Cary’s 100% Generic Blog

It’s a Modest Mouse kinda night. Although I just downloaded a song by The Magic Numbers from Music Glue, and I kinda want to find more of their stuff.

Muneeb and I both bought cameras on Boxing Day. His is to document his adventures in NYC; mine to document my travels in Europe next summer (a little early, I know, but I want to learn how to use the camera now so I’m not fooling around when I’m travelling. And it was a super good deal!).

At the ArtSci get-together on the 28th, one of us suggested that we start photoblogs. Since I have a thoroughly underused blog just sitting on some webspace, I figured where better to post my pictures? I need to learn how to use it before I head off to Europe next summer, so starting today I’m going to try to post one picture per day. I’ll try to provide some context along with the photo (i.e. what it is, why I took it, what I learned from the shot, what I’d like to improve) so y’all aren’t just staring at Cary’s Random Photoblog (we’ll see if this promise lasts as long as my pledge to write something everyday. Hah!). Since it’s mostly dark by the time I get home from work, I’m going to start bringing my camera to work, so I can go outside at lunchtime and take pictures of downtown Hamilton.

I’ve had the camera since the 26th, so I figure that’s 10 pictures that I owe the blog. I’ve taken around 300 shots so far, so here are the ones I like the most (in mostly chronological order). Pictures after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Me? Self-indulgent?

Never.

A lot has happened since I last updated this blog. Most prominent in my mind are: the run of Hamlet’s Dorm; applying to law schools; getting accepted to law schools (three: U of T, Osgoode Hall and UBC. And all in a four-day span); working on a new play with Scott. Like I said, a lot. I’ll write about it later

I really hope that, since I’m writing this in the “code” window, WordPress doesn’t fuck with my formatting.

Nick’s gone home for Christmas, so I have the apartment all to myself. You’d think that this would mean I’d have people over, play music loudly, rehearse my lines - stuff that I, you know, wouldn’t do when he was here, because I like to be a good roommate. Well, you’d be wrong (except for the playing music bit. I am playing music, just not loudly. Well, maybe loudly. You’d have to ask my neighbours about that).

I got fish and chips for dinner tonight from the local place. I remember Steve Dadds (or was it Galen?) telling me that they made the best fish ‘n’ chips he’d ever had. I guess management changed. I mean, they were all right, but they weren’t the best. You have to understand, I’m very attached to the place around the corner from my parents’ place, Art’s. They make the best fish ‘n’ chips of anywhere I know (although I’ve heard Hutch’s is pretty good, according to Robyn. And you can drink wine from a paper cup through a straw), and the portions they give you are absolutely ridiculous. I don’t think we’ve ever finished an order, which is too bad since fish ‘n’ chips don’t really keep the next morning the same way that pizza or Chinese or Indian food does. Anyway, the fish ‘n’ chips tie into the Nick thing, because we always said that we were going to get them but then we never did, and now I feel like I’ve betrayed him in some slight way.

When I was 8 (or 7 or 9 or however old I was), my brother and I had been playing through the Secret of Mana for SNES on cooperative, and we’d gotten to the last boss but we couldn’t beat him. For the life of us we could not kill that goddamn dragon. We must have tried twenty times to kill that fucker, but each time he’d get the better of us. Anyhow, one day Chris was away (I forget where - maybe I was sick home from school, or he had a piano lesson or something) and I decided I was going to beat that cocksucker of a final boss all on my own. And I did. And then I watched the ending of the game, and I felt like I had somehow cheapened the experience because I’d done it without Chris. We’d worked there together, and then for whatever stupid, selfish, 8-year-old reason I went and beat it on my own.

When people ask me if there’s anything in my life that I regret doing (or not doing), I always tell that story. Out of everything I’ve ever done, that’s probably what I regret most. Beating that game without my little brother. Would I find doing the same thing now stupid and petty? Sure. I doubt I’d feel that deep sense of betrayal and regret, but that’s how being 8 is I guess.

Anyhow, that’s kind of how I feel about getting those fish and chips without Nick. We’d worked our way to those fish ‘n’ chips through our 4 months of living on Locke, and then out of curiosity/hunger/laziness I went and ate them on my own.

