Hard To Love

Turner: "I guess if, in a week, the people running Alberta wanted to demonstrate what a bunch of short-sighted small-minded cowards they are [I'll add bullshit money-grubbing, me], these stories would do so nicely."

Demonstration #1:
EnCana's new Bow Building initially lauded as an environmentally designed, community-integrated wonder, now a toothless shell without many of the design features that sold Calgarians on the project in the first place. Via the Globe & Mail.

Demonstration #2:
Alberta's premier and his cabinet just decided to award themselves - without public debate - a 30% salary increase. Via Vue Weekly.

It's bittersweet to be in Melbourne this week. Melbourne, with its public art, amazing public transport infrastructure, public washrooms every 100m, was apparently a boring, empty-downtown'd backwater with a ton of unrealized potential only as recently as the mid-1990s. Then they decided to do things right.

Categories: Calgary | Wurldliness

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Benefits of the zoo

Life and death, death and life.

The death of basically all of the Calgary Zoo's stingrays last week made national headlines. Here we are at the stingray exhibit just over week ago, when everything was still going well.



It was a cool exhibit. Sloane and I both chickened out when the rays got too close to our hands, though. No thanks for me! I'm still with the "that's a wild animal and it doesn't want me touching it" opinion I had back in 2004, in Australia.

...But also I'm scared of fish n' shit, yo.




Any guesses as to what else we saw at the zoo? I found this little tableau on the coffee table the next day.

Categories: Calgary | Sloane

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And Now For Something Completely Different

Aha, have I given you the impression that I am a photographer? Yes? Well! Suddenly, and minus the majority of the usual qualifications (I own not even a single cravat), I am also the curator of a gallery in a most hip and chic part of town.

Since last year I've been working with an aesthetics salon called Chic Studios down at Mount Royal Village. The owner, Amy Nicole, and I barter our services and generally cross-promote our businesses. I love working with them. All the people who come through are awesome, and everyone has good ideas and the energy to back them up.

The studio is on the lower level of a fabulous location on 16th Ave SW, facing the park on 17th Ave. The other businesses in the area include an Asian furniture importer, an art supply house, fancy clothing and shoes and flowers for the ladies who lunch in the area, a bunch of coffee and teahouses, and hip bars and restaurants. It's at the western end of what's known as "The Red Mile" when the Calgary Flames hockey team is doing well in the playoffs. In any case, it's a great location.

And so back in June, Amy and I started talking about turning the very wide and empty hallway space just outside the studio into a sort of gallery that I would curate. Eventually the arthouse-appropriate track lighting I bought will be installed in the ceiling, and the wall will be painted white (with the tops and end being the hot pink of Chic Studios), and we'll have gallery postcards and some signage. But before I left for out east in early July, I did the real jumping-through of the hoops, which was getting the art framed and hung on the damn wall, for starters.

This first show includes my two neon sign pieces that showed at the Vertigo space in early June with the Mob Hit festival, and three pieces from Erin Pasternak's winter oil rig series. Erin did the nameplates on her old-timey typewriter and there's a price list for the works behind the Chic Studios front desk. The next show will likely be two local painters, and then I'm looking to bring in some drawings from Tara Lowen Ault Chowdhry, an artist based in Mumbai. Later on I'd like to bring in a graffiti artist to paint the walls themselves. But first, we're going to have an opening show/gala in September. The date isn't set but will likely be mid-month.

The Hilksom Gallery, upon opening. July 2007.

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Work work work

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Grateful

Last Monday evening Turner and Sloane left for Nova Scotia and I was left here in Calgary by myself. This was by design. I needed a period of me-time, it had been decided and planned months ago.

I missed Sloane and Turner this week, but I have been using the time alone (the first alone time in more than 2.5 years) very wisely. Among the things I was grateful for, this week:

- My bicycle. Such a lovely and constant companion these last seven days. It totally deserves a tune-up, I realize. But I toodled my wobbledy way through the traffic every day to avoid the horrendous Stampede parking fees around town, and got enough exercise in the process to stave off totally gaining the 20 pounds I deserved to put on this week (I went off "the Plan" when Turner left and this week even had PIZZA. And REAL TEA. And a GELATO. And so on).

- The band at Fionna McSomethingsomething (the Sheraton hotel downtown bar)'s willingness to play our yelled-out 'requests' of "RIGHT UP YOUR KILT" (Wild Rover) and "AND SHE WAS" (Black Velvet Band), and their amazing, miraculous, and fortuituously perfect timing on "Home For A Rest", which pulled Victoria and I out of the bathroom to madly pseudo-stepdance our hearts out, channelling the old Clark Hall Pub spirit.

- Sourpuss shots. Thank you, David Friese, for introducing these into our world. Far too tasty & dangerous!



- The weather. During the week it was 28C every day. I ran around outdoors working and carousing in the improbably humid air, loving every second. Then today, when I woke finally exhausted and worn out from the week, it was 14C. Perfect timing for turning on the furnace.

- Chic Studios. Amy Nicole of Chic Studios and I have been working together to cross-promote since December and I've really valued her amazing and ultra-positive business sense. A few weeks ago we hammered out the details of turning her hallway into a gallery that I would curate. This past week this has become a reality. Please visit the gallery at 100 - 850, 16 Ave SW (lower level). This is directly across the park from 17th Ave where the kids juggle and people hang out with their dogs in front of Mount Royal Village. You know you go past there every week, dawg. Drop in to see our hip shit on the walls.

- My house. Though I usually spend a lot of quiet brain time wishing my house had higher ceilings, or a second storey, or a back extension, or a rose window for the attic, or a properly sealed front walk... etcetera, this week I found in me a huge amount of genuine and unconditional gratitude for my house as it is. I love our proximity to downtown, I love the hollyhocks that are finally sprouting in the front yard, I love our freshly painted croft shed. I love how the house is cool even when it's roasting outside. I love that we have windows above our bed that let in the fresh early-morning air. I love that we don't live in a show home, so that our messy lives with our toddler and cat and million magazines can spill all over everywhere and it's okay. Plus, we live close enough to Stampede for the nightly fireworks to rattle the windows, so we've got that going for us, which is nice.

