Yet Another Prideful Weekend.....

The Original B-Girlz

Well another Pride Weekend came and went, and I must say, I had a great time. I saw all the people I wanted to see, I didn't melt in the heat, and I didn't get sick. I didn't get any nooky either, but then again, I wasn't actually looking for any. I went dancing a few times, hung out on the street with my friends, had a heart-t0-heart with Scotty's dog Tiegan, ate lots of ice-cream, drank quite a bit of beer (the beer gardens served Keith's this year! Yaaaay!!) gave Dave and Victor a needle-ingly hard time, and didn't get sunburned. Ran into bunches of people on Saturday, a day before the parade actually happened, and hung out with Victor and Scotty and ran into James A., and his posse, and then Scotty and I went to Buddies later that night and danced the night away, before he ran into his 21 year old inamorata, and then I, yawn, pleaded excessive exhaustion and slipped away to home. I got up the next day, cleaned up and headed down to the beer gardens at around 12:30. It didn't open til one, so I didn't have too long to wait. Then Doug and Steve showed up and Ron and Chris, and we all just hung out under the trees, and then I ran into Dave and Greg, and then eventually Stephanie and Bart were there, and Stephanie's charming friend Kate, and we all just sat around, relaxed, chatted and tried to circumvent fiendishly long lineups. I ran into my old roommate Thad, who hasn't physically changed an iota in fourteen years, the bastard, introduced him to Doug ("Go ahead, kiss him, he's not shy!") and then Stephanie hauled me off to Victor's before I incited anybody else into more trouble. Victor had a lovely table of food all spread out, which was a godsend after all that beer and no real food to speak of all day. Then we all went back out walking in the street at around 9:30, and ran into Clinton and his bleached blond hair, and then Sheila, (sp?) V., and a few others went back to Buddies to do some more dancing. There we ran into a fling of Victor's, an intense, but very handsome and serious young actor with blazing eyes. Evidently, he's a comic. I'm not surprised. Most good comics were all very serious people. We all left at around 1:00 or so, and then I walked Sheila over to Parliament before heading back home to bed. Monday I took off to recover and sleep. Thank God.

In retrospect, I know its kind of chic for some people (gay, if you can believe it) to pooh-pooh the idea of a gay pride parade, but you know, nobody's ever been shot at this thing (a claim not many festivals of this size can claim) nor have any planes crashed during it, in fact, aside from the usual number of people fainting from the heat, I don't remember hearing anything of any fatalities occurring during Pride, ever. Which isn't a bad thing. A parade without a body count is generally good, I'd say.

Anyway for all of the gay people griping about it, I understand their logic, if I don't necessarily agree with it. They argue that it marginalizes us, keeps from fitting into the fabric of society. Well, if society is still arguing about whether or not we should fit in anyway (re-opening the marriage debate should be clear proof of that) then I say, "the hell with fitting in, and while we're at it, let's have a party!"

Look at it this way; if the powers that be had vetoed the whole thing, and raised a stink like they did in Moscow recently, and forbidden any kind of parade at all, we'd all be up in arms and furious that we couldn't have it. My figuring is; if you don't want to be a part of it, don't go. Stay home and garden. The rest of us will have fun.

So while we can have it, and enjoy it, let's just be grateful that we're living in a country that for now lets us celebrate who we are, in all of our diversity. Don't forget, it could just as easily be the other way around. I imagine that if Harper and the rest of the minority gov't feds had their way, it soon would be. Which reminds me, I must remember to bring a camera next year. If things keep going the way they've been going, heaven only knows how many more of these we'll get to have.

Words to Live By......Or Not

It dawned on me (in the midst of using one of them) that there was a plethora of sayings I've heard all of my life. They are indicative of my background, that is to say, the rural upbringing I was exposed to, and although I've never heard them anywhere else, I do find them apt at times, and at others, downright fun....

1) "You'll eat it before it eats you." A saying my grandmother made infamous after my uncle Paul, at the age of 11 months refused to eat anything but orange custard. My grandmother, at age 41, and after four other children, threw her hands up and basically left him to my mother (age 12) to feed, raise and mother, after that.

2) "A blind man would be glad to see that." Something my grandfather would say after you would be standing on top of the dining room table trying to string the Christmas cards across the doorway, and hoping you could stretch far enough across without falling off and killing yourself. If it was all crooked, he'd smile and just say the above.

3) "Waste not, want not, woe the day." My Dad's mother's favourite saying; usually done after you'd requested a piece of toast and she cut up an entire loaf, buttered it all, and put it in the oven and then wondered why you couldn't eat it all. The fact that you were six, and weighed 50 pounds not really mattering to her. But after eight children, and umpteen grandchildren, did you really think she could just cook for one? Not a chance.

