The other night I hung out with a group of friendly folks and watched their kitten destroy small balls of foil, and then watched hockey followed by tiny girls throwing themselves bodily around an ice rink whilst dressed in sequins. It was fun. It amazes me how different watching sports in a group is from watching it alone. Before now I never actually understood the act of watching sporting events on television (playing sports I get – but also don’t do) but now I think I understand the national compulsion. I mean, I’m not going to be going down the pub to watch the game with the boys any time soon, but I think I sort of understand why so many people do.
I say I hung out with “friendly folks” because I’m in that delicate in-between stage where I’m new in town and only know a few people; those people are introducing me to their respective crowds, but I don’t know if I can presume anybody specifically in those crowds to be “friends” quite yet, you know? Many of them are extremely awesome, but I don’t want to be the strange party-crasher either, so it’s delicate. I’ve never actually figured out where the point is when you’re suddenly friends as opposed to acquaintances, so I’m trying not to be rude. Is it once you’ve texted somebody more than once? Emailed them about something non-specific? Been invited separately to something, or invited them? Once you know which cupboard their mugs are kept in? Is it incredibly awkward – or very creepy – to just call them up and ask them for coffee? “Hey, you seem cool. Wanna hang out?” That’s how I got my first best friend in Grade 8, and she was creeped out. Of course, she still did agree to hang out with me, probably to get me to shut up and go away, but it worked out in the end. There’s a lesson there, but I’m not sure if it was that she should have run screaming in the other direction, or that I should try and be more subtle.
I don’t know. All the friends that I’ve made in the past few years have been through going for beers after a rant-fueled socialist organizational meetings of some sort, so I’m really not up on group-friendship-hangout-etiquette quite yet.
Basically, though, I’ve been doing stuff with awesome people, new and old, and I’m very much enjoying their company – they’re all funny and generous and fairly awesome; I’ve only been in town for short time and I’ve done more random shit in a week here than I did in a month in Kingston. That may be due to the Olympics, but it might also be due to Vancouver. I’ll take it, either way.
In related news, last night I went and had sushi with another old friend, and we hung out and listened to hockey in the background, and I stayed up past my bedtime and now I am tired. But oh, fresh fish, I have missed you so. If there is anything better than fresh west-coast seafood, I don’t even need to know. Tonight, I’m going to see Jonathan Coulton with Kimli, which will be hilariously fun - her date couldn’t make it, and I get to be his last-minute stand-in. I will try to be useful.
Thanks, Wil
Way back when the Internets were young, when wild FARKers roamed the tubes beating up newbies and making boob jokes, I started reading a ‘blog by a guy named Wil (old ‘blog linked to for historical nostalgia purposes). Wil, of course, was the guy who had played the loved-to-be-hated teen-genius Wesley on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The show had ended years before, and in the intervening time things hadn’t going so well for him – his agent had dumped him, he wasn’t getting much work, and he was kind of miserable (though he did have a girlfriend, which put him ahead of most other Internet denizens of the time).
Things started to turn around, though, as they often do, and he became a huge celebunerd due to all of the people in the darkest of the geek-tubes who increasingly read his ‘blog and sort of understood where he was coming from. He eventually even published a book about it all; the book did really well. He refocussed his career away from acting, and things took off every which way – and he’s still acting, because as the koan goes, things only come once you stop striving for them (which, despite being a huge basic tenet of zen philosophy is totally not fair and is actually kind of shitty, if you think about it for long enough.)
But this isn’t about Wil. It’s about one of Wil’s friends, Jonathan Coulton. Wil introduced me to him – me and probably a gagillion other geeks as well – through his ‘blog, and Jonathan Coulton is, shall we say, fairly awesome (Ok, well, he was also big on the other nerd staple Ze Frank’s “The Show”… remember him? Yeah). For those who have been sleeping under a boat that doesn’t get good Internet connectivity for the past four years, JoCo writes funny, smart and sweet songs about love and nerds (and nerd love), and about all the great things that come from understanding science, having had an awkward adolescence, working a shitty dead-end tech job, having hooked up at least one transistor in the hopes of building a robot to decimate your enemies, and the joys of knowing how to program its microcontroller in C. And also, zombies.
Anyway, I am a fan thanks to Wil (even though I hadn’t really listened to him in awhile – and just downloaded the new album. Woot!) but I never actually expected to ever see him perform or anything. Then, this week, Kimli told me that she had a spare ticket to see him. And that I could have it! WHUT?!?
So, we went to see Jonathan at the RIO last night. As predicted by Delphic seers at the dawn of the last millennia, it was awesome. Paul and Storm opened; I’ve listened to their podcasts but am not terribly familiar with their stuff. BUT I SHOULD BE. Because they’re hilarious. They opened with a song about being the opening band (“We’re probably not the band you came to see tonight/But it’s alright, ’cause soon we’ll go away”) and were able to harness the audience’s rowdiness and pump it up to ridiculous levels. I haven’t seen that much nerdy excitement in one room since the lineup to meet Nathan Fillion at the Toronto ComiCon. And they ended on a hilariously extended version of their famous song about seamen. I mean, sailors (“The Captain’s Wife’s Lament).
And, of course, there was JoCo. He played all the favourites, and got lots of audience participation (even when he didn’t want it), along with a mini chocolate cake (which was NOT a lie) from an adorable girl who looked like a goth-punk version of Bo Peep. He did many things, but the stand-outs include a fabulously extended version of Mr. Fancy Pants that involved loops of Beyoncé. I won’t say any more; you had to be there (or will have to watch the inevitable bootleg YouTube video that is probably going up as you read this.) He also introduced Molly Lewis, who kind of reminded me of a more overtly sarcastic Kate Micucci from Garfunkel and Oates (or maybe I’m actually just a ukulele racist, and all tiny, dark-haired sarcastic girls who play the uke look the same to me.)
I could go on, but instead I’ll just leave you with the song that the show closed on: The First of May (this version involves a giant Rick-Roll at the beginning, but IT IS WORTH IT.)