- And of course, the peoples! Among the peoples I need to thank for this amazing week of amazing fun whist being amazingly un-traditionallly-encumbered are: Chris Turner (my spouse and father of my child) and Sloane (said child) for getting out of Dodge without complaint; Alexis Bahry for finding a lot of really fun things to invite me to; Karen Krull and Victoria Coffin for calling and yelling into the answering machine, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TONIGHT???"; Bruce Bristowe and Peggy Bumanis for inviting me to the RCA Stampede party; Moonira Rampuri, Marcello DiCintio, Jenny Saarinen, Garth Kennedy, Jewels, Maryam Nabavi, Heather and Trevor for including me in their awesome, I-was-invited-last-year-but-couldn't-come Kensington House Crawl ('07)... what a wicked Georgian-toasting, bocce-playing, Reefer-Madness-watching, and piratey-minus-the-intended-eye-patches-ARR-me-mateys time was had by all! Thanks to my neighbour Rob Dermedy who was 100% cheerful about lending his electrical skillz to the Chic Studios gallery despite the repeated delays and logistical glitches. And of course three cheers to John Johnston, David Friese, and Bruce Manning, plus the guy Karen brought to the Sundowner. Thank you all for including me in your Stampede plans this year. (Marky Mark-Mark, we'll see you next year, yo!)

p.s. I read TWO BOOKS this week!!

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Friends | House | Work work work

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Not A Job I'd Want

I wasn't afraid of heights until after Sloane was born. One day I was up on a ladder (I think to peer suspiciously into the attic, still fearing the zololite back then) and when I looked down I got wicked vertigo. Since then I have had some trouble with being up high, the idea of elevators, Sloane anywhere near a balcony, etcetera. Nothing too drastic but certainly a change from my growing-up-gymnastic self, having won many ribbons for my prowess on the balance beam and being able to do back full twist flips on the trampoline.

Anyway, we were getting lunch yesterday at Vietnam Restaurant on 12th Ave, and I look out the window and see a man dangling from the Calgary Tower on a grapple line. Photographic evidence:

So I wasn't exactly using a telephoto lens, but let me assure you that that black dot isn't dust on the filter. That was a person, I saw their legs and arms. And as we watched, it became increasingly believable that it was, actually, a photographer. Being lowered to take photographs of the downtown from just such-and-such an angle as can only be had by being lowered from the Calgary Tower on a little wire.

Now THAT is a gig on which I'd probably take a pass.

Categories: Calgary

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Kitler!

A few weeks ago I was at Koentges' friend Gavin's house in Hillhurst, shooting the Himmelfahrt feature for the Swerve Drinx column. Gavin has this cat, I can't remember its name. But it looks like Hitler. It has the little Hitler moustache, mainly. We're standing around the backyard setting up the column photographs and I'm told there's a whole website devoted to cats that look like Hitler. And that I should take a photo of Gavin's cat and send it in. Okay, okay, sez I. So I took the photo, then forgot about it. A few weeks went by and I came across the digital file while looking for something else. Found the website on google. Sent it in. Forgot about it for another week or so. Then today I went to check if Gavin's cat had passed muster with the website panel. And yes indeed, Gavin's cat is now, officially, a Kitler.

My apologies to Gavin that they've listed this cat as mine, i.e. "owned by Ashley Bristowe". I did tell them it was Gavin's cat. I guess they assume that the person who posts the photo owns the cat.

Categories: Calgary

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Ramsay Courts

Today we had another of those shoots where Turner was made to carry stuff and be the model, and this time it involved a lot of running around, because it had to do with tennis. So we got him all geared up in shorts and running shoes and went just up the hill to the public tennis courts, where I made him bang the ball around for about twenty minutes (with no partner) so I could get a good net-side shot of a pewter flask full of scotch. So he was in the background, but he did have to run and lunge and stuff like that, because you can't just pretend to be playing tennis in photos, for it to look real you really have to be trying at it. So Turner was a good sport, very helpful about trying to be Mr. Action Man in exactly the small range of the court where his body would fit in the proper part of the background of the shot of the scotch flask (which was the ostensible reason for the photograph in the first place). And after twenty minutes of me bunkered down near the net taking photos of him racing around the court chasing the balls he'd bang against the fence, I have to admit that the sun was nice and warm and I felt a bit snuggly and tired. Turner was all exercised and I'd done nothing but lie on my tummy on the warm court. When we came home I had to have a nap.

So here is an arty-type photo of the tennis court from the start of the shoot (from the part of my setup usually called "getting the light"), to conjure up for you the warmness of the court surface and the nice summer day with blowing clouds and whatnot that we are having here in Cowtown:




I love that long crack along the net line.

Categories: Ash | Calgary

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More About The Exhibition

As reported, I sent out this email saying "please come to the exhibition play" and told people that I'd be there on such-n-such dates. So as per the schedule, we headed down to the theatre as a family for repeat performances of the torture-of-watching-strangers-look-at-my-photos, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday this week. Turner would chase around after Sloane while I hid behind the structural pillars in the lobby, sucking on martinis. This, as part of our ongoing campaign to socialize Sloane into being one of those precocious kids who is at ease in 'thee-ah-tah' (and other "arts") circles.

We took some pictures (after everyone went into the theatre, so as to prevent me looking like a totally self-absorbed narcisstic asshole):

On the caption card:
Sydney, Australia. Taken during the Planet Simpson tour through Australia in November 2004. Turner was off doing an interview at some boobsy men’s magazine where women were definitely expected to be naked or absent. Instead of hanging around, I wandered through central Sydney. The shape-echo between the tricking bike and the birds at water’s edge always stuck with us as weird, and awesome. 
Metallic paper, 11 x 14. (2004/2007)




Quaich
This traditionally Gaelic vessel usually holds scotch during celebrations. Originally published in Swerve magazine, January 2007.
Metallic paper, 11 x 14.
by Ashley Bristowe (2007)



The captions:

Left -
Fort Macleod Java Shop
Home of the best buffalo burgers in Canada, this old building is perched at a corner, along the southbound Hwy 2 in the middle of Fort Macleod. Part store, part restaurant, part bus station, the corner is dusty. 
photographic ink print and laminate on canvas, 20 x 24.
by Ashley Bristowe (2004/2007)

Right -
Knowles Motel
Just east of Moose Jaw, SK off a feeder road to the TransCanada Hwy. The prairie sky was – obviously – doing one of its midsummer showstoppers. We were pulling a drive-till-we-drop cross-country sprint but roared onto the shoulder for this one.
photographic ink print and laminate on canvas, 20 x 24.
by Ashley Bristowe (2004/2007)

These are the ones that sold. I think I've agreed to a limited run of 5 prints (remember, many martinis): at this manipulation, this size, three sets are sold. We're going to keep one set. Which leaves one for the clamouring masses. If you think that based on this photo that you. must. have. a. set... Well? I suggest you contact me post haste: (403) 234-0176. They are awesome, but my natural inclintation to think my friends are humouring me leads me to believe that I shouldn't wait by the phone. (Prove me wrong?)





