Posts tagged with "Trolley"

Trolley and Steph's Wedding

Changing groomsmen

Not only the day that Trolley got hitched, but a chance to see Adam and Tomasini and Eric and Nick and Alison; the peo­ple I only get to hang out with when camp­ing or par­ty­ing at the farm. I missed Adam and his ever ebul­lient atti­tude most of all, some­thing that nev­er fails to buoy the spir­its. Even though we did­n’t get a chance to talk much through all the prepa­ra­tion, it was enough to hear his voice and laugh­ter.

Handshake

Thumbnail: Wedding handshake
Thumbnail: Wedding handshake
Thumbnail: Taking cell phone photos
Thumbnail: Walking to the aisle
Thumbnail: Just married
 

It was back to Stanley’s Maple Farm1 for the out­door wed­ding. The rain con­tin­ued up to half an hour before the cer­e­mo­ny then stopped com­plete­ly, as if god him­self had a hand in ordain­ment.

You just need to look at the smile on Trolley’s face to under­stand how hap­py he is.

The recep­tion was open bar, with prime rib and a dessert buf­fet at the end. I had been wait­ing over a year to have the prime rib din­ner, as I was going through an undi­ag­nosed case of IBS at Aaron’s wed­ding and was left eat­ing bread. Even Pat, my gour­mand friend, said that it was cooked to per­fec­tion, and found out that the venue has a deal with the farm up the road to get the best cuts of meat.

We sur­prised the new­ly wed­ded cou­ple with the shoe game, where they answer a series of ques­tions with­out know­ing how the oth­er one will answer. They sur­prised us with how many they answered in sync. A good sign for the new­ly wed.

Thumbnail: Wedding guestbook
Thumbnail: Center piece
Thumbnail: Photographer sticks his tongue out
Thumbnail: Aaron drinks
Thumbnail: Wedding favour
 

Nick humourous­ly not­ed that there weren’t many sin­gle girls around, but being able to hang out with Aaron in the MC booth made me feel much less awk­ward and aban­doned than the last wed­ding I went to.

At one point, Trolley came up to me and asked me _____ __ _________ ____ _____. It was his wed­ding, but he was con­cerned about me. I could­n’t believe it even entered his mind with every­thing going on around him, and it was cer­tain­ly the part I’ll remem­ber most about that night.

  1. The same place Aaron got mar­ried. [↩]

Trolley's B-Day '07

Thumbnail: Rock 'N Bowl alley 
Thumbnail: Aaron and Karen 
Thumbnail: My shoes in blacklight 
Thumbnail: The girls bowl 
Thumbnail: Making a wish 

Since he’s nev­er been bowl­ing before, we decid­ed to go for Trolley’s 30th.

Rock ‘N Bowl is an inter­est­ing phen­emo­nen. Aaron thinks it’s for the 14-year-olds to get all hooched up and feel like they’re going club­bing. Didn’t stop us — Trolley includ­ed — from get­ting card­ed at our table when pitch­ers.

Five-pin is hard­er than I remem­ber. Maybe because I was try­ing to spin every­thing, so it would either hit the left pins, or com­plete­ly gut­ter on the right when I tried to adjust. For our two teams, it was a pret­ty close match through the night.

For the pho­tographs, I tried to play around with light set­tings. 2nd-cur­tain-sync would­n’t work for me, and I did­n’t real­ize that there’s a set­ting for it on the 580EX flash which over­rides cam­era set­tings. As a result, the pic­tures are most­ly flash-less to cap­ture the mood of the wild­ly swing­ing light.

The next day, I dis­cov­ered that I some­how pulled my left glute and right groin mus­cles. A gen­tle reminder on Trolley’s birth­day that we’re all get­ting old­er.

Musical Context

For years, I lis­tened to music based on my mood. Playlists were well suit­ed for this. I had one full of sad songs for my sad days, days that would last months at a time. I had one with only quick-paced, aggres­sive gui­tar riffs and lung-spit­ting screams, for the pock­ets of rage I’d encounter every now and then. One that was most­ly elec­tron­ic inspi­ra­tion — songs that would move me when I need­ed to move. One for the par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult days, con­sist­ing of sto­ic melodies that could fill me with grit deter­mi­na­tion. There was even one for the bit­ter­sweet moments, per­fect for a post-show buzz. Every song served a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose.

This mot­ley group­ing of sin­gle tracks may have been the result of the way I dis­cov­ered new music. Tenaciously, with ears always open, I would record as much as I could that caught my fan­cy, jot­ting down any dis­cernible lyrics I could use as a basis for a search, and nev­er stop­ping until I could find the song. Hysteria, by Muse, is just one exam­ple, which I hap­pened to dis­cov­er while watch­ing an awards show. For a long time, it remained a song I’ve enjoyed on my for it’s sub­tle build-up, and ener­getic, near­ly chaot­ic, synth-inspired bass lines.

