Stubby ears rotate...

... and the panda rises from the dust once more to try to blog. Feh, I hear you say, and feh I say too. But I need to chill out on a daily basis in July and so I will attempt to make blogging a part of that chill-out process.

A brief summary of the year so far, for my own benefit (I forget entire months at a time):

• January: I had a terrible bout of chickenpox and spent almost the whole month at home, contagious and grim-looking, while Sarah played piano for The Musical Of Musicals (The Musical) and fretted about leaving me alone so much. However, I wrote 30,000 words of a novel and got reasonably good at Guitar Hero III, so it's not like it was a total write-off of the time.
• February: can't remember. See? Sarah was working at Cap College, playing piano for their musical theatre course, this much is true.
  
• March: errrr... more of February, most likely.
  
• April: ah, now this one I know. Sarah played piano for tick... tick... BOOM! for three weeks. Meanwhile we were rehearsing for Broadway Chorus's summer show.
  
• May: supposedly Sarah's month off, and we were intending to relax together and be very creative regarding our in-progress musical One Plus One. Unfortunately - as if it would be fortunately, given what I'm about to describe - Sarah acquired some kind of abdominal pain, which might have been an ulcer, and is at this moment still there even if it's not an ulcer. Nine fairly-regularly-spaced trips to Emergency have proven necessary since May 1st. A big shout out to James for driving us there and back at all hours.
• June: Broadway Chorus, which was fantastic fun, but also nearly crippled Sarah (a trip to Emergency from 1am till 5am Saturday morning, between the Friday night and Saturday night shows - James and I were a bit exhausted...). And now, we are enjoying an Attack Of The Twines for the next fortnight or so.
  

But despite all the good things, I's just a littul stresst, especially since May. So I decided today (after our most recent trip to Emergency, which was last night, and my consequent exhaustion and depression today) that I need to take action. A nice ego-loss and physio-psychic detox is called for. After all, it's the summer of my 39th year. I should make a bit of an effort to fix up some stuff. And a small (and probably therefore doable) part of that can be a commitment to blog. Je vais tryer, anyway.

So here is advance warning of some of the things I'm planning for myself:

• Self-image: trivial, but also important. It's really time I stopped biting my fingernails. And for that matter, ripping at my toenails. I believe I have moisturizer; I should use it. And Sarah's just given me a very nice haircut; I should stay clean-shaven, otherwise I'm going to look like a hairy egg. Never good.
  
• Physical fitness: inspired by the, er, inspiring (insane would also work) dedication of Kate Douglass, whose 30 days of yoga come to an end tomorrow, I'm going to try for 31 days of physical fitness. But going to the gym every day wouldn't be wise, as I understand it, so the plan is to walk to or from work every working day, and go to the gym three times a week for sure, four if I can manage it.
• Self-control: I download a lot of crap, often just for the sake of downloading or because I optimistically predict I'll have time for it, or will make time for it. All this actually does is make me look at piles of crap and feel depressed, leading to more downloading. (For downloading, read also "buying stuff", "getting books from the library", "promising to read something interesting on the internet", "playing games"... procrastination-a-go-go.) So this month: none of that. I'll put, if not a massive dent, at least a small and perfectly formed dint in the mountain of stuff that forms my life. I already have my A-Z Of Musicals listening project to continue, but all this gym and exercise time should also mean I can listen to a lot more pop music.
• Creativity: One Plus One is going well, but it already needs editing, not to mention 1/3 of the songs are still to be written. We have some plans for moving forward with it, but they need the script to be either finished or thoroughly blocked out. So, OK, that's the aim for the month: progress it to the point where someone could read the script and get the whole story, except where some genius-in-waiting lyrics happen to be missing (but at least there'll be a summary of what they'll say).
  
• Relaxing: Sarah is in a lot of pain. But she's right: it's only pain. Fingers crossed, there's nothing wrong with her which the correct diagnosis and then hopefully a simple operation won't fix. And then she'll be better. So I'm going to smile. Through gritted teeth, sometimes, but I'm going to look at the mountains and the water and the skyscrapers and the people around me, and remember how amazing it is that we have a life (with bonus pain) in Vancouver, rather than in England. And instead of cursing the cyclist who tries to run me down, and scowling at the people who don't wait for me to get off the Skytrain, and fearing what I might not be able to get done at work today, I'm going to breathe slowly, meditate on our general good fortune and excellence, and take the road less travelled by pandas, namely the cheerful one.
  
• Diet: pandas are notorious for having a bad diet. Show week also never helps... it all goes a bit Pete Tong, frankly. Add lack of sleep and the resulting "I gotta go now"-ness to the next day's life and meal-planning... hmmm. The Incredible Hercules who was the marvel of the stage a mere fortnight ago is potentially getting a little pudgy again, and exercise won't fix all of that. I'm reasonably good with the quality of my food at work (it's free, and you have to work quite hard to find unhealthy stuff) but it's easy to overdo the quantity. And then I come home, and am, frankly, a Bad Panda. So: no chocolate, less bread, something for breakfast every day, more fruit, and a Restrained Approach To Drinking With James.

This is a hefty assignment (and it's not complete, for privacy's sake) - and if I were coming to it completely cold, I would balk and indeed scoff at my chances of taking it on. But, I feel relatively optimistic, because I've done all the various parts of it at earlier times this year, either without a choice (while ill) or with great willpower (while dieting for the show in Feb/Mar). So, y'know, I stand something of a chance, I think.

We will see!

And one of the things we'll see is whether I can document it here. Vive le panda, and vive his willpower.

The Dust Settles

Well, for those not monitoring my cryptic Facebook status or aware of the recent events in the games industry: I still have a job, but life has been somewhat stressful for the last month.

Vivendi (the French company which owned Radical and many other game studios) and Activision have been discussing a merger for a while. When the merger went through in July, Activision exercised their powers, as new owners of the Vivendi studios, to review the games under development and align the studios to Activision's market strategy.

This is business-speak. What actually happened in more readable terms was that Activision cancelled two of the four games Radical was working on, and Radical was told the number of people that it was allowed to still employ to work on the games we've got.

This was not unexpected. New owners like to sack a quarter of the staff just to show they're there. And there's a well-known adage: "If it's not your money, it's not your company." This is typical if you're a worker at a company, bad if your company is owned or relies upon another company, and worse if you are now a subsidiary of a publicly-traded company, because, while Radical's money was really usually Vivendi's money, the situation now is that it isn't Radical's money and it isn't even Activision's money, it's the stock market's. And the stock market is very definite about what it likes. It likes more money, now. The motive for the merger, in my view, was that Activision wanted to get its hands on Blizzard, the Vivendi-owned company which makes the Warcraft and World Of Warcraft games. (For those who don't know games: Blizzard is essentially a 24-hour printing press which prints free money for whoever owns it.) Activision merged with Vivendi to get Blizzard, and everything else which came with the deal was either gravy - or disposable.