...Etcerera. Vertigo Theatre, Calgary. (2007)

There were others, but I got too self-conscious and had to go home and throw up.

My official apologies to Mark Heard, with whom I originally offered to share this exhibition but I didn't get my shit together in time. I am a big narcisstic asshole. Also I was registered in Art History 110 at ACAD and it seemed to suck up every moment of my free time (please see previous postings re: this) that I would have otherwise used to be not-a-narcisstic-asshole in the sense that I would've finally figured out a time to meet and get our photo choices sorted. Let's do something at ArtSpace in the fall? Sorry again. Love Ash

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Sloane | Work work work

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Because After All, It's Only The End Of May

Lo, ye readers not born in Canada, prithee tremble before these bald evidences of our latitude:

So it's 12:40am last night and Turner and I have just finished watching LOST on PVR. We're channel surfing, procrastinating going to bed. And I glance out the window. It's snowing. I say to my husband, "It's snowing." He says to me, "Well...  it's only the end of May. You're really being delusional if you think it's actually spring until well into July."

We looked at the snow. Turner: "...You want to go save your bedding plants?"
Me: "Yeah, I guess so..."

Because, you know. We got the bedding plants on the weekend. In Canada you're told you're really not safe planting stuff outside (besides tulips and crocuses and stuff that can handle frost) until after the Victoria Day weekend. Which was last weekend. But I think we've hit a technicality: Victoria Day is a public holiday and they always make it fall on a Monday. But the actual Victoria Day itself is May 24th. So when you're using Victoria Day as a planting guide, which is it? The long weekend or the actual day?

I think we have the answer. Don't plant until after Victoria DAY. (Being today, though we might wait until the snow melts.) Luckily I was too lazy to get around to planting them this week, anyway. We just hauled in the trays.

For the record, it was 25C on Monday. How quickly the worm turns!

Categories: Calgary | Canadiana | House

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The Months Flew By

I am totally borrowing this idea from Sean & Keitha over at House of Hot Sauce, who had a similarly quiet few months on their blog. From Christmas to mid-March it was pretty quiet around this url. Here's what we were up to:

- Christmas!


Thab came to town with Seung-Yi and we managed to cross paths in the airport when she was on her way back to Toronto and Margo was coming in from Nova Scotia! Posing in front of the giant Sam Livingston head at YYC.



Official Chez Bristowe Turner family Christmas photo. I think Turner and I are on our way out for a date or a party or something here, Sloaner to stay home with Gamma.



Strawberry Hill, winter wonderland edition. Christmas 2006.


Christmas Eve Dinner with all the trimmings, fixings, doo-dads, and whatnots.  


This brass planter was my gift to Granny Val on Christmas Day - presented with a bonus Sloaner in on the deal.

Margo and John came to Calgary, we rented a giant SUV and drove out en masse to Nakusp for the holidays. Uncle Johnny-John and Cousin Liam joined us the day after Christmas. There were toboggan parties and Granny Val's birthday, Thomas the train presents and dogs aplenty, trips up to the spring, a fab snowmobile/drinkfest up at the Gustafsons', a ski day down in Rossland, a German meal 'in town' (fancy-fancy!), Grampa/Oompa got a bit upset and threw a few things down the stairs and had to be taken back to Nelson in the middle of the night, and in the end we fortuitously made our departure just ahead of what ended up being a Gi-Gan-Tic storm which shut down the Trans Canada Highway in every direction only 24 hours later.

- Happy New year! We rang in the new year in Nakusp, in the fine company of Granny Val and Papa Mike, Turner's parents Margo and John, and Turner's brother John and cousin Liam. My new year's resolution was to go on this food-combining plan that I've done in the past and works well for me: no sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol, no white starch (white bread, white rice, corn), lots of vegetables and fruit, and you seperate eating 'carbohydrates' and 'proteins'. In the end these categories contain foods that of course include various amounts of both, but in essence you're separating meat/cheese/oil and carbs, eating them three hours apart. I've lost 35lbs so far: 20lbs to go to hit my pre-Sloane's-birth weight.

- We switched phone & internet companies. I've long hated Telus, the company that refused to allow unlimited long distance into Alberta until approx. 8 months ago (Ontario and the rest of Canada have had the $20/mo plan since, oh, 1995). Great ads, shitty service and idiotic billing. Our internet bill came in differently every month. When I'd call to ask/complain, the operators would do some kind of complex math on the phone and tell me that it all worked out to the same amount per month over time, so shut up about it already. So when Shaw came out with a bundle that allowed you dedicated phone service (with your same telephone number as before), plus internet, plus cable for less than my previous internet + phone service from Telus, we wuz like, SIGN US UP. Of course, there've been some snags. Telus wants their modem back. They didn't shut off the internet service and continue to charge us for it - this one is going to end up in small claims court, unfortunately. And the "Retention Department" keeps calling to try to woo us back. I tell them that if they'd like us to think better of their company perhaps they might start by STOPPING CHARGING ME FOR INTERNET SERVICE I'M NOT USING.

- In mid-January we billetted an actor who was here for the One Yellow Rabbit High Performance Rodeo theatre festival. Kevin of Albequerque's Tricklock Theatre was neat and tidy, interesting to talk to, left the house early every day under his own steam and came home late (but quiet) at night, and when we attended the show we realized he was also the lead character (and damn good at his job, too). After the many many many kindnesses of strangers we've availed ourselves of over the years in foreign locales, we felt good about giving back to the international travel karma jar.

- Cousin Jessica came to visit again. We've been seeing lots more of Jess since Leo's stroke, obviously. When she arrived in late January Sloane and I decided to decamp out to Brucio's in Douglasdale, the better to spend time with her. Also to give Turner some space at home to write and wander around bleary-eyed and writer-like, without wife and child demanding his attention in the midst of this, the mid-home-stretch of the book writing process. So out to Douglasdale we went, and Jess guest-starred as the hookah-smoking lass in one of my photo shoots for Swerve, and Uncle Larry arrived from Aylmer for a visit too, and we had a good ol' family reunion there in south Calgary.

