-up drink started hitting me, things began to grow a little hazy...
A woman named Xavia came into the bar and tried to teach the bartender to make a "Matrix Martini," which involved a lot of incoherent verbal ejaculations and produced a skunky concoction that I was forced to drink part of. Xavia was impeccably dressed and extremely drunk, and she was depressed. Remember that resolution I made about "giving something back" to people during my trip? After Xavia was kicked out of the bar I decided to listen to her and try to get her home.
I have only disconnected impressions of this part of the night, because it was all so surreal. Xavia and I sat on Hennepin Ave and she told me she was a registered nurse, her daughter was a psychopath, and her husband was a deadbeat. In trying to give me her phone number she poured nail polish all over my purse. I told her I'd get her into a taxi and take her home, and she promised to "feed me."
The cab driver's English was poor, so when Xavia gave him an address and he said "are you SURE?" I thought maybe he just didn't understand. I said I'd pay to get her home, he shrugged, and off we drove. Xavia was loud and demonstrative, saying she couldn't approve of my lifestyle because of her religion and repeatedly shouting "YOU DON' KNOW!" I found all this fascinating and she was beginning to calm down a bit...until I noticed that we were on a freeway someplace in the middle of a black wilderness, and the cab fare was up to $30.
Then it hit me...Xavia was too drunk to really know ANYTHING. She'd said she lived in Minneapolis, but she'd given some far-off address to God knows where...an after party? Her parent's house? Another state? So I told the cab driver to turn around, and Xavia started yelling that we had to keep going, and out of everybody I felt the most sorry for the poor driver, especially when she started screaming "I GOTTA PEE! OH GOD! I GOTTA PEE RIGHT NOW!"
We pulled onto an off-ramp, she rolled out of the car and pee'd on the front tire, then she lurched back in saying "Where's the TOWEL?" which I'm sure the driver wasn't happy about. We fought all the way back to Minneapolis, and Xavia's friendship turned gradually to hatred; in her mind I was abandoning her, even though I was returning her only a few blocks from where we'd started from in the first place. I paid the driver $60 -- the price of trying to help this woman out -- and she glared at me like a dog who wanted to bite something it hates. Last I saw she'd managed to get into another cab...the first driver, obviously, didn't want her around anymore.
I was just busting to bitch about this situation and Cindi -- the poor desk clerk at the hotel -- got to listen to me. Fortunately she was wonderful and exposed to me the world of UPTOWN Minneapolis, where the stores are funky and the coffee shops are friendly.
Suddenly I was comfortable in Minneapolis. I'd lost my Summit friends but I'd instantly met some new and wonderful people, and I'd also survived a harrowing experience in a cab with a drunk and crazy woman. Inebriated and happy, my trip was REALLY beginning!
Eating my complimentary Raisin Bran on Wednesday morning I realized the basic flaw in my trip plan: I'd decided to stay on in Minneapolis so I'd have more time to hang around with good people...but all the people I'd met at the STC Summit would be flying out on Wednesday night! Then I'd enter stage two of the trip (exploration and nightclubs) where I'd meet MORE wonderful people...then *I* would be flying away on Saturday! So instead of somehow finding more time to hang around with new friends I would be meeting twice as many people and leaving them just as quickly.
"That's obvious!" you shout. For some reason I'd assumed that other Summit people would be staying in Minneapolis like I was...but none of them seemed to be, and I had yet to meet a Summit person from Minneapolis who was under forty and bar-hopper fun.
8:30 - "Distributed Writing: A Psychology of Social Computer Practices." This was one of those periods when I had to scrounge to find an interesting presentation, but fortunately Johannes Strobel gave the perfect early morning talk: relevant, friendly, and fun. I didn't take many notes because -- once again -- the session wasn't even remotely related to my line of work, but Strobel's point seemed to fall in line with the general Summit theme of forums/wikis/social networking sites being the "new literacy" in which many of the old rules no longer apply.
Sadly this session also had the highest level of "noise comments" from the audience, who constantly asked tangential questions in order to -- basically -- talk about themselves, their blogs, and their general web behaviour. Since Strobel seemed happy to answer any question regardless of its relevance, I compiled a list of question introduction warning signs...when somebody starts a question with one of these sentence fragments, you know it's time to take a bathroom break and grab a bottle of overpriced water in the lobby:
- "Kind of similarly related..."
- "I just wanted to say..."
- "Can I just add..."
- "Kind of a comment on..."
- "I was gonna say..."
- "When I used to..."
Alright, yes, the three presenters talked about their experiences moving content from one management system to another: from an HTML website to a more sophisticated web 2.0 style, from Framemaker to some sort of XML style, etc. Since our docs department is pretty happy with our tools (and we can't even upgrade our existing software, let alone move to an entirely new content management system) I didn't find this session very interesting.
1:30 - "If You're So Smart, Why Does Your Writing Suck?" Bonus points for an enticing title, Karen A. Schriver actually pulled the session together with some relevant (and entertaining) content. Once again we were reminded not to focus ONLY on design and "good English," but Schriver took a more optimistic and proactive approach than many of the other speakers who'd touched on this theme. She told us to avoid "knowledge telling" -- fact/data dumps that use "inside language" and which overestimate the audience's familiarity with a topic -- and be more sensitive to the audience. Good tips, and something we shouldn't need to be told (but we still DO need to be told).
