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Festival Express Poster




Festival Express Poster

Originally uploaded by rgdaniel

It’s 1970, the year after Woodstock. And now, right here in Canada, another sure-to-be-epic rock festival is selling tickets via this very poster. The Trans Continental Pop Festival was a 1970 tour across Canada by some of the world’s biggest rock bands, including The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and The Band.

It later became known as Festival Express, which is also the name of the documentary film that would eventually emerge.

The bands travelled across Canada on a private train between the gigs, which became a party / jam session of epic proportions. Some of this mayhem — along with actual concert footage — was captured on film, but not seen until Festival Express’s 2003 premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, 33 years after the original event.

I just found this poster in some old papers, and I’m very excited. Also very old, since I was at this show, in both Toronto and Calgary!!

I have several of these, and also a couple of copies of the original newsprint program for the events. I think I may just look into this whole E-Bay thing…

Where’s our John, John?

Our favourite contractor, John Marriage, is a funny guy. Maybe a little funny-peculiar (aren’t we all) but mostly funny-haha. He used to be one of those TV-show contractors, but decided he would get a real job instead. As a former rival, he has strong opinions about our favourite TV-show contractor, Mike Holmes . I feel that Mike Holmes has important lessons for homeowners to learn about the renovation process, whereas John feels that he’s a big poopy-head, or something. I dunno, who listens.
Anyway, our bathroom renovation is well underway, i.e. we no longer HAVE a bathroom. Just bare walls and some Ditra. (….mmmmm, Ditra……) After a few days of no progress in moving things forward, it was with a heavy heart that I called John to let him know that I was getting very stinky and wanted my shower…
His return message (we never speak directly, I’m a very busy man, what with the naps and the going out for milk) was informative and his reasons credible, and I am no longer concerned that he has abandoned us for a return to the limelight.
At the end of his message, John said “Gee, I hope you’re not going to put all this in your Blog”.
No John, I would never do that.

IMG_0717-medium

I am the Most Interesting Hippie on Flickr




Yes

Originally uploaded by rgdaniel

If you go to Flickr (arguably the world’s best photo-sharing web site, according to themselves) and Search “Everyone’s Uploads”, “tags only”, using the word “hippie” and sort by “most interesting”, guess who shows up as Number One??

Ya, baby, put that in your pipe and smoke it…

Here’s the search link if you don’t believe me:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=hippie&m=tags&s=int

Stitch Guide




Stitch Guide

Originally uploaded by rgdaniel

So my wife asks me to scan an article from a needlework magazine. No problem. So I’m looking over the file before I give it to her, and I see what you see here.

At first I’m thinking “Hmm, looks like the OCR screwed up”. Then I realized I wasn’t doing OCR, I was scanning in Photoshop as JPG’s.

So it’s actually supposed to be like this.

Cornelia with new chicks Cameron and Creemore

New Lady Amherst Pheasant chicks, hatched June 27th, 2008. Our friend Emma suggested the names, carrying the "C" theme from proud parents Corny and Cornelia, and also referencing two local craft beers, which I can get behind totally…

After brooding in her brooding box for a couple of weeks, two of the dozen-or-so eggs Cornelia was sitting on finally produced these little puffballs. This is their third day.


More pics on Flickr, click here.

Playing the Building

From David Byrne’s website:

Playing the Building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

In this video interview, David Byrne describes and demonstrates the installation (warning: short commercials)

Additional video here.