- We had our first-ever Sunday brunch. I'd been feeling decidedly out of the socializing loop, and Turner was getting that nocturnal lemur-locked-in-the-basement look he takes on after a long stretch of working solitude. Obviously we needed to rectify the situation somehow. Going out at night is expensive and inconvenient and requires a babysitter, besides interfering with our patented (and necessary) "third shift" of work after Sloane goes to bed. So there had to be some other way to see people... and to get Sloane involved... and finally we hit upon the idea of Sunday brunch. Having people over. Eating, and some potluck stuff too so we weren't completely swamped with prep. Our first brunch was inaugerated on Sunday January 21st. Although we forgot to invite a few people (and didn't realize we'd forgotten to invite them until we started to wonder why they hadn't shown up yet), it was a great first go and eventually we hope to make the Bristowe Turner Sunday Brunch a monthly "thang". Here it is March already and we haven't had another one yet, so obviously we're working up to this goal slowly.

- From January 25th to February 9th, Sloaner and Auntie Alexis and I went to Costa Rica. Our travel partners included Brucio of course, and for the first week we were joined by Fifi and Brother John. Turner flew down for the second week of our stay. The route took us from Calgary to Houston, where we had a seven hour stopover (and a special guest-star appearance by my old friend Amy, Houston-based friend from long ago in France), and then on to San Jose, where we stayed the night. The following day we drove cross-country to the west coast and set up shop at Brucio's place in Faro Escondito, outside Jaco, on the west coast. We went swimming in the ocean, and watched fabulous sunsets from the balcony, and ate mountains of seafood, and Sloaner learned to swim in the (cold) hot tub, and we did bird-watching and snake-watching and monkey-watching and butterfly-watching, and we all learned the requisite 5 phrases in Spanish and used them prodigiously.



Ash (looking like a hatted dork) & Alexis (looking jolly & festive) at Playa Hermosa.



Sloane learns to swim with Grampa. Note the fancy "PolyOtter" suit with insertable "floaties", brought all the way from South Africa for Sloane by the ever-awesome Dr. Garth Kruger.




The Bristowe-Turnersesses at the fabulous hilltop restaurant at Villa Caletas.

- Upon arriving home in mid-February, the craziness cycle began anew with work. I started in on the provincial arts grant applications, due February 15th. Transcribing the interviews for Cryptic Moth I shoulda done in Costa Rica. Shooting the Swerve column photos. There was a lot of work to do. Sloane went to playschool during the day and Turner and I worked our brains out. I'll mention only once, and very briefly, that we were owed an absolutely tremendous amount of money by a variety of publications during this period. Everyone took their sweet goddamn time paying. Or, rather, not paying, as it turned out. We went through another terrible financial crisis. It was basically all I could think about day and night from about the beginning of December all the way through to mid-March. I hated a lot of people very intensely. I wrote three huge blog postings about it, all of which I deleted before I posted them to the site. I couldn't just post blithe bullshit about how great our lives are when our lives were really not great (Costa Rica trip notwithstanding). Financial stress is awful stress. Basically that's what caused the silence for three months.

- In the midst of all this, Brucio bequeathed to us the second-most-giant-est tv in all of creation. (Why? you may ask. Because Brucio got an EVEN BIGGER tv and didn't need the "little one" anymore.) If you know us, you know we don't even have cable. So to receive, unsolicited, a truly humungous television (it has three remote controls. THREE) was... unexpected. When you're truly poor and are suddenly given a six-foot-wide television that can be seen from two blocks away, a giant pulsing beacon of postmodern opiates beaming straight into your brain, it does make you wonder about the rationality of the universe. Can't afford groceries... maybe we can eat the images being shown on the television...? They do seem so life-like... We are not the ungrateful assholes we seem. Thank you Brucio for the giant tv.



Aforementioned giant tv. Those are Brucio's feet sticking out at bottom right. He's putting the approx. 1.7 billion cords into the right connections to make everything... "go".

- Then, in mid March, we got the Canada Council grant. $10,000 is nothing to sneeze at. I'd been running to the mailbox every day for four months, WILLING the Canada Council grant notification papers to arrive. Turner had basically given up hoping. But I knew we stood an excellent chance: I was once a funder, remember. And I also wrote the grant application. Then, one day, while Turner was away in Seattle at Lebowskifest and feeling guilty about spending money we didn't have on another trip for the book... it came. I tore it open. And called Turner. We were both able to sleep properly for the first time in months. If any of my readers have some kind of philosophical stand against government funding for the arts, you are personally invited to leave the blog right now and never come back. All hail the Canada Council.

And that kind of brings us to the present. That's what we did when I wasn't posting.

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Family | Married Life | Mom-ness

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Mr. Vicious Goes To The Cat Show

Well, I was thrilled when Shelley over at Swerve said she'd take my cat show story. I'd been obsessed with the idea of taking Rooney to compete at the Southern Alberta Cat Fancier's fall cat show for a few months, and wanted to find some way to fund it. (Attending a cat show as a participant/competitor/exhibitor is not a cheap pastime!) Initially I thought Rooney, my wee household purebred Abyssinian, might win a ribbon or two that we could hang in the back hallway. But when he hit the first ring it was clear that things were going to go a bit differently than I'd planned. Basically, he went insane and attacked everyone - me, the judges, and the head of the international cat fancier's association. And he earned himself a nickname among the other competitors: Mr. Vicious.

And that's what made the story.

I won't lie to you - I'm floored: a six-page feature, a cover article plus a teaser on the Calgary Herald's front newspaper banner! Sixteen photos total, in the feature and scattered through the rest of the issue, all shot by me. And I daresay that you'll laugh at the story. Yes, I'm predicting that you'll chuckle at my little tale. It's funny.



First page of the article: Rooney looking piiiiiiiiiiissssed off.



One of the photo pages - the cat jewelery and other scenes.

The Swerviettes did an absolutely inspired and spectacular job of this issue - there are dozen tiny details that were carefully handled and finessed. The editing of my piece, done by Executive Editor Jacquie Moore, was marvellous. A nuanced hand, she is a writer's editor, the best kind. My huge thanks for taking a piece I thought was finished and making it even better! Bundle of thanks!