And they weren’t even that good.

Oh well.

I know I’ve been bad. I haven’t posted anything in nearly two months now.

Things you should know:

- I graduated recently. I’m a real, honest-to-God university graduate now, which means I can write B. Arts & Sc. (Hons) when I want to be really pretentious.

- My parents bought me a Cole Clark FL1A acoustic guitar as a graduation gift. It is wonderful. But she needs a name. Suggestions?

- I’ve been working at CCE (the place I worked last summer and all school year) as the receptionist. It’s pays well, but it’s not the most intellectually stimulating job in the world.

- Still looking for a job for the fall. Hoping something at McMaster will pop up (preferably at CCE).

- Half-Past 8 P.M. is going very well. I’m extremely proud of my cast and crew and all the hard work that they put in. Now to market the shit out of it so they have an audience. We’re doing the “you must all be promoting this show” talk tonight. Can’t wait.

- The Summer Performance Festival has been getting a lot of love from me lately. New website (sidenote: I love Wordpress), and we’re meeting with the McMaster School of the Arts people sometime next week to discuss the extent to which they can support us. Official university support + money = awesomeness. People seem really interested in it, too -yesterday we had around 200 hits, and so far today we’re at 40.

- I have been spending a ridiculous amount of time on Twitter following the #iranelection stuff. It’s fascinating stuff - Twitter covered all the major events days before the major Western news meda. I am cautiously optimistic for the Iranian people.

- A few new friends to add to the sidebar. Blogdenville, a blog run by friend Jillie from Chillie, and Obscure References Monthly, a website run by my housemates Nick, Brendan and Mike. Please visit them!

 Looking back over this entry, it more closely resembles a series of tweets than a blog post. Gah! Twitter is destroying my brain.

I will come back with a longer post when I have some free time. I promise.

Maybe you’ve been following the recent events in Iran extremely closely - with Twitter, an RSS feed, and BBC News running on the television 24/7. Maybe you have absolutely no idea what’s going on - and could care less (educate yourself). Either way - there is important, potentially world-changing stuff going on in Iran right now.

Being the news junkie that I am, I’ve been following it all pretty closely - especially on Twitter, which was the best source of news on Iran from last Friday until Wednesday, when our media started to say, holy shit, these tens of thousands of people protesting an unfair, undemocratic election might actually be newsworthy! and began acting like they gave a damn.

I give a damn. There are a lot of young people protesting in Tehran - probably about my age. As far as I can tell, we’re not that different - at least not in the ways that really matter. Many of them are students with hopes, dreams, and aspirations. They want to be treated fairly. They want to be heard. And so when it became apparent that their presidential election had been stolen from them - not lost, but stolen - they took to the streets in protest. What started out as protests quickly became a movement, as the regime clamped down on communications and more people took the the streets.

Green is the colour of the movement. It represents many of the things that I take for granted - freedoms that are so deeply embedded in my way of life that I have difficulty seeing that they’re there. I don’t know how much I know about Iran’s current government is accurate, but if the little bit that I know is correct, then the protesting Iranians are amazingly courageous. There aren’t many things people outside the country can do to help, but I’ve tried to do something (changing my Twitter location to Tehran, for instance. Or even Twittering about what was going on in those early stages - to get the word out. I tried setting up a proxy, but that was beyond my technical ability, even with ). I’ve changed the header’s colour to green to show my solidarity with the Iranian people, and their hope for a freer, fairer country.

My default web browser is Google Chrome. It’s fast, not too memory intensive, and it runs tabs as separate processes, so crashing one doesn’t kill the entire browser. With that said, it’s still in beta and I run into some problems here and there (especially with pop-ups and some Flash stuff). Most annoying is the fact that I can’t write blog posts in Chrome without having all the formatting go to hell, so I have to fire up FireFox (or worse yet - Internet Explorer) and do all my writing there.

