A Long Time Ago, We Used to be Friends

I’m on Facebook but use it for hardly anything useful. I generally spend my time reading other people’s status updates, trying to come up with smartass comments for photos, and sometimes setting up social gatherings. On an average day I probably spend 5 minutes on Facebook.

Almost every one of my Facebook Friends has between 100 and 300 other Friends - it’s rare I see anyone with less than 100. It’s easy to amass Facebook Friends, since you end up with requests from people you went to high school with, or you worked with, or you once sat next to on a bus five years ago. I’ve made a mandate of keeping my list to under 100, though, because I’m a stone cold jerk.

You see, I don’t like having Facebook Friends that I haven’t talked to in a decade and who, until the advent of Facebook, I really didn’t care about. I’ll admit when I first signed up for Facebook, I went on a crusade to add all the hot girls from high school, just to see if they were still hot. But since then I’ve deleted all of them, and probably delete a good eight or ten people every six months. This is probably not proper Facebook Friendship etiquette, but seriously, I don’t want these near-strangers peeping in on my life, however unexciting it is, and I don’t really wonder what they’re up to (looking up ‘hotties’ is purely superficial). Sometimes I’m curious, sure, but I do equate Facebook Friendship with at least a tiny shred of real friendship. I think I’ve got a small but good bunch of friends, and most of the people on my Friend List are ones that I genuinely like, and like hanging out with, ‘in real life’.

Olympic Day

This past Thursday I booked a vacation day to head downtown with my ladyfriend and my cousin. The plan was to check out the various sponsor and national ‘houses’ (pavilions). We got into town just before noon, and entered the German Fan Fest tent right away, where my cousin and I enjoyed some bratwurst and sauerkraut. Aside from some $9 beer, that’s really all there was in this tent, and it would become a common theme for the rest of the day.

We walked to see the five-flamed cauldron, the day after organizers fixed the fence to give people at least a small gap to put their cameras through. From there, we headed up Granville Street to the library and LiveCity Downtown, home of the Made-by-Americans Canada House. The lineup here was about 40 minutes, and Canada House was pretty sad. We got to hold the olympic torch, but the rest of the tent was just interactive computer screens. The beer gardens were at least ‘bumpin’ as the kids say, and I can see that one could just park one’s ass there and down $7 beers while cheering on the athletes on the big screen TVs. But for a quick visit, the lineup really was not worthwhile.

After a break for food, we moved on to LiveCity Yaletown: a 10  minute lineup to get in, followed by two separate lineups of an hour each to the Coca-Cola and Panasonic sponsor houses, with no seating to be found anywhere (we sat on the floor of the Panasonic house for 2 minutes before being told we ‘weren’t allowed’ to sit). If we weren’t dead tired, Yaletown would have been worth staying at for the free nightly concerts/laser shows/fireworks, but we were dead tired and weren’t keen on standing around for another 2 hours before the good stuff started.

And, on a related note, on Friday a colleague and I snuck in to the Bell Ice Cube, another sponsor house, conveniently located just next to the building where we work. It’s another spot that featured hour-long lineups. Inside? A bunch of TVs, some free Bell crap, and a Bell phone store located in the back. I felt sorry for the people lined up.

So in all, downtown Vancouver right now is a fun place to be - if one avoid lineups and instead just mills about among the crowd. Everyone is happy, civilized, and just generally having a good time. Anything with a line is essentially not worthwhile, and I wish we’d not wasted so much of a day off standing in lines. Oh well. Go Team Germany!

Beard-B-Gone

Ten days after starting down the path of most excellent facial hair growth, I am no longer bearded. I had only planned on keeping it until roughly day fourteen or so, so the early bald-face isn’t really a tremendous loss. Besides, the point of growing a beard is simply that; to grow it. Mission accomplished. It was the first time in about nine years that I’d stopped shaving for more than a couple of days, and it may be a long time before I ever try it again (my ladyfriend declared, the day before I removed it, ‘I hate your beard’. That pretty much sealed its fate).

