Posts in category "Daily Life"

Collab

This is pret­ty much the most awe­some sit­u­a­tion I can think of. A jam ses­sion with Nic on beats and bass, Jesse rap­ping and on organ + glock­en­spiel, Audra on clar­inet, and me on ukulele. Figuring out what sounds best, mod­i­fy­ing arrange­ments, prac­tic­ing until it feels right.

The night was actu­al­ly a rehearsal for Jesse’s upcom­ing Canadian liv­ing room tour, the last stop of which is in Ottawa, at the same place I first met Jesse and Audra and Jacob.

Rehearsal

 

Because Jesse’s sis­ter is only avail­able on the east­ern tour dates, that left a spot for one instru­ment on the final tour date, which I’ll excit­ed­ly be fill­ing with my ukulele. It’s only for three songs (and singing one part of a three part har­mo­ny) but it’s going to be so much fun.

Here’s Jesse singing and rhyming and con­duct­ing us and play­ing the glock­en­spiel at the same time. It’s a new track off his upcom­ing album with an obvi­ous theme about video, except in this ver­sion he made an arrange­ment of Video Tape by Radiohead and VCR by The XX to book­end the vers­es. I’d nev­er heard VCR, so Jesse had to teach me the chords on the fly.

I record­ed this on my iPhone so I could prac­tice on my own; I won’t have a chance to see them for anoth­er rehearsal before they go on tour. I’d nev­er heard the song before, and it was our first time play­ing it through togeth­er but every­one knew when to stop. It felt com­plete­ly nat­ur­al. We were com­mu­ni­cat­ing with­out words, our instincts cul­mi­nat­ing in that won­der­ful­ly sol­id uni­son.

Even though I’m still rusty, it felt amaz­ing to be play­ing an instru­ment with oth­er peo­ple again. And this time with mate­r­i­al that’s fuck­ing genius, not the same old con­ser­va­to­ry pieces some teacher choos­es for you. At one point I was play­ing around on the ukulele when Jesse had to get the phone, and Nic start­ed putting beats to what I was doing and it made me want to steal Nic for all my prac­tic­ing.

See Jesse Dangerously in your town:

Friday, July 23rd — The Bird House in Halifax, NS — 6156 Duncan Street, 10:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 24th — The Galley in Fredericton, NB — 1–178 Westmorland Street, 7:00 p.m (with fem­i­nist/an­ti-cap­i­tal­ist gum­boot troupe Rebelles).
Sunday, July 25th — Gallerie Rye in Montreal, PQ — 1331a Rue Ste Catherine Est, 8:00 p.m (with the veg­an ukulele of Nicola IV).
Monday, July 26th — 160 Workshops in Ottawa, ON — 160 Primrose Avenue, 8:00 p.m. (with electronic/acoustic singer-song­writer Jacob Earl).

Visiting Pita

Pita is soon mov­ing to the west coast of Canada, so I went to vis­it him in Montreal on the week­end. We lived togeth­er in res­i­dence in uni­ver­si­ty and for two years in an apart­ment down­town, but had­n’t seen each oth­er in years. I’m prob­a­bly the only per­son to still think of him as Pita, the nick­name giv­en to him from the first week of res­i­dence. There were two pairs of room­mates named Jeff and Peter, so every­one decid­ed that one pair should have nick­names to make the dis­tinc­tion, and that end­ed up being us.

Pita's house

He’s mov­ing out in two days, so his house is a jum­ble of packed box­es and mis­cel­la­neous items.

Continue read­ing “Visiting Pita”…

Team Fortress 2

On nights like this, I won­der how I’m going to kill the time before it’s late enough to fall asleep, wor­ried that I’ll be bored on a Friday and con­se­quent­ly faced with the fact that I’m so very alone. I was crav­ing some kind of human con­tact tonight, but spend­ing time with peo­ple takes too much ener­gy nowa­days so I decid­ed, instead, to play Team Fortress 2.