3:30 - Closing Session. After some tastefully short presentations we were totally overwhelmed by Ze Frank, who was exceptionally funny. Much like Jean-luc Doumont he gave some lighthearted interpretations of "low context" signs ("lock your giant baby in a suitcase") before moving into an increasingly serious examination of social network sites.
I wasn't ENTIRELY sure of his final point, but he seemed to be a bit of an apologist for trolls, saying that (like the rest of us) they just wanted to be part of the communication, and that those people behave like trolls for various reasons...reasons that didn't seem to include MY theory, which is that trolls desperately want attention but -- for whatever reason -- just do it in an antisocial way (which Frank likened to doodling genitals at a social gathering). The same way that immature kids pull pigtails because they don't know how to express themselves, or because they're jerks.
He said that, yes, social-interaction technology is evolving at an enormous rate, but humans still have the same old social needs: intimacy, jealousy, egotism, etc. I'm not sure if he ever made a distinct and final point because I wasn't taking notes, and I'm definitely paraphrasing from what I remember of his talk.
Aha, dinner. It was time to budget, and since all of the restaurants in downtown Minneapolis were INCREDIBLY expensive (and since I didn't have any food appliances in my hotel room other than the coffee maker and the ice bucket) I resigned myself to the only food & booze convenience store in the area. I always find that the cashiers and fast-food employees in America are offensively rude, but I think it might be because I'm actually NICE to them; I say "please" and "thank you" and "have a nice day," and since I don't see anybody ELSE doing this, maybe it comes across as obnoxious or condescending to them. Or maybe they're jerks. Or they think I'm a jerk.
10:00 pm - The Gay '90s: Time for fun and adventure! I found myself in the large and complicated "Gay '90s" nightclub, which was apparently dead for even an average Wednesday night. A sad and lonely go-go dancer -- apparently wearing a diaper -- gyrated in a cage for an empty bar. The drag show upstairs was slightly better attended, and I found myself able to WATCH an excellent show without actually needing to PARTICIPATE.
After "Maurice" told me that I was "so pretty and naive!" I hooked up with a quiet New Yorker who politely listened to my sociological sputtering. Every drink seemed to be a bigger and more alcoholic one. Eventually, bored, I left the bar and moved down the street to:
1:30 am - The Brass Rail: Tiny bar! Tiny stage! But WONDERFUL people. Trying to regulate my alcohol intake I asked for a single vodka & diet in a tall glass, and the bartender gave me a Long Island iced tea instead. Jamie Monroe arrived to say hi and to invite me out for coffee the following day, which was the moment when my Minneapolis trip changed from "depressing" and "uncertain" to "fabulous!" But as the liquored-up drink started hitting me, things began to grow a little hazy...
A woman named Xavia came into the bar and tried to teach the bartender to make a "Matrix Martini," which involved a lot of incoherent verbal ejaculations and produced a skunky concoction that I was forced to drink part of. Xavia was impeccably dressed and extremely drunk, and she was depressed. Remember that resolution I made about "giving something back" to people during my trip? After Xavia was kicked out of the bar I decided to listen to her and try to get her home.
I have only disconnected impressions of this part of the night, because it was all so surreal. Xavia and I sat on Hennepin Ave and she told me she was a registered nurse, her daughter was a psychopath, and her husband was a deadbeat. In trying to give me her phone number she poured nail polish all over my purse. I told her I'd get her into a taxi and take her home, and she promised to "feed me."
The cab driver's English was poor, so when Xavia gave him an address and he said "are you SURE?" I thought maybe he just didn't understand. I said I'd pay to get her home, he shrugged, and off we drove. Xavia was loud and demonstrative, saying she couldn't approve of my lifestyle because of her religion and repeatedly shouting "YOU DON' KNOW!" I found all this fascinating and she was beginning to calm down a bit...until I noticed that we were on a freeway someplace in the middle of a black wilderness, and the cab fare was up to $30.
Then it hit me...Xavia was too drunk to really know ANYTHING. She'd said she lived in Minneapolis, but she'd given some far-off address to God knows where...an after party? Her parent's house? Another state? So I told the cab driver to turn around, and Xavia started yelling that we had to keep going, and out of everybody I felt the most sorry for the poor driver, especially when she started screaming "I GOTTA PEE! OH GOD! I GOTTA PEE RIGHT NOW!"
We pulled onto an off-ramp, she rolled out of the car and pee'd on the front tire, then she lurched back in saying "Where's the TOWEL?" which I'm sure the driver wasn't happy about. We fought all the way back to Minneapolis, and Xavia's friendship turned gradually to hatred; in her mind I was abandoning her, even though I was returning her only a few blocks from where we'd started from in the first place. I paid the driver $60 -- the price of trying to help this woman out -- and she glared at me like a dog who wanted to bite something it hates. Last I saw she'd managed to get into another cab...the first driver, obviously, didn't want her around anymore.
I was just busting to bitch about this situation and Cindi -- the poor desk clerk at the hotel -- got to listen to me. Fortunately she was wonderful and exposed to me the world of UPTOWN Minneapolis, where the stores are funky and the coffee shops are friendly.
Suddenly I was comfortable in Minneapolis. I'd lost my Summit friends but I'd instantly met some new and wonderful people, and I'd also survived a harrowing experience in a cab with a drunk and crazy woman. Inebriated and happy, my trip was REALLY beginning!
