Difficult Music

What a weird weekend. Saturday the belter and I went to (hung out on the periphery of) my company picnic at Confederation Park in North Burnaby. After we got off the bus at Hastings and Willingdon we saw this little stray dog, collar-less and obviously lost, wandering in and out of traffic at the intersection. People were stopping their cars, getting out and chasing after it. He/she wouldn’t let anyone near him/her, though. We were just about to call the pound when one woman pursued it down an alleyway, out of harm’s way. I hope she caught up to it. It looked like a cool little dog, but I think it was set for a life on the street.

Never having been to Confederation Park, we walked right past the picnic and then got lost. We did come across a pretty rad miniature railway, though. We found the picnic in time to get in on the last dregs of lunch but too late to score any beverages. The belter ate a burger that soon had her feeling as foul as the water in the executive dunk tank. Maybe a turn in the bouncy castle might have helped? I said hi to a couple people, then everyone gathered around for the raffle. Lotsa prizes on offer. We won a copy of Stitch! the Movie—hope the stinker hasn’t already seen it. It would have been cool to win the DVD player, but lady luck didn’t deal us any consumer electronics that afternoon.

After the raffle we walked up to the McGill library. That whole area has been redeveloped since I was last there. The old library is gone, replaced by a larger metal-and-glass affair. We went in and loaded up on stuff, including Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? which we watched that night. Now I truly understand the genius of SCTV’s Whatever Happened to Baby Ed?

I also found the latest Alan Warner novel, The Man Who Walks. The belter wanted it immediately, but I got dibs on it for bus reading. I felt a bit bad, since finding a new Alan Warner for her is probably the equivalent of me coming across a new Van der Graaf Generator album. I promise to pass it on ASAP, fancylady.

What about Sunday? It started with one of the best Coronation Street omnibuses ever (the game’s up for Richard!) then I headed to Burnaby where I mowed my folks’ lawn and went over to jam with the kings of Patrick. It took a while to get a band together, but I found a stash of Bob Sox’s old Kerrang! magazines from ’81 to ’84 that kept me more than amused in the meantime. So much good stuff—the original review of the epochal Script for a Jester’s Tear, a shot of up-and-comers Metallica (McGovney/Mustaine lineup), with Lars in white spandex, Girlschool, Wendy O Williams, Lee Aaron, the great Rock Goddess (Sox has always had a thing for women in rock), and a very weird photo comic strip depicting a bloody battle for supremacy between Cronos and Jon Miki Thor (who was all over Kerrang! back then) in which our boy trounced the pasty pseudo-satanist and made off with the girl.

Then Smash showed up and we had to jam. Rats.