I would be inclined to call the "I just broke up with Sarah Marshall, and then went to Hawaii and found out that she was staying in the same hotel as me with her new boyfriend!" thing the worst kind of Hollywood cliché, until about 9 p.m. on Wednesday night, when not 10 hours after having seen Forgetting Sarah Marshall in an empty Wednesday morning theatre, and en route to Niagara Falls for a night of decadent trashiness, Sarafina called her ex-boyfriend to wish him a happy birthday, only to discover that he and his girlfriend were in the very town we were about to enter, staying at the casino we were at that exact moment pointing the Land Rover towards. And would we like to get together later for some gambling? So, apparently that's actually a thing that happens in the world. Jason Segel, I take it all back. And your penis is lovely, but please tell your director to stop cutting away from it so quickly. His ratings-board kowtow is ruining the joke.

We did the Niagara Falls thing, a town so named because there's a dirty great waterfall cutting right through the middle of the tourist traps (Ours and Theirs). There was a large Jacuzzi; there was stupendously expensive room service; there was a ginormous bed with lots of pillows. There was the single largest collection of Orthodox Jews I have ever seen staying in a single place at a single time. There was a massage, but no cookie platter cookie platter cookie platter cookie platter. There was a waxwork of Johnny Depp that looked more like me, instead of the other way around. There was a moderately-effective Haunted House that emptied out into an eerily deserted indoor playground - making Sarafina and I wonder aloud if this wasn't all part of the experience, the part where "the real terror begins." Yeah, all in all I'd say we took that town to school.

"A stupid, dangerous prick move" is what I've been calling the TTC midnight strike - wherein several hundred thousand people were left stranded in Toronto when transit when on an unannounced wildcat at 12:01 a.m. That's a pretty fucking terrible night and time to leave people standing alone on bus platforms, unaware that their ride is never going to show up. The back-to-work legislation reputedly just passed, meaning that my Hail Mary drive out to Consilium to get my work laptop for some work-at-home tomorrow was apparently unnecessary. But I'll probably stay home anyway, just to stay off the system an extra day. I don't really think I want to be anywhere near any ATU 113 members in the next 24 hours or so.

Now I've gotta deal with the fact that I'm going back on the clock tomorrow; that my remarks comparing the planetary boringness of The Barber of Seville to Saturn might have made Margaret Atwood think me uncouth; and that even though it feels like we've spent every waking moment together for the last 8 days, I miss my girl. But I'm in a "let's get on with it" frame of mind right now, so I suppose hauling canvas isn't a bad way to round out a long, strange vacation.

Posted by tederick at 2:05 PM in blogTO & hotels & i hate the ttc & jedi antics & movies
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Back at Worthington Labs in Vancouver BC, till late Friday night; I get Friday to do my own thing, and the other days to do all the other things. My packing this time was a model of utter stufflessness, one half-full carry-on only, and fully a third of the things I brought with me are staying here. I am an "everything you don't need goes overboard" kind of traveller.

For my flight over - and this I'm fairly happy with - I just sat for four hours and reviewed the Lord of the Rings scores with their liner notes and detailed track listings. Clicking from "track 2 - 2:17" to "track 17 - 8:53" to compare the development of a Ring sub-theme is sort of the biggest snobby geek-out I've had with my iPod in a good long while. It was illuminating on a lot of levels. Plus, I got to stare out the window. Everyone assumes because I'm big, I don't want to sit on the window. But then I never get to see!!

I don't smell like me, which is a problem; the terrorism thing means I can't bring my usual deodorant. I don't know how other humans walk around in a cloud of the filth that is a 24/7 Speed Stick. Plus, my perpetual traveling companion (my leather jacket) is still bloody overseas. I'm not Newman!

Is there no sun in this cursed country??? They've got a weather readout by the elevators that looks like it's been set on "cloudy" since the Truman administration. I wonder if it's controlled by levers and wheels, somewhere deep in the bowels of the gulf between Wall Centre North Tower and Wall Centre South Tower, and whether the man who works the levers has a huge grey moustache and is named "Edward."