So, Radical sent many people home (on pay) for a few weeks while they sorted out plans, and last Thursday they called us all in and let us know who was staying and who was going. The gannets were out in force almost immediately the takeover had completed; for example, in an act of utter cheekiness - and I use such a mild word only because my mother reads these blogs, otherwise I'd use another words beginning with 'c' - Rockstar Games spray-painted their logo on the sidewalk in front of our building the week before the jobs were cut. Radical has actually processed the cuts very well, organizing all sorts of outplacement options, and Vancouver still needs plenty of games people, so fewer people are unhappy than you'd think.

Personally I was petrified, for one reason only. The day that it became clear cuts would happen, I had nightmares of being laid off one day and of Immigration officials arriving at our apartment the next, ordering us onto a plane at our expense. Fortunately it transpired that even if I lost my job at Radical, my work visa is actually good for living here until it expires (next February), and in that time I could apply for another job and get a replacement work permit. And in any case, I didn't lose my job - Panda liiiiiives.

But it was nerve-wracking.

So after 18 months of working on a game, it's been cancelled from under me - the first time that's happened to me in games, although not in programming. And now I'm on something else. It's all very exciting, and super-secret-squirrel. But it looks like I still have a career at Radical if I want one. And I do.

Phew.

Being A Good Panda

Sometimes virtue is its own reward. And sometimes there's potential you'll get a gig out of it. 'nuff said.

We were virtuous today in that we booked our medical exams (next week) and had photos taken for them. This is the next stage in our application for permanent residence in Canada. Important points here: Radical is sponsoring my application, it takes ages to go through, and it comprises numerous bits and pieces... one of which is a police check, one of which is a thorough medical.

The police check has given us some irritation. We both need a report from the UK police force, and Sarah also one from Ireland, to assert that we are basically Good People. The Irish one is free and requires just a form to be filled out. The English one costs $70 and requires, amongst other things, a photograph signed on the back by a professional who has known us for two years. Well, that's just great isn't it? Because that really facilitates an application for residence in Canada which has to be made before my two-year visa expires. And even though we can use people back in the UK, what is this, the 1800s? Oh, just get your family doctor to sign it, or your family solicitor - Miss Austen. God, when will this class-ridden claptrap go away? Anyway, onwards to the medical. At least Radical is paying for most of the (quite substantial) cost.

I keep being Facebooked by blasts from the past. A whole bunch of people from Sussex have tracked me down. It's all very friendly and, you know, I remember them and I chuckle at the references, but it's freaky. I never feel like I really lived through the past that I remember. Was I really there? Was that really me? Did I really do those things? I have a window of about twelve months within which I broadly believe I actually did stuff, but my emotional memory is poor, and that probably enables such a big disconnect. I'm uncertain whether I wish this was not the case. But it is almost certainly why I'm so bad at keeping in touch with people once I'm not within sight of them...

You, Sir, Are No Terry Pratchett

So, sure, not everyone is Terry Pratchett. And 'comedic fantasy' is a tricksy thing. And Pratchett didn't invent it (see Fletcher Pratt, Gordon R. Dickson, and Poul Anderson for what, I presume, are just three predecessors). But there's this guy Robert Rankin whose books have jokey titles and Pratchett-esque summaries on the back. Sure, let's try to blame the marketeers for this: "Ooo! Pratchett-esque summaries sell Pratchett books! Let's try them out on this other guy who might not be at all similar!" And for all I know, Rankin's been writing for longer, but I have no particular journalistic cred to preserve so I amn't even going to check that.

But, dear god, I struggled through his "The Witches Of Chiswick" this last week, and I'm so glad it's over. I heartily anti-recommend it to fans of well-written and amusing fantasy. With a plot that looks like "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and any steampunk book you've ever heard of were involved in a horrible high-speed car crash, and characters who literally leap back into the page at the slightest effort to understand them, this is awful, awful, awful.

And it reads like a lager lout wrote it. Whenever Rankin can't be bothered to think of something, he basically says so in as many words. Jokes about sloppy authors, footnotes highlighting poor jokes, characters alluding to the running gags being perpetrated in neighbouring paragraphs, attempts to appear unpretentious (or rather, attempts, to undercut any accusations of pretension and education)... Rankin reads like he's afraid his mates down the pub will accuse him of being gay if his books don't hold their attention and trigger their trivial senses of humour if opened to a random page in the split-seconds between mouthfuls of beer. This is probably why there's so many postmodernism-is-fun-for-drunk-people references to "Time Cop".

Actually, rereading that last bit makes it sound like I might be sympathising with Rankin for having to write down to his audience. So I should correct that view; without changing my opinion of his target audience, I think he's writing up to it. This is one of the worst books I've read, and I don't have to compare it to Terry Pratchett to say so. JMS once observed that it was difficult to create the future for "Babylon 5" when fans would retort with "But it's been proven that we'll have transporter beams and handheld communicators, haven't you seen Star Trek?" Sure, the subtext of this post may be to accuse myself of being unable to let go of Pratchett's view of comic fantasy. Except, I also like Jasper Fforde, and Bill Willingham's "Fables". So apparently there is room in my head for other ways to be funny and fantastic. Just not for Rankin's, because he is rubbish. Take that! Panda wins.

I'll probably find Jan loves them and thinks they're harmless unpretentious junk now ;-)

This was probably all because the book I read before this disaster was a Joe Haldeman short story collection, which is going to have prepped me for quality. Less grumpy service will be resumed shortly...

(Olympic Frogwatch: Frog didn't get to see any Olympics today because we were busy or out pretty much all afternoon and evening. Tump. He has silently zotted us both as a warning that this will not be an acceptable excuse twice.)

Sleeeeepy Paaaanda

Chilli & Sage news: we wrote a new song today - or rather I wrote the lyrics for music Sarah wrote last week. But I can't say what it is yet because it's for extremely secret-squirrel purposes. In other C&S news, you'll see I added buttons at the side for you to click and become super fans of the best songwriting duo in... history? The multiverse? Who can say, although I can certainly bombast some more about it if you like. Anyway, click and listen, particularly if you're a Facebook user as it's all integrated, y'know.

Today: We went to Tara's for dinner. I played a little with their kids - Sophia (5) and Rowan (3) - and since we'd brought Pill the Panda with us, there was a certain amount of stuffed monochromatic fun. After dinner I sang "I Want To Be A Panda" for them. But I was very sleepy and we left at about nine. A little hot-tubbing slightly woke me up, although the 20 minutes of treadmill I did before that might have had something to do with it too. Exercising before getting into the pool and tub is disturbingly fun.

Frogwatch 2008: Frog fell off the chair just as we turned on the television; he explained that soon lots of athletes would be similarly falling off things, referring to it as "unsympathetic magic". He then managed to make one gymnast fall off the bars twice in one routine. When you consider that he's watching footage of athletes filmed fifteen hours ago (the time difference between Vancouver and Beijhing), you have to admit: he's good.