Big City Muffy in Minneapolis (May 15)
This is part three! For parts one and two see May 13th and May 14th.
8:30 am - "If I'd Known Then What I Know Now--Lessons Learned and Best Practices." Many of us started Tuesday morning watching this panel discussion. Besides pointers about resumes, career advancement, and mentoring, the recurring focus was on a theme that was pervasive throughout the entire summit: since many people now get "help" through forums and wikis as opposed to formal documentation, the "good English" and formatting of a help document is becoming less and less important. The user with broken English can give you just as good (maybe even more cutting edge) help, and they can do it immediately without any frills or nifty pictures or anything.
This upset the two editors in the audience. Their job was basically to make sure that their documents looked good and were written correctly, so what sort of future did they have in a forum/wiki world? The panelists were pessimistic, the editors miffed.
I think the pundits are so anxious to spot a trend that they're jumping the gun on this one. Many people read manuals -- I'm one of them -- and there are some environments where manuals are still considered essential. The manuals that *I* write are for products bought by large media networks, which are disseminated to operators throughout the company. These networks DO NOT allow their operators to just play with the software until they figure it out; they need their operators to be up to speed BEFORE they go on air. And as of a few months ago these companies were CLAMORING for the latest and most up-to-date manuals.
Whether this is a disconnect between management and users, or a difference between consumer products and business products, is difficult to say. But I'm not willing to throw page design and "good English" out the window yet.
10:30 am - "The Use of Cultural Models in Web Design and What Eye Tracking Reveals about Web Usability." Many of us found titles like this to be ironic at a technical communication summit, not to mention the ill-designed session manual (which session period does this page header refer to?) and the dreadful PDF version (which started on page ten and caused constipation in our printers). Regardless, my psych/globalization side wanted to see this session even if it didn't relate to my job in any way whatsoever.
Kathleen Gygi gave a lacklustre report about websites in Uzbekistan. Apparently these websites are usually blue, or something. It was difficult to follow her conclusions, let alone understand how she'd arrived at them (a scale of website blue-eyness, maybe?)
Then Lynne M. Cooke gave a much better presentation about an eye tracking experiment, intended to find out how users look for specific pieces of information on web pages. Her main conclusion was that users look for links that both match their search criteria AND speak to their personal conceptions of themselves as audience members, and her secondary conclusion was that people don't often look at pictures on web pages, especially if the pictures look remotely like advertisements. This was disputed by another researcher in the audience, which brought a spark to the discussion until they'd figured out the differences in their research methods (people DO look at pictures if the picture is of a product they're specifically searching for).
I went back to The Local for lunch with Sue and her brother, where we chatted about the problems with pollen in Minneapolis (which had laid a few people low already), then returned for:
2:00 pm - "Polishing Your Pictures." Like I said, I came to the summit partly to find out how to improve the images and charts in my documents, and Patrick Hofmann's presentation made lots of sense: standardize the attributes of your images, decide on the "primary focus" for every image, decide what needs to be emphasized or excluded, and test your image by VERBALIZING what you see in it. He described some methods for displaying screenshots, which was a real revelation for me: you don't NEED to show the entire dialog in the manual! You CAN crop it, if you present the cropped area properly! That's stuff I can USE.
But throughout the presentation I couldn't help thinking that I recognized him, and that he was lacking the midwestern twang or southern drawl I'd been growing so accustomed to. When he mentioned growing up in a small town in Ontario I became even more suspicious. I spoke to him briefly after his talk and he instantly recognized me from Club Abstract -- a K/W native! -- and though we tried to make plans to get together we just never managed to connect, for whatever reason.
4:00 pm - Rather than go to Tuesday's final session I decided to spend the afternoon exploring downtown Minneapolis, taking some pictures along the way. I'd heard about the "warehouse district" that supposedly had some hipster stores in it, and since we'd found ourselves among refurbished warehouses during our previous night's walk, I retraced our steps and tried to explore the northern part of the city.
Starting at the Mississippi -- which is much more impressive than my picture conveys -- I went Northwest in search of warehouses. I zig-zagged back and forth a bit but was unable to find any shops, and eventually I found myself in a district full of REAL warehouses and factories, across a set of railway tracks and totally lost. I could SEE downtown Minneapolis but I couldn't get back to it: I was blocked off by fences and closed pedestrian walkways, and when I say "fences" I mean eight-foot structures with angled barbed wire at the top.
In this picture I'm trapped within a literal maze of fences, behind a series of factories whose gates are locked and unattended. Worried about rain, closing gates, and the strange man who I kept running into, I'd decide to go on another few blocks, only to find myself in yet another fenced-in dead-end.
Finally I retraced my steps almost all the way back to the river. Back at my hotel I realized that I had no dinner plans; everybody makes these plans at the final sessions, which I'd just skipped. Tim told me that another amorphous group of writers would be meeting at Brits Pub. I found myself an honourary member of the "Lone Writers" special interest group, eating samosas with the shyest Calgarian you can possibly imagine. There was speculation about a trip to the local gay bars but I decided to turn in early. The night was over, it was too late to start getting into drag, I was bushed, and what the heck would I do during the next four days?
