Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Are We Not Men?

We are Devo (for Halloween).






















Lifesaver

This is bizarre. Last night a bunch of us went out for dinner. My lighting tech was sitting next to me, devouring a plate of chicken. He started flailing around and grabbing my arm, indicating that he was choking. I instinctively gave the little bastard the heimlich maneuver until he popped out a piece of chicken the size of a quarter and then continued eating. I didn't even think about it. Today Andre gave me this:














I think, at least according to Ghost Dog, that I own someone's life and can have him kill people for me at my command. This may or may not be true, and frankly tarnishes the act of general kindness a bit.

You can't prove that I had anything to do with this

Mark feeding a bag of Cheetos into a paper shredder, because he was bored. I am surrounded by lunatics. And in case you were wondering, it was my idea.











Bring a Sweater

Last night the bartender at the hotel bar asked me where the tour was headed next. When I told her that we were going to Montreal she advised me to bring a sweater. Apparently she had failed to notice my wool coat, scarf, gloves and mink hat that I have been wearing all week since it has been 36 degrees.

















I'm in Toronto today.



















And was yesterday as well.



















The show last night was a corker.















We are at Massey Hall, which is basically an average theatre not unlike the last five or six in any way other than this:
















This is the room where Johnny Cash proposed to June Carter.
Five minutes after someone told me this I ran into the actor who plays Corey on the Canadian show Trailer Park Boys backstage. The show is a riot. Embrace it:






These two things made my night.
In something completely unrelated, I find Canadians to be generally devoid of character, history and culture (sorry), but occasionally they paint some weird shit on the side of a building that makes you wonder why you don't live there.

















The other thing that is vaguely tempting about Toronto is a place called Active Surplus. It's a close-out type store on Queen street with aisles stacked floor to ceiling with the most random things known to man.















It's predominantly an electronics surplus store, but they had boxes of binoculars, music boxes, strobe lights, garden shears, light bulbs, sunglasses, baby arms...















Rotary telephones...
















And all manner of nonsense. The greatest thing is the hand written descriptions on each of the thousands of boxes in the store. The indicate that I may not be have been the only one who had no idea what some of that stuff was. Genius.






















































Today is Halloween.



I went to Fran's for lunch today.
















All of the waiters and waitresses were in costume. There was a lifeguard, a witch, a doctor and this guy who came dressed as Darth Vader.


















It was goddamn hilarious to see this guy taking orders wearing a cape and helmet. The hilarity was only compounded when Tim and I started calling him 'Darth Waiter.' Oh, it hurts. On the little blackboard that listed the waiters which stations they were working it just said 'darth.'















Not that I'm one to talk. Tonight's festivities include, in case you had forgotten, an encore of DEVO songs with band and crew in costume. Here are the preparations:


















Cha-ching.