Barkerburgh

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By an ex-Google staffer, whose software they bought to improve theirs, but she flew the coop…

I dunno. It’s… different.

Spent 5 days/4 nights in the Wasagas, at Vala’s Villa, the Tolkien themed ancestral summer cottage of the Ellis-Perrella family of Guildwood.

Just about here:

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It was taken by Reid, total serendipity. I get hit in the head repeatedly (every time somebody watches the damn thing) and I still think it’s funny. Maybe that’s why…

I had a great, relaxing time, with frisbees, thunderstorms, standing in the lake up to my neck for an hour at a time, and an engineering project at the mouth of the Saint David’s River, which flows mightily into Nottawasaga Bay somewhat north of the villa.

After returning from the Wasagas, Anneli took me, as a somewhat belated birthday present to see the “Facing Mars” exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre. While I had some issues with the interface for some of the exhibits, and some just didn’t work, it was still highly cool. Then we went to see the IMAX film “Roving Mars“, which was so kick ass I can’t tell you. It was basically about the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and their missions on Mars, a combination of live shots and splendid CG. One hypothetical shot showed an ancient Martian desert of rolling dunes dotted with saline lakes, and was quite spectacular, stirring in fact.

We had lunch, wandered around the other exhibits a bit and then we went to the tiny planetarium to see a show about Toronto’s night sky, although we also went out into intergalactic space for a quick peek. Beside the line-up, there was a sign telling us that if we were past it, we might not get in because space was limited. I pointed out that space was in fact infinite, got a general laugh except from a snotty 10 year old girl who said “I think they mean that seating in the planetarium is limited.” I couldn’t let her get away with that so I kidnapped her and sold to the greys from Zeta Reticuli for scientific experiments said “I don’t think so!”

Yes sirree, had me some fun.

How long has it been since my last post? Mere minutes.

In that time, I’ve lost my glasses. No, they’re not on top of my head, as they have often been when I’ve thought I misplaced them, even at home. First place I check when I lose them; top of my head. Not today. Not in someone else’s house. I’m typing this by luck and squinting.

I”ve also misplaced this family’s cable remote and my own cellphone I don’t know how many times in the last week. Can’t find their cable remote right now, too, either. I’ve had to watch judge shows. Bad ones.

How do you people live in such a big home? Three floors? Four? Really. How do any of you manage? Oh, it must be nice.

“Oh, we’ve twenty pairs of glasses. Each. We just pick them up on any of our floors when we need them.”

“Oh, I’ve got all my many remote controls velcro’ed to a board so I can always find them.”

“Oh, we have ten universal remote controls. Doesn’t everyone? You never know when you might need one.”

“Oh, my man Geoffrey knows where all my glasses and remote controls are. So I never give him a day off.”

Yes, well. I don’t have a universal remote or a board or Geoffrey.

I still don’t know where my glasses are. Or the cable remote.

But wait, there’s a complete “Vicar of Dibley” DVD set sitting right there. And the DVD remote. I’ll just move back a bit.

Never mind.

…and I’ve got diagnosed osteoarthritis in both hips so I figured, for Wetstock this year, I’d just go easy.

But my people do not go easy into that good night. And this was in the afternoon.

I didn’t run around too much with the general ruck and rumble of the water-gun fight itself, although I wanted to. Luisa came to be, with water balloons, in the upstairs john which is always a target as it is overlooking the backyard wetting-fields, and I went up to tag her, but I got suborned to her side. We got Jeff R. and a couple of young people who I’d just met that day, (and bravo for the next generation, God bless’ em), and we won the day. We did. We did so.

Reid, with a high-powered water-rifle, employed a ladder to climb up to the bathroom window, in spite of the absence of one of our dear family of friends, partly, in part I’m sure, due to a ladder accident a few weeks back, with a head thing. And Baby H. Jesus, Reid, what were you thinking? But since he didn’t fall. it was genius, and hilarious. And he pulled open the window nearest me and I took the brunt of his humid and humorous assault.

This was Simon’s first Wetstock, and he needs experience, God love’im, he’ll be three in November.

Later, in the round backyard pool, we did the traditional whirlpool, with two reversals. K. A.

As always, the company was great, the food was great and I look forward to several next years.

What’s hilarious, seriously, is, that right now, two days later, when I was expecting one or both hips to be almost literally killing me, WTF and NGOOHA, it’s my thirty year old chronic back condition that’s bugging me, not my hippage.

At this same age, my parents did not have this suite of experiences or concomitant consequences. But they didn’t have waterguns.

It’s pronounced as ‘Four Double-Six Six Four” and it was Nelson Mandela’s prison number, indicating he was the four-hundred-and-sixty-sixth person imprisoned in 1964, this according to Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith who were hosting

Mandela has turned that number around (not literally, c’mon) and created an HIV/AIDS charity organization for which this concert was a fundraiser/benefit.

Himself is 90, and when he came out on stage, he needed a cane, and an arm from (I assume) his wife. He looked great, for an actual, true, real superhero, even though his frailty was heartbreaking.

(FY yer I and just so’s ya know, I don’t follow a lot of modern popular music…)

Peter Gabriel was there. Amy Winehouse made it. And Queen showed up; with Doctor May, and the new lead singer is no Freddie Mercury, but he’s really good. There was a children’s choir called Agape (three syllables, the Greek word, not the English), and lots of African singers and performers. I think I might like (not African that I know of) Josh Groban. What a voice.

What got me was this. At one point early in the concert - I had the sound off between numbers - this middle-aged white woman came out on stage. I thought maybe she was like a housewife from like Slough who’d won a contest to introduce an act or something. She’s kinda ordinary looking, but pretty, and very earnest and enthusiastic, which I could tell even with the sound off. I wonder why a housewife from Slough gets to introduce an act at the 46664 concert. Enh, the English. Who’s like’em?

So I turn the sound up to hear this woman. She’s got that light, delightful Scottish accent that I like (and can do), and I’m thinking she now looks maybe familiar, and sounds familiar too.

She introduces the Agape Children’s Choir and starts to hum along with them and a tag jumps up on the screen; my middle-aged housewife from Slough is Annie Freekin’ Lennox!

I know.

So I tried to watch Oliver Stone’s Alexander the other night. There was so much about it I wanted to like, and so much that was good about it, but what a synergetic suckfest. Almost as bad as Star Trek:Enterprise.

Colin Farrell was good, surprisingly. Angelina Jolie as Olympias was good, even with the 1960s “Mission:Impossible” generic Eastern European accent. Rosario Dawson was achingly beautiful as Roxane. Stone even handled the gay thing between Alexander and Hephaistion better than I expected. The battle scenes were glorious and splendid, and just what you want battle re-creations to look and sound like. If Stone had had Smell-o-Vision(tm) - which the Japanese have been working on for 30 years - the battle scenes would have been perfect.

But you know that really burned my ass? (more…)

(Does anybody else empathize with how hard it is to use the correct HTML spelling for ‘center’ when you’re Canadian?)

I’m just sayin’.

And if you could too, that would be great.

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I just discovered that Buffalo’s PBS station, WNED, broadcast 17, cable 61 (Rogers, downtown) is rerunning The Vicar of Dibley and the exquisite mid-1980s Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett in the title role.

Dawn French is almost flawless in The V of D, (en passant, closing credits include “Dawn French supplied by: Saunders and French Productions”) and Jeremy Brett is the best Sherlock Holmes ever. Ever.