Calvin's Weblog

Mid-August Weekend Update

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but I'm actually in two bands now. For the past month I've been rehearsing with Randomblind (as well as with Scarecrow Balcony) and on Friday night I played my first show with the RandomBoyz at The Pic on Friday night. It was also the first night for Craig from The Joint Chiefs - the new Randomblind drummer, who like me, started rehearsing with us about a month ago. It was a little rough nailing down 10 songs when half of the band is new, but considering the timeframe, I think we did a damn good job. Also on the bill were Tenant and 'The Join' - both really awesome bands.

Saturday was a fairly lazy day, as the days after late night gigs tend to be... (wasn't home 'till about 4AM) - so we watched The Last Samurai again, before a rendezvous with Scarecrow Balcony for a photo shoot. We got some great shots - I can tell... the setup was killer, so I'm hopong there are a few good bio shots out of this session. Then it was off to Scarecrow rehearsal, then up Buraby Mountain to watch the fireworks finale. That was both a good idea, and a bad one. Good because aparently there were over 400,000 people downtown, and we'd never have gotten in there (let alone out) alive... but bad because there were several thousand people on Burnaby Mountain too, with a police baracade, roadblocks, the whole bit - so we settled for a side street up the mountain with a decent view, where we sat on a bluff and had a couple beers while chewing the fat and watching fireworks from 18 kilometers away.

Sunday, while another late-to-rise day, was actually pretty productive. We got some errands run, then Carole and I spent the day in the big city. We had paninis in a quaint Italian bistro, we finally went to STORYEUM, we got over to relative's house for a visit, and we saw The Manchurian Candidate down on Granville. We had planned to see Metallica's 'Some Kind of Monster' but it wasn't playing. Oh well, I guess I'm going to have to download it ... just kidding Lars, it was a joke! don't sue me!
Storyeum was fun, and educational - I think everyone should check it out once, but I don't think it was worth $23. I was keeping a running tab of what I though the experience was worth, and I think that at $16 a ticket, they'd be stretching it. There were NOT any of the 'state of the art special effects' that were promises (and that I was looking forward to), but rather it was more like walking through the B.C. Museum in Victoria, with the only difference being live actors to bring the sets to live. However, things I learned that made the experience interesting, educational, and worth seeing at least once:
- Barkerville was at one time the largest North American city north of San Fransico and west of Chicago.
- Spain owned western Canada for a long time - it was only when they pulled out to concentrate their efforts on their South American holdings that the Hudson's Bay Company crept in and Spain never bothered to contest when the British started moving in. We were almost Spanish!
- 150 years ago, the native population of BC was nearly a quarter of a million. After the white man introduced smallpox, the decimated population was less than 25,000.
- Over 600 Chinese workers were killed while building the railroad through the rocky mountains alone.
- Over 22,000 Japanese fishing boats were 'confiscated' and moored in lower mainland harbours during the 2nd world war.
- B.C. ALMOST joined the United States - only the promise of a transCanada railroad made us join the Canadian Confederation. Six years later, when a railroad still had not been started, we threatened to secede and join the US. It ALMOST happened again - so the Canadian government started the railroad imediately. Whew! That was close!