4) "Burn a church." An epithet reserved by my father's family when some unforeseen calamity occurred, ie; the spilling of alcohol.

5) "A lean horse lives longer." My Mom's dad said that once when some relative was commenting that I was too skinny. Grampa would know. He'd had horses for years and his sister raised Clydesdales. I think I stuck my tongue out at the relative.

6) "Its a bad cook who can't eat her own cooking." Yet another epithet from my Mom's mother, who despite her obvious lack of maternal solicitude, was a fabulous cook. Thankfully Mom inherited this skill AND the maternal solicitude in spades.


These are the ones I remember. I'm trying to see if my folks remember anymore. If they do, I'll add them as I hear them.

Cycle Mania(cs) Part Cinque, or.....To Live and Die.....in Claude?

So there I was, not even halfway through a 97 kms journey on two wheels. Pedalling like mad into a NORTH headwind no less. (For those not in the know, and NOW, believe me, I know) a headwind is precisely that. Wind that blows into and onto your head, from above, in front, and underneath. But always in front of you. As my brother would say, it was "butt nasty". Only in my face. REAL special. So there I am cycling away, when we (the WE being in this instance, the eighty other cyclists on the trip with me) manage to hit an unforeseen detour on McLaughlin road just east of Brampton heading north. We started out from Kipling subway station that morning and headed roughly northeast, with the idea that we'd hit McLaughlin road and go straight north til we got to the smallish hamlet of Inglewood for luncheon and a break before we had to head back.

Heading up McLaughlin was long, and fairly uneventful. Like being stuck in the suburbs on a loop. At one point I noticed a road we crossed called Petworth, which caught my eye, for the sheer oddity of it. Well, I thought it was odd, because at first glance, I thought it said Pilworth, and I immediately had the image of a cranky old dowager spinster in my head, Miss Pilworth, whose first name would be.......Agonia. Agonia Pillworth. She would wear a lot of indigo, and uncomfortable shoes, and oh, never mind.....you see how writers' minds work when they're not paying attention?

At any rate, we hit a detour on McLaughlin, and decided en masse to head east and then go north again on Highway 10, aka; Hurontario Street. Which goes through very flat, picturesque, quite lovely looking farmland. Much like the above picture, which is near King City, where I grew up. The scenery was lovely, the road was not. In the first place, it was festooned with very loud, very large trucks who obviously did not relish the idea of sharing a four-lane highway with a bunch of two wheeled upstarts! They roared past, close enough that I could taste the grade of exhaust and could feel the road quaking beneath my wheels (I may have gained a bit of weight in recent years darlings, but no number of cinnabons causes THAT much road rumbling!) but I soldiered faithfully on....until we hit, I believe it was, (where the hell's my map?) Victoria's Corners? I can't remember, it was something with royalty that's all I know, and I think there was a V in it. At any rate, we stopped there, a bunch of us, and Rodney said, "Its only another eight kms til the lunchbreak." So I thought, "Fine. I've got this far, 8 kms will be nothing."

Famous last words.

The headwind got worse, and I started to crash. My stomach was rumbling, and the half a protein shake I'd had that morning, and the two apple bars I'd eaten were no longer cutting the mustard. I was tiring, in short, I was what they call, bonking out, and worse still, the north headwind was picking up steam making every turn of the pedal sheer agony. And this was on FLAT terrain. Had it been uphill, it would have been impossible. As it was, it dawned on me that I might not have the strength to simply make it to Inglewood, a mere eight kms away. This was what my body was saying, whereas my brain was saying, "Don't be an eedjit, keep pedalling. What choice have you got, dumbass?" Point to note, when in a hopeless situation, keep going. So I did. In the distance I saw a Church steeple, which was the only tall landmark in the horizon. So I thought, that must be the place. I just have to make it there. So on I went, and eventually got within sight of the church, which turned out to be the "1st Presbyterian Church of......CLAUDE." I'm not lying. CLAUDE. I doublechecked the roadsign as I went past that said, "WELCOME TO CLAUDE."

Now I have to tell you, at this point, two or three things went through my head at once; the first thing was that the 1st Presbyterian Church of Claude was a rather redundant sign, since it was readily apparent that Claude only HAD one church, Presbyterian or otherwise. It also only appeared to have four other buildings at most. Claude that is, not the Presbyterian church, which of itself, was quite lovely to look at, and possessed a very impressive parking lot.