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 :-)

FUN With Your New HEAD (25 July, 2008)

(I wrote this at work earlier in the week but forgot to post it. Thus its TARDIS-like disregard for the fact that I just posted something else. I could edit it, but... bah. You won't notice.)

... don’t you think time is speeding up? It’s only yesterday evening you were reading the entry for May 1^st, and now look at the calendar. You’re getting old, you know, when you don’t notice time scuttling past like a plague of chronologically-fascinated scorpions.

I thought today I would start talking about our attempts to have “fun”. There’s a famous Thomas M. Disch story called “FUN with your new HEAD” which you can find online in various places, e.g. here (http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/head.html). Similarly, although in an unrelated way, we have recently attempted to do slightly less and enjoy life a little more, after several hectic months of no fun. So what can we report?

Well, our Nintendo Wii is a hoot. And has potential for being great FUN at parties – although we only have two controllers for it at present, and only one plausible party game. The principle of the Wii, you see, is that while the X-Box 360 and the PlayStation 3 have gone for expensive power, the Wii has gone for involvement and a distinctive selling-point: its controllers are motion-sensitive, and games can detect how you’re holding, tilting, and moving them. You’re then supposed to act out the actions which normally would happen on screen at the touch of a button. This might sound like hard work, but it means that for the first time, playing a computer game of tennis actually means serving and playing shots kinda like you would in a real game. It’s not quite the same, and you can cheat and make much smaller moves (and you don’t have to run around, it does that for you) – but Sarah and I have suffered minor cases of tennis elbow from playing too much in one session, which is a change from getting RSI from bending your fingers over a strangely-shaped controller for two hours at a time. Anyway, the Wii isn’t hugely more powerful than the last generation of consoles, but it does have a bunch of fun games. The Twines already have a Wii, so I foresee plenty of tennis when they come over next month. People here have liked it in various measures: James got to grips with it quite quickly, while Kim was lunging so far forward to play some shots that I feared for the TV. But everything and everyone survived, so ‘tis good. Our FUN HEAD factor for the Wii: 8 fun heads out of 10.

More fun. We’re watching the Tom Baker Doctor Who stories, all of them in order. Or at least we’re going to. So far we’ve managed to watch the first one: “Robot”. If you ever wanted a demonstration of J. Michael Straczynski’s comment that UK TV sci-fi had cardboard sets and three-dimensional performances while American TV had the reverse, this is it. Amidst wobbly sets, confronted by a comical robot that looks like Bertie Bassett the lollipop man gone metal, and watching, at one point, a 3” plastic tank being disintegrated in a chromakeyed sequence which looks like it cost all of tuppence-ha’penny to film… nevertheless, the actors are pretty much all delivering committed performances, taking their characters seriously, and carving out strongly-defined roles in the plot. The extras are a bit gormless – all on day release from Rent-A-UNIT-Soldier Ltd – but there’s the Doctor, Sarah Jane, Harry, the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton, Miss Winters, Professor Kettlewell, Jellicoe, and the guy inside the robot. That’s nine lead roles. And there’s time to *breathe*. Four episodes at twenty-two minutes apiece gives you enough space for some essential downtime, and because this considerably predates the New Who with its well-done-but-sometimes-slightly-portentous atmosphere of supreme power and supreme loneliness, the Doctor is, while confused after his regeneration, still intrinsically having fun at all times. Sure, he isn’t up against a universe-challenging foe, just a little matter of a stolen disintegrator gun (Earth tech varies up and down considerably in this show) and then against a neo-Nazi cabal of science-fanatics who have obtained the launch codes for the world’s nuclear weapons from a cabinet minister’s safe because, after all, what country except Britain could be trusted to possess such important info? Slightly ropey plotting, sure, but fun. And of course there’s Tom Baker. Born to play the Doctor, never matched except in occasional flashes from David Tennant. It’s interesting that at the time they cast him, they weren’t sure how he would play the role and whether he’d be into performing stunts, so they wrote in Harry Sullivan to be the clean-cut square-jawed action hero. Within a series they’d clocked that Tom Baker was quite action-packed enough to carry it himself, so Harry got written out (“Think I’ll stick to British Rail from now on, Doctor”). You have to admire the power of reincarnation, though. To carry a show through cast changes as a way of life… wow. So anyway, roll on the rest of Tom Baker’s first series – the impeccably-connected sequence continues on from “Robot” with “The Ark In Space”, “The Sontaran Experiment”, “Genesis Of The Daleks”, and “Revenge Of The Cybermen” – is it any wonder that this is the first series that stands out in my childhood memory as being The One Thing That Made Me Afraid Of Being Sent To Jail, Because They Would Have No Televisions And I Would Miss Doctor Who? Our FUN HEAD factor: 9.5 fun heads out of 10.

Posse Guests! (25 July 2008)

We had an absolute Posse in town in July! The Twines came over for two weeks and then the Burges (TM) - OK, Neil and his girlfriend Ginny, who are therefore not technically "Burges" - joined them for a couple of days and stuck around for over a week afterwards. Jaysmith Apartment Absolutely Infected With Visitors From The Old World!

Of course Jax and Twiney have been here before, but Phil saw the place for the first time, and collectively they love it. They arrived on June 30 (I think) and performed Much Sightseeing... Sarah fulfilled most of the tour guide duties as I was at work most days. But I did book a long weekend and we went to Whistler, stayed in a holiday home, went up a 6,000-foot mountain, saw a brown bear (cute! but endangered so go away now), ate lots of very nice food, went on a downhill luge (which was a bit terrifying), watched Twiney go on a zipline (which looked like fun, in the end), and took lots of photos, some of which may be included somewhere along the line. Phil went fishing for two days and impressed his guide with his knowledge. The drive up the Sea-To-Sky highway was gorgeous. And even Jax's 3am medical emergency didn't affect the good time had by all (except Jax while she was ill ;-).

Neil and Ginny arrived on July 8 and the Twines left on the 11th. Burge spent a lot of time playing Super Paper Mario on my Wii, and we also had two games of Lord Of The Rings - scarily, two years to the day since we last played it, in England. We and Burge know this game well, so first Ginny was introduced to it, and then a few nights later, James joined us at Kalypso for dinner and came back to be the fifth hobbit in a session where we tried out the expansion pack that Neil and Ginny bought for us as a thank-you present. It was quite epic and I think James' head visibly exploded several times...

You also should have seen the games of Jenga we had. Ginny nearly fainted from the suspense. Neil and I invented some groovy new moves, which you'd think wouldn't really be possible in a game like Jenga. Also, I was right: there are YouTube movies demonstrating 'mad Jenga skillz', e.g. this one.