8:30 am - "If I'd Known Then What I Know Now--Lessons Learned and Best Practices." Many of us started Tuesday morning watching this panel discussion. Besides pointers about resumes, career advancement, and mentoring, the recurring focus was on a theme that was pervasive throughout the entire summit: since many people now get "help" through forums and wikis as opposed to formal documentation, the "good English" and formatting of a help document is becoming less and less important. The user with broken English can give you just as good (maybe even more cutting edge) help, and they can do it immediately without any frills or nifty pictures or anything.
This upset the two editors in the audience. Their job was basically to make sure that their documents looked good and were written correctly, so what sort of future did they have in a forum/wiki world? The panelists were pessimistic, the editors miffed.
I think the pundits are so anxious to spot a trend that they're jumping the gun on this one. Many people read manuals -- I'm one of them -- and there are some environments where manuals are still considered essential. The manuals that *I* write are for products bought by large media networks, which are disseminated to operators throughout the company. These networks DO NOT allow their operators to just play with the software until they figure it out; they need their operators to be up to speed BEFORE they go on air. And as of a few months ago these companies were CLAMORING for the latest and most up-to-date manuals.
Whether this is a disconnect between management and users, or a difference between consumer products and business products, is difficult to say. But I'm not willing to throw page design and "good English" out the window yet.
10:30 am - "The Use of Cultural Models in Web Design and What Eye Tracking Reveals about Web Usability." Many of us found titles like this to be ironic at a technical communication summit, not to mention the ill-designed session manual (which session period does this page header refer to?) and the dreadful PDF version (which started on page ten and caused constipation in our printers). Regardless, my psych/globalization side wanted to see this session even if it didn't relate to my job in any way whatsoever.
Kathleen Gygi gave a lacklustre report about websites in Uzbekistan. Apparently these websites are usually blue, or something. It was difficult to follow her conclusions, let alone understand how she'd arrived at them (a scale of website blue-eyness, maybe?)
Then Lynne M. Cooke gave a much better presentation about an eye tracking experiment, intended to find out how users look for specific pieces of information on web pages. Her main conclusion was that users look for links that both match their search criteria AND speak to their personal conceptions of themselves as audience members, and her secondary conclusion was that people don't often look at pictures on web pages, especially if the pictures look remotely like advertisements. This was disputed by another researcher in the audience, which brought a spark to the discussion until they'd figured out the differences in their research methods (people DO look at pictures if the picture is of a product they're specifically searching for).
I went back to The Local for lunch with Sue and her brother, where we chatted about the problems with pollen in Minneapolis (which had laid a few people low already), then returned for:
2:00 pm - "Polishing Your Pictures." Like I said, I came to the summit partly to find out how to improve the images and charts in my documents, and Patrick Hofmann's presentation made lots of sense: standardize the attributes of your images, decide on the "primary focus" for every image, decide what needs to be emphasized or excluded, and test your image by VERBALIZING what you see in it. He described some methods for displaying screenshots, which was a real revelation for me: you don't NEED to show the entire dialog in the manual! You CAN crop it, if you present the cropped area properly! That's stuff I can USE.
But throughout the presentation I couldn't help thinking that I recognized him, and that he was lacking the midwestern twang or southern drawl I'd been growing so accustomed to. When he mentioned growing up in a small town in Ontario I became even more suspicious. I spoke to him briefly after his talk and he instantly recognized me from Club Abstract -- a K/W native! -- and though we tried to make plans to get together we just never managed to connect, for whatever reason.
4:00 pm - Rather than go to Tuesday's final session I decided to spend the afternoon exploring downtown Minneapolis, taking some pictures along the way. I'd heard about the "warehouse district" that supposedly had some hipster stores in it, and since we'd found ourselves among refurbished warehouses during our previous night's walk, I retraced our steps and tried to explore the northern part of the city.Starting at the Mississippi -- which is much more impressive than my picture conveys -- I went Northwest in search of warehouses. I zig-zagged back and forth a bit but was unable to find any shops, and eventually I found myself in a district full of REAL warehouses and factories, across a set of railway tracks and totally lost. I could SEE downtown Minneapolis but I couldn't get back to it: I was blocked off by fences and closed pedestrian walkways, and when I say "fences" I mean eight-foot structures with angled barbed wire at the top.
In this picture I'm trapped within a literal maze of fences, behind a series of factories whose gates are locked and unattended. Worried about rain, closing gates, and the strange man who I kept running into, I'd decide to go on another few blocks, only to find myself in yet another fenced-in dead-end.Finally I retraced my steps almost all the way back to the river. Back at my hotel I realized that I had no dinner plans; everybody makes these plans at the final sessions, which I'd just skipped. Tim told me that another amorphous group of writers would be meeting at Brits Pub. I found myself an honourary member of the "Lone Writers" special interest group, eating samosas with the shyest Calgarian you can possibly imagine. There was speculation about a trip to the local gay bars but I decided to turn in early. The night was over, it was too late to start getting into drag, I was bushed, and what the heck would I do during the next four days?
Big City Muffy in Minneapolis (May 14)
This is part two! Click here for part one.They provide a complimentary breakfast in two small rooms at the Holiday Inn, and they discourage you from lingering by playing CNN really loud. They also employ this technique in the lobby to keep you from using the computer for too long (and to also keep you updated about stranded whales, shipwrecked booty, and Jerry Falwell's long-overdue death).