Things changed when I lived with Trolley. He exposed me to bands of dif­fer­ent gen­res, and being a musi­cal col­lec­tor, this expo­sure took the form of com­plete albums. One of them hap­pened to be Absolution.

Now that I have the entire album, Hysteria is known to me as track 7, com­ing after the pen­sive Interlude, but before the gen­tle, ethe­re­al, Blackout. In this con­text, pre­ced­ed and suc­ceed­ed by two equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant tracks, the song does­n’t sound the same.

Eventually, none of my playlists were appro­pri­ate for what I was feel­ing. At first, I thought that this was the result of increas­ing­ly sub­tle or com­plex emo­tions, but I’ve come to real­ize that it’s sim­ply because I’ve matured, and as a result, my emo­tions have evened out. With the wis­dom and seren­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with grow­ing old­er, came the loss of emo­tion­al highs and lows that would inspire me.

Now it’s become dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to a song in a playlist. Every album has an order. Every track has its place. Listening to a song out of its musi­cal con­text may be hard, but lis­ten­ing to music with­out the rush of inspi­ra­tion is hard­er.

And this has become my musi­cal con­text.

Trolley's B-Day '05

Thumbnail: Chillin outside
Thumbnail: Strike a pose
Thumbnail: Shots of Jag
Thumbnail: Dual Stella cans
Thumbnail: Cheers

A cou­ple of shots (no pun intend­ed) from Trolley’s birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, also mark­ing my first for­ray into the dig­i­tal SLR cam­era world. I had no idea how much was involved in pho­tog­ra­phy until I start­ed going ful­ly man­u­al (quite a change from my sim­ple point-and-shoot Elph), but just try­ing to achieve what’s “tech­ni­cal­ly” cor­rect has made me appre­ci­ate both what the pro­fes­sion­als go through and what the artists try to express.

The Day Has Been Bright And Warm

I spent the week­end at Trolley’s place and had a great time. We just hung out, played Gamecube, and watched some movies. I’m not sure if I over­stayed my wel­come, but I’m sure that any good host is able to blur that fine line. It’s good to have anoth­er friend that I can con­nect with. Wheaties and Ian went ski­ing at Tremblant, and although I was invit­ed, I felt like I was­n’t pre­pared to spend over $100 on a lift tick­et with rentals.

Trolley also intro­duced me to Crank Yankers, a hilar­i­ous show on Comedy Central. The con­cept of the show is that peo­ple make crank calls, and both the roles of caller and reciev­er are played out using pup­pets. The crank calls are usu­al­ly very orig­i­nal though, some­times involv­ing a third par­ty (such as a moth­er pick­ing up the phone while her son is call­ing about a penis enlarg­er). Everything is very well done, and the actors are able to impro­vise their lines with per­fect pre­ci­sion depend­ing on what an unwit­ting par­tic­i­pant says. My favourite
series of crank calls are by Spoonie Love, the res­i­dent playa (played by SNL’s Tracey Morgan). Sometimes he’ll call a news­pa­per to place a clas­si­fied ad, and his mes­sage will involve bust­ing a dou­ble hor­i­zon­tal on some­one’s ass.

Thom lent me his Pantera DVD, 3 Vulgar Videos from Hell. The music has­n’t been that great, but the behind-the-scenes and con­cert footage is good. It’s also mes­mer­iz­ing to see the con­fi­dence that Phil Anselmo exudes at the con­certs, the way Danko Jones or Kid Rock seem to in their music videos.

I was awak­ened by Dolly scratch­ing at my sheets this morn­ing. As soon as I lift­ed them up, she went under­neath and tried to sleep on my stom­ach. Unfortunately, my thin frame did­n’t pro­vide much of a foun­da­tion, and she slid to one side, but even­tu­al­ly fell asleep there any­way. It’s the first time she has been com­fort­able enough to sleep under the sheets, instead of beside my head as usu­al.

I stum­bled across the site of an intel­li­gent girl who writes about things in rela­tion­ships not com­mon­ly dis­cussed, and who hap­pens to inhab­it the same city as I do. I enjoy the pol­ish and depth that her edi­to­ri­als have, but I think it’s her open­ness that I can appre­ci­ate most. It’s always fas­ci­nat­ing to find out a female opin­ion on some of the more taboo sex relat­ed sub­jects, instead of the opin­ion which oth­er guys believe they know.

The entire Columbia Space Shuttle inci­dent has made me feel like we’re still very prim­i­tive in our explo­ration meth­ods, and that we should sim­ply leave well enough alone until we’re ready. It’s like we’re try­ing to break the sound bar­ri­er again, and peo­ple are sac­ri­fic­ing their lives in the pur­suit of knowl­edge. I sup­pose that if they’re will­ing to make that sac­ri­fice, then their deci­sion must be respect­ed. Otto Lilienthal would be proud.