But now everyone has gone home and we are all alone again... and, although we love the Posse... we were exhausted! There's been a lot of singing... we've started the summer singing alternative, which appears to have acquired the name "The Strongbow Chorus"... four sessions, every other Monday... we had eighteen people here for the first one, and out of it we got very acceptable-sounding versions of "The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd" and Rutter's "Sing A Song Of Sixpence"... we had Kim and Forsey over for singing... we had two Raves At The Jaysmiths', which were mildly epic affairs, and included me and Neil singing some tenor duets, one of which blew out everyone's ears because we weren't subtle with our dynamics! It was also lovely to reconstitute a chunk of The Incredible Posse Singers - only Justine was missing from our majority lineup. We sang Orpheus and Sounds Of Silence. Very uplifting, and only a couple of moments where our unrehearsed-in-eighteen-months sound wasn't bang on the money. The Posse Rules! Anyway, where was I... oh, more singing... Neil and Ginny learned the ultra-high A New World and we sang that for a couple of people, nearly ripping out our throats in the process (Burge has to sing As, I have to sing off the top of the scale)... and we just generally nebbished around the piano at the slightest opportunity. Result: we've done a lot of singing.

But: all this has been putting a huge dent in our Chilli & Sage time, so over the summer the rule is now: Our Stuff Comes First. We don't have High Spirits or Broadway Chorus until September, so we'll be spending evenings and weekends for the next two months (a) working on our music, (b) relaxing with the thought that we don't have to do anything else, (c) doing other things.

You'll be pleased to hear on our behalf that we are now logged in the US Copyright Office. Look!

CHILLI & SAGE VOLUME ONE.

Type of Work:	Sound Recording and Music
Registration Number / Date:	SRu000865667 / 2007-08-16
Application Title:	CHILLI & SAGE VOLUME ONE.
Title:	CHILLI & SAGE VOLUME ONE.
Description:	Compact disc.
Copyright Claimant:	GIL JAYSMITH, 1970- . Address: 1060 ALBERNI STREET, #2003, VANCOUVER BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA V6E 4K2
	SARAH ELIZABETH JAYSMITH. Address: 1060 ALBERNI STREET, #2003, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA V6E 4K2,
Date of Creation:	2007
Authorship on Application:	GIL JAYSMITH, 1970- ; Domicile: Canada. Authorship: MUSIC, WORDS, AND SOUND RECORDING.
	SARAH ELIZABETH JAYSMITH, 1974- ; Domicile: Canada. Authorship: MUSIC, WORDS, AND SOUND RECORDING.
Contents:	1. I WANT TO BE A PANDA 2. TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE, TOO BAD 3. I GOTTA GET ME ONE OF THOSE GIRLS 4. VELVET 5. THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII 6 FIREFLIES 7. IF LOVE IS 8. THE NIGHT TRAIN 9. THE JOURNEY 10. ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY 11. WHEN YOU SMILE 12. LOVE, DANCE & SING 13. I’LL RESCUE YOU 14. 24 DAYS 15. AIR CONDITIONING.
Names:	JAYSMITH, GIL, 1970-
	JAYSMITH, SARAH ELIZABETH, 1974-

It's us! Do not steal our music, we have Copyright on our side! Tee hee.

It's hard to focus on what else might have been going on lately, but we've been watching Doctor Who (epic!) and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (a bit epic! and Sarah's aunt Jane is in T4, exciting huh?), and playing the customary range of Games Which Will Work On Laptops.

We finally went to a dentist - with the promising name of Dr Chris Hacker! The Canadian attitude to dentistry appears to be "hygiene, hygiene, hygiene", leading to an expensive but covered-by-insurance bout of cleaning which has left our teeth both spotless and unusually white. On a less enticing health front, I confessed a while back to Sarah that the soles of my feet hurt a lot, particularly in the mornings. I had assumed this was just me getting old (at 38). She researched and then sent me to the GP who referred me to a specialist. Turns out to be fallen arches, or Plantar Fasciisti or something like that... a recurrence, expected at this age, of what I had when I was 15 and had to go to a torture specialist in Teignmouth for various electrical treatments and arch supports in my shoes. So here I am, with new, expensive, custom-made arch supports ("orthotics" is apparently the word for this), and my feet still hurt, but less than they did. Still: tump, I'm getting old and creaky!

More oldness and creakiness next time, including photos if I find out from Sarah where they are. Mwah.

Safe Area

Welcome back, take your seats, here are your complimentary peanuts, can I get you a drink?

I'm not making any promises, but I do feel guilty about what turns out to be a four-month lapse of service, so once more unto the blog-breach, dear friends (assuming you haven't died of impatience), and once again shall the Jaysmiths Hit Canada.

So, 2008 edition. Well, I sense a Blog TARDIS or two - or four, or eight - will be required to cover major events up till April, so we'll move forward with current affairs.

ITEM! Gil's work proceeds apace. The game I'm working on will hopefully be announced soon and then I won't have to pretend no-one can guess what it might be. Work itself has varied from mildly to extremely stressful, but a great stonking wodge of the stress was relieved last month, when I received a great stonking wodge of money in the form of a pay rise plus a superstar-sized bonus, which I suppose I must have been advised would occur every year based on performance, but frankly I'd forgotten all about it, and my understanding of most game-related bonuses is that they are literally game-related; Radical apparently just pays out bonuses regardless. The advantages of being owned by an evil multinational corporation, I don't doubt.
Anyway, this was just what our bank account needed; we cleared the credit card, cleared the bills for sorting out our house in Littlehampton, bought some treats, and had a few meals out. We had both been worrying our asses off about money, it turns out, and moments before our heads spontaneously exploded in unwitting synchronization, the problem solved itself. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, or in this case the chequebook.

ITEM! Sarah has been keeping herself busy with various things, including a play, plenty of music, some voiceover work and the role of Musical Director at Broadway Chorus.

ITEM! We bought a Wii! Definitely a Blog TARDIS entry to cover this.

ITEM! Gil turned 38 in March. I've decided to deal with this by focusing on the important part of that age, namely '3'. So I regard myself as being 3.8 of the new 'large' years, and I can stay like that for another couple of years, and even then I'll only be '4'.

ITEM! We're attending a songwriting course on Thursday evenings... i.e. that's where we've been tonight. This was the second week. It's somewhat scary. Actually, it's very scary. There were ten of us last week including the two instructors... tonight, eight... next week, in theory, ten again thanks to some replacements. So far it's been useful in terms of supplying tools for creativity. The results when it comes to writing lyrics have so far been (at best) poetry, but on the other hand I've been analyzing how poetry is used as a choral text in some of the songs we sing at High Spirits Choir, and I can see how poetic lyrical ideas (which probably don't rhyme) can be a source for a condensed, considerably treated, and hopefully rhyming lyric. As for the music, well, I still lack heavy music theory, it's all aural with me, but as Sarah has observed, I've listened to a whole lot more pop and rock music than her, and I have a better grasp of what works outside of the classical domain, even if she can write better chords than me (let alone the ability to write any chords at all). Anyway, the exercises are kinda interesting, and I might go into details about them sometime.

ITEM! The building's swimming pool and hot tub, out of action for over six months, have finally been repaired, repainted, and refilled with water... and then drained again, apparently. We may have found this apartment in an excellent location for a bargain rent, and we may not have particular grounds for complaint, but: we've missed our swimming pool and hot tub! And so the thought that they're so close to becoming available once more is driving us nuts. Grrrrr! Sarah scrabbles the responsible people with her bunny-claws. Perhaps next week, we hear on the sour-grapevine.