In the plus column, Vancouver's insane geography is finally starting to make a weird kind of sense to me. If I completely give up on even trying to understand where the cardinal points lie (if someone tells me one more time that "the mountain is north" when the sun is clearly rising behind it, I am going to become murderous), I know how to drive from downtown to the office and/or the airport, with a stop in Kitsilano to go comic book shopping. Plus, great Mexican last night, and actual free parking... nice town.

Posted by tederick at 6:40 AM in hotels & j-o-b & jedi antics & pj's playground
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Finally, I have a pirate belt to go with my pirate soul. (And heart.) I am now well within my means to actually wear something pirate-emblazoned every single day. Even for me, this feels like taking it too far. (And a trip to Bang On is more than enough to convince anyone that as a culture, we have taken this pirate thing too far.) Still, I'm stupidly happy, and enjoy walking around with my shirt off.

Hey guess what! Sarafina and I would like this. They call it the "cathartic knife holder." It's a silver dude that you stab each and every time you put a knife away. We don't actually have a house to put the knife holder in, it's true, but things like this must take priority over things like that.

I am booked for YVR for the 16th, flying home on the redeye (my first redeye!) on the 18th. I am booked into the lovely Sheraton Wall Centre again, which actually put a small quantity of drool on my desk this afternoon just from thinking about it. All other travel plans are summarily shitcanned, but I read the Napalm script again today so maybe I'll work on that. I am ready for March to be over. I have phantom limb pain where my giddy euphoria used to be.

Posted by tederick at 5:33 PM in hotels & jedi antics & pirates & tederick films
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Now reporting to you live from the road at the Sleep Inn (ooh witty hotel name punnin'!) in lovely nowhere-near-the-downtown Philadelphia, Land of Shyamalan, Home the Village and the Cove and the Crop Circles From The Signs. How I ever lived in hotels that did not have complimentary WiFi, I cannot tell you. For certain, the room here is not large and any cable tether would doubtlessly give me free-ranging access to every corner of the place, but WiFi tastes better. And so, being in America, I consoom.

Drive took a while. We got caught in the recurring Devil's Snare of my life's navigational exploits, the goddamn QEW/403 switchover outside of Hamilton. That thing is my Kryptonite. Two spectacular girlfriend fights, three of the worst getting-losts of my entire life, and then today's needless couple-hour detour into nowhereland (and eggs), all because of that Bermuda fucking Triangle of Southern Ontario. It's because the rules don't make sense there. Up is down, black is white, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! And then even when we literally turned around and went back the way we came to get out of this problem at last, we got caught up in July 1 QEW traffic. So we only got over the border at around 2:00, having left Toronto at 9:00. Shameful.

Border guard: Reason for your visit?
Us: Going down for the Fourth of July.
Border guard: So you're celebrating the Canadian holiday in the United States?
Us: Pretty much yeah.

We stopped in Syracuse to go to the Dinosaur BBQ, a place Matty Price found online. It's a biker bar... for the whole family. Syracuse is a weird fuckin' town on a Sunday afternoon (every parking spot taken, but no humans visible anywhere), but the Dinosaur was swarming with folks. Oh by the way? Best food ever. Holy mother fuck. I had the Mojito Criollo Chicken Steak with mac and cheese on the side and it was like if Jamie Oliver jacked off in Strawberry Shortcake's hair and made her make a mince pie. i.e. really fucking good. And yes, there was the obligatory waitress crush on both our parts (she sent us out with a complimentary portion of the day's featured desert, Porn on a Plate), but let's not talk about that; let's just revisit the food:

Oh fuck I'm hungry again.

Now Matty Price are iChatting with each other from beds separated by less than three feet of distance, because we have run out of other ways to make conversation interesting, and looking at Marisa Tomei's breasts on the internet. It's gonna be peculiar in here in a minute.

Posted by tederick at 9:50 PM in foodin' & hotels & jedi antics
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HOLY MOTHER FUCK, people, they have me in Worthington Labs. I am staying at Worthington Labs. Savvy? The cab pulled up to the hotel and I turn to my friend Dave and I says, "that building is from the future," and he says "actually it's from the X-Men." And then I got a little bit too excited. I am about ten floors up and ten rooms over from where the Angel jumped out the window after he decided that he did want to be a mutant after all (after he had already decided he didn't want to be a mutant any more). Man that fucking movie made no sense. Dave said he knew a bunch of people who were extras in the protest crowd outside Worthington Labs for that scene. I said "at least they were protesting the right movie."

