"This Chart Doesn't Even Go Up to 1956!"

Theatre. History. Head. Full. Study. Too Hard. Like that scene in Scanners. GAAAH.

Yeah. We have a big final on Tuesday, so Gio and I are cramming. It would be an understatement to say that I've got a little bit to relearn.


The term is wrapping up, which is a little bit sad. Our scenes, which we have been growing with since November, have been shelved, our songs have been performed for a last time, and on Monday our final dance project is due. As sad as it may be, I am very excited to pick up some new courses, and work with new instructors. I'm keeping today's post at a minimum -- typing is difficult.

Enjoy squirrel picture.

"Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat"

It seems that Central Park is what it's cracked up to be. A surprisingly fun day was spent kicking across the park, width wise, twice. We hit up the particularly scary Alice in Wonderland statue which at left is scaring the hell out of Gio. We visited the statue on our way from the west side of the park, on our way to Strawberry Fields. While we strolled through the park and snapped photos, we came across a particularly steep slope filled with sledding children and their parents, who were more concerned with their coffee than the safety of their children. Now, don't go getting the wrong impression: if any of those parents were to actually watch the death defying stunts their precious little upper west side tikes were in the process of completing, those kids wouldn't have half the fun they would have had. The only downside is that it often ends in tragedy -- or in this case, your sled bursting through the retaining fence at the bottom of the slope, and smashing into a concrete park bench. I was laughing just a little too hard to be a friendly passerby as I snapped the photo to the right. In fact, I may have appeared to be a little acidic. Whatever -- New York will do that to you! Haha.

Don't Pay Any Attention to What is In My Hand in the First Photo

Well, it's been two weeks since we returned to the big city after the Air Canada fiasco. School has kicked it up a notch: Scene work has started getting hot and heavy (it's been particularly troubling for me, but I think I've figured that one out), and the term is beginning to wrap up. Movement has turned into a choreography challenge which is both difficult, and freaking' fun. Let me tell you, if you ever find yourself in a position where you can't dance, yet have to put together some Choreography, simply put together a hip-hop dance and don your character the name of "megacomputernerd". That way you look good, by looking bad. The perfect plan, I know. Now if only I could find some way of infiltrating So You Think You Can Dance...

Having returned home to a mostly empty fridge and freezer, Gio and I spent six hours trudging through the snow to Costco and our local food market where we blew a great deal of money. Of course I couldn't even fit everything into our fridge, which led to me having to resist opening any jars or ketchup bottles and keeping them in the pantry, until we ate the vast bulk of vegetables we bought.

Speaking of snow, the cold snap here is freaking ludicrous. As I'm writing this, there's a fine dusting of snow on the ground, and my computer's weather network temperature reading for central park is 17°F -- of course, for those of us who use real measurements, that's about -8°C. Tomorrow, the windchill is supposed to get down to -17°C. That scares me in ways I never thought that the weather ever should.

We've recently caught wind of an especially exciting production: Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard has been redone with a new translation/edit by Tom Stoppard (of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead fame) starring Ethan Hawke, and directed by Sam Mendes. Best part? Student rush tickets are ten bucks. Second best part? It's at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, so for once we're not the one's borough hopping when the lot of us go and see it. Take that Mid-Towner's.

In other news: just today a plane had to put down in the Hudson river between Manhattan and New Jersey. The plane was debilitated by a Flock of Seagulls (of I Ran fame.. Wait... What?) and the pilot decided that instead of turning his un-engined aircraft into a flaming ball of skyscraper cleaving death, he'd put her down in the water. EDIT: Now they are saying it was geese -- not as funny at all. Well, turns out he did the right thing: no casualties have been recorded, and only three people went to the hospital for mild hypothermia. The captain had time to walk the aisle twice in order to make sure he left no-one on board. That's right, the Captain was prepared to go down with his ship. Oh, and they evacuated women and children first. Kinda warms your heart doesn't it? I watched until the local news channel started talking about how much of a good thing it was that it was only a flock of seagulls in two engines which caused the plane to crash, instead of a terrorist. Yeah.

"I don't know what in God's name is happening either"

Wow. Really, I cannot believe the ineptitude of one corporation. As you can see, Gio and I are both stuck in the Vancouver Travelodge, only after we refused to take a certain Air Canada employee's crap.

Now, don't get me wrong, not every air Canada employee is useless - in fact, most of the lower-down-the-rung employees are great - but the management is terrible. A certain manager tried to tell me that it was not Air Canada's responsibility to find me a hotel, when our flight was canceled. Only after a friendly fellow traveling Aussie let me in on the truth did I manage to get accommodations. It turns out that bitchy management lady just assumed that all of us were from Vancouver and not in the middle of a connecting flight. Gio seems to think she had more vicious motives. Whether she was in fact cheating people out of their entitled lodgings or just stupid, she was still a big heaping pile of mean poo.

Even after getting a hotel, Air Canada does not allow its agents to rebook your flight for you. Instead, they are instructed to give you a little card with a telephone number on it, and you have to rebook the flight yourself. So this went to prove my theory that the higher up the ladder you go in Air Canada, the more shitty you become. Giordana is now on the phone with Marilyn about flights and things aren't sounding too good at all. I hate Air Canada.

Dear AC:

You are a dirty little hooker.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Hi, there. This is Giordana, and I edit all of Garry's blog posts. I just censored this entry, as Garry got a little carried away in his fury. Note that this is not the original. Imagine it a lot worse.

After a Brief Hiatus

I took a bit of a break from posting on the NY blog during which I was at home (Canada home, a.k.a. home 1.0, a.k.a.  The Island, a.k.a. "Oh God I hate Duncan so much") visiting with relatives and generally having an awesome holiday season filled with snow, presents, and booze.  More so the first two than the final;  I am such an old man.     

Our initial return to the Island was, to say the very very least, an immeasurable hell filled with the screaming souls of the damned, who all sound very similar to inbred sugar buzzed redneck mullet sporting children caged within the ball pit at McDonalds.   I am sure some of you may be very aware of the big snow coloured dump the clouds took on the Vancouver area around the twenty-first of December -- Air Canada sure was, but let's not go there.

Christmas was a blast: I saw a lot of family -- both my own and Gio's.  She spoiled me for Christmas, I spoiled her, blah blah blah.  

New years eve was taken slowly: Giordana and I, without car, opted to stay home, drink wine, and watch movies.  Each of us has made our New Years resolution quite simple:  Hers is to take more photos, and my own personal resolution is to write more (possibly in this blog, possibly a play?)  Who knows?

At the moment we're both sitting in Vancouver International Airport.  Our original flight through Calgary was cancelled, so we had to take a flight to Vancouver instead (four hours later). Now, the new flight from YVR to JFK has been delayed by two whole friggin' hours.  This means we won't be getting home, a.k.a. Brooklyn, a.k.a. The Big Apple, a.k.a. My bed, until around two o'clock a.m. NY time.  Ouch.

Well, you can expect more pictures and more writing very soon.  I have a feeling we'll be able to keep those resolutions up (yeah, right).