ITEM! We've been watching the absolutely dreadful remake of The Bionic Woman. Dear God. This is one of the worst TV shows imaginable. I could spend all night listing its flaws. Suffice to say, when you wish the villainess would show up and are deeply unhappy about any episode when she doesn't, you know you've got a miscast heroine. The script is often atrocious - we've adopted "just merely" as a catchphrase thanks to a line from an early episode. The continuity is often completely missing - a town's inhabitants all died three days ago, but the wheels on a fallen bicycle are still spinning and a girl is in a basement cleaning her teeth and wondering where her granny is? An important character seen in jail in the first episode is reported in the second episode as having escaped - off-camera? Oh god. Make it stop. It's so much fun to mock it, though. Plus, it was filmed in Vancouver, so we've been spotting locations. Jan will be pleased to hear that it features the Morgans (of Space: Above And Beyond) as executive producers and consultants. I can't help but think that these people are a danger to TV SF...

ITEM! Vancouver is still an adorable place to live. The view as we cross the bridges into town, the greenery, the breeze on Alberni Street on a Sunday, the shining water, the protective mountains... "the sparkling streams, the bracing air, the therapeutic salt"... it feels very much like home. On which note, we've started the process, through Radical, of applying for permanent residence here. They pay for all of my fees and half of Sarah's, and it takes months to accomplish, but thereafter I will be free to stay in Canada even if I leave Radical... although (a) there's still nearly a year to go before I could leave without having to repay Radical our relocation expenses, and (b) I should emphasise this in case anyone at Radical is reading: I don't actually want to leave (yet ;-).

ITEM! The Twines are coming to visit in July, and so are Burge and his girlfriend Ginny. And their visits overlap by three days! It's a Posse rave! Absolute Vancouverage for the Posse! This will be so much fun.

ITEM! I think that's enough for tonight. See? We do still love you. 'night all.

Bang-Up-To-The-Minute Film Reviews Of 2008, #1: The Bourne Identity

Yes, friends, it's time we told you what the best films of 2002 are going to be. And I can confidently predict that The Bourne Identity won't be one of them. From its thickset and in fact generally thick hero (who, sad to say, doesn't say "Matt Damon! MATT DAMON!" even once), to its ineffectual and drugged-up "oh, did someone just try to kill us? oh well, hee hee, in German" heroine / love interest, to its plodding pace, its lack of scale, its meaningless plot, the most amateurish secret agency ever, and its complete misuse of Julia Stiles, this is just woeful. The end song - with a chorus approximating "Oh man, then everything just fell apart" - was more welcome than usual in cases like this. Seriously, this has to tank like a big big tank of tanking things...

... what? It was successful and kicked off a three-movie franchise? God, the world has no standards. Tune in again sometime soon when we watch the second instalment and see how 2004's audiences will be amazed and awestruck by its effervescent genius.

(I'm sorry to report that I saw the third one first. It was formulaic crap with even less from Julia Stiles than the first one.)

"Resolve THIS..."

We did our obligatory new year planning today. And already have forty things to do in January. About fifteen of them are "attend High Spirits or Broadway Chorus rehearsal / concert", which won't tax us too greatly.

Tonight we watched Hoodwinked, a very strange CGI movie which combines the retelling-a-story approach of Rashomon with, er, Little Red Riding Hood. It's very funny. One imagines it doesn't sell itself to children though. Rebecca took Jake to see it when it came out a couple of years ago and reported it wasn't what she'd expected. Very funny though. Amongst other things it spoofs xXx. (Of which I once remarked: "You know, I could be ****ing a dead chicken rather than watching this film". Sarah pointed out that a dead chicken wasn't the best option.)

There's also a bunny. Sarah was unimpressed with the plot developments concerning the bunny, but its ears ruled.

I didn't think it would be Sarah's thing so I watched Shoot Em Up on my own. This is a daft violent movie in which Clive Owen goes around munching on carrots and shooting dead approximately three hundred bad guys while sliding under cars on his stomach, running up fallen objects, jumping over things, screwing his prostitute girlfriend, carrying a baby, abseiling, skydiving, driving... it's utterly ridiculous, and thus fantastic. It's the first Western equivalent to something like Hard Boiled (which is odd considering John Woo's been in Hollywood for years and this isn't by him). I loved it and could quite happily watch it again. Recommended, particularly for guys.

You'll remember last year I was playing a lot of hidden-object games, specifically the Mystery Case Files series. Well, this is now up to its fourth entry, Madame Fate, and while the end-of-level minigames and puzzles are still impressive-but-irrelevant-and-a-little-annoying, the object-hiding is still mostly unsurpassed. Coming up on the rails, though, is the Agatha Christie series (I know! licensed casual game in any-good shock). I accidentally played the second one, Peril At End House, first, and so for my miscreancy I'm now lumbered with playing the first, Murder On The Nile, and suffering through the lack of polish here and there which will affect you if yo play games out of order. But the pictures are gorgeous, and the object-hiding is reasonably fair - although why does bloody everyone insist on hiding butterflies, and pretzels in these games?

Sarah has been churning through casual games herself, with the most recent being Farm Frenzy (I think). I don't know what happens in the game itself, but sound effects suggest cows being tormented by something, and if you try to quit the game, it asks you to confirm your decision, and the "YES" button moves away from the mouse pointer for a while, while a cow face sobs in distress at your attempts to abandon it.

Oh! The new Sam And Max season started in November and I immediately bought the first episode and didn't play it until last week. It was, as usual, hysterical. Buying these games should be required by law.

Think it's bedtime now. Sarah is playing some bizarre platformer with an entire family being chased around in caverns, through the air, in a supermarket, etc (whatever the hell "etc" means with a list like that). I think she may be channelling her tumpiness about what happened with the bunny in Hoodwinked...

Oh! again... I added up the numbers for Take December Off, and we wound up with a grand total of 1,074 views for the video across all the sites (YouTube, Veoh, MySpace, DailyMotion, GoogleVideo, Guba). Not bad, not bad, not bad. This year will be the year of I Want To Be A Panda. One of my Christmas presents was the electric panda I've been demanding for about eight years... surely this is fate at work!

Pictures! (Blog TARDIS, July 2007)

I just found a folder of pictures from, er, July. Oops. So this is some of what we were up to then...

Fireworks over English Bay as part of a big music-with-lightshow thing.

(I can be even less specific if you like.)

Apparently, a Chinese food stall. But I have no idea why Sarah took this picture!

The phone company, using the best possible promotion - "use our phones and cute bunnies will, somehow, be involved in the process".

Buy PANDA shoes now, or face the consequences.

Because you would buy that.

Never too fat to give a thumbs-up to the camera. Note approved Radical tee-shirt.

English Bay in late Fall: sunny and, by Vancouver standards, crowded.

I eat pitta bread stuffed with chilli because they're funny.

