One of my roommates makes puppet shows:

Last year I hosted a Quebecois couchsurfer for a few days. We had a great time hanging out, and we've been keeping up a little bit through facebook in the months since he moved back to Canada. I just got this message from him a few minutes ago. It means a lot to me, and I think y'all will be inspired by reading it:

Hey! I'm the guy who was couchsurfing at your place a year ago, in case you don't remember some of your facebook friends (something that happens to me often...). I was filming a movie on the elections and the racial problems in the United-States. You invited me to cook some food for the homeless, and the next day, I rode your mother's bike with you through the coolest critical mass ever. These are good memories. The more I think about it, the more I realized that my stay in Atlanta has guided my life for the ending of 2008 and almost all 2009.

After staying at your place, I had a different view of homeless people, having met them in Atlanta. That view was later to be completed by another couch-host that I met later on. But I want to concentrate on some of the details. You told me that getting around the city is way easier on a bike. We arrived late to the critical mass, but yet we went on that crazy chase throught Atlanta to find the mass of cyclists. I was not in shape, I was trying to keep up with you and the other cute girl. When we finally joined the mass, I discovered how cool it was to cycle in the city and I discovered the power of being a cyclist vs driving a car. After, we ended up in that little bar, we met back with the cute girl and some mexican guy, and I had to much to drink. But it was good. At the end, I made it in time for my bus and went to my next destination, Miami, which was boring as hell compared to what I lived in Atlanta.

All the way throught the end of my trip, I kept in mind that a bike was the best way to go around a city. I ended my trip in Vancouver. There, I bought a bike (an old seventies girl's cruiser!), found a job and an appartment and lived some of the best 5 months of my life. I rode in the critical mass over there and it was awesome. It was no surprise that after a month in Vancouver, I decided I was going to ride back home to Ottawa. 4000 kilometers of riding throught mountains, plains (with horrible head wind!), and the hills of Ontario. My goal was to get back home while seeing my country.

That was probably the most challenging feat I have done in my entire life. The mountains where terrible, the head wind was nasty but the worst were those rainy days in the hills of the north of Lake Superior. All in all, I arrived in time for my mother's birthday on the 29th of july, and everybody was very happy.

I am now studiying in cinematography in Montreal. I ride my bike everyday. I even became a bike courrier for a week, but decided to quit. Not that it was hard, on the contrary : it was too easy and they were not giving me enough calls, so it wasn't paying much at all. But I'm gonna keep biking all through the "terrible" Canadian winter. I also have plans to finish my trip across Canada with my father next summer. Since me and my father were not very close in the pass few years, this could help to bring back a good and more intimate relationship between the two of us.

And it all started with your intervention. It's amazing how people can just set your life on a new course. Perhaps you had no idea of all this, and you think you didn't do much, but Atlanta was the beginning. I want to thank you for what you have done.

Xavier

P.S. By the way, I'm in an awesome shape right now. I could take you on anytime :P
P.S.S. Whenever you feel like visiting your north neighbour and freezing your ass off, give me a sign, my door will always be open.

Addendum: I've been looking through my livejournal history for stuff I wrote about Xavier's visit, but the only entry I can find is this one.

I took pictures of Beverly modeling Monica's fort for a contest.





My website still isn't up. I still cough when I stand or sit at my accustomed speed. I can't handle this stress.

You can download most of V/VM's albums here.

This is what I spent the night taking pictures of:



Here's how it turned out:




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This is what I've been shooting lately. To tell you the truth, this last set of shots feels pretty bland to me.( More pictures... )

This is my brother with his cat.

One of the few men in the series, and one of the few whose faces are revealed. I am trying to figure out why it seems to fit with Adam.

Too heart-healthy quotes from today:

Via Cedric, my next door neighbor, who does beats and stuff for rap and r&b, speaking to me a few days after the party:

"this is gonna be one of those things, one of those places people remember in 40 years, like... Haight-Ashbury, you know? Like I saw that girl playing the guitar by herself, and everyone was sitting on the floor around her. And I thought, damn, even I would sit on that dirty-ass floor to hear her!"

Via Mathew, a bike messenger I am pretty sure I've never met except through incestuous Atlanta bike kid association, speaking to my roommate Sergio:

"Oh, you live with Ben? Yeah, he's really fast."

Now I've got to go figure out how to print and frame/present photos for a show which is actually this Friday, not the Friday several weeks from now.

I think this is one of those months that I'm inexplicably attractive. I mean, even with still-healing-bike-accident-face-scars and patchy beard, I am engulfed in a flood of strange and awesome women.

I mean awesome in both senses, depending on the girl.

Anyway, I'll be in New York in six weeks, which should be good; but only for a short time, which will be bad. I don't like going to a place unless I can stay there for a few weeks - long enough to make friends and incur horribly scarring romantic collisions. I don't really know where I'd like to visit. My past NY visits have usually involved lots of wandering around the city and eating at corner cafes, a bit of wandering around the city drunk, one or two way-historical-jazz-places where I almost fall asleep, an obscure warehouse show, and, on the last night, climbing onto some sort of factory to watch the sun rise.