I was up out of bed at about 4:15 this morning after not so much sleeping as shivering all night. Five minutes out the door when I realized the one thing I hadn't ingeniously tucked into my single small backpack worth of luggage was my camera, so there will be no photos of Stanley walking in Stanley Park. Otherwise all's well. I was in the line at Tim Horton's for about twice as long as I was in the line at security. Comes the flight; I find my seat and the one next to me is empty, and I know that's too fucking good to be true so I start watching the cats coming in the door to try to pick out my seat-mate. And with metronomic regularity (like on a 90-second interval), "small, asian hottie" starts being the demographic of choice. And every one that comes in, I'm like, please let that be the one sitting in 30-B. Not just because of the hotness but because of the pure pragmatism of the thing: she needs a little less space, I need a little more space, we interlock, it's like Lego. But no suchers. Who gets 30-B? Motherfucker exactly my size, like down to the last brass tit. The one dude in all the world I could wrestle at a stalemate for as long as you let us wrestle because we are exactly the same height, build and weight. Oh and he prays during takeoff and landing. I snap the Macbook open on the tray table and watch both Hard Candy commentaries and then listen to SModcast, all by way of drowning out the world. By the time I'm off the flight I'm cursing like Aunt Ginny when she's been into the spring wine, and I don't even have an Aunt Ginny. So's the business.

There's mountains in these parts, my friends. Like actual large chunks of earth-tits sticking up in the air and shit. There's also an uncanny ability to have six different weather systems happening simultaneously. From the office window once I was reunited with my colleagues I could see bright sunshine, pouring rain, hail, and a bit of snow. (And a tornado and an earthquake.) What kind of backwards gin-soaked burg have I fallen into? Well, it's all right. There's screaming kids next door and I can't decide if I want to eat or go into a coma, but who cares, they've got me at Worthington Labs. Gosh knows I fell into this shit but it's like sugar candy when it works.

This post was published in Pacific time.

Posted by tederick at 5:18 PM in hotels & j-o-b & jedi antics
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It must be said: there are few things I enjoy more than stealing WiFi. I am suckling at the teat of Spag & Co., the bar/grill directly below my balcony right now. I feel like a fucking pornstar!

This is where I am:

Connu comme Mont-Tremblant, dans le Québec. J'ai conduit ici de cet après-midi après mon offsite d'équipe et rien allo, il est magnifique !

Now: in addition to being some kind of WiFi theft fetishist, I am also a hotel fag. If there's another word for what I'm describing, let me know, otherwise I'm planting the flag with "hotel fag." When I was a kid when we'd arrive at a hotel, I'd be ludicrously, stupidly excited and run around like a crazy person because I was just so keened up about being at a hotel. You know what? I STILL AM. Last night the males on my team relocated to a house in Morrisburg because it had become available; I stayed in my room at the hotel. I LOVE HOTELS. So now I'm in one of the hotels at Tremblant and I STILL LOVE HOTELS. I don't ever want to leave the room. I just want to run around on the cheap carpeting and fuck around with dials on the walls and take really long showers and unfold the foldaway bed just to fold it back up again. There's a fireplace in here, Internet! And a kitchenette that is virtually on top of the bed - it'll be like sleeping on the set of a cooking show or in Ikea or something! It's all very exciting to me. Which, I'm gathering, is not the case with most people.

So I got here too late today to do any snowboarding because you know what? IT'S FUCKING FREEZING OUT THERE. It's minus twenty-two and still dropping. It's cold like a crazy old man with long, sharp teeth. So I have to wait till the sun crests the hill in the morning before I can even think of doing any "active sports."

Here's a plug: if you're ever in Morrisburg or in the Morrisburg area - for whatever reason; no judgment here - go to the Russell Manor Bed & Breakfast. I didn't sleep there but I took the majority of my meals there over the past three days. Folks, you have no idea. It's run by two guys named Ron and Michael and the food is fucking phenemonal. And by Toronto standards anyway, unbelievably cheap. Every single thing, from the ginger scones on Wednesday morning to the avocado and egg salad sandwich they sent me away with this afternoon, was among the best eatables I've ever had. I highly, highly recommend the place. Oh: and the house should be in a 19th-century period picture. It's like The Age of Innocence in there. It's so cool.