Sarah, on the other hand, still refuses to eat carrots, despite messages like this scattered around Vancouver supermarkets.

Dotey polar-bear table! I'm sensing we're into the pictures we took when we were furniture-shopping with Susan. And yes, look...

It's La Braverman herself, demonstrating where the Army is at with its revolutionary and fashionable chameleon-technology-enabled summer dresses.

I expect this was funny because of something written on those pieces of paper. As it is, it just looks like a grumpy couch watching television on its own.

This, while admittedly not the greatest ever lake and park, is nevertheless a random fixture in the middle of the Nainamo suburbs. Quite nice. This picture dates from when we went to a "harmonic overtones" class. In what later became the rainstorm of the year, caused when Bear, asked to conceal the sun which was shining in Sarah's eyes, decided to move it out of position and cause Flash Gordon-scale flooding and disaster across the entire world. If you didn't notice it, that's just because Bear moves very quickly to repair his mistakes. Sometimes.

Who could fail to love Grumpy Bunny: All Year Long?

This bunny kills fascists.

After you walk beyond Coal Harbour, on the way to English Bay, there's a lake, featuring wild geese and ducks, none of which have the faintest idea about pavement protocol.

Along the Stanley Park sea wall there's a set of rock sculptures - piles of stones apparently balanced amidst the waves. Unsettling when you first see them. A moment after we took this picture, a jogger came along (posing by running along the elevated section of the wall) and double-taked almost hard enough to fall into the water as he noticed what he was running past.

This reminds me of the painting which hung in our lounge for years in Teignmouth.

2007 In Retrospect Part Two: We Live In Vancouver!

We've been here eleven months. Blimey. It feels like a year. It feels like forever. It feels like we were having our goodbye party a week ago.

What do we miss about England? The people. Or more accurately, our friends who we left in Littlehampton and the collateral damage zone surrounding it, and our families (which in Sarah's case doesn't even mean 'in England'). When we went back in September it was mostly unpleasant but for them. Grimy, dark, bad air, no smiles, and to quote an Alan Moore CD, the moral atmosphere of the week before last. Yuk. Everyone we like should come out here as soon as possible. It's like being sluiced.

Other things I miss: alcohol on sale pretty much everywhere; the singing and the parties, although we're trying to train them up... so many people here are responsible adults, which SUCKS... it may be the apartment-living that does this... it can be difficult to have a rave at 2am when there are neighbours in five directions; long skirts... fashion here is a little on the woeful side; young people... there don't seem to be any downtown, or in the choirs, or in the community theatre... they have separate Young People's Choirs and Theatre groups, perhaps to avoid any hint of impropriety or dubiety; everything being within walking distance (although most things are, and pretty much everything else is in range of mass transit); our rabbits.

That might not be a complete list, as I thought of it while I was typing. But on the other hand, it might be a complete list, in which case, my god, are we better off here.

What do I like about Vancouver? Almost everything. It's wonderful to live in a city. The variety of the architecture... the surprising spaces between, above, and under the buildings... the randomness of two-storey old-style houses jammed between skyscrapers... the immensity of the Shangri-La apartment complex they're putting up across from us... the convenience of having two dozen of anything to choose from within ten minutes' walk... the unparalleled transit system which for $80 a month lets me travel pretty much anywhere at any time on bus, SkyTrain, and even the ferry... the quality of the shows and music... the freshness of the air... the view from the bridges as we head back into downtown in the evening... the way life here is vertical and not horizontal... and peeking between the buildings in almost every direction, mountains like we're on an Orbital. Vancouver is just awesome. And although the overuse of the word awesome is a big strike against Canadians, it's appropriate here. You look at this city and you think, god, it's big and it's beautiful and it's amazing. Hurrah for Vancouver!

It's been a hell of a year for our music. We've written about thirty songs since April and performed in a bunch of random pubs and cafes - Sarah's stage nerves appear to have gone, even if they actually haven't - we've joined two choirs and a theatre group and done shows for them all, we've done some Christmas quartet singing, and we've even collaborated... erk... loss of control... does not compute...

Next year - this year - our resolutions are: make more time for ourselves, figure out our long-term plan for Canada and our lives, and make the ultimate step in music - getting other people to do our stuff, as often as possible.

(And, er, post to this blog more often...)

What are your plans? And HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2007 In Retrospect, Part 1: Next Time We Take December Off!

We've been busy.

No, really busy.

Our activity sheet for this month:

December 1: recorded an alternative version of 12 Days Of Christmas for a corporate event. Then did a two-hour gig at the Richmond bicycle club's Christmas dinner.
December 2: did a lunchtime gig at the over-40s ski club in Dunbar. In the evening, Sleeping Beauty singthrough.
December 3: Chroma gospel choir rehearsal in the evening.
December 4: Broadway Chorus rehearsal.
December 5: High Spirits choir rehearsal.
December 6: retirement home gig with My Lady's Chamber.
December 7: FREE!
December 8: Saw Seussical: The Musical at the Waterfront Theatre.
December 9: Sarah went to see Beauty And The Beast: The Musical with Kim.
December 10: Broadway Chorus singing rehearsal.
December 11: Broadway Chorus dress rehearsal.
December 12: Broadway Chorus tech and dress rehearsal at the theatre.
December 13: Broadway Chorus show: Anne Murray Of Green Gables, opening night.
December 14: Broadway Chorus show, second night.
December 15: Singing carols on a street corner in aid of a women's shelter. Then Broadway Chorus show.
December 16: Sarah to a cast get-together for The Vagina Monologues. Then open mic in the evening at Urban Rush Cafe.
December 17: Chroma concert.
December 18: carlyle.4 singing at VanDusen Garden.
December 19: High Spirits Christmas singalong with carlyle.4 guest spot.
December 20: carlyle.4 singing at VanDusen Garden.
December 21: FREE!
December 22: carlyle.4 (or .3 as it turned out) singing at the Oppenheimer Park homeless benefit. Then singing at a private Christmas party.
December 23 onwards: FREE!

This list is largely a public reminder to me that we do too much. So: next year we're scaling back...

• We've left Chroma, at least for now (we might return, who knows)
• We're going to rely on Susan to manage us as Chilli & Sage; she'll make sure we get paid a sensible rate for our singing gigs, which, while not necessarily reducing our workload, will mean we feel better about devoting time to it.
• Broadway Chorus's summer show sounds like it'll be fun, and Kim / Susan / James might join up for it, which will be fun, but we'll try to skip the Christmas show.
• High Spirits is pretty much bulletproof because we like drinking with them so much, and the music is good and varied.

That list doesn't include two things which stretched over several days:

1) The presence in our apartment for seven days of Jacqui and Alexis Twine, on a super-short-notice trip to Vancouver. It was like having kids, listening to the sounds of Ambient Twineage in the spare room. We showed them the sights, took them to Kalypso, introduced them to the mob here, got them into Anne Murray Of Green Gables, and waved goodbye very unhappily after an extremely packed week. It was a thoroughly excellent time.