The second thing that went through my head was that it was sadly evident that the charming hamlet of Claude was not where I was supposed to be stopping for lunch. Apparently, THAT was further on down the road. So, feeling like Diana Ross with a bad perm, I eased further on down the aforementioned road, tiredly, but with the notion, that even if I felt like it, I couldn't stop right then, much less give up. It wasn't because there was nowhere to eat (there wasn't, at least insofar that I could see) but that the humiliation of expiring there would be too much. The idea of my compadres finding my disappointed and dessicated corpse lying unpicturesquely outside the 1st Presbyterian Church of Claude wasn't a picture I was willing to entertain. Its not that I had anything against the place itself, God knows, but it was just that the idea of people looking sad-eyed at my funeral, and delicately asking "Where did Trev pass on?" and some wit brutally answering, "He died in Claude." left me, well, cold.

So, I pedalled on and eventually got to Inglewood where I had a fantastic lunch, and with that, more than enough energy to make it back, which I did, WITH a tailwind I might add, thanks be to an undoubtedly Presbyterian God.

Having said all that, the fact remains that I learned a valuable lesson that day, and coined some words to live by in the process; make sure you EAT enough food when about to do anything strenuous in life, because you never know when and if you're ever going to be stuck in Claude.

And if THAT don't convince you darlins', nothing will.

Portrait of the Artist.....by the Subject

Malodorous Crumpet by James Huctwith

Its an odd feeling looking at yourself in a painting or in a drawing. Unlike a photograph, which in most cases is so hastily devised that it doesn't possess any spirit of the sitter at all, a painting or drawing requires an almost psychic bond between the sitter and the artist. The same bond that connects actor and audience in a theatre must also needs exist for the painter and his subject.

It doesn't happen very often any more, this connection, as few people possess the skill or training to manage drawing or painting on this scale, and a lot of people simply cannot afford to have it done. At one time of course, before the advent of photography, it was de rigueur for people from the haute monde to have their portrait painted, not once, but several times. Titian, Carravaggio, Michelangelo, Davinci, Rembrandt down through to Whistler, Carrington and Augustus John all made their livelihoods and legends by painting other people. Extraordinary, isn't it?

My friend James Huctwith, is an heir to that fastly disappearing breed of artist. How much more equally extraordinary is that the necessary bonding to his subjects are done from photographs of them, endlessly perused and studied and turned inside out, to achieve EXACTLY the right sense of truth that matches the shadowy ideal in his mind's eye.

James is a classically trained artist of what one might term "the old school". Its not surprising then that one of his greatest heroes is Carravaggio and that his knowledge of Old Masters and their works could fill several shelves of art history texts (although I suspect James' versions would be a whole lot more raunchier and fun). He is probably one of the few working at the level of portraiture (if I can use such a term, not being an art critic, I'm probably making a tonne of errors) of the old Masters in this country, right now. His skill set is exemplary, and he has mastered his technique to a degree that he doesn't even have to consider it that much. He works on it constantly, and for him, a lot of the technique is about expediency. How to manage the paints and colours in ways that will let the work get done faster? It isn't a question of painting itself in that sense, but the technical knowing inside and out of how the concept of colour and composition work. He knows how to accomplish what he needs to do technically. The question that plagues him (as it plagues all artists of any merit) is, can he live up to the chimera that exists only in his head?

James can and has painted architecture and flora and fauna with equal ease, and yet I suspect that his heart truly lies here; in the mysterious shades and soul baring brightness of the masculine gay world he knows and loves so well; in bringing the masculine form to an incandescence on canvas that hasn't been explored for several centuries.

He's painted I think, almost all of his friends, in various and sundry motifs from dark and violent to light and romantic. I think I am one of the few whose portraits are exercises in fey, piquant fun, free of the darker tincts of feeling that run riot in a lot of his work. If you're familiar with James' ouvre, then you'll know that it can have a shocking Pan-sexuality, a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners kind of intensity about it. Whether its a wasted youth in the throes of a drug induced nightmare, or an orgy with bodies hanging off meathooks, or a leather daddy playing with his toys, there is an aura of exhausted, raw sexuality in his work. Yet, on closer analysis, there is an almost over reaching, haunted sense of longing in there as well.

I suspect that what makes the paintings so human and memorable (and not just the naked bits!), is that James has somehow managed to capture on canvas the souls of his subjects. Through some sort of mysterious alchemy he takes the most ordinary of us (not all of us are as beautiful as some of his subjects) and gives us a stature that he sees or imagines in us. Consequently, we are transmuted from lead into gold through his devotion to the ideal of us in his head. He loves his subjects in a sense that Michelangelo must have loved the David, or the Pieta. I don't mean the models themselves, but the heightened sense of them as he sees them, and as they must be conveyed on canvas. James sees things in his subjects that may or may not really be there. He conveys his dark romantic nature through their eyes, and as we look back out at ourselves we see things we hadn't thought were there, and maybe never were. But this in itself hardly matters at all; reality is expendable in art. Which is fine; all that really matters as a result of this transformation is great art. With the work of James Huctwith, that is the final and greatest achievement.