Swerve comes free in the Friday Calgary Herald - and next week marks the start of the Ashley-Turner-Koentges collaboration on the weekly Eats & Drinks columns... more info to follow. But for now: chase down those covers with the orange cat licking his chops!


Full text below:

Okay, I admit it. I thought our cat had a shot at winning the big ribbon at Calgary's fall cat show. I thought he was maybe even a contender for first prize. I wasn't at all prepared for the disqualifications, and I certainly didn't think he'd attach me -- or the head of The International Cat Association. None of it went according to plan, not in the slightest. But let me explain.

A year ago we acquired a purebred Abyssinian kitten, and named him Rooney. He's a friendly little imp who shamelessly helps himslef to my morning granola, and he's a fanaticaly fan of fetch played with tossed paper clips. But most of all, he's gorgeous. Giant amber eyes and huge bat-like ears. Plus, the Abyssinian coat is "ticked", which means that Rooney actually seems to glow from within, as though he's irridescent. The kind of cat you'd see and think to yourself, "I bet he could win first prize in a cat show that handsome devil."

I heard about the fall Southern Alberta Cat Fanciers' Show over the internet and was immediately intrigued. Judges would be coming from across Canada, the US, and Europe; upwards of 125 cats would compete. Certainly Rooney would prove fancier than 124 of them. And wouldn't a nice "Top Cat" laurel look perfect hangin in the back hall above the litter box?

So, at a much-too-early hour on the last Saturday in October, I unceremoniously stuffed a befuddled and half-asleep Rooney face-first into his carrier and zoomed off to the Ogden Legion Hall -- our home for the next two days of competition at the fall championship cat show.

A cat-show neophyte, I arrived with some preconceived notions. Would it be a bunch of eccentric cat-ladies feeding their babies crushed caviar with infant spoons? Or would it be mean and brutally competitive – a hierarchy of bitchy breeders elbowing out the competition with poisoned mouse toys? I just didn’t know. And it didn't matter, for in the days and weeks leading up to the show I had but one simple, lingering fantasy that involved Rooney collecting a bevy of fancy ribbons. How wrong I was.

We arrived at the hall around 7:45am and I found our assigned “bench” in the way-back far corner, next to the fire exit and the kitty litter station. After setting up his cage I put a now hissing and decidedly cranky Rooney inside and taped on the sign I'd printed that morning: “My name is Rooney Roo! I am a red male Abyssinian. This is my first show!” Though ridiculously naïve in retrospect, the sign gave me a strange sense of satisfaction at the time. I’d gotten the idea from a website discussing ‘show hall etiquette’ which suggested preparing a sign because otherwise you’d spend half the time explaining your cat’s breed to the general public attending the show. I also wanted the competition to know Rooney was a newbie, an innocent first-timer, which would, of course, make the pile of ribbons he'd garner that much more enviable.

From our vantage point near the kitty litter we could see the whole exhibitor’s hall laid out before us: rows and rows of tables topped with identical wire cages. Some of the seriously serious breeders buy up whole rows of benching and have photos and new kittens on display in elaborate customized fabric benching ‘condos’ with zip-fronts and fuzzy beds. Circling the outer hall walls are the rings where the actual judging part of the show goes down: tables with raised judging platforms, surrounded by unadorned judging cages and overseen by small teams of earnest young people responsible for the vital clean-up after each round. And at each end of the hall, the vendors: cat toys, cat jewelry, enormous scratching-post-trees, cat carrier bags, cat picture fames, cat blankets, cat mugs, cat pins, cat hats, cat pencil jars, cat slippers, and pretty much anything else you could possibly festoon with the image of a cat. As well, ther ewas a booth advertising cat cremation & funeral services. for planning types. Indeed, at five bucks for a daylong gander at this subculture spectacle, I'd say it was the cheapest wholesome entertainment in town.

By 9:30am the whole hall was a flurry of activity. Judging began in the rings, and the room echoed with cryptic announcements from the PA system. Exhibitors walked their cats back and forth through the rows, or elaborately wiped them down with special gloves and combs designed to eliminate static. I did my best to fit in, pulling out a grooming brush (used not even half a dozen times) and went to work on Rooney’s luxurious ginger coat. The nice lady running the nearby raffle table told me I would have to take off the cat’s collar for the judging, so I did – revealing a bald ring around his neck that wouldn’t brush out.

While we waited for Rooney's turn in the ring, I took a tour of the hall myself, sneaking covetous glances at the giant wall displays of satiny, shiny, riotously coloured ribbons. They numbered for places all the way down to “Tenth Best”. Surely, I figured, Rooney was at least tenth best in some Byzantine category or other. Most of the time, though, I sat there beside the cage, periodically flipping through the workbook-like “show guide”, which seemed to be a collection of pages full of acronyms and other jibberish, incomprehensible aside from the advertisements. I was a bit confused about how to know where and when to take Rooney for judging, though I’d been told that I should just listen to the PA for an announcement. I missed it, of course. The raffle table lady must have been keeping a watchful eye because suddenly she came running down the aisle, waving and pointing at the ceiling. “That’s you! That’s you!” Instantly nervous, I yanked open the cage, pulled out my cat, and went shuffling down toward Ring 4.

Rooney hissed and struggled as I jammed him into the appointed cage at the judging ring – a mild portent, as it turned out, of the storm to come. I wasn’t completely surprised – cats don’t think much of each other when they’re strangers, and now he was under unfriendly flickery fluorescents and within easy earshot of his rivals. As I settled into a chair to watch the judging, Rooney and a cat in a nearby cage faced off with a big round of back-arching, tail-puffing, and yowling. And then suddenly it was Rooney’s turn.

As the judge approached his cage, Rooney spat and moaned, and when she tried to pick him up he swiped at her. Unfazed, the judge asked for his owner to put him on the judging bench. I leapt up and went to his cage, and reached in to get my cat. That’s when the kitty litter hit the fan. It happened so quickly I can’t recall all the details, but I remember that it sounded just like a cartoon cat fight, complete with bouncing-off-the-inside-of-the-cage reverberations and caterwauling screeches.