In this picture you can see the conference center in the background. Everybody gathered there at 8:30 am for the Keynote General Session, where STC people honoured other STC people and where Al Gore (absent) was given an award for "An Inconvenient Truth," which the three bull-necked guys in front of me scoffed at. The crowd of educated, critical thinking technical writers seemed surprisingly lukewarm about Gore's film and his techniques of communication. A subset of the crowd became even more edgy when Simon Singh, the keynote speaker, praised the film and trashed "The Great Global Warming Swindle."
Ah yes, Mr. Singh. A few years ago I read his "The Code Book," and on May 13th I picked up his latest book ("The Big Bang") to help save me from an avalanche of depressing novels. As honourary STC fellow, Singh spoke at the conference and gave us a deconstruction and analysis of his "Fermat's Last Theorem" documentary. He even confessed to his own switcheroo: he'd subtly modified a quote from a mathematician in order to translate it into layman's terms. He discussed the lines that documentary filmmakers need to cross in order to make an understandable film. In short, as long as you keep the intent of the quote without distorting it, you're probably okay. If you feel guilty or the person you interviewed gets angry, that's bad.
11:00 am - Since the "How to Design Anything" session was cancelled I found myself attending "Tips and Tricks for Adobe RoboHelp Users." I constantly use RoboHelp (version five) to create online and dialog help for projects, and it's absolutely hellish...but it does what it's supposed to do (and if we'd upgrade our copies we'd be able to do a bit more, like create conditional text and use text variables).
Unfortunately many of the tips were for users of version six, and the one tip I was looking forward to -- how to prevent a help topic from appearing during a "search" -- was a terrible and embarassing kludge that I wouldn't wish on anybody. So I didn't get anything out of this session other than a trial copy of version six and a sneak preview of the Totally Exciting and Amazing Version Seven.
Here's my own tip for Adobe: don't send a developer to demo a product unless he does professional demos on the side. The guy who showed us Version Seven was incoherent and spent most of the time showing us how to move and dock windows on the screen, which is not much of a "feature" and something that people know how to do anyway. Based on the sneak-preview I can confidently report that there are many, many ways to move and dock windows in the new version of RoboHelp. In fact there are almost LIMITLESS ways to meticulously move a window, if you include moving the window in all four directions, as well as all the combinations of those directions. You get a lot of window-docking-mileage out of Robohelp Seven, and there may be some other features too that we never got to hear about.
During lunch I ran into Tim from Philiadelphia, who recognized me in the Panera Bread line. He followed the networking instructions we learned during orientation ("It's just talking!") and we hit it off. Tim invited me to a somewhat nebulous and impromptu eat/drink meeting scheduled for that night, which I happily agreed to. Tim became my most constant and welcome companion in Minneapolis and I hope I get to attend next year's STC Summit, which will be held in his hometown.
During lunch I also ran into Sue, who I used to work with in the pre-buyout days of my company. It's ALWAYS a pleasure running into Sue! Plus we got to gossip about work in a way that we couldn't do when she was actually an employee...
1:30 pm - "Effective Page Layout for the Nonartist." I can't design a chart or a diagram to save my life so I hoped to get some tips at the summit. This session (by the very entertaining Jean-luc Doumont) was more for people who design 20-page reports than for those who write 200-page manuals, but I found two of his ideas useful: more blank space equals greater readability, and it's bad to give yourself too many options. He recommended choosing strict constraints for your projects -- one font, one style, one colour, all spacing constrained to horizontal and vertical integers -- with exceptions allowed ONLY when doing so adds value. Also be consistent.
In short, the page templates which we use at my workplace are ALREADY excellent and conform to most of his design specifications, for which I can thank my manager (who was also nice enough to approve my Minneapolis trip, incidentally).
Then Doumont went completely off the deep end, describing how he manually composes his emails so that EVERY line ends EXACTLY at an abnormally short right margin, INCLUDING the final line. Seriously, he chooses his words and punctuation and sentence structure to make sure his monospaced text ends PERFECTLY. God forbid should he need to add something in the middle of a paragraph at a later time, or should the email receiver view his emails in a small window, but he claims that nobody has ever complained. Chances are that's because nobody cares as much about email formatting as he does.
Incidentally the different elements of technical communication -- formatting, "good English," and "good content" -- kept being debated during the conference. I'll get to that later, but let's say that Doumont still believes that formatting is EXTREMELY important (but, like I said, his demographic is more businesspeople and ad agencies that folks who read computer manuals).
3:30 pm - "Road Signs: Finding Your Way in the Visual World." I couldn't resist ANOTHER presentation by Jean-luc Doumont. This one was 75% fun and 25% content, but his points were interesting (if not always useful).
By juxtaposing North American signs with European signs he illustrated the differences between "high context" and "low context" cultures, and showed the pros and cons of "wordy" versus visual signs. In short, wordy (high context) signs spell everything out for you but can overload you with information, can be difficult for people who don't speak the language, and still assume that the reader understands some degree of context ("xing ped" for example).
More visual signs are useful if their concepts are unambiguous, but it was easy to understand that there are problems with standardizing colours/shapes/symbols, not to mention gender issues (how are men and women figures represented?). Is it better to use old, established icons (telephones, televisions) as opposed to updated ones that better represent what the objects look like today? And what kind of a dog is a dog, anyway?
