car trouble.

well, unless you are riding the rails with jack kerouac, car trouble should certainly be expected while on the road. something has happened to our dear beloved boris carloff (maybe a fuel issue) and we are having a heck of a time getting someone to look into it on the verge of canada day. i must say, though, that the garage we towed it to on whyte avenue did lead us to believe that they were a 24 hour operation. how could we have been so naive in this small city? when i called to check on progress today, i was told "no, we don't have any mechanics in until wednesday." what's that? so what i am saying is, if you know of a mechanic in edmonton who might help us out tomorrow (monday), we are all ears and appreciations. i like this place okay and all, but my family, a salmon barbeque, a dentist appointment and countless other wonders are all waiting for us in vancouver.

university rainbow.

an antithetical outing.

i know this whole blog, our whole tour and my whole life are supposed to be about independent creativity, but when in rome one is wont to do what the romans do. and a trip to edmonton without experiencing "the world's biggest mall" (a claim i feel must be obsolescing to some new development in dubai) is a crime against all things industrialist/albertan. also, aitor had never been to west edmonton mall before and was told by our friend taz that you can shoot guns there...somewhere. for my own part, i wanted to buy some new underwear (with all apologies to indie crafters, y'all have yet to make a panty that can rival my old reliables).

aitor was ready for action and adventure, i was braced for the throngs of doughy teenagers and we set out on our voyage. a quick and surprising discovery about west edmonton mall is that it is littered with old-style photo booths (a great love of ours) in both colour and black and white. i guess west edmonton mall is just large enough to have bought/leased a bunch of these things but just outmoded enough to have kept them instead of replacing everything with cutesy japanese sticker machines.

we went for the black and white; they are getting harder to find.

i was planning on submitting a listing to this site i recently found that is aiming to catalogue photo booths worldwide. but when i got back to our dorms i realized i had broken some of their submission guidelines. i regret nothing! aitor's sock-gartered calves look the best in that booth.

this and buying my underwear comprised the high points of our trip.



aitor and i both immediately got the "shopping with mom" feeling that malls give us; we were (well, aitor was) getting gawked at by teenagers with faces full of metal and plastic bags sewn into their hair; and i experienced a pang of depression when i realized that there are sharks living under the mall in what can't amount to more than a hole in the prairies. but aitor did get to have an orange julius for the first time. oh, malls. what a bad place to vacation.

an open letter.

...to the douche bag who ran into my car while i was teaching at the theatre:

you obviously hit my car pretty hard. you must have noticed and then you just left. i feel your lack of personal responsibility will now begin to bleed into all parts of your life at an increasing rate. aside from the damage to your own car, i foresee a trend in your life away from deep connections with others. your family will grown disdainful of you and those you love will never trust or admire you enough to foster a reciprocal relationship. you will live a very long time and watch this process unfold before you until at a final arduous moment, all your errors will shine clearly into your mind and soul. this is the feeling you will spend eternity inhabiting.

your friend,

becky

blackout.

my laptop failed me yesterday and now needs repair.

i mention this in case any family members (mayte, that means you) are concerned about the radio silence on this blog.

we are well and happy and fed in edmonton and plan to continue in this manner for some time. i am here performing with and without other people at improvaganza while aitor keeps quite busy with nightly unflattering portraits of drunken comedians and other illustrative work.

i would also like to congratulate aitor on having his live stage debut today. he played a hard-up travelling mustache salesman in the improvised kids show, uncle grampa's northern jamboree, and was quite a great hit. it's a good thing he can back up those dashing good looks with jokes and mustache drawings.

button pile.

rent me a dorm room and i will do this to its desk.

so long, citizens.

after such a brief but jam-packed visit to bruno, it came time for us to reassemble ourselves and shove off for edmonton (where i will be performing for ten days).

it was a sad goodbye to our new friends (for me, anyway) but at least we got to do some rabble rousing before our departure. serena has been holding on to an assignment she made (from learning to love you more). the assignment involved making a presentation about an artist and installing it in a public place. serena had made an installation about glen baxter but felt too shy to put it up on the town bulletin board (being one of the new weirdos in town). so when two new weirdos showed up, the time was right to put it up. you will also note that some market weight pigs have become available in the area. so, if you're hungry...







after wrenching ourselves away from bruno, we threw caution to the wind and decided to drive twenty minutes away from edmonton to visit the nearby town of humboldt. this was dumb because i had agreed to perform in a cabaret at 8:00pm in edmonton and we were already going to be cutting it close. but we've just fallen so deep in love with saskatchewan and it's not a place we often have the opportunity to find ourselves. we also heard there was good thifting there.

i'm glad we made the trip. the "humboldt goo neighbo store" was one of those just totally incredible out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere thrift store experiences. i bought a whole bunch of vintage buttons and (this is the crazy part) an avocado flour/sugar/coffee tin set with matching wall-mount paper towel/tin foil/cling wrap dispenser for $2. for the whole set! now just i have to figure out how it is going to get back to toronto.

we also made it to the varscona theatre just in time for the show. we pulled up to the back door, i said some hellos, talked to the tech, got into costume and the show began. and thus it starts anew. goodnight.