Two momentous events occured this week. The first that I began teaching my course for Kaplan. The students are nice and quite bright - they catch on really quickly - and they laugh at my jokes. Always a good sign. In some ways it’s very different from the Big Questions tutorial that I led during first semester last year. There’s actual content that I have to know and then teach to my students, which means considerably more preparation time is required. I’m also up there for three and a half hours, which is quite a bit longer than I ever had to be in front of my tutorial for Big Questions.

But there are some similarities. The relationship is very similar - teaching for Kaplan is a lot like coaching a high-end sports time. Everyone wants to be there and wants to improve. As their LSAT instructor (or continuing the analog, LSAT coach) it’s my job to get the best performance possible from each of my students. As I’m discovering, this means a lot more than just teaching the classroom material - it also means supporting them when they falter and talking them through how to get where they want to be. Even though my LSAT class is smaller than my tutorial (16 for the LSAT class versus 28 for my tutorial), it feels a lot bigger and more impersonal. That may just be the benefit of hindsight giving my BQ tutorial the advantage - I’m sure that by the end of our six weeks together, I’ll feel much closer to my class.

I’m looking forward to tonight’s class, but I’m also a little scared. They got their diagnostic test results back yesterday, and I’m not sure how they’ll all react to their scores. Already I’ve had to do some crisis prevention over email, which was fine - email gives me time to think and reflect on what I’m saying. I’m not sure how I’ll handle those same emotions/questions in class. Guess we’ll find out tonight!

The second big thing that happened this week was that I signed up for Twitter. It’s destroying my attention span; I can’t do anything without twittering (tweeting?) about it. I’ve checked my account three times already during this post, and I’ve thought about updating it at least that many times with various thoughts and feelings. I’m not a fan of how quickly stuff gets lost on my twitter page either, but I do like how easy it is to update and how easy it is to stalk my friends. It’s like what Facebook was a year ago (a.k.a. “the golden age”).

In other news:

- Half-Past rehearsals continue to go swimmingly. I’m always amazed at what my cast produces, and their ability to make me laugh at the same jokes time and time again, despite the fact that I’ve heard/read them a hundred times before.

- I still don’t have a full-time job, and I’m not sure if I really want one.

- Korea is looking better and better as a job option. But that would probably mean no more teaching for Kaplan, and I’m liking teaching for them.

- I hung out with Erin yesterday. I made strawberry-banana smoothies. The conversation was excellent and the smoothies were delicious.

- Work is going full steam ahead on the McMaster Summer Performance Festival. We (we being me, Brad, and Riane, the festival producers) met with Dr. Cockett yesterday (a Theatre & Film prof at Mac) to discuss ideas and he was very interested and enthusiastic about our ideas. We’re meeting with someone from the Classics department Friday and, if all goes according to plan, we should have some really exciting stuff to announce next week.

- Back in Oakville tomorrow and part of Friday.

- My blog is the first thing that comes up if you Google “ArtSci 1B06.”  Awesomeness.

- My blog is also apparently popular enough that people leave anonymous comments now. I think that’s somewhere between knowing what 4chan is and being the Star Wars Kid on the road to internet popularity.

Time to go prep more for tonight’s lesson. Peace, peeps.

I am now on Twitter. Follow me here.

Real updates coming soon, blog, I promise.

Listening to: Built to Spill (as always)

Finally got an email today from Shad guy. I didn’t get the job - which ticks me off, after the amount of time I spent trying to figure out what was going on with Robinson this summer - but probably for the best, as it would have screwed up Half-Past 8 P.M. for me. After our first live rehearsal I realized that I couldn’t miss any of it for something as silly as a job. Scott mentioned this over on his blog, but it was crazyawesome how seeing people acting out HP8PM took it from being a script to being a play. I hadn’t made that mental leap yet (and really, I didn’t realize that that shift was needed until after I’d had it. Weird how that stuff works, eh?), and it made me realize how much I’m starting to get invested in HP8PM.