Definition - Morrisburg Handshake: When somebody (e.g. your boss) backs into your vehicle (not the Smrt car, thank goodness) at a high rate of speed, from a minimal starting distance, causing a disconcerting BOOM!

More tomorrow, pending piracy.

Posted by tederick at 6:03 PM in foodin' & hotels & jedi antics & photoblog
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Barely any internet in Morrisburg! Truly these people don't actually know the difference between having wireless internet (which the hotel claims to) and not having it (which they do not)! Finally me and my friend Dave went nuts and started stealing high-speed by sticking a juice line into the ass of the guest computer in the lobby! Piracy is alive and well in Morrisburg! Going stark raving stir crazy out here, Internet! PRAY FOR MATT BROWN!!

Posted by tederick at 11:32 PM in hotels & jedi antics
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Me, Huntsville, the Goo, and the Smrt car. Possibly the last voyage of the Smrt car, come to think of it; I can't believe we've been banging around in that thing for two whole years already. I can't believe wankers still swarm me when I get out of it and ask the same five questions. People: they have been around for years now. Get on the internet or something.

I got up damned early on Wednesday morning and left Toronto before rush hour, figuring that I'd beat the traffic and then have breakfast north of the city, before making my languid way to Huntsville for noon. I was eating at the Island of the Sirens before nine, way ahead of schedule, and then I just cruised Highway 11 and enjoyed the late-October scenery. I tell ya, going down to NC in the spring is fun and all, but one of these days I want to take a road trip north in my own country. Not that there's necessarily anything to see up there, just that I enjoy the process rather a lot.

The Huntsville occasion was a 3-day offsite for my entire department. You should have seen the damn room they had me in: I have never been in such a place in my entire life. I was supposed to be sharing it with another guy but we couldn't make the door between the suites work, so he had his little one-bedroom and I had what was essentially a palace all to myself. Here's the living room with view of the lake:

And if I'd known there was gonna be a 50 square foot back deck, I woulda brought some chiba. Anyways it was a perfect time of year to be up in the wilds, and a pretty good gang of people to be up there with too if I do say so myself. My favourite part was a mass outdoor team-building simulation on Thursday where half of us were blindfolded, and the other half were unable to walk and had to direct the blind folk to gather survival implements. I was blindfolded. And I was a perfect island of Jedi calm in what can only be described as a roiling sea of mismanagement madness! Well not that bad but I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I had someone I completely trusted guiding me, and when things got hairy, I also had the loudest voice in a large group of loud voices and could make my points spectacularly well. So that was cool.

On Friday I got the hell out of there and beat it on down south to the Goo, a trip that was supposed to take 5 hours but actually took 3, which lead to me hanging out at the Book Shelf and reading and blogging and generally yessing. Then it was yet another queer somethingorother at the Grad Lounge, which somehow manages to happen every single time I'm in the Goo. Also, there was Lost and Indian food, and more Lost, and then some Lost and also Lost. But good company, because watching Lost with Bex and Macelod - particularly when, say, Ana Lucia and Libby get shot - is goddamned fun beyond reckoning. And did anyone else notice that the woman Locke home-inspects in "Lockdown" is Sayid's ex-mama jama? Cuz I didn't (but Bex did, much is my shame). Yeahba. I tell ya, I'm sure going to miss the Box when it is finally cast asunder by Paris-going Mennonites and the lure of co-habitable vegans. But this, too, is life.

Funny that I've only ever hung on to other peoples' college cohabitation experiences, first with Jen in Kingston and now with the Box. Gee, do ya think I maybe shoulda gone away to school instead of wussing out with York? But then, I never woulda met Laurier.

Came home, played a drop-dead freezing game of soccer in pouring rain yesterday, Chris is ill with something other than what I was ill with so Jeff channeled himself some goalie action and proved stunningly effective. ("The Power of Chris Compels Me!" was heard often.) And honestly, by the time I got up to go to work this morning, I'd completely forgotten where I was employed. Mmm five day weekend.

Posted by tederick at 9:26 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & hotels & j-o-b & jedi antics & sockey
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