Short Hair, Angels, Comix and Why Hugh Never Has to Worry....

Word of warning kids; this is a light, shallow and completely vapid post today, and I don't give a goshdarn to quote my brother, (who since the advent of spawning children, has had to give up on the evil syntactical delights of swearing, poor bugger) as I'm in too good a mood to be dragged down into the woes and miseries of the world aujourdhui....

At any rate, I'm MUCHLY improved today. Got my hair cut yesterday. Not that the two are mutually codependent, but I imagine as Grampa used to say, "a change is as good as a rest", and that it perked my mood up considerably. Something different. I never fare well with too little variety or change.

I now look nothing so much like that "happy hunting boy" some wayward British theatre critic called Vivien Leigh's Viola in Stratford's 1955 "Twelfth Night", but I don't mind. Vivien's much prettier than me, but I can live with it. A friend (who shall remain nameless lest it ruin his reputation for being snarky with me) admitted that he had always envied me my hair, and said it made me look pseudo Victorian, in a Bronte-esque or Byronic kind of mold. Which is exactly what you want to hear the day after you get it all cut off.

"You yutz." I snapped, and hung up the phone on him.

Ah well, its of no moment. The short hair I mean. It'll make the cycling easier and besides, it'll all grow back. At some point. I forgot how my hair curls when its short, which may be a mercy, because if it were short, I'd have a bowl cut, and look like an ex-pat Beatle. Or an eight year old named Quentin. But its got a stubborn curl to it, so now I can just brush it anyway I like and it STAYS there.

Anyway, I went out with the lads tonight (Scotty, the two Jameses, Robert, his friend Scott and Dave and his friend Jeff) and saw X-Men 3, which I confess I already saw on the weekend with Victor, but I liked it so much I didn't mind seeing it a second time.

O.K. I don't know WHO Ben Foster is, but if Tony Kushner had seen X3, HE and not Emma Thompson (lovely and brilliant as the divine Em is!) would have played the angel in Angels in America. THIS angel would certainly have made quick work of Prior Walter; plasma orgasmata indeed!! Gorgeous creature. My only real criticism is that we didn't see enough of him, and I'll miss Cyclops. He was a prig, but you need that in a story such as this, and he played so nicely off Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Fun movie, you'll enjoy it. I only hope there's an XMen 4 and that we'll get to see more of this Foster character. Whoever he is.

I'm glad there was such a strong Canadian contingency in the cast. Both Anna Paquin and Shawn Ashmore were in it, and for a comic book movie, it was quite rivetting. Say what one may about the comic book culture, but there is an immediate cinematic quality to it, that probably lends itself to be easier (and perhaps more successful) to adapt as a movie than say a regular novel, which by nature, is a lot of the time, an internal journey. Some (a lot, actually) novels just aren't filmable. Comics would seem to be an obvious inspiration for films since so much can be done now in the way of special effects. I can't wait to see what they're going to do with next year's Wonder Woman. More to the point, I can't wait to see how they're going to cast it. They've managed to pull off the best Batman movie yet, and Superman Returns looks to be a winner, and the Spiderman and X Men series have just been getting better, so let's hope it keeps up. What a disappointment to take a major female icon (let's face it, the Big Mama of female superheroes) and screw it up. Cross your fingers and toes kids.

You want to know something funny? When Victor and I were in New York City, we went to see Hugh Jackman in Boy From Oz, and when we stood outside the stage door, waiting for them to come out, he came out in jeans, a sweatshirt and a baseball cap, signed some autographs, and then hopped into the jeep I guess they drop them home in, and I noticed, he's my height, my build, (well, obviously in much better shape) that is to say, he's small boned, long and lean like me. AND the stunning thing was, you know how you can always tell your contemporaries? You look at them and think, "Yeah, they're my age." I looked at him, and it hit me, my God, he's MY age! I didn't know how old he was at the time, until I looked it up the next day, and it turns out he's not only 6'2" and a half (my height exactly) but that he is actually YOUNGER than I am, by about seven months! The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our goddamn faces!!!

Sigh. Now isn't THAT a kick in the rubber parts? Well Hugh, you might have gotten and lost Famke Janssen, but thank God, I've still got my hair.