Sometimes other people are involved in this NY aimlessness, but mainly they are not. One thing that is no longer possible to experience in Atlanta is being alone - if I go somewhere ITP, I will know someone. For example:

I went to a show tonight after work. The place was filled with people I knew, so I spent a while wandering around hugging wimmin and karate chopping men on their backs in a manly way. A friend of mine was drinking at the bar, I went over and said "Hi Melissa!" She said, I'm [other name that starts with 'M'], didn't we meet at the Film Festival? I said no, maybe you're thinking of my roommate? She said, wait do you live at Fishmarket? I said yes. She said I think I was at a party there last month! I said oh, and then my roommate Sergio walked over. Sergio had met her at the Film Festival.

Okay, that example sort of petered off.

Man, I love this.

We dumpstered at a few million flower shops last night, and now the warehouse is filled with trees and vines and flowers and jungle bushes.  We are having a jungle themed concert/costume party tonight.  I am going to be a puma.  I am looking up pictures of pumas right now so I can correct anyone who tries to sass me about my un-puma-like behaviour.

Puuuuuuma.

Just saying the word makes me excited.

I cut through my first lock with the bolt cutters last night.  It was great.

I'm hosting these two couchsurfing girls from Elon University.  We've been having a blast showing them all the weird parts of the city, getting into hijinks, and playing Deluxe DVD Edition Lord of the Rings Trivial Persuit.

Ate dinner with the Hare Krishna's on Sunday.  It was excellent, highly recommended.

These Are Powers concert tomorrow night.

It's been so sunny+hot lately.  It hurts in a good way, leg flesh on burnt concrete.

I keep telling people I'm super-excited, but I think they can tell even before I mention it, because my eyeballs have been dancing like eggs in a frying pan.

I got into a heated exchange with my mom via email, and ended up calling her crazy. I don't think she's crazy. I don't think anyone is crazy, even the woman I met last night at the bus stop who kept muttering to herself and snapping the band of her sweatpants. I think constructs are crazy; we are unfortunate enough to be living in those constructs.

Here are some pictures I took last night, to illustrate the point I made in the last paragraph:







I may have gone overboard on ghosting the dog's background. Please comment with your thoughts.

This is a good song.

(download full album here.)

Friday and Saturday nights both started out really shitty, then turned into listening to brass bands at Eyedrum and getting drunk in a bar with several dozen million friends, respectively. Also I got my lost hat back.



This is a picture I took for the ADIML I was working on yesterday. I scrapped the thing halfway through because I was boring myself, but the picture is pretty cool, amiright?

Now I am at Big Ralph Studio, eating up delicious internet and working out a plan for today. The only thing I really had in mind was checking out the dumpster behind the Whole Foods near here - I've never looked because I just assumed the place used a compactor, but I talked to a guy last night who says they toss tons of stuff into an open dumpster. I am hoping for chard or spinach, maybe something crazy like strawberries.

Oh!

I ran into a former professors last night, and we went drinking at Highland Ballroom! He's all drinking vodka straight, complaining about how his recent promotion to [something fancy I don't remember] keeps him from teaching classes. And I'm all, yes! We fell into this conversation style that I've seen a lot at hostels and among train kids, where the act of conversation is savored, and you're not exactly talking towards a specific point, but if a point is reached then that is just dandy.

Welp, I just saw someone on my flist posted a "sex questions quiz," so I've gotta get on that. Actually, you may want to just defriend me for the next few hours - there are two other quizzes besides that one that I urgently need to answer and post.

These were all taken this Sunday. They work best viewed in order.

(So, um. Ignore that first picture.)
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A friend sends this from French Guiana, where he's doing Peace Corps work.

I hiked around this mountain for a bit yesterday.



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Then I spent the night wandering around crashing parties, which turned out to be difficult because every time I showed up at a party half the room would inform me (to my surprise) that they had been at my party the previous night. Sometimes I wish I had a better memory. But it is also really fun when someone says, "Ben! What's up? How was [shared experience]?" And then I get to spend the rest of the conversation trying to remember their name and how we know each other.

I have been telling everyone I meet about how we're building a jungle descending from the warehouse ceiling (complete with real fruit) for Em's concert in a few weeks. I don't know how that will happen. Please help.

My old editor at Performer Magazine's moved on to a blogging job since the magazine went bankrupt. She's awesome (doy) and puts together a lot of cool posts like this one:



Herbie Hancock - Rockit (1983)

"Not only was this the first hit single to feature scratching, and
inspire tons of turntablists for years to come, Rockit was a seriously
funky electro tune crafted by one of my all time favorite musicians.
Herbie has always embraced the most current technology and found a way
to squeeze the funk out of cold hard machines. Killer video too!"

The rest of the article.