2) Filming the Take December Off video. I'd had the mad idea that we could do this in the last week of November, but we got swamped, and it dragged into the second week of December, and then took several days to edit (only a few hours of actual editing time, but it was finding those hours...) and so the video debuted on YouTube about the 16th. We've put it on several other sites as well, and across all of them, it's collected over a thousand views. Of course this isn't many compared to the stuff on the front page of YouTube, and, hope springing eternal in my breast, it's less than I'd kinda hoped for, but I'm not grumbling, as it's far, far more than we've ever achieved with anything else we've done, and we've learned plenty from that one experience which will inform our videos next year. Yes, more videos! Panda and Henry need videos! And we have plans, oh yes, many plans...

Shock apartment update: we have new furniture! And we're tidy! Slightly grumpy over being constantly referred to as bohemian, and aware that we had to redeem our second room for the Twines to use, we performed a mammoth act of springcleaning, and have kept the place somewhat neat since they left. We then went to IKEA on the 27th and bought two side tables, a bookcase, a TV stand, and a desk unit. I then spent most of the 27th and 28th building these things, with help from Sarah on drawers, and we now have lots of surfaces and places to hide things. And fewer boxes standing in as tables. And the place is still tidy! We're hosting a flatwarming party tomorrow night (because, er, we didn't have it ten months ago, because we didn't know anyone then), and we'll see how the unforewarned jaws drop at the sight.

Culture update: Seussical The Musical was brilliant - I was in tears for most of it because it was so satisfyingly innocent and ineffably bouncy and fun. They'd cut it a little as it's the child-friendly version - a little annoying, as it means The Military has gone - which includes Green Eggs And Ham played as a platoon-marching tune - but it was still excellent - one of the best things we've seen in our year here.

Further culture update: we finally got round to watching some TV and movies. The Bionic Woman was dreadful from the first episode, and no wonder it's been cancelled during the writers' strike. Fantastic Four 2 was utterly lamentable (as were we for watching it). I watched Irreversible, an uplifting French film about violence and rape (... OK, not really uplifting). We watched Mr & Mrs Smith, which we thoroughly enjoyed although it was a bit random. And I finally got Sarah to watch The Sting, but unfortunately the history of caper movies since then has rendered it somewhat predictable - I hadn't seen it in, like, twenty-five years, and I was occasionally wincing at the pace, but it's still very stylish. In a very, very slow-paced way. Point is, though, we've finally succeeded in making time for ourselves if we think we have time to watch TV and movies.

And today we finished off three new songs, because as Sarah said to Kim on the phone earlier, "We've got a party tomorrow and we suddenly realized we didn't have anything new to perform. Disaster!" We hadn't written anything since Take December Off a month ago, so three new songs feels about right. And, for once, these have mostly come from our 'song graveyard' document, rather than being conceived and written on the spot. Of course we've had a dozen new ideas which have gone into the graveyard in the meantime, so as with all true graveyards, this one is expanding.

My musical challenge for the New Year is to write an ironic hard-rock musical accompaniment for the depraved lyrics I've written under the title I Wanna Be Your Lawyer, Baby - a very raunchy big-hair-rock spoof about a lawyer who goes too far in appreciating a female client. Sarah's eyes nearly popped out as she read the lyrics. Muhahahahaha.

Tomorrow, more end-of-year rounding-up type stuff.

Triumph Of A Bunny

Let us talk of the Triumph Of The Day: Sarah's musical, Sleeping Beauty, which got its first ever readthrough/singthrough this evening at Ieva's house. After handpicking a cast from the members of High Spirits, Sarah has been drilling them over the past few weeks, and tonight we gathered to spend a couple of hours trying it all on for size.

And it was an absolute blast. Sarah is still bouncing (well, almost bouncing, what with her hopped-out ankle).

A little background: Sarah wrote the first version of this musical as part of her music degree, thirteen years ago. It's the fairy tale rejigged for a feisty, independent princess who dismisses the Prince as the prat he is and ends up agreeing to go out with his servant who performs the actual rescue / rescuscitation. Along the way we meet a nutjob barbarian who gives up his bloodthirsty day job in favour of horticulture, a concerned fairy (renamed and rebranded as Wish Order Fulfilment Agents, or WOFAs), several unconcerned WOFAs, and a villainess with an even more villainous henchman. Add about twenty of Sarah's most gorgeous songs, and there you are: Sleeping Beauty.

She's kicked this around a bit over the years, fiddling with it, tweaking it, and letting me work on it a bit with her, but we never got around to doing much with it in England... we performed a couple of the songs with the Posse, and sneaked one of them into the Aladdin pantomine she MD'ed for LMCS in 2005, but aside from that... nuffin. But earlier this year, she performed one of the songs, Look, in a solo spot at a choir concert, and people fell in love with it - her take on love songs is always spectacularly offbeat and involving. After numerous questions and a lot of cheerleading from some particularly keen friends, she agreed to organize a readthrough... and here we are.

It's difficult to single people out for their performances tonight as everyone rose to the occasion with stellar focus and clearly a lot of hard work beforehand. So I'll list the cast:

Ieva - the Queen
Martin - the King
Susan - Ruby the evil WOFA
James - Prince Conceitus, and Conan the Barbarian / Agrarian
Barney - Burch the henchman
Catherine - Princess Frederica
Heather - Sapphire the WOFA
Kim - Opal the WOFA
Patti - Diamond the WOFA, and Narrator
Tara - Emerald the WOFA (and our flautist!)
Sara - Harriet the good WOFA
Me - Justin the servant

And candidly, we were all legends, although I think everyone would agree that particular mention must be given to James's incredibly camp Elmer-Fudd-a-like Conan, Barney's perfect overacting, and Sara's outraged Harriet.

But it was SO MUCH FUN!

Now we have to schedule a repeat performance, but this time with some VIPs in attendance, as there's clearly possibilities here.


In other news: Take December Off moves to its second day, and we've sold a copy of the song online! We've made $0.74! We're rich! Our first sale-by-download! We've been very naughty and asked friends and family to spam everyone with the link. Next task: a video, even if it's just of me sitting there pretending to be on the phone to my hypothetical gullible boss. Videos can go places where simple songs can't.

We also decided today was the day to go digital for our album sales. So look, here is how you can buy our singles:



And here is how you can buy our album:


Thrilling isn't it? So go buy something now.

That's us for the night - checkin' out. Much love.

Take December Off is go!

Our Christmas song of great luxury and relaxation, Take December Off, is now all systems go. We have a daily blog, the opportunity to listen to and buy the song itself, and other goodies lined up for inclusion at, wait for it, wait for it...

The Take December Off Experience

So go now there and click things and buy things. Because you can. Because we're worth it. And it'll be updated every day, so keep going there. Make it part of your morning routine. But clean your teeth first. Actually, no, go to that site first, and clean your teeth while listening to the song.