Speaking of things I’m invested in, tomorrow is my last full day at CCE. I’m going to miss that place - not for the work, which was often pretty boring, but for the people. Everyone just has so much fun there - it’s really laid back, but still quite serious. Exactly my style. If it weren’t for the whole budget-cuts-because-the-economy’s-in-the-shitter thing I might have pressed them to hire me, but since they’re cutting my position next year I don’t think there’s any room in the budget. If I’d been a real hire instead of a work-study student I’d have been laid off, which is kind of a weird thought.

I want to write more on yesterday’s entry, but I’m not feeling terribly introspective right now. Maybe on Wednesday or Thursday.

PS Shad guy, if you’re reading this: I will be professional in my email response to you, because that is the right, professional, SHADLIKE THING TO DO. You missed your deadline to get back to me by two weeks without so much as a Twitter-length email to say why, even when I emailed you asking when I could expect an answer. In my books, that’s a fail - and I don’t want to work for people who are going to fail me. I will bitch about your behaviour on my blog that only five people read because that’s all I can do to vent my anger at how poorly you represented an organization that is near and dear to my heart.

That is all. Good night, folks.

Listening to: Jets To Brazil (because this post reflects on something from my highschool years, what else could it be?)

I almost didn’t post this as it’s terribly self indulgent, but then again what blog post isn’t? And why start to censor myself now, eh? So read on, anonymous internet millions.*

The first blog I ever had was called “The Cary Show” (I think it was a LiveJournal. Shameful, I know). I took the name from my time at Shad. On my last full day at Shad the Program Manager, James (Jim) Simpson, told me something which - at the time - I thought I’d never forget. More on that later. First, you need to understand the relationship that Jim and I had.

(A quick backgrounder for those of you who don’t know: the Shad Valley program is run at university campuses across Canada during July for high school students in their final years of study. It focuses on business, entrepreneurship, and science. Each campus splits its students up into a number of groups and gives them a theme (in my year it was “Disaster and Emergency Preparedness”). Based on this theme each group must develop a new product, as well as a company and business plan to accompany it. There’s lots of other awesome stuff too, but that’s the jist of it.)

On the first full weekend of Shad (it starts on a Sunday, I think) you head off somewhere to go camping. The camping site we were at had a beach, and as industrious teenagers do, we got to building in the sand. Given that we were a group of about ten hormonal sixteen/seventeen-year-old guys, we made a penis. A large penis (we figured it was about 20 feet long and about 3 feet across). It was damn impressive - I think I still have a picture of it, either on my Gmail or on my external harddrive somewhere. Anyway, as we were taking pictures someone wrote “SHAD” on the top of the shaft in sunscreen. Bad call.

We were at a public beach, and eventually word of our antics made it back to the program administrators, who were livid. Rumours ran throughout the group all day - what were they going to do to us? Would they kick us out? No - they couldn’t do that! That would mean losing almost half of the campus’s students. In the end Jim gave us what amounted to a stern talking to, admonishing us for our immaturity (”we expected better of you” - really? From the group that had been playing The Penis Game till four o’clock in the morning the night before? You expected better from us?), and particularly for the damage that we could have potentially caused to Shad. We weren’t going to get kicked out, but we damn near came close. I can’t really remember exactly what happened after that, but I do remember giving a heartfelt apology on behalf of the group - whether that was just to the admin crew or to all of the Shads I can’t recall. Maybe it was to both? Not sure.

(Since I’m reminiscing about Shad, here’s another stupid thing we did: most of our group meetings were on the fifth floor of the engineering building, and since taking the stairs at 8:30 in the morning was a fucking chore for most of us, we took the elevator. But since there were 52 of us and only one elevator, we took to cramming as many people inside that elevator as we could, going both up and down. We tried to count how many we fit in each time. One day we fit 38 people inside on a trip going down. For reference, the elevator’s capacity was 19 people. So we start going down, picking up speed as we go. As we’re about to hit the ground floor, we keep going - and for about 3 seconds I could see the next day’s headlines in my mind’s eye: “Group of Campers Perish in Overcrowded Elevator Accident.” I don’t think I’d ever been so scared up to that point my life. Thankfully we stopped at the basement level and the doors opened.  If the first story didn’t prove it to you, even smart teenagers can be very, very stupid sometimes (although we later learned from one of our PAs that the elevators used a hydraulic system for moving up and down, and that there was no way we could have entered free-fall). And, from talking with friends who went to other Shad campuses, we were one of the more tame groups. Anyway, back to Jimbo.)

