Waterfalls and Wanderlust…

Day 1:

The unending crap storm that has been summer 08 has seemed to continue into this trip. Having finally finished our first drive across the unending boredom of western Manitoba and Saskatchewan we pulled in to the bustling metropolis of Swift Current. After 12 hours or so on the road I have to admit I was dying to hit the hot tub. What does the summer of fun have for us next? An ice cold whirlpool and swimming pool that have apparently been freshly filled with water from Lake Superior. Shitty shitty finish to a long boring day.

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God of War and Keeper of Water

Direct confirmation of earlier almost-proof as the Mars Phoenix Lander has officially “tasted” water inside its special little soil baking ovens. Scientists are now trying to determine if the water ever thaws to the point where it’s available for any sort of biological reaction. NASA has also extended funding for the mission an extra five weeks giving them a chance to expand on the fantastic results achieved so far.

Efforts to reproduce the experiment using an ez-bake oven and brownie mix were a delicious, delicious failure.

Pre-Holiday Roundup!

It’s finally here!

While nowhere near as fun or blog-worthy as my original plan, starting tomorrow I’m still getting out of this godforsaken city til at least the 20th of August. School doesn’t start until the 4th so I really don’t care when I get back.

As a result updates will likely be sporadic since I have no way of knowing if our hotel(s) in nowhere Wyoming and bumfuck Montana will have reliable wifi. I’m hoping our actual destination resort will, but you never know. In any case I’m planning to spend more time white water rafting than on the net but given the total lack of nightlife I imagine I’ll still be online fairly often when I can.

I really hope so anyway as I’ve been having a crazy run at P-stars lately cashing in most of the (admittedly low stakes) tourneys I’ve played in the past week. Made a solid few bucks at the cheapo PLO tables last night too. Probably my best play last night was check raising a guy all in after I flopped a boat.

I was in the bb with a Patrick Roy (3x 3x) to those who aren’t hockey fans. Blind got doubled at 1st position and about half the table called. I matched and we saw the flop. 3x 9x 9x came out (w/ no flush possibilities) and I inwardly smiled. I had to think I was tops. I checked and it went around most of the table before we saw a bet and a double. I pretended to hem and haw for a second then called and the rest of the table folded leaving just me and the raiser. The turn came out with a Jd (and again no flush help) I played it slow and checked to him.

Now this guy had been really aggressive all night, the moment he sensed weakness he pushed hard and never seemed to consider the possibility of someone slowplaying him. I was counting on this and sure enough when I quickly checked to him he put about 1/4 of his (then cheapleading) stack into the pot. I put him on a 9 with a nice kicker as he hadn’t seemed too aggressive until the flop hit (I also suspected the guy that bet on the flop initially had held the other 9 as he’d been playing any suited connectors all tourney. It was possible however that he had a straight draw so I decided to go hard. All-in (to take me to about 2/3 of his total stack. I imagine he suspected he’d been had but he called anyway and we flipped. Sure enough he had Ad 9d and I ended up just short of being the new chipleader.

It was a nice run, as in the next few hands I saw a QQ and Rockets but got no action both times. My cards ran a bit dry after that, but I still managed to hold on til heads up when another pocket pair ran into a low set and I finished in second. Still a respectable payday though.

Here’s hoping I can keep the run going while on holidays and maybe even play some live poker. There’s got to be an indian casino or two in wyoming/montana right?

Shittiest thing about the trip? Having to watch incredibly annoying and biased American Olympic coverage, not an event where a yank has a chance to medal? Good luck seeing even 5 minutes of it, and if one didn’t medal you’re never going to see the podium. Missing CBC’s final olympic broadcast and getting that silly little shiver when I first hear the music will suck too. CTV/TSN’s coverage will never be as good. I can only hope our resort in the mountains gets satellite with CBC, it happened once in the past on a trip there and my fingers are crossed.

Now dear readers, in closing I leave you with the cutest Darth Vader ever.

Luke, I am your gender-confused father.

Ich bin nicht ein Roboter!

I am a lion!

Well, sadly fringe is done for another year. I didn’t get to a record personal attendance (my best is still 24 or 25, I can’t remember) but I did get close with 23 different plays. As usual I went into the festival wondering if there was enough I truly wanted to see, and as usual I enjoyed everything I’d targeted before going out and catching some of the shows with buzz and loving those too.

Best Show I saw?

Serious: Spiral Dive

Comedy: Tie between Sherlock Holmes (S&F) and The Shakespeare Show (Monster) with an Honorable mention to Chris Gibbs for Antoine Feval.

Sketch/Improv: Tie: Outside Joke/Improvision with an honorable mention to Phil van Hest

Genre Straddling Honorable Mention to the hilarious yet tear jerking Testicular Cancer show: Balls.

