Springtime chillfest

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The mundane peculiarities of life have stacked up in a way that has thwarted any chance of kelly-yoyoKelly and I going off somewhere for a vacation, even a short one, right now when she’s off work. She’s got a series of days right now when I still have job stuff to show up for, in other words. In a couple weeks’ time the reverse will be true–she’ll be commuting to her exciting new job while I have a week of loaf.

It happens, it’s no huge deal, and in the meantime I’m taking as much downtime as I can while she’s off. This morning, for example, we ambled to Gastown and tried out a new cafe, Finch’s Tea and Coffee House, that makes excellent tea, delicious little breakfasts and, from the looks of things, has a lot of potential for excellent sandwich. It’s a quaint, cute, inexpensive and somehow English-seeming place.

Then we came back to East Van, bought every delicious thing we could find at the produce store, including two pounds of strawberries, and I napped!

A half-day in, the so-called staycation has, in other words, been restful and comfortable. All that’s really lacking is the “We saved our pennies and went went Here! To this really cool place! On a plane! Or maybe by sled dog! And did this wholly sexy thing that doesn’t exist in Vancouver! Here’s pictures.”

Instead I can tell you that last weekend we went to Burnaby Lake! On the Skytrain! And hiked about eight kilometers. Where I captured a blurry redwing blackbird.

Redwing Blackbird

Redwings can be rather unrewarding subjects. When they’re sitting still, which is never, their colored patches aren’t all that interesting. The rest of the time they look like this, only usually the color contrast isn’t as interesting.

What kind of sexy are we looking for today?

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On Friday morning, I posted the following on Twitter and Facebook:

Trying to decide on a physical type for sexy recurring minor character. Is he a Denzel Washington? Jon Hamm? Giancarlo Esposito?

I looked at that and thought, I have no idea who the hot young guys are these days.

Rather than actually buckling down to work–I’d slept poorly–I considered Glee, because it’s got the highest profile and the youngest cast of the Hollywood Stuff I watch. Will Schuster, as I’ve recently discussed, is not my thing. Finn? Meh. Trouty Mouth, a.k.a. Chord Overstreet? Ewww, Trouty Mouth!! Kurt and Blaine are lovely and gay and this character is bait for a 24-year-old female extrovert. Burt’s too uncle-y. Kevin McHale, is adorable, I admit, and could totally play the role if I were actually casting a movie–but Artie himself is too buttoned down. And I like Puck the character enormously, but I’d call Mark Salling more charming than cute.

(I’ve also recently seen the vampire boy from Twilight on the cover of Vanity Fair, by the way, and all I can say is a world of no to that action.)

On the one hand, this is the perfect sort of question to throw to the Twitternets just for the fun of it. It was also an insufficiency of information to offer, or it would have been if I were seriously looking for help. Maggieno immediately asked what kind of sexy I wanted. Jon Hamm sexy, she pointed out, does not equal Johnny Depp sexy. She went on to ask: Sexy as in wild, hot, slam-n-g’bye? Sexy as in grab a blanket, find a cozy place, and start canoodling right NOW?

(As I was underslept and set on random that morning, I have to tell you that this made me think: “Must stop using the verb canoodling so imprecisely.” Because I use it to describe a mental process whereby I play with story ideas in my head, or sometimes in e-mails to Snuffy when I need to bounce a story problem off someone exceedingly patient. Bad writer! Wrong usage! Although, considering the uses I’m going to put this particular character to… oh, sorry!)

The thing was, the reason I was going through the mental flip-file of celebrity nom was to decide just that. What kind of sexy?

Anyway. I got suggestions, both of actors and of characters. Spike and Angel from Buffy. (Great characters, and creditably heterosexual, but they don’t rank high on my cute scale.) Hugh Jackman in a utilikilt, from Breklor. Jason Stathum whom I’d never heard of, but whose name reminded me of David Strathairn, which made me think, I really don’t know who the hot young guys are these days.

A smart-ass cousin suggested our Prime Minister, which is to gag. Thank you for that at seven in the morning, Colleen. I will have my revenge.

I do like Hugh Jackman, though. I thought: Is he a hot young guy? But no, IMDB says we were born in exactly the same year.

So far, Johnny Depp is the winner. Because yes, I am thinking rather of a grab-a-blanket now guy, but not so much a keeper. If nothing else, Johnny’s got not a keeper written all over him.

Peregrine falcon… maybe

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Not the best shot ever, but since it was sitting out on a branch with no obstructions, in bright light, I chased this raptor out into the swamp at Burnaby Lake today.

RSCN6838

The real stroke of luck–after seeing the bird in the first place–was that I didn’t end up knee-deep in wet mud in the process. The masses of wet dead winter grass held me up, a little reluctantly, and the bird took wing before I had a chance to plunge out too far in pursuit.

Cumberstein! Frankenbatch!

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Last night the National Theater in London beamed a live performance of FRANKENSTEIN out to movie theaters ’round the world. The show has Benedict Cumberbatch of Sherlock as the Creature and Jonny Lee Miller, who we saw in a recent and rather shrill adaptation of Austen’s EMMA, as Victor “Whoops, shouldn’t have gone there!” Frankenstein. The two men trade off the lead roles, and I was glad Cumberbatch was the monster: he did some amazing physical acting, strenuous, fascinating stuff, in the coming-to-life scene. It was unbelievable.

Nick Dear’s script eases us smoothly through all the pivotal scenes in the Mary Shelly novel, but–and this was the show’s only flaw–the dialog was sorely lacking. The characters speeched at each other… and so their emotional connections came off a bit stilted. The actors did what they could to imbue these pedestrian exchanges with more charisma and passion than the words really deserved. And they did rise above. A good actor can lift workmanlike words, after all, and these performances were stunning. The staging, meanwhile, was utterly brilliant and creative. I am so glad I saw it. My brain is filled with happy theater vibes.

On the 31st NTLive is swapping the leads and doing it all again. If you want to see Benedict get his half-mad golden-haired Boy of Science on, there’s still time to get a ticket.

Or, if puppets are more your thing, Superbass and I also saw a preview for an upcoming NT show, War Horse, which I assume will get broadcast next season.