Tim and I met up with the rest of his posse, one of whom was an ex-Minniapolitan who took us to a bar with a moose head in it. We discussed the Boston Molasses Disaster and finally found that statue of Mary Tyler Moore that everyone told me to see. I found an instant conversational chemistry with C., who was born and raised in the deep south (New Orleans, Austin) and who told me what SHE thought about politics, Katrina, books, and The South.C. really wanted to visit the 112 Eatery so we began a drunken walk which first took us to the Mississippi river, then past "Sexworld," and finally to the eatery itself, which was uncomfortably swanky but apparently served excellent fois gras meatballs.
Big City Muffy in Minneapolis (May 13)
I started a journal on May 13th at 7:30 am. I stopped making entries in the journal at 9:15. Why? I don't know. Maybe we can figure it out as I present this retrospective examination of my days in Minneapolis, from May 13th to May 20th.
But first an explanation. I signed up to attend the three-day annual Technical Communication Summit, and since my airfare would already be covered I decided to extend my stay in Minneapolis, therefore getting a short "holiday" that theoretically would cost me very little. I find it sad that whenever I visit someplace, I always have to leave just after I've met a group of wonderful people. This way I'd meet wonderful people...and have the time to get to KNOW them a bit!
The problem is that I'm a sort of nervous, panic-stricken individual who does not adapt well to change. I also had to leave my cat behind for an entire week, and I'm sad to say that I've grown almost TOO attached to her. I've become the type of person that I make fun of: reclusive, ritualistic, and in love with an animal. So this trip was bound to be a bit trumatic.
I think airports are awful because their procedures change every time I visit them. At 6:30 am on Sunday morning -- still depressed about the cat -- I dealt with new automated machines that both check your luggage AND give you a boarding pass, which required more than the usual amount of passport/E-ticket/luggage juggling. I was also embedded in a group of women who were going to Minneapolis for a missionary conference. One of them shouted "Praise Jesus!" when she discovered her misplaced passport.
My first instinct was to make fun of these people -- if Jesus needs to intervene every time you're a scatterbrain, shouldn't you shape up to make his job a little bit easier? -- I started to form a resolution that was to cause much joy and suffering throughout the week. I watched these women sitting together and waiting for the plane, and I couldn't help acknowledging that they were the most friendly, social, and happy people at the Gate (if not in the entire airport). They swapped stories about child-rearing and discussed their needlepoint projects ("It's the Twelve Days of Christmas, but the problem is that they get more detailed with each day!") while the rest of us hunkered down with our books and iPods and our soon-to-be abandoned journals.
So I made this resolution: in Minneapolis, I would be as friendly, giving, and tolerant as possible. I would emphasize COMMONALITIES instead of differences. Instead of relying totally on the kindness of strangers -- which I so often do when I travel -- I'd try to give something back to society by being generous and open-minded. In short I'd be a gullible schlump, but we'll get to that on May 16th.
In the airplane I was thrilled to see Lake Huron. Or was it Lake Ontario? Or Erie? It was hard to say but I DO know we flew over some awfully big lakes. We also looked down on segregated patches of farmland and gradually lost sight of smaller things like cars and houses, though the pill-shaped racetracks were always visible, as usual. This leads me to wonder (as I always do when I fly) why we have so many racetracks? They're everywhere, but it never seems that way on the ground. We also got to see the tops of storm clouds which were black and evil and rising up toward us in characteristic anvil shapes.
On the ground, however, Minneapolis was sunny and hot. It was 10 am on a Sunday morning, but with the time change (and the fact that I'd been awake since 4:30) it felt like the afternoon, and my first view of the city was devastating: no people. No cars. Just deserted buildings and shops. Not even the Scientology and Christian Science buildings were open. Since my hotel room wasn't ready yet I wandered around and around and around: skyways, parking garages, enormous corporate headquarters, no place to eat, no place to buy a coffee. And only me on the streets.
I was already sad about "the cat thing" but now I had a new worry: was Minneapolis a pathetic ghost town? Was I doomed to spend an entire week in this place without new friends or new experiences or any form of social interaction beyond the Automatic Baggage and Boarding Pass machines at the airport?
In hindsight it's obvious that ANY city is deserted on Sunday morning, but this was a blow to my already fragile state of mind. To lift my spirits I retreated to my hotel room and tried to read the two books which I'd brought along based on their size (small and light) as opposed to any real foresight. The first, "Nights in the Underground" by Marie-Clair Blais, was about a depressed and homesick woman who tried desperately to find warmth and comfort in a strange city. The other was "Diversey" by MacKinlay Kantor, about a depressed and homesick man who tried desperately to find warmth and comfort in a strange city.
Feeling justifiably homesick and depressed, I made a beeline to Barnes and Noble to buy books that wouldn't make my life any more difficult than it already was, books interesting and happy but not Opra-stupid. I settled on "The Big Bang" by the wonderful Simon Singh and a book of "Challenging Logic Puzzles" by Barry R. Clarke ("Hearts is one place before Bleereye who was two places after King"). As a sidenote, I found MacKinlay Kantor's literal transcription of regional dialects to be even more depressing than the book's subject matter ("Hooey, juss out, juss out. Hooey, aggstry papey, hooey. Allll ay-bowt thu big----Hooey, hooey!")