I pur­chased it on an impulse, but this was still three years after TF2 first came out. There’s a very good rea­son I avoid­ed buy­ing it for so long: it’s the sequel to Team Fortress Classic, one of the games I was most addict­ed to in my life, and a huge time sink1. An entire day could go by with­out real­iz­ing it when I was play­ing TFC, and I pur­pose­ly did­n’t buy TF2 when Aaron was get­ting into it too; I knew I would­n’t stop if I had friends encour­ag­ing the habit.

TF2

 

Continue read­ing “Team Fortress 2”…

  1. Also the same rea­son I haven’t tried World of Warcraft. [↩]

Bobby's number two

I’ve been itch­ing to play around with some new footage late­ly cause I love edit­ing and it’s been a while since I had a good sto­ry to tell, so when Tiana invit­ed me to Bobby’s sec­ond birth­day par­ty, I could­n’t resist. I also recent­ly pur­chased some new gear in prepa­ra­tion of a wed­ding I’ve been hired to film in the Fall (with a sec­ond one poten­tial­ly lined up), and I’ve been look­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to field-test a new bag, shoul­der strap, and mono­pod.

I tend to get real­ly shy at Tiana’s par­ties cause I feel like I’m the only one who does­n’t know any­one else there, but she does a good job of mak­ing sure I’m nev­er left alone for too long and includ­ed in most con­ver­sa­tions. She’s also the only oth­er per­son I know to actu­al­ly design cus­tom invi­ta­tions. This time, how­ev­er, she was sport­ing a perky new hair­cut, and no longer a veg­e­tar­i­an (for now). Such is the pow­er of St. Hubert.

Continue read­ing “Bobby’s num­ber two”…

Cranium Party, the Third

So out of the 26 peo­ple I invit­ed to the third Cranium Party, 9 said they could­n’t make it, 13 said they’d come, and 4 did­n’t RSVP at all.

Out of the 13 peo­ple who said they’d come, only 3 of them showed up, and one of those was Jessica, who was sort of co-host­ing this one with me, so fuck yeah she was there1.

That means that includ­ing me, we had four peo­ple, which is the bare min­i­mum to play Cranium.

To say I was dis­ap­point­ed is an under­state­ment. I spent a great deal of time and ener­gy mak­ing the invi­ta­tions, and clean­ing the house so my guests could be com­fort­able. Not to men­tion all the food I bought, most of which went bad because there weren’t enough peo­ple to eat it (and espe­cial­ly when the guests who do show up also bring plen­ty of snacks).

We did end up play­ing a good game, but it was entire­ly not worth all the prepa­ra­tion.

Jessica offered to host the next one at her place — very nice of her because that real­ly means she’s offer­ing to shoul­der all the respon­si­bil­i­ties — but I feel like Cranium par­ties are my thing. An invi­ta­tion is not only an invi­ta­tion to play, it’s an invi­ta­tion into my social cir­cle. The guest list is tight­ly con­trolled; any­one on it is either a very close friend, or some­one I can tell has the poten­tial to be. I want to have all the respon­si­bil­i­ty, because it’s one of the ways I can show these peo­ple they’re impor­tant to me.

At the same time, some peo­ple are already ask­ing about the next one2, which I find strange because the impres­sion I get is that it’s a low pri­or­i­ty, nev­er some­thing peo­ple put in their sched­ule and plan around. I’m pret­ty sure most only go if noth­ing else comes up on that day.

That’s fine by me — not every­one loves doing bad impres­sions of Christopher Walken as much as I do — but when peo­ple say they’re going to be there and don’t show up, it’s a com­plete deval­u­a­tion of my efforts. I’m seri­ous­ly ques­tion­ing if I’m going to host anoth­er Cranium par­ty any time soon. If I do, the next invite list will undoubt­ed­ly be much short­er.

At the very least, the day was sal­vaged with some bub­ble tea, Chinese food, and qual­i­ty time with Jessica.

  1. She’s also the only per­son to make it to all Cranium par­ties up to now. [↩]
  2. I pur­pose­ly don’t make them a reg­u­lar thing because I want them to be spe­cial. [↩]