More wrapup after the jump!

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Love the Mall…

Personal fringe attendance has dropped a bit for me at this point in the week. Combination of shitty scheduling and personal tasks always seem to wipe out one or two days in week 2 but this year is worse than most.

Tuesday night I caught my favorite performance poet (not suprisingly a short list anyway) Mr. Jem Rolls at the King’s Head. Jem was in his usual fine form though I imagine I’m easy to please while full of Half-Pints Bulldog Amber and a plate of Scotch Eggs with Curry Fries. His command of language and pure intensity always blow me away and after every performance of his I attend I can’t help but wonder if I would have enjoyed poetry in school if it had been someone like him.

A hearty thank you to the King’s Head staffer who found my Cell Phone after it dropped from my pocket and who announced it to the crowd, and a hearty fuck you to the other staffer who told me that they hadn’t found one even after that announcement.

Unfortunately the vast majority of shows started exactly as Jem ended so we were faced with waiting around a solid 2.5 hours for something we’d actually want to see or going to do something else. We voted to go see Dark Knight which,  despite my hatred of Batman Begins, was excellent.

Wednesday was another slow day. With the downpour hitting off and on I decided to take my Mother (who is on crutches) to another show. We voted for The Shakespeare Show at PTE for accessibility reasons and Monster Theatre didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t quite up there with the best of Ryan Gladstone’s plays (Napoleon’s Secret Diary is still my fave) but the quick tempo and mixture of jokes were enjoyable. The woman who played most of the other parts (Tara something… mind blanking) was especially good at playing off of Ryan and swapping between characters. Unfortunately we called it a night after that and hit the BDI on the way home.

Tonight being the Bomber game I won’t be seeing anything either so I’ll have to hope to catch up on the weekend. Here’s hoping I can get a solid four or five in on Friday again

Real Men find Jesus Sexually Attractive…

Ok, so it was an extra day. Yesterday was a nutso day of cooking and fringing. Post title courtesy of Phil the Void, not sure what’s up with the Jesus theme I generally just pick a funny line that sticks out in my memory of something I’ve seen the day before.

Since my last entry I’ve seen:

The Pig Stoopid Improv show (with the Probably Cast):

At MTC up the Alley

The Big Stupid Improv Show was originally done as a last minute fill by Wes Borg for an empty venue slot at the Edmonton fringe using random fringe actors from a wide circle of friends. It has since become a semi-constant show in Winnipeg and is generally done as the same concept. Here it Winnipeg it seems to be run by the Crumbs guys.

As per usual it was long form improv with the “Director’s Cut” framing. For those who haven’t seen this it basically goes like this: 3 or 4 different scenes are started, usually grabbing a suggestion from the audience. After each act of all the scenes are complete the audience “votes out” one of the scenes based on applause.

As usual with Crumbs and Big Stupid I really wish they’d take a few more audience suggestions. This is partly because I’m not a massive fan of really drawn out long form, but also because in the past I’ve seen some of these performers just take whatever suggestion and more or less ignore it and go into what seems like an awfully planned performance. Improv is about spontaneity and having a few extra audience suggestions at points in the scene keeps you honest. Ryan Gladstone (much as I love his work) was particularly bad about forcing the scene to go where he wanted.

All that said, the show I saw was my favorite version of the BSIS in years and was well worth the punch on my Buddy Pass. Chris Gibbs was very funny in his oft deadpan way and Penny Ashton and Fraz (I think his name is) stole the show at times.

Overall, well worth seeing if you’ve got an empty slot and they’re on. 3.5/5

Phil the Void (Venue 3: Pantages Studio)

Phil van Hest’s “Too Smart” show from 2 years ago returns with a sequel. Very funny oddball humour that’s a mix of observational stand-up and ranting. Unlike some american performers Phil doesn’t entirely have a grasp on the Canadian experience, but we’ll forgive him since he’s very, very funny. A friend of mine recommended the show to me with the phrase “He’s a lovable asshole.” After seeing the show I’d have to agree. Besides, how can you not like a guy that drinks Red Stripe on stage.
The Aethernomicon (Venue #3)

H.P. Lovecraft… Puppets… What more could an ubergeek ask for? Well, a little more work on pacing for starters.

The Watch and Spectacle Puppet Company is a local endeavour that was behind the truly magnificent “The Clock in the Lobby” at Fringe 2007. Thankfully they’ve gotten a bigger, less sweltering venue this time and as a result I was able to spend less time fanning myself with my program and more time watching the puppets.