I bought a third book on the recommendation of a woman at the bookstore -- "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris -- but I didn't get around to opening it. I was uncertain about that woman's judgement, since her first recommendation -- after hearing my "interesting and happy" requirement -- was a book about the destruction of the World Trade Center ("I know it doesn't sound funny, but it really is!")
5:00 pm: Finally time to register for the Conference and join the "First Timer's" meeting, where they deliberately make you sit at large tables with other people who are all looking inward, supposedly so you can meet each other. I sat beside Art from Illinois, who told me all about the Canadian parliamentary system and kept confusing me by saying "English" when he meant "British." He shouted out details about poverty, racism, politics, and economics. He told me how best to interact with Native Americans, all without any prompting whatsoever. When more people joined our table and another one of them happened to be Canadian, Art yelled out "Thank God the Canadians are here, now we'll have some SMART people at the conference!" I decided that Art was not somebody I wanted to hang around with.
Instead I went to The Local with B., a woman who rarely made eye contact, instead gazing to the right of my face in a lofty way. We had an illuminating and equal chat about books and food and writing, but when somebody has a lofty expression which she won't even aim directly at me I figure they either don't like me or they don't like themselves. So B. and I didn't eat food together again.
Afterwards I shopped at Target for the first time, which made me think of Josie and the Pussycats. I was amazed when the cashier built a sturdy "carrying handle" for my Diet Pepsi out of Target stickers, but when I laughed and pointed she glared at me like it was something I should be used to, which means this innovation is probably a common one at Target stores. It certainly made it easier to lug the Pepsi back to my hotel.
One more word about Target: I always thought it was similar to Walmart, but if you say that to people who are familiar with Target they will vehemently deny any comparison. People in Minneapolis are proud that their Downtown is almost totally devoid of chain stores, and rightfully so. Unless you count Target and Starbucks and Macy's and Walgreen's, of course.
But first an explanation. I signed up to attend the three-day annual Technical Communication Summit, and since my airfare would already be covered I decided to extend my stay in Minneapolis, therefore getting a short "holiday" that theoretically would cost me very little. I find it sad that whenever I visit someplace, I always have to leave just after I've met a group of wonderful people. This way I'd meet wonderful people...and have the time to get to KNOW them a bit!
The problem is that I'm a sort of nervous, panic-stricken individual who does not adapt well to change. I also had to leave my cat behind for an entire week, and I'm sad to say that I've grown almost TOO attached to her. I've become the type of person that I make fun of: reclusive, ritualistic, and in love with an animal. So this trip was bound to be a bit trumatic.
I think airports are awful because their procedures change every time I visit them. At 6:30 am on Sunday morning -- still depressed about the cat -- I dealt with new automated machines that both check your luggage AND give you a boarding pass, which required more than the usual amount of passport/E-ticket/luggage juggling. I was also embedded in a group of women who were going to Minneapolis for a missionary conference. One of them shouted "Praise Jesus!" when she discovered her misplaced passport.
My first instinct was to make fun of these people -- if Jesus needs to intervene every time you're a scatterbrain, shouldn't you shape up to make his job a little bit easier? -- I started to form a resolution that was to cause much joy and suffering throughout the week. I watched these women sitting together and waiting for the plane, and I couldn't help acknowledging that they were the most friendly, social, and happy people at the Gate (if not in the entire airport). They swapped stories about child-rearing and discussed their needlepoint projects ("It's the Twelve Days of Christmas, but the problem is that they get more detailed with each day!") while the rest of us hunkered down with our books and iPods and our soon-to-be abandoned journals.
So I made this resolution: in Minneapolis, I would be as friendly, giving, and tolerant as possible. I would emphasize COMMONALITIES instead of differences. Instead of relying totally on the kindness of strangers -- which I so often do when I travel -- I'd try to give something back to society by being generous and open-minded. In short I'd be a gullible schlump, but we'll get to that on May 16th.
In the airplane I was thrilled to see Lake Huron. Or was it Lake Ontario? Or Erie? It was hard to say but I DO know we flew over some awfully big lakes. We also looked down on segregated patches of farmland and gradually lost sight of smaller things like cars and houses, though the pill-shaped racetracks were always visible, as usual. This leads me to wonder (as I always do when I fly) why we have so many racetracks? They're everywhere, but it never seems that way on the ground. We also got to see the tops of storm clouds which were black and evil and rising up toward us in characteristic anvil shapes.
On the ground, however, Minneapolis was sunny and hot. It was 10 am on a Sunday morning, but with the time change (and the fact that I'd been awake since 4:30) it felt like the afternoon, and my first view of the city was devastating: no people. No cars. Just deserted buildings and shops. Not even the Scientology and Christian Science buildings were open. Since my hotel room wasn't ready yet I wandered around and around and around: skyways, parking garages, enormous corporate headquarters, no place to eat, no place to buy a coffee. And only me on the streets.
I was already sad about "the cat thing" but now I had a new worry: was Minneapolis a pathetic ghost town? Was I doomed to spend an entire week in this place without new friends or new experiences or any form of social interaction beyond the Automatic Baggage and Boarding Pass machines at the airport?
In hindsight it's obvious that ANY city is deserted on Sunday morning, but this was a blow to my already fragile state of mind. To lift my spirits I retreated to my hotel room and tried to read the two books which I'd brought along based on their size (small and light) as opposed to any real foresight. The first, "Nights in the Underground" by Marie-Clair Blais, was about a depressed and homesick woman who tried desperately to find warmth and comfort in a strange city. The other was "Diversey" by MacKinlay Kantor, about a depressed and homesick man who tried desperately to find warmth and comfort in a strange city.
