Why Frog Likes The Olympics (Friday August 8th)

First and most important: Chilli & Sage news. We've been very virtuous for the last few weeks, writing new songs, adding exciting new instruments to existing songs, and this week, entering lots of competitions and performing at an open mic - the Cottage Bistro on Main and 29th. This was okay, but as usual people kinda glazed over at the songs with lots of words, and only perked up for "I Want To Be A Panda". But our crusade to convert people to songs with more words will continue... and YOU can help! Tell people to listen to our songs at Chilli and Sage at iLike.com - a site which seems to (a) work and (b) not have limits on songs.

And now for the usual assortment of oddities. Starting with Frog. You may not have met Frog. Frog is about six inches square and an inch high when splayed out in stealth mode, and exists in two shades of green for additional camouflage. We found Frog in the Bristol County Show not long after Sarah moved in with me. And the only other thing you need to know about Frog is that he's... a little violent...

Frog has reached his current level of anarchy by degrees. Some years ago he sent Sarah an email from his Hotmail account (godfrog@hotmail.com, naturally) while she was upstairs, reading "Come downstairs and hug me or I will zot you". A while later she only just stopped him from sending an email to Sky News telling them that they were boring peons and he was going to zot them.

A few years ago Frog discovered that he had my father's talent for predicting the mishaps of Formula One drivers and jockeys, and since then he's mostly externalised his violent streak by zotting innocent athletes from his comfortable position on the arm of Sarah's big leather recliner. So you can imagine how happy he is that the Olympics have started. He's already done a considerable amount of damage to the gymnasts, and when the track and field events start he'll come into his own. If you see any epic fails going on in the pole vault or relay, that was Frog... sorry.

I should mention at this point that we got cable connected last week, after only eighteen months in Canada. This was largely so Sarah could watch the Olympics. It's on right now. Cycling, gymnastics, and ads every ten minutes, most of which are distressingly patriotic ("Pontiac - official car of the Canadian Olympic team"... "Chrysler... official car of the Canadian Olympic team"... er, hold on...), some of them laughably so ("The Canadian Olympic team... working together for victory... just like Brake & Tyre of 4th Avenue"). Of course now we face the prospect of hearing the Canadian team being hyped up as the ultimate contender... which is, at least, more plausible than the equivalent BBC commentary. ("And the British contestant comes in a valiant last, only twenty-nine seconds behind the winner in this 100m sprint, that's a full two seconds faster than at the 1992 Olympics isn't it Brendan?") We (or rather "we") might even win medals. Coo. Go Canada, etc.

I've tried watching some television and oh god, I can't do it anymore, it all looks so rubbish. My attention span may have something to do with it. As someone generally so disinterested in the past that I have trouble remembering to hang my swimming trunks up on the showerhead to dry properly five seconds after getting out of the bathtub, it's increasingly difficult to care enough about books or television for the hour or two that they take to deliver their fun. Give me mono mono gluto gluto, as Chiun used to say... I want it all now, compressed and cut and chopped up for super-fast digestion.

We went to see the fireworks on Saturday. The HSBC Festival Of Light is this annual suite of various national firework displays fired off from a barge in English Bay over the course of several nights, followed by a closing ceremony with excerpts from each show. This year, it being the 150th anniversary of British Columbia (proper old, that is), we also got an eight-minute firework display illustrating the history of the province. Yes, illustrating. I can tell you the next time I do a presentation at work I'll be intercutting it with interpretative pyrotechnics. It added so much to what was essentially a mission statement for the west coast of Canada to see random spontaneous explosions of colour in the sky... ah well. At least the displays were good... er, well, the Canadian one was excellent, with a theme of "sea monster invasion" and some excellent synchronization of spectacular fireworks with some great modern-classical music from various sources including the Godzilla movies. The American one... eh, not so good... bombastic, pompous (my, fireworks can express so many emotions), and set to various well-known American singers and bands, such as Josh Groban and U2. And the Chinese display was okay, but perhaps suffered from the apparent refusal of China to send more than one expert to supervise it - as if Chinese fireworks experts had anything better to be doing right now.

So the fireworks were nice, but the one dark side of Vancouver is that, just as civilization may only be three meals away from chaos, this town is generally only one big event from drunken debauchery. James and I nearly got gaybashed on the bus on the Friday night before the Pride festival weekend, apparently because we prefer to sit with our legs crossed and are therefore clearly gay... and the fireworks brought out the noisiest, scummiest behaviour in a whole load of people. At least when I get drunk I just come home and bore Sarah by repeating everything twice before sleeping on the couch. I don't go out on the street, throw stuff everywhere, call out rudely to other people and act all defensive (and probably also, immediately thereafter, aggressive) if it isn't to their taste. It's annoying as hell because this is spoiling the dreamlike vision of Vancouver which Sarah and I have enjoyed since (before) moving here. Okay, so nowhere on Earth is likely to be truly idyllic. But Vancouver gets it right in so many ways that it's even more shocking and frustrating when it all goes south. Grrrrr.

But I'll finish on an upbeat note, which is that for various reasons I've had most of last week and this week off work. Hopefully more exact news on this will follow soon, but nothing to worry about, anyway.

Kisses and salutations to you all for now :-)