Welts rising up my forearm and bite marks on my fingers, I scanned the crowd. The people I’d met that morning were politely averting their eyes from our disgrace. To buy time, I pulled down my sweater sleeve and pondered my next move. I was pretty sure that most prize cats don’t attack their owners, in the ring, right in front of the judges. Visions of Rooney winning ‘Best In Show’ were definitely fading… though somewhere north of “Tenth Best” still seemed within reach.

The judge saw through my thin veneer of calm immediately. "You didn’t expect this, did you?" she said in a broad Texas drawl. I shook my head, at a loss for words. Rooney was doing that deep-pitched feline warning growl, tail swishing, eyeing me from a corner of the cage. "It’s his first show?” she asked. I nodded. She leaned in. "Now, don’t you let him win," she warned, voice low, pointing at Rooney. "This is a control game for him. I’ll judge him if you get him to the table. But don’t you let him think he can just have a temper tantrum and that’s it. If you give in, he wins. You’re the boss. You show him."

I turned back to the cage to find Rooney clawing at the ceiling bars, hissing. Where was the lovely cat that follows me around the house, the affectionate little bug who watches over my workday from the windowsill? He’d been replaced by a crazed, judge-hating lunatic. I didn’t know this cat.

I grabbed at Rooney a few more times, trying to get him back in the game. I wanted that ribbon. Even tenth place would be – swipe –  just – bite – fine at this point - screech, backflip out of my grasp. After a minute or two it was clear that we were holding up the competition and that Rooney was definitely not going to allow himself to be judged. "I’m going to withdraw him from this ring," I told the officiants, and our judge nodded.  I made a blind final grab with both hands at once and managed to get Rooney by the face and tail. With that hold I yanked him out of the judging cage, pinned his head under my armpit, and hurried back to our bench with whatever phlegmy furball of dignity he and I had left. I was suddenly very glad to be exiled at the far end of the show hall, beyond the curious gazes of the more experienced exhibitors.

Initially, it seemed to mark the end of our brief cat show career. In the melée Rooney had somehow torn a significant chunk of fur from his own head. He’d also split a nail. And now he was stalking around the cage, hissing disgustedly at fifteen second intervals and clawing at any attempt I made to pet him. I spent about ten minutes wondering what to do with the rest of my weekend, now that my whole flawless plan of winning the big show prize was clearly shot all to hell.

However, to my enormous surprise, however, it soon became clear that I wasn’t expected to leave. Even better, people started coming by the bench to give advice and buck me up. It happens to everyone, they said. Some cats just take time to get used to the overlit pressures of the show hall, they said. Many of them suggested that I walk Rooney through the aisles and past the judges a few times before the next ring, to give him a chance to get used to the smells of the other cats. The next ring? Like I was going to go through all that again? On the other hand, I’d paid the show’s steep entry fee, and there were still two days and fifteen rings to go.

Halfway around the hall on our first "orientation" tour, I started hearing greetings from the crowd: "Hello Mr. Vicious! How are you today, sir?" and "Oooh, lookout! It’s Mr. Vicious! Get ’im, tiger! Grrr!"

People were coming up to greet Rooney directly, not looking at me at all. With just one appearance, Rooney had managed to earn himself a nickname and something of a following among the other competitors. By the time we got back to the bench, I was laughing to myself and willing to give him another shot.

After several hours of constant petting, playing, and other forms of bribery, Rooney chilled out a bit. He was immediately disqualified from four of the next seven rings for hissing and scratching at the adjudicators, but he did win first in his division in every ring that didn’t disqualify him. Granted, he was the only cat in his division (Abyssinian “alters” – which means he’s been ‘fixed’, i.e. doesn’t have his… ‘equipment’ anymore). Unfortunately, it’s just a designation that doesn’t come with any take-home prizes.

Still, Mr. Vicious seemed to be winning an unofficial popularity contest. He was the punk-rock demon of the show, hissing and sputtering while the fêted champions lazed around placidly, gently pawing at feather toys and allowing themselves to be manhandled by the judges. By the time of his final ring show mid-day on Sunday, people were coming to see Rooney the way crowds used to flock to see the Sex Pistols, wondering what stunt he’d pull this time on the judging table. And let it not be said that Mr. Vicious let his fans down.

But Rooney’s last ring started out as one of his best. The calm at the eye of the storm, as it turned out. I’d taken to scruffing him (clutching the neck fur below the cat’s ears) as a control measure, and bringing him to the ring just in time to be put directly on the judging table. As I set him down in front of the benevolent Texan judge for this final contest, she also scruffed him and began telling the assembled gawkers what a long way Rooney had come since his first ring the day before. I allowed myself a moment of what turned out to be hubristic pride in my troubled boy. Things seemed to be going just fine, I thought. Finally.

And that’s when Rooney made his move. I was taking photos like a proud parent as it went down: he flopped on his back, working himself into position for his final volley of spite. The judge managed to maintain her hold on him for a few more seconds as my cat rolled around figuring out the best angle for his finale. But then Rooney exploded, becoming what can only be described as a flying ball of fur, teeth and claws. I learned later that our nice Texan lady judge is the head of TICA, the international cat fancier’s association. When my cat decided it was finally time to go completely batshit insane, he did so by attacking the highest ranking official in the cat fancier’s world, and with his whole fan club looking on.

To my horror, Rooney managed to fight his way out of the judge’s expert grip, and escaped down onto the floor. Immediately, calls went up throughout the crowd: "CAT OUT: SHUT THE DOORS!", from which I took a nanosecond's consolation that it wasn't the first time this sort of thing had happened. As I scrambled around the tables and under the displays in pursuit, I heard the fire doors slamming closed one after another at the other end of the hall. Judging came to a halt in the other rings and the whole show went quiet, hundreds of people now waiting on the recapture of my cat. A nice Singapura breeder from Lethbridge came out of the crowd to offer to hold my camera equipment so I could better throw myself around corners trying to nab Rooney in mid-escape. Others were scurrying around, calling out updates: "He went this way! He’s under there!" - until the PA boomed, "PLEASE LET THE OWNER OF THE CAT CATCH THE CAT." Finally, over near one of the cages belonging to a particularly snobby Russian breeder, I managed to grab hold of Rooney’s hind legs from between some chairs and haul him into my arms. He was not pleased. But by then, neither was I. Not. At. All.

"Thank you, I’ve got him!" I announced to no one in particular. Some cheers went up from his fans back at the ring at the far end of the room, but I knew it was time to thank the crowd, turn out the lights and head home. Owner and pet marched back to our bench, our disgrace now complete.