Beard growing generally goes through the following phases, and judging by the poor facial hair growing skills of my friends, I’m comparatively blessed with the ability to sprout a hairy chin.

Day zero: the last day of shaving
Days one through two-and-a-half: generally classified as the ’sexy stubble’ look
Days two-and-three-fifths through six: amber alert!
Days six through ten: the rubicon of beardedness; either you keep going or you turn back
Days ten through twenty: can blend in with indie band members or recluse writers
Days twenty and onward: the ‘just crawled out of my yurt’ look

It Has Begun!

The Olympics are officially underway. The streets downtown were absolutely packed with people from about noon onward. On my lunch break I took a stroll to LiveCity Yaletown, one of two big concert/corporate zones, to scope out the area before it became totally overrun. Security is tight - basically like the airport, with metal detectors and tote trays to empty your pockets, and belt checks - but I managed to do a quick sprint through the Coca-Cola pavilion before heading back to work.

Over the next couple weeks, the ladyfriend and I are definitely going to take a day or two to check out all the international houses, take a look at the Olympic ‘cauldron’, and just generally take advantage of some things that this city likely will never see again. And let’s face it, BC is probably going to enter a tailspin of debt as soon as it’s all over, so seeing shitloads of taxpayer money used to entertain us isn’t something to be cranky about, it’s something to have a little fun with.

Anyhow, having just watched the opening ceremonies, here’s a rundown of some random notable bits: Native dancing and drumming (with an english announcer ‘welcoming’ them? Uh - I think they were here first); Azerbaijan and Czech Republic sporting some eye-bleedingly hideous clothes; I make crib notes on which countries have cute athletes, for slow-work-day internet searches; Bryan Adams misses his lip-sync cue; Nelly Furtado is really hot; poetic tribute to the prairies that’s so Canadian it hurts; KD Lang sings at an Olympic ceremony for the second time - is that a record?; Michaelle Jean asleep during John Furlong’s speech; dome ‘cauldron’ malfunction; Wayne Gretzky rides in the back of a truck surrounded by yahoos.

All in all, it was a good opening ceremony. My criticisms are just that parts after the fiddling/tapdancing were slow and started to feel like a dreary, dreamy indie Canadian film. Look, KD Lang is great and all, but Hallelujah isn’t a terribly inspiring song. Considering it took place in the toilet that is BC Place, the first half was well done. I didn’t well up with Canadian pride, but then I have a heart of coal, so that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

So the Olympics start tomorrow. Three words: Deutschland Uber Alles!

TWIG Notes XXIII

It’s been a long week, and here’s what went down over the past seven days or so…

- On the weekend we said goodbye to another friend: this time it was Rumpole, my Mom’s miniature schnauzer who’d reached age fourteen-ish. It was hard to follow up Lucy’s passing with another dog leaving us, but Rumpole was really a ghost of his former self for the past year or so. He had a fantastic life, and gave us all years of love and entertainment with his crazy schnauzer antics. One of the oddest thing he did was go entirely berserk attacking an old housecoat - until he got himself burrowed into one of it sleeves, at which point he’d give up and just sit with his snout peeking out the end of it. Rumpole, like all animal friends, will be missed, but he was around for nearly half my lifetime and I’m grateful for that.

- The Olympics are only a couple of nights away and downtown Vancouver is overrun by police from all provinces. I work right next to BC Place, so the police presence is ratcheted up even more than other areas. I’m still not jazzed about the Olympics, but I don’t have any animosity toward them anymore either. They’re here, so we all might as well get used to it. And I am looking forward to checking out the free stuff, like country pavilions and the zipline across Robson Street. Free stuff is good.

- There was a time - high school, probably - that I would have sat down to watch the Superbowl. You know, back in the days that I had at least a passing interest in all professional sports (including the worst: pro basketball). I haven’t watched a basketball, baseball, or American football game in at least a decade. Ladyfriend, I know you’re reading this; just remember things could be a lot worse next time you catch me watching hockey.