The Aethernomicon tells the story of a book of dark alien secrets that could lead to the destruction of humanity. It’s all very lovecraft-y (which is incredibly hard to describe so go look it up on wikipedia if you aren’t familiar with him) and much like last year’s effort is incredibly well done. The story is told in a series of vignettes from the story of an exiled scholar. A translator of the scholar’s book gives us the framing story. From what I could see they appeared to have taken the WFP review into consideration and had shortened a few of the interlude scenes but I think perhaps they could have gone further. In particular the complex dance of the protos could have been a solid 60 seconds shorter without losing any effect.

The stars of the show are inevitably the puppets themselves. Decidedly creepy, yet with undeniable personality in their movements they’re unlikely to change the minds of any puppet-phobes out there. The craftsmanship obvious in every object that appears on stage is truly a delight to behold. The puppeteers themselves give their movements an intensity that keeps the audience enthralled…

Unfortunately a good puppeteer does not necessarily equal a good actor and much like The Clock in the Lobby the Aethernomicon suffers a bit from the substandard vocal acting of some of the cast. I honestly think the next step for the W&S company is to get some true actors involved to do the voices (of at least the main characters) for their next production.

The single greatest problem with staging such a complex show is the time required between scenes. At times the blackness seemed to last for minutes and would only be lifted for the briefest of scenes before fading to black again.. I do entirely understand that a large part of this is a limitation of the medium and the complexity of the show, but there were certainly times that something else should have been done. The audience was absolutely rivited while the action was on stage but the frequent, lengthy fades to black were tiresome and in all honesty if it had been 30 minutes later in the day I would likely have fallen asleep during one.

My only suggestion would be to be perhaps to have used the extra space they had this year to have another secondary performance area off to the side where the simple conversations could take place. That way the audience wouldn’t have to wait for backdrops to be moved in and out so constantly. This area could even be kept dimly lit to remind us that this is the story that’s being played out. However, I suppose that this might A: cause personnel issues and B: The company likely designed the sets months before they knew what size of space they would have.

All that being said, I really enjoyed the show and would recommend it to everyone who enjoys a little puppet gore but a warning: it sold out very quickly last night. I recommend getting there early.

Jesus was a fringe performer…

Fringe has been amazing thus far, to the point where I’ve had no time at all to write anything til now.

Sadly as is becoming routine I missed the first night of the festival due to a softball game. Thankfully I made up for with a quick hit for two thursday night and a solid day long 4 plays Friday, almost 5 but we got in the wrong line for Jem Rolls and missed tickets by about 45 seconds.
Luckily for us, solace was found at the Cupcakery on Stradbrook as we waited for perennial favorite “Sound and Fury” at the Gas Station (venue #18)
but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Thursday saw us trying to beat the inevitable crowds at T.J. Dawe’s later shows by catching Totem Figures on our first night.
Unfortunately for me my fringe companions chose to tell me the wrong time after having picked up the tickets so it was by the skin of my teeth (and winded and sweaty after having sprinted from Graham and Smith to PTE) that I made it inside at more or less the stroke of 7:14:59. While TJ was his usual rapid-fire, word-spinning self I can’t help but agree with the WFP that the show could easily have been trimmed a bit. Thankfully the seats at PTE are comfy so it’s hardly a bit issue. Dawe seemed to be even more personal than usual, telling us more about his inner self than simply observations and exaggerations of his personal adventures. He’s also apparently not living in Winnipeg anymore which would explain why I don’t randomly see him around these days. 4.25/5

Second up thursday night was “The Spy” a strange and (one might think after the performance we saw) not entirely ready one man 60’s/70’s spy spoof which was hampered by horrible sound and a few other hiccoughs. If the theme catches your eye it might be worth catching later in the week as there were some genuinely funny bits and a smoother more flowing performance would help the whole thing keep it’s zing. 3/5

The rest of thursday night looked a little sparse and we didn’t want to be up til 2:00 AM either so we decided to call it a night and get back out on our day off Friday.
I dragged out my cousin, a relative fringe newbie, and we randomly caught the first show near where we parked… which turned out to be The Movies (abridged) which was a perfectly pleasant (if none to original) mini-ode to movies with the subplot of decrying the force feeding of hollywood blockbusters via giant chain video stores. It was pleasant enough and helped along by some hilarious (and hilariously terrible) impressions and homages. 3.5/5

Next up was “How to fake Clinical Depression” which again had a few good moments but was not particularly memorable. I sadly couldn’t tell you much about it even 2 hours after I’d seen it which is never a good sign. The main actor is likeable enough, but I guess the script just didn’t grab me. 2.5/5

A pleasant beer and a terrible outdoor stage magician/”comedian” later (seriously bud, you’re a total hack and I can’t believe you quit your day job for this) we settled in for dinner and a beer with Chris Gibbs at the King’s Head. The Further Adventures of Antoine Feval a sequel to a much beloved show from a few years ago. As always Gibbs was hilarious and entertaining but also as always there was issues with getting the shows started and the sound system. Please Chris, spend the money on a sound man, or at least beg a friend to help you get going for the first show or two. When you’re already fitting a show you admitted you’d never done in under 70 mins into a 60 minute slot we don’t need you struggling with a sound board for an extra ten minutes and missing our next show. No, you definitely don’t have to have seen the original show to get the most out of this one… 4.5/5