After that I thought Jim always kinda like/hated me. No, that’s wrong - I don’t think he particularly liked me, but he respected me for stepping forward and taking hold of a bad situation. Anyway, on the last real day of Shad he took me aside and told me that I was different from the rest, and that I would do well in life because I knew how to change it from life into “The Cary Show.” He smiled, patted me on the shoulder, shook my hand, and then left. That was it (if you were wondering where the self-indulgent part was, you’ve found it).

I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant then, and I’m still not exactly sure now. But I have ideas, and I’ve been trying to live them for the past five years of my life (which, wow - I can’t believe it’s been that long). Shad’s a lot like ArtSci in that you have a group of (for the most part) really smart, really outstanding people (for instance: one of my Carleton 2004 Shads was a Morehead-Cain scholar, and now a Rhodes scholar as well) all together and intensely close. I’ve never been particularly comfortable in these kinds of groups - I know I’m awesome in my own little pond, but throw me in with these folks and my self-confidence begins to fall apart like a New Orlean’s levee in a hurricane (too soon?) So for Jim to tell me that I was somehow special was really weird for me: firstly because I didn’t really see myself as special, and secondly because I didn’t see myself as having the potential for that specialness.

I don’t really know why I typed this all out, or why I’ve been thinking so much about it lately. Maybe it’s the nostalgia kicking in because I just finished undergrad. Maybe it’s because I’m still waiting to hear back from Shad guy about working for MacShad this summer. I don’t really know. But it’s been bouncing around in my head for awhile and I wanted to get it out. Time for bed now. I have to prepare my teachbacks for Kaplan tomorrow morning. God those sessions are useless. At least I have the TFC game tomorrow night with Aunt Nik to look forward to! WHOO!

* Divide “millions” by about 100 000 and you should be closer to my actual readship.

I will update you soon. I promise.

Listening to: Three by Joel Plaskett (obviously!), but mostly to Through & Through & Through on repeat.

The first time I heard Joel Plaskett’s music I was in Grade 10. My super-cool record executive aunt had brought me a new CD to listen to, called Truthfull Truthfully. I didn’t really think much of it - she was always giving me CDs - but popped it into my CD player anyway. I liked the riffs and I liked the band’s sound, so I went out to HMV and picked up two of JP’s other records - Down At The Khyber and In Need of Medical Attention. For the longest time, I loved DATK and absolutely hated INOMA. I’ve since come around to INOMA and seen the errors of my ways.

Because of the aforementioned record executive aunt, I’ve had the opportunity to go to a number of JP/JPE shows (four? maybe 5? I lost count a long time ago), but one stands out in my mind in particular. It was just after the release of La De Da, and Joel was playing a solo show at Hugh’s Room in Toronto (lies: Pete Elkas opened for him and played electric on a few songs). He played Light of the Moon as an encore, just him and his acoustic guitar. It was haunting - I’ll never forget it.

Anyway, enough about me - onto the music!

Three feels a lot more personal than JP’s last solo album, La De Da. It seems much more Nova Scotian, less produced, and a lot more… raw? I don’t know. There’s a lot of nostalgia here, but it never becomes maudlin.There’s nothing on Three that breaks my heart like Before You Leave, but that’s OK. Not much will, to tell you the truth - which is probably more a function of what the music has grown to mean to me than it is of anything inherent to the music itself. The album’s a little folksier than JP’s earlier solo offerings, but you still get that signature cheekiness, movement, and killer guitar work. And, man, Joel: keep it up with those harmonies! More more more! They’re awesome and add a whole new dimension to the music. I love ‘em.

The moral of the story is: go out and buy Three. Or don’t go out, and just buy it online. It’s only $20.00 - which, when you consider that it’s a triple-album with 27 songs in total, and that it’s Joel Plaskett and they’re all awesome -is a pretty good deal.

Time to go work on my philosophy of science essay.