Feeling justifiably homesick and depressed, I made a beeline to Barnes and Noble to buy books that wouldn't make my life any more difficult than it already was, books interesting and happy but not Opra-stupid. I settled on "The Big Bang" by the wonderful Simon Singh and a book of "Challenging Logic Puzzles" by Barry R. Clarke ("Hearts is one place before Bleereye who was two places after King"). As a sidenote, I found MacKinlay Kantor's literal transcription of regional dialects to be even more depressing than the book's subject matter ("Hooey, juss out, juss out. Hooey, aggstry papey, hooey. Allll ay-bowt thu big----Hooey, hooey!")
I bought a third book on the recommendation of a woman at the bookstore -- "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris -- but I didn't get around to opening it. I was uncertain about that woman's judgement, since her first recommendation -- after hearing my "interesting and happy" requirement -- was a book about the destruction of the World Trade Center ("I know it doesn't sound funny, but it really is!")
5:00 pm: Finally time to register for the Conference and join the "First Timer's" meeting, where they deliberately make you sit at large tables with other people who are all looking inward, supposedly so you can meet each other. I sat beside Art from Illinois, who told me all about the Canadian parliamentary system and kept confusing me by saying "English" when he meant "British." He shouted out details about poverty, racism, politics, and economics. He told me how best to interact with Native Americans, all without any prompting whatsoever. When more people joined our table and another one of them happened to be Canadian, Art yelled out "Thank God the Canadians are here, now we'll have some SMART people at the conference!" I decided that Art was not somebody I wanted to hang around with.
Instead I went to The Local with B., a woman who rarely made eye contact, instead gazing to the right of my face in a lofty way. We had an illuminating and equal chat about books and food and writing, but when somebody has a lofty expression which she won't even aim directly at me I figure they either don't like me or they don't like themselves. So B. and I didn't eat food together again.
Afterwards I shopped at Target for the first time, which made me think of Josie and the Pussycats. I was amazed when the cashier built a sturdy "carrying handle" for my Diet Pepsi out of Target stickers, but when I laughed and pointed she glared at me like it was something I should be used to, which means this innovation is probably a common one at Target stores. It certainly made it easier to lug the Pepsi back to my hotel.One more word about Target: I always thought it was similar to Walmart, but if you say that to people who are familiar with Target they will vehemently deny any comparison. People in Minneapolis are proud that their Downtown is almost totally devoid of chain stores, and rightfully so. Unless you count Target and Starbucks and Macy's and Walgreen's, of course.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Mini Minneapolis Thoughts
Let's see how much I can write before somebody else wants to use the computer.
Here are my impressions about Minneapolis. This mainly regards the downtown area:
Here are my impressions about Minneapolis. This mainly regards the downtown area:
- Clean, clean, clean. There is not a speck of dirt in this area. Even the skiddy areas are spotless.
- Gorgeous and varied architecture.
- More than adequate green space and gathering places, though you're still aware of constant traffic.
- So many one-way streets.
- Because of all the one-way streets, everybody J-Walks.
- Things are MUCH closer than they seem. Whenever I see a building in the distance I think "jeez, that'll take half an hour to get to," and five minutes later I'm there. This is diametrically opposite the way Las Vegas feels.
- Skywalks everywhere.
- The giant Target store, the giant Target office building, the giant Target stadium...
- Charming, laid-back, almost poetic pan-handlers who seem to appreciate conversation more than money. Though that's probably their schtick.
- Apparently people DO live downtown, but I can't imagine where.
The Sucker Canadjin
Gah! Gah! Gah!
It's true, I can still blog from the Holiday Inn in Minneapolis, but unless it's 2am (like it is now) it's a bit difficult.
All I can say is that I just spent $60 trying to get somebody home. I tried and I tried and I tried. We were in a taxi cab going NOWHERE, and when I realized that we were LITERALLY going nowhere I tried to turn us back to Minneapolis...but regardless, a $60 bill (that I paid) just to drive somebody AWAY (so they could pee on an off-ramp) and then back to my hotel (where they treated me like shite for abandoning them) was a bit of a shock. So sad!
It's a basic fact that people get burned for charity. We pay for all those times we pass by homeless people on the street. But my goodness I am frustrated that I just paid for somebody who is too drunk to ever know how much trouble I've gone through...
Is that the wrong attitude? Probably.
It's true, I can still blog from the Holiday Inn in Minneapolis, but unless it's 2am (like it is now) it's a bit difficult.
All I can say is that I just spent $60 trying to get somebody home. I tried and I tried and I tried. We were in a taxi cab going NOWHERE, and when I realized that we were LITERALLY going nowhere I tried to turn us back to Minneapolis...but regardless, a $60 bill (that I paid) just to drive somebody AWAY (so they could pee on an off-ramp) and then back to my hotel (where they treated me like shite for abandoning them) was a bit of a shock. So sad!
It's a basic fact that people get burned for charity. We pay for all those times we pass by homeless people on the street. But my goodness I am frustrated that I just paid for somebody who is too drunk to ever know how much trouble I've gone through...
Is that the wrong attitude? Probably.
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