Unfortunately missing Jem left us with the decision to simply head to Gas Station early, so we didn’t get to fit in 5 shows. The aforementioned delicious cupcake along with some brazillian music from a combo outside the Gas Station Theatre left us in the mood for a good evening ending show. The victorian antics of L.A. based Sound and Fury delivered in spades. Their infectious enthusiasm and apparently genuine love of Canada and Fringe circuit is always so nice to see. The show itself (while imo not quite reaching the heights of previous efforts) was amazing and I was happy to see that they got a 5 star rating in todays WFP. There’s no doubt they deserved it, and you should get there early if you want to catch the show despite the annoying seperateness of the GST.

More news tomorrow… time to catch a show.

The Dark Side of the Garden

My favorite shirt ever has just been reprinted at Threadless. If you buy anything from them, please do so through that link or here as I get a buck or two towards a tshirt for myself if you do.

In which the Winnipeg Fringe Festival is about to begin…

It’s almost Fringe time… A few days from now the area surrounding Winnipeg’s Old Market Square will be filled with Venue desks, theatregoers and food trucks. 12 straight days of theatre goodness for increasingly not low prices await the citizens of Winnipeg who haven’t fled to cottages or holidays. The program this year looks passable, though not quite as good as recent years to my mind.

There seems to be a surplus of “OMG GAY” and “OMG FEMINIST” crap plays this year, though of course it’s hard to make a judgement based just on the program description (though I fully expect to see that first impression justified by eventual reviews.) It makes me curious though, who wants to watch this crap? None of my gay friends want to have anything to do with these incredibly stereotypical pieces of “art.” As one friend put it… “Why on earth would I want to waste an hour watching someone camp up their queen side to sell tickets to middle aged women.”

Perhaps it’s just that older housewife/soccer mom demo who see soaking up a bit of “gay culture” (even though it’s nothing of the sort) as something naughty that spices up their day. It would certainly explain how Steven and Chris have gotten renewed for another year. My opinion? If you want to see a good play about gay issues go see something like “Bash’d” from last year that is both a funny play about gay culture and also addresses important issues.

As for the “feminist” plays, ok, we get it, not enough plays are written about women’s issues, I totally agree. Don’t you think that rather than simply making play after play that’s ranting about it without any other quality to the (what can only loosely be termed) play you should maybe just write a genuine funny or dramatic play that approaches and discusses women’s issues? If you want to preach to the choir by ranting to a small crowd of people perhaps get into stand-up instead? I sometimes wonder if some of these acts are simply “I ran out of time to write my actual play and the program deadline is in a few days” moments.

In other “shitty premise” news… someone is doing a Napoleon Dynamite themed play. Really? I mean honestly? You don’t think you missed the boat on that one bud? I may be in the minority as I despised the movie except for the inclusion of the awesome Tina Majorino.

In happier news:

Old favourites Sound and Fury are back again with a Sherlock Holmes spoof that’s sure to be awesome. They’re also in the comparatively huge Gas Station this year after having been stuck in Cinematheque last time. For a group that solidly filled warehouse on a regular basis in their previous appearances I’m not sure what the schedulers were thinking last year shoving them into that tiny venue (especially given some of the crap that played to empty houses at the bigger venues.)

Speaking of Cinematheque they are apparently not a venue this year but are instead showing a regular schedule during the fringe. I’d question the wisdom of this except for the fact that the second Friday of the fest they’re showing “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” complete with a serving of Mead, delicious!

T.J. Dawe is back again (or perhaps not back since he now lives here) and will no doubt be performing to packed houses from day one. Here’s hoping they give him a big venue with a small stage since it’s ideal for him and shitty for a lot of people who get assigned them. I hope I get to see him this year, but getting into his shows without an advance ticket is such a PITA and I prefer to get about with my Buddy Pass.

Chris Craddock is giving Winnipeggers a second chance to see pornStar, which was a hit back in 2005. Here’s hoping I get to see it this time, Craddock is quickly becoming my favourite of the new crop of Fringe playwrights.

Screwed and Clued is back for the first time in a while, I haven’t yet heard who’s in the actual cast for this one but hopefully it’s a continuation of the funny we’ve seen in past years. Also returning are perennial improv artists ImproVision who hopefully have a better venue this year as well.

Yours truly is going to try to enjoy the festival despite the never ending rain of shit that has been falling on him this summer. I’m dedicating my fringing this year to the memory of my grandmother who first introduced me to the festival and who passed away last fall.