Cathy Herbert has started to produce a fun little show in Winnipeg, Mb called “Reading Buddies”. It takes place at the Yellow Dog Tavern. The first show was Monday, January 4th 2010 and I was lucky enough to be one of the contributors. I wrote a short story in the form of a journal entry. Here it is:
Monday, January 4th 2010.
I’m watching the season 5 finale of The Sopranos and loving every frame of it. The story line was in a lull for the most of the third season, picked up in the fourth and took off in the fifth. This final episode is so captivating it’s hard to look away from the screen long enough to complete a … In the past 7 days I’ve watched 5 seasons of The Sopranos. At 13 episodes per season averaging 52 minutes in length.. that’s a shit ton of Sopranos. Three thousand three hundred and eighty shit ton minutes to be exact. There are only ten thousand and eighty minutes in seven days. But, this journal entry isn’t about my television and movie watching addiction. It’s about the twenty-four-hour New Years party I embarked on seventy-two hundred minutes ago.
On Thusday, December 31st I met up with my old roommate from my Wolsley year at a house that coincidently shared the same back lane as our old house. This house, known as Dragon Island, was inhabited by people who were doing everything in their power to enforce stereotypes about the physical appearance of people from that area of the city. There was a late teens/early twenties male with a blue buzz cut, tight blue tank top and a dress that looked like the tied-dyed love child of a grizzley bear and the left leg on a pair of parachute pants. Ironically, he was preaching about the absurdity of christian zealots in the Republican party. I wanted to ask Pastor Raven if he was part of the 41% of CANADIANS that didn’t vote in the last federal election. If only just to knock him off his hemp soap box. I decided to let the inverted smurf have his moment because I had smoked a joint that morning and desperately wanted to get some liquid energy from the currently-brewing pot of coffee. I thought they could probably already smell the business school on me and I decided not to push my luck.
At about a quarter after six I had my coffee in my hands and Ian had figured out the route to our final destination for that evening – Schorzman Farm. Schorzman Farm is about 2 clicks South East of Kleefeld, Mb. Kleefeld is 30min South East of Winnipeg. More on that later… At 6:30pm Ian and I dropped a couple tabs of blotter acid that apparently dates back to 1999. I thought it was fitting to go into 2010 riding on a magic carpet from 1999. Before picking up Ian, I stopped in at Silver City to pick up three tickets to see Avatar in 3-D. The showtime was 7:35 and we had about 30min to get to the theatre before Alice arrived in Wonderland. Joining the possee of Ian and Tim was a nice young ladyfirend of Ian’s who goes by the name Prairie. Yes. Her name was Prairie and she was from Wolsley. I can’t help but think that if she was from Transcona I would have found her nose deep in a bag of cocaine, passed out next to a pool of sour puss and a pile of wiggling men and her name would simply be “Sex”. Prairie had her own supply of LSDizzle so we’d all be on the same plane when the night takes off.
When we got to the theatres my world had already begun to change. We entered the already weird enough world of Silver City and became a disoriented three headed human. Everyone just assumed someone else was leading the way, which lead to us circling the interior twice before coming to whats left of our senses. Theatre 14. Must find theatre 14.
Like I said before, I bought the tickets earlier to avoid having to interact with humans. However, when I looked in my wallet I only had two out of the three (paid for) tickets. I’m not sure if I left the third one there because I was baked, or if the machine really only printed two. Regardless, I would have to talk to someone sober about this. Shit. I told the clerk at “Guest Services” it only printed two and one signature later the problem was solved. Easy enough. But, why Guest services? Why not customer services? We’re paying for a movie viewing experience, we’re not a guest using their facilities as we please. Somebody get Seinfeld on the phone!!!
Communicating was remarkably easy to do. At this point, my vision was mostly unaffected. In fact, the only effect I was really feeling was a heightened sense of hearing. I was in the washroom puttin piss to porcelin when I heard this conversation between an average sounding couple. They were talking about what a dress should look like with legitimate and articulate arguments. I could hear their voices getting louder as if they were walking towards the washroom. In the time that it took me to finish making peepee and thoroughly washing my hands, they had this whole debate on what a dress should look like. As I stepped out of the washroom the couple was just then passing by. The last thing I heard was the guy saying “See, now thats a dress” as they walked into the theatre. I’m not sure how far away they were when I picked up their convo, but when I caught wind of it my mind locked on. I realized that I could select conversations to listen to from the bustling crowd of people in the lobby. I wish I could explore this further, but the movie was starting right away. What should have been a 5min walk from the parking lot to our seats took us about 20minutes. As a result we ended up getting seats with great leg room… in the first row.
The drugs started to really grab me by the bawls when AVATAR started at 7:35. Visually, AVATAR was one hell of a great movie. I’m 98% sure that visual effects of the movie overpowered anything the LSD could conjure. The suspension of belief was snapped a few times, however, when the lead character – an american soldier – slipped into the native tongue of the Australian actor. James Cameron spent 10 years on a movie and he couldn’t let Sam Worthington spend 10 minutes on a second take? Even trippin bawls on acid I couldn’t not notice it… unless it WAS the acid… du du duuuu
After the movie we made the carefully miscalculated trip to the aforementioned Schorzman Farm. As I said, Kleefeld, Mb is South East of the city. I was convinced, for some unknown reason, that it was North West of the city. So here I am driving through downtown Winnipeg, through the exchange district, over the Disarnia Bridge, back up to Regent, over to Lagimodiere all while in the middle of hour 5 of the acid trip. I think the collective will of the three people in the car was the only thing sustaining my stoic focus.
We ended up driving through the official countdown and calender flipping because we were so engrossed in our conversations. Topics included: past trips, directions, full moon ceremonies, cats, Africa, cats in Africa, Cats the musical, Sam Katz, entanglement theory, and, of course, Spring Break. You’re basic “yup, im high” topics. Spring Break turned into the catch phrase of the evening. Whenever we drifted past each other at the party it was customery to utter “Spring Break” as a greeting and “Spring Break” as a departing phrase. It got to the point that we could carry on full conversations using only those two words. My favourite Spring Break conversation ended with “Spring Broke” and uproarious laughter. Maybe you had to be there. Sring BREAK, SPRING break, Spring Break. Spriiing Break. Spring Break?, SPRING BREAK. Spring Broke. Spring Broke.
We arrived at the Schorzman Pharm around 12:15 in the am. Even though we only drove for an hour, it felt like we had just ventured across the great plains of North American to arrive at this deceptively large farm house. We stepped out of the cold red Saturn and layed in the colder, white snow. It wasn’t long before the music and inviting images drew us into the lively house. That and the fact that we spent a good chunk of the journey talking about how we can’t wait to finally be somewhere warm and then layed down in the cold snow under the blue moon.
I walked into a sea of familiar faces and friendly strangers. The rest of the night was far too chaotic to recant coherently. All I can say is there was a lot of face painting, a couple fire dancers, lots of great food, a wood stove, inspiring conversations and music provided by a fiddle, mandolin, banjo, stand up bass, plenty of guitars and plenty of beautiful people. I’ll leave you with some parting words of…. WATCH OUT TONY SOPRANO, FBI IS COMING!