After retrieving my camera, I went around to the remaining rings, striking Rooney’s name from the rest of the judging rosters. "You’re wise to know when to call it quits," said one judge who’d seen the whole great escape sideshow. I made a special effort to thank the judge from Texas, who’d been exceedingly kind and understanding about everything. "Some cats just hate the cat show,” she said, rubbing a fresh welt on her wrist. "Yours, I’m afraid, is one of them….But he’s a good pet, isn’t he?" I nodded. "Sure he is," she continued. "You take him home and love him, y’hear? He’s a good one, got lots of fight in him." She paused. "But don’t show him anymore." I promised I wouldn’t.

And with that, I packed up our stuff, dumped out the kitty litter, and took Rooney on a final tour to say goodbye to his fans. And then we hightailed it out of there, nary a ribbon on the cat carrier, and never again to darken the door of the competitive cat show world with the ominous shadow of… Mr. Vicious.

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Rooney | Work work work

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A Short List Of Sh*t Going Down 'Round Here, Y'all

Let me preface this post by stating that, of late, we've been working batshit insane hours. Sloane started playschool last week (Turner found a daycare nearby that had a spot: I'd say more, but I get too mad about the whole situation. Suffice it to say that she's got a spot, not the one we wanted, but it's a nice place and it's close) and since the moment we first dropped her off it has been go go go go go.

Contracts ahoy: thanks to recommendations provided by the ever-lovely Alexis Bahry, I've been running around on architectural shoots for the last two weeks, taking photos of buildings in Midnapore and Cochrane and southeast Calgary. These being my first forays into industrial work, I've got The Fear. (Hell of a motivator.) When the weather forecasts are incorrect, I have anxiety attacks. You may be aware that in recent years the tv meteorologists are basically making shit up, right? You should see my blood pressure.

Turner and Koentges and I have been negotiating a collaborative contract that we can't really talk about just yet, except this: they'd do alternating biweekly pieces, and I'd do the photography for both. The idea was proposed to us back in August by an editor we all love. We've been at the negotiating table for nine weeks, sending samples and shooting head shots and mainly asking every so often what's going on, since we as the "talent" remain mostly in the dark while the money people talk to each other. Turner and Koentges and I could really use the income, if you dig, and boy, we were salivating at the prospect of "being paid properly" as per the original terms of the pitch. ...But suddenly, yesterday, the deal started skating on thin ice. We're not sure why. It's not over yet, but it's been stressful. We still don't know what's going on.

LOST is finally back on television, thank god.

Turner's in the second round of a pitch for a big American magazine that we've all heard of. The editor has given him guidelines for the re-write and once this new draft goes in he'll take it to the editorial board with his recommendation. Turner's been slaving over the fifteenth draft of the thing for a few days, and starts to sweat whenever I bring it up. If they take this piece, it could save our year and make Turner's name in the US. Cross yer feckin fingers for us.

In more plebian news, I applied for a job at a well-known department store photo studio, and got it. At $12.50/hr it's not the hottest job in this market, but the next stage for me is learning a lot more about studio lighting and I'd rather be paid than have tuition for a course come out of my pocket. It'll be mostly babies and families. I start training next week.

I smashed a veddy expensive lens. I had rented it to do some extra-snazzy photos on the weekend, and I dropped it. For any of you Nikon fans out there, it was the AF-S Nikkor 17-55mm 1:2.8G. ...Yeah. It retails for almost $2K. Accidents happen, sure. And the ever-amazing Kevin of the Calgary Vistek rental department was supportive and nice about it, but in the end I have to pay for the damage (of course), and we won't know the repair bill for about a week. So I'll just shit my pants until then, if that's ok with you.   

John and Fifi are pregnant. Not that we've seen them yet in person since the news was announced, but hopefully things with them are well. In the midst of the rest of all this: Congratulations, Mr. & Mrs. Bristowe of Mackenzie Towne SE!

The doors. They're not in, yet. Stephanie and Mike have shouted themselves hoarse at the Totem down in Midnapore, to no avail. We don't know what's happening, except that all of western Canada is in a labour-and-supplies deadlock because of the black hole of the tar sands up in Fort Mac. Resources and energy and time and money and people from all across the country are inexorably sucked into the gravity of Fort McMurray's economy, and we can only assume that our doors have ended up there, along with everything else. We're getting set to seal the back and side doorframes with insulating plastic to keep out the "winter".

I joined the "Learn to Run" clinic at the Running Room with Alexis. I am not in shape, anymore. I come in last. Okay, not quite last as in absolutely the last person, but I'm always among the last 3 or 4 people to finish. I can't run the 2:1 (two minutes running to one minute walking) and at today's run we move on to the 3:1. I enjoy the running clinic in retrospect each week, but during the running clinic I have a rough time. I feel like a big wobbly sausage. Y'all, nobody wants to feel like a big wobbly sausage.

The Canada Council application. It went in, at the beginning of October. All of you out there in internet land who've done a CC application know the pain of which I speak, here. The tension, the meticulous detail-checking, the taking everything down to the post office and insuring the hell out of the purolator envelope because damn, that pile o' paper is potentially worth thousands and thousands of dollars if the stars allign correctly: yeah, that. 

I've been assigned to do photos on a story Turner's writing about urban sprawl. Which means that I'm chasing around town trying to find shots that can properly illustrate the piece, but without falling back on the typical pictures of identical houses or traffic jams. I'm finding myself picturing various scenes I'd like to shoot, all of which would necessitate the hiring of models. I don't have the budget for models, and I've mentioned about how the weather forecasts are total guesswork, so there's no certainty that I could even use the models on any given day if I actually did hire them. As an M.Sc. in Planning I'm also feeling professional pressure on this shoot to produce a set that's absolutely spectacular... or at least something I can send back to my advisor at Guelph with a post-it attached: "I know my thesis sucked, but check this out". Last night I was roaring around northwest Calgary at midnight in the fog, getting lost in the swirly cul-de-sacs of Royal Oak. Please. Please. Please help me find the decisive moment somewhere out here in suburbia. I have four days left.

And, the best for last: Out of the blue this week Brucio invested in my burgeoning photography business with the surprise purchases of a Nikon D200 and a new Mac powerbook. From whence the provenance of these gifts come is beyond me, but lord knows we do not look the Brucio gift horse in the schnoz. Thank you, Brucio!

