May 2004

"Dragon....Slave!!"

I'm a nerd. I'll freely admit it. But I also have the strange trait of, if I say I'm going to do it, I probably will. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not even WELL. But that's just the way I am. And Tara made the mistake once of wanting to get together a cosplay troupe for Anime North (cosplay= costume play, masquerading, dress up, whatever) and go as all of the characters from the popular Anime Slayers. Now, of course, she wanted to be Lina. She wanted me to be Amelia. I'm not such a big fan of Amelia, so I opted to cut her a little deal- I'll play the movie version of Lina, who is younger and has an entirely different outfit, and you can play the series version of Lina. Well, that didn't sit so well, and she certainly didn't want to dress up as Naga, so somehow the Slayers plan got nixed in the early stages. But in the meantime, I had thought a great deal about how to do the costume, and thought it would be kind of fun. Three years later, and probably to Tara's shock, I emerge into Anime North 2004, in my deluxe Lina costume. Probably the best and most complicated costume I've ever made (or will ever make, whew!), but it was still a lot fun to have people stop me to ask for my picture.

Next year I'm probably going as Faye Valentine. ^_^

Summer 2003

This is me at the Canada Rocks Concert. Better known as, SARS-stock. For those of you who didn't go, I'll explain:
In order to counteract the unholy crippling on the tourism of Toronto during the SARS crisis (I have a poem about it- I'll post it sometime), both local and non-local music artists pitched in to host a few benifit concerts. I went to the one at the skydome also, which featured mostly canadian artists. I went to THIS one with my friend Michelle, because the Rolling Stones were playing.
First of all, I don't think I've ever seen that many people in my life. It took me an hour to work my way over to the water truck and back, and I can't even remember how long it took us to get lunch. As you can see from the photo, I burned like hell even though I was slathering myself with sunscreen. Everyone was walking around in a semi-daze, half-suffering from sun-stroke. Dan Akroyd was on stage between sets to keep reminding us to have one bottle of water an hour. He neglected to mention that there were only two transports of free water, on either side of the field (and we're talkin an old airbase here), and all of the ones in between were charging like five bucks a bottle. And by the way, people were allowed a maximum of two bottles of water on entry.
Regardless, we suffered 'til the sun went down, at which point we could enjoy the Stones in all their glory, even if they were only little dots on the horizon (yes, we were THAT far away). But it was still wonderful. Michelle and I got to dance to "Sympathy for the Devil", live, which we never thought we'd be able to do (see Altemont, or whatever it was called) and we got to see the guy from ACDC do his little dance 'n strip show. There was a lot of pot, a lot of people, but man, it was just one of those times.

I lived in Downsview at the time, so we only had to walk back, and we were dog tired. I remember on the way home there was some religious zealot with a sign, and Michelle, her mum, and I all started singing "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of weath and taste...."

Rock on.