- I haven’t shaved in five days. This is only relevant because I’m going to give the full beard a try, for the first time since my college days. The goal is to try to make it to the 20th of February, or thereabouts, without being so repulsive to my ladywife and without going mad with the beard-itches. If you’ve never grown a beard before, the itchiness is hard to understand. I figure by the end of next week I should at least look like some greasy band member (minus the greasy top-of-head hair of course). For reference, here’s what a bald guy with a righteous beard looks like.

City vs. City: Compare and Contrast

No Music Video Monday today - I need to give it some more thought before I post anything, otherwise I’ll just end up posting MC Hammer videos.

Making plans for last week’s this trip to Seattle, I was excited but also thought, “Downtown Seattle’s going to be a lot like downtown Vancouver.” Is it? Time for some tale-of-the-tape comparisons!

OLD STUFF
Seattle: countless buildings that date back to the early 1900s, still in excellent shape and home to shops and pubs. An entire section of the city (Pioneer Square) consists of brick buildings with neon signage. Some roach motels and social housing. Space Needle and Science Center date back to the World Fair in 1962 and are kept in near-new condition.
Vancouver: numerous old buildings condemned, falling apart. Pretty even split between pubs, sandwich joints, and slums. One street in Gastown is in moderately good condition; anything around it has been left to rot. Notable historic landmarks from the old days: a steam clock and a statue of some guy whose first name is Gassy. I’m gassy and I don’t get a statue, what up with that?
Winner: Seattle

VAGRANTS
Seattle: Crazy people who may yell at storefront windows without warning then ask you in a polite manner for spare change. Poor people who wander aimlessly. Downtown city streets do not smell like urine.
Vancouver: Crazy people with drug addictions that smoke crack or shoot up in doorways. Generally passive panhandlers. Poor people who wander into traffic. Smell of urine at least once every two blocks downtown.
Winner: Seattle

FOOD
Seattle: good selection of restaurants, but the city seems divided into ‘districts’, where there may be a lot of eateries or only a few. No cheap sushi joints downtown. Coffee shops pretty much everywhere. Pike Place full of variety, but it closes early, and aside from raw vegetables, I’m not sure any of it is actually good for you.
Vancouver: pretty much any type of food available downtown, and a lot of it inexpensive and authentic, and some of it less than authentic (Koreans running a Mexican restaurant, Indian food served by Honkeys, etc.). Coffee shops and sushi joints are everywhere you look. Strangely, no one’s opened an upscale coffee and sushi eatery.
Winner: Vancouver

GETTING AROUND
Seattle: free city buses within the downtown core. Streets are laid out on a grid but high number of one-way streets is frustrating. You may find yourself on an on-ramp to a highway without even trying. Interstate highway seems to operate alright despite always being busy. Right-lane traffic drives exactly the speed limit.
Vancouver: buses aren’t free, but Skytrain operates on the honour system! Grid street layout would be easier to navigate if you could identify landmarks rather than cookie-cutter condos. No highway into downtown, instead everything’s funneled through bridges built fifty years ago. If you don’t drive 10km/h above the posted limit, you’ll face road rage.
Winner: neither!

PEOPLE
Seattle: the city didn’t seem terribly busy (maybe it was the time of year). After dinnertime, you can wander the streets and it will just be you and the vagrants and the police cruisers. Good luck making eye contact with anyone you walk past. Yoga pants craze does not seem to be successful here. Everyone looks pretty plain. You will see black people here. If you smell marijuana you’re probably going to jail.
Vancouver: city is full of people, and a lot of ‘em are fairly attractive. Yoga pants industry still firm pert supple strong. Daytime brings out a lot of foreign-language students. Nighttime brings out drunk douchebags from the suburbs as the main street shuts down to accommodate pubs, bars, stabbings, fights, and drugs. You will smell marijuana numerous times before you see a black person here.
Winner: Vancouver