 

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Work work work

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SMOKIN' Mad

So I knew that there were lineups and wait lists and stuff like that for playschools. So I signed Sloane up back in March, paid my deposit. When I didn't get the promised receipt in the mail in 3-4 days like they'd said I would (a month later nothing had shown up), I called. They didn't answer my call. So I went back.

It's a great place and the kids look happy. The staff are friendly. It's close by. It reminds me of my own kindergarten. I put Sloane on the list for either full or part time, whatever came up first.

In Alberta you can't send your kid to playschool until they're 19 months old. Which means that to have childcare before that you can stay home, or send them to daycare ($25-45/day and up), or get a private babysitter of some description ($11/hr and up). Turner and I work in shifts (me - mornings, him - afternoons & evenings) and share the childcare at home. A lot of days Grampa Brucio comes over and takes Sloane for an hour or two. Our personal philosophies, combined with our financial situation, didn't really allow for dumping her in any ol' daycare. And besides which, there aren't many daycare places to be had, anyway. So I cobbled together my work in the free hours of my day, and although my career arc is transcendent at present, I was really looking forward to the chance to really kick out the jams.

Sloane is really social, too, and loves other children. She screeches, "Kiiiiids! Kiiiiiids!" when she sees other children at the playground, or we go to friends' houses with kids. We know she'd thrive in a playschool environment.

So it was with some measure of concern that I hadn't heard from the playschool yet. I'd perused the documents they'd given me, familiarized myself with the checklist of stuff I have to send with Sloane every day, read the bylaws, started scoping out the lunchboxes at toy stores. And yet, no call. By last week I'd put on my to-do list "Call playschool re: Sloane". And today I called.

1. The school is full for the fall. When I signed her up in March, I asked if I should be investigating other options. I said the words, "This is the only place I'm putting her on a waiting list. Is there any reason she might not make it to the top of the list by the fall?" The answer was, and I quote, "I don't see ANY REASON why she won't be here in the fall. Don't worry" (emphasis mine). So I didn't put her on any other waiting lists.

2. Other kids were brought through the wait list before Sloane. The administrator hadn't written that I would take full or part time, whatever was available first. They'd put "part time" by Sloane's name. Which means, and I quote from today's phone call, "Other children were placed ahead of Sloane". When I registered her back in March, they weren't sure whether they were going to cut the part-time program. Sometime between then and now, they went ahead and cut the program. If I had indeed wanted part time care for Sloane, I was not notified.

3. Fucking $100 per month from the fucking government. ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS. You know what $100 buys you these days in Calgary? Not even a blow job. I am absolutely repulsed by these fucking government buy-off programs. Ralph and his fucking $400. Do you realize that even Sloane got $400? Seven months old and she was sent a cheque for $400 by the Alberta government. And then they take $180/mo in health care premiums. Schools are falling apart. Multinational oil companies are subsidized to speed the irrevocable destruction of the boreal forest and muskeg in Northern Alberta. But my seven month old daughter got $400 from the Alberta government, and so did I, just for breathing - just for being a resident of the province. We put it all in her RESP. 

But this $100/month. I am SO ANGRY at that program. Where the hell is a national strategy for child care? I am SO ANGRY at ALL the fucking political parties that have been promising a national child care program since the late 1980s. There was this big study recently that showed that back-to-work rates for women in Alberta is the lowest in the country. I am part of that demographic because I CAN'T GET MY KID INTO PLAYSCHOOL. I COULDN'T PUT MY KID IN DAYCARE BECAUSE THERE WERE NO SPOTS, AND THE ARRANGEMENTS I DID FIND WERE TOO EXPENSIVE, OR IN THE FAR SOUTHEAST, OR IN TRULY SCARY NEIGHBOURHOODS.   

There is one slender ray of hope and it's this: some little kid in the program hasn't shown up yet. If he doesn't show by tomorrow, Sloane is at the top of the list. But here's the kicker: they don't graduate kids to the next "grade" until the end of the school year. Which means that once the year is full, it's full until the following fall. And Sloane doesn't turn 19 months, the age at which she can start, until October 19th.

I'm terrified to call back and ask if that means that some other kid, who is already 19 mo + gets the spot ahead of Sloane.

I hate facing this feeling - the one where I know I'd claw my way over another parent to get what I need for my child. I don't know what to do. I'm SO ANGRY.

Postscript: I called. If this other kid doesn't show up, Sloane can have the spot. But only if we pay for the month of September to hold the place. That's $675 for childcare we can't access.

Categories: Calgary | Mom-ness

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Bottle Wall

I got all in a lather at the Earthship seminar in Taos, inspired by the bottle walls. Sure, the concept of Earthships in general was FABULOUSLY inspiring, but time consuming and with an inherent, serious time and money investment. An idea at least five years off for us, at this stage. Someday: our Kootenay Earthship retreat. Or maybe in Antigonish if the entire current city council is hit by a meteor. But nowadays? It's Ramsay until further notice.  

However - just a bottle wall? C'mon! Collect a buncha bottles, set 'em in mortar, and voila. I've got a pretty ghetto yard where anything goes, and any moron can erect a bottle wall if they really want to, right? ...Well, this moron is going to try. In the Spiller Road yard, no less.

First off, like any good artist/planner, I figured I'd "work with the materials" to get a feel for bottles as an artistic-architecturo medium. So I thought a border for the garden would be a good start.

(photo to come of initial bottle border)

Ah. Working on the first border in the location where our carport will eventually be erected in the fall taught me a few lessons. Said lessons:

1) Take labels off bottles

2) Put a time-consuming bottle border in an area of your yard where you are not going to have to tear it out in less than three months

With these new ideas in hand, I selected an area of the front garden where I'd been digging up the grass and sod, with the intention of putting in a shade periwinkle garden a la Sharron & Mary's front yard on Major St. in the Annex. I had a leftover plastic runner in place from the previous jackasses who owned this house, but it was thence jettisoned to make room for the bottle border.

I collected bottles from our own leftovers, Brother John's recycling pile, and through direct recruitment of a few neighbours and friends. In waves as they came in, I soaked the bottles to loosen the labels, and scraped and scrubbed and brushed them clean and anonymously shiny.

This is just a few days before Brother John's wedding - I'm trying out the dress I eventually wore to the rehearsal dinner as I scrape the labels