Also tell all your friends, because if we make enough money from this to take not just December but the rest of our lives off (hope springs eternal) then you're bound to be invited to our Vancouver mansion at some point, for your part in helping us out. Go on. Be a devil. Forward the link to everyone you know. We know you hate doing that normally, but just for us, be a sport.

In other news, last night we had great fun at a benefit for a local charity called PAWS which helps dogs and children all at once - so having a song called I'll Rescue You which was originally written for a dog rescue charity in England was kinda convenient - and we tried out Other People's Business - the anteater / anti-Bush protest song - which got plenty of applause. Which was nice. Needless to say, I Want To Be A Panda went down a storm. Sarah also sang as part of My Lady's Chamber for the night owing to a localised alto shortage. We couldn't stay too late because of the whirlwind weekend we had lined up, but it was fun. Some nice poetry, some of which Sue Turner had set to music. And Artie (drummer / guitarist whom we met at Sorrento) was there too, doing an amusing song about having an Extreme Sports Christmas up at Whistler Mountain.

And tonight we performed at an over-40s Bicycle Club in Richmond. This was a bit of a trek, and it's been snowing all day, so while Bunny was happy at the concept of snow on December 1st (it swirls upwards while you're watching it from the twentieth floor, which is tremendously cool) she was also stressed at the thought of trogging that far on the buses with our keyboard, and worse, she nearly fell over while hopping gleefully around in the snow, so she's now hopping all the time, on a slightly twisted ankle. Pauvre lapin! And her pedal foot, at that. However, the gig went well, we performed for about an hour and a half, and they appreciated it a lot. And it's a bit of money in the bank. More tomorrow as we provide background for the Christmas lunch of a skiing club on 37th Street.

We also now have a manager! Susan has despaired of our incompetence and is taking pity on us and will organise our career. We love you, Susan, for we are rubbish!

JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!

JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!

Jacqui's bringing Alexis with her!!!!!!

JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!
JAX AND TWINEY ARE COMING TO VANCOUVER!

JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!! (November 28)

JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!

Jacqui Twine is coming to visit us in Vancouver for a week in December!!!

JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!
JAX IS COMING TO VANCOUVER!!!

The trouble with women (November 27)

Wotcher. News from Tuesday:

Rehearsals for One Million Things Happening In December proceed apace. I'll put up a list for your awed admiration once I can bear to look at it. It's going to be a Very Busy Month. Last night we were rehearsing for the gospel choir, chroma (which owing to time considerations, viz. we have none, is going to be the main casualty when we hit the new year and clean house a bit). Tonight we were polishing and then running the Broadway Chorus show, Anne Murray Of Green Gables.

It turns out that Dani from Broadway Chorus, who plays my hapless starcrossed lover Jenny, works in video game law and is one of the authors of the Video Game Law Blog. Quite the coinkidink.

Adam from BC pointed us at the world's most boring game, Desert Bus. LOL.

In fantastic news, Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate is brilliant: I've completed it once and am now trogging through it a second time. I haven't even looked at the new Sam And Max despite buying it the instant it went live. Might get a chance to play it this weekend.

I didn't get any sleep Sunday night but as a result at four thirty in the morning I wrote lyrics for a gorgeous piece of music which Sarah had likewise composed in a time of insomnia. The result is something quite unusual for us, far more poetic than I normally try for, and hopefully nice.

For Chilli & Sage fans, there's new music at our MySpace page.

We've also set up the blog page for Take December Off, which is our latest cunning project. We had intended to have fun making a video for I Want To Be A Panda - and indeed we will, early next year - but instead we're going to push our seasonal song, Take December Off, which is, as the title might suggest, a comedy song about getting the whole of the month off work. We were hoping to make a quick video in time for December 1st, but we're so swamped that we're going to have to settle for a sound file and a comedy blog and photos, with a video to come after a few days. The upshot is, remember that link and take a look at it on December 1st, and then send it to all your friends. It's how to skive off work for 31 days, set to a samba beat. You want it.

We go now to collapse...

CAVE People Get Jobs! (November 15)

Tonight's subject line is taken from an ad on the SkyTrain wall. It depicts a group of people who all look extremely Indian. I feel that whichever organization has this acronym CAVE (I can't remember what else the poster said), they were perhaps ill-advised to word their slogan like that. Or, I'm racist and so the racist interpretation sprang to mind faster than it might to a nice person's. Either way, amusing in the way that those Western Union ads back in England are amusing. (If you've never seen them, they basically say: "Don't trust a member of your family to take money back to Pakistan to give to your poor needy mother! Send it via Western Union instead!" Because, that's right, if you're from Pakistan you can't trust your own family! Why, they're practically niggers! ... *sigh*)

Some more random highlights of the past couple of months which we've dredged from our "schmoozing" diary...

• We helped Kim write a song for her father's 60th birthday. It had started off sounding suspiciously like Billy Joel's Piano Man, but Sarah fixed that. I helped with a couple of lyrics, then Kim recorded it, I mixed it, and she put together a Powerpoint slideshow. Apparently it went down a treat and we were heroes. Hurrah!
• We've sold about $160 of our CDs, mostly at $10 a pop, occasionally cheaper where our nerve faltered or we were part-exchanging for another CD. Not bad. But still legally a hobby, defined as something you do where you don't make as much as you spend.
• James' ensemble, My Lady's Chamber, has not only worked on Sarah's choral piece The Blackbird Of Derrycairn, but has taken on our surreal jazz piece Air Conditioning. We joined them in performing it at the party the weekend before last and it was an absolute hoot to hear it with nearly a dozen voices powering it. As for Blackbird, Sarah is extremely pleased. It's been thirteen years since she composed it, and this is the first she's heard it performed (by anyone outside of a slightly incompetent panda multitracking his voice as a Christmas present a few years ago).
• And on the subject of things Sarah wrote thirteen years ago... Sleeping Beauty: The Musical is finally moving forward! This version of the traditional story is decidedly untraditional - the princess is a feminist and the prince is a prat, as one lyric observes - and after a couple of years of teasing people with songs taken from it, Sarah was at last persuaded to take the plunge and organize a singthrough/readthrough. People from High Spirits have leapt at the chance to take part, and no doubt (he says enthusiastically) you'll hear something about how it went on here at the start of December.
• We've bought some art! Two pictures from a great shop called Kimprint down in Gastown. One is from a series of scenes from Alice In Wonderland... the artist has a great command of perspective and the series is pretty striking, so we may slowly accumulate it. The other is a small but equally striking long-range picture of a fantasy city. Buying art made us feel grown-up. All this art plus my Medieval gold CD and our A New Brain framed poster on the walls... the apartment is starting to look like we live, rather than squat, here...

We went to the open mic at the Myles Of Beans cafe in Burnaby again tonight, but it was the least appreciative audience yet... no-one applauded much for anything by anyone. Feh. On the plus side, I sat behind the drums for an hour and drummed along in numerous jams. Sarah says I looked very cute, particularly when I looked sheepish whenever I tried something adventurous and it didn't quite work. But I did enjoy it.