randnorm monday event in black rock city 2007 Spatch's Naked Masage Parlor 12:00pm-3:00pm Give a massage, get a massage!
At Spatch’s sinfully delicious Naked Massage Parlor, located in the Pleasure Garden, pairs are welcome to relax in their most natural state. Spatch and her minions will guide each couple through multi-handed massage so that both partners can learn new massage techniques together and enjoy the benefits of being touched in a safe, friendly environment.
Sign ups begin each morning, so come by early to add your names to the list. The Massage Parlor will open around lunchtime. Adult pairs only -- must be 18+ to enter and participate. All boundaries are respected, but please be comfortable with full nudity. This is NOT a sex party. No creepy single men or spectators allowed. This is a no-camera event. Hosted by Pleasure Garden
randnorm mind grenade You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand. ~ Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of US (1856 - 1924)
randnorm video freestyle fire poi
normdate: long time after the memories i'm trying to remember
finding a balance between recording my life through words and pikchaz here in my blog and actually living my life has been a difficult challenge. its very similar to my skrapbooks. bringing out my book and asking someone to write in it takes the focus away from the moment and onto my scrapbook. kind of like taking a photo, our attempt at trying to capture a moment, freezeframing it so we can revisit it at a later time. in our haste to capture that moment, we take something away from it. the best part of the moment is to be there in the moment.
its been almost two months since my last blog entry. so much has happened to me. my life has been made infinitely brighter. i am more aware. i am more creative. i am loved more than i was before. i love more than i did before. from burning man to brennan and bev's wedding, my life has been a roller coaster of love, imagination, and creativity that i've had no time to sit down and record it, remember it. thank god i take pikchaz of everything;) plus, thanks to facebook, my attention has been diverted. perhaps there is more of an audience there than here. but it doesn't mean i'm going to let this blog die...
so i'm going to condense the last two months of my life into three parts...pre burning man, the burn (which will come in separate parts), and apres burn.
this is me remembering who i was and what i did before burning man. enjoy the ride.
normdate 14.8.7
i agreed to babysit kristin's younger brothers while linda and kristin's sister, toni, went to the hilary duff concert. they had the meet and greet tickets which meant they got to meet hilary duff before the concert, then enjoy the show from front row center! seeing as i couldn't just give toni my scrapbook to have hilary sign, i pulled out my calligraphy pen and wrote a little something to be autographed.
toni asked me "do you like hilary duff?"
i answered "not because of her music." ;)
i also got a signed photo of hilary too. hooray!
turns out that ms.duff's successes are bigger than she is. actually, she's kinda tiny...
don't know why i wasted blog time on hilary duff. maybe i'm just stoked to have her autograph. i also wouldn't kick her out of my bedroom for eating crackers.
sunday ultimate krew!
god i love playing ultimate!
carving my new staff for the burn. more like recreating the design of my old staff onto a new one.
playing dress up at work in the ronin jumpsuit. you'd be surprised how well this full piece outfit sells.
my friend daiva was having a pre burn party here in the cspot, one week before burning man. one of the best parts of burning man is the explosion of creativity that happens inside of you.
i was never really one for fun fur, even in my raving days...but the burn kind of turned me on to the joy of fur! its amazing what you can create with fun fur, a sewing machine, and a healthy sprinkling of imagination. this outfit was the result.
captain q and kale
kale and her partner hitoshi also tuned into the creativity of the burn and crafted a pair of yip yip costumes.
just in case you forgot what a yip yip is, here's a little youtube reminder.
furvert, kale and kane
daiva's party was a perfekt way to start tuning into the radical creative energy of the burn. radical self expression, creativity, and imagination...and some fukkin kewl peeps to celebrate it with. this town is a whole lot of alright.
of course there was fire
kale had decided to take her life in a new and amazing direction by moving to vancouver to live with her partner, hitoshi. it was time for a new chapter in her life, and mine too. the week before the burn was the last week i would call edgemont my home. my next home would be black rock city.
goodbye kale. i love you. thank you for everything.
goodbye gramma. goodbye bruce.
goodbye kuma. you truly are the greatest dog in the universe.
i wish you nothing but joy and happiness in your life together.
the week before burning man is such a blur. there is so much planning involved to survive in the desert for a week. it really is the most harsh of environments, and we are going to live there for a week.
my work was also having their annual park sale. we're talkin huge! get rid of all of last year's winter stock at ridiculous prices. it also takes an insane amount of set up and preparation. i worked two 15hour days in a row getting the park ready for the sale...and getting myself ready for burning man. plus, i was moving out of my home in edgemont so i had to pack up everything i owned and move it before i left for the burn.
my hard work setting up for the sale was rewarded with a jacket gifted to my from my boss. it was the forum slapaho reversible jacket. pure playa wear. i could not wait to wear it at home.
it was time to say goodbye to my home of one year, and journey to my new place of residence in the black rock desert.
randnorm event in black rock city 2007 Slut Cultivation 101 7:00-8:30pm This isn't your mom's whore-ticulture class! You can come as you are but you're not leaving until you're slut-abulous! Come to Slutgarden and place your raw seed in our experienced hands. We'll cultivate you for a night on the playa with sound, libations and of course- slutwear! You will flower and cast your bloom onto the slutadelic winds... Hosted by Slutgarden
photo by tristan savatier
randnorm pikcha my friendz jay and tarzie with their bodies turned into a canvas
randnorm mind grenade if you can't be good, be careful - anon randnorm video essential viewing ^^^
normdate 2.8.7
graham drove in from edmonton and picked me up from work today. his car was packed full of all his belongings. he had made a decision to leave alberta and head back home to toronto to live...and i was going to join him for the drive!
i've never driven across canada, and was very excited to see this country...but not until after we enjoyed a delicious steak dinner at the keg. daam they know how to cook a steak *mmmmm*
two men about to start a long drive
visiting our friend toby before hittin' the road...gangsta!
are we there yet by the dream warriors became our theme song for the trip
fueling up one last time in calgary
we were on the trans canada by 10pm with a 40hr adventure across canada awaiting us.
first stop: medicine hat, alberta, home of the world's largest teepee.
graham took the first shift of driving. we never ran out of things to talk about. graham and i are good like that.
i took over the wheel in saskatchewan and let graham catch some rest. thank god i had red bull!
normdate 3.8.7
now i've heard that the praires were flat, but i didn't really notice it because we drove across them at night...that is until i watched the sunrise. it was breathtaking to see so much sky in a rainbow of technicolour. it was a perfekt way to greet the day.
even though the sign said this town was friendly, we decided to skip the visit and just take a pikcha of the sign instead ;)
just outside of moosejaw, we came across an antique car show. of course we had to stop and take pikchaz. i love old cars. to keep them on the road after so many years takes so much care and love. these car owners are passionate about cars, and it shows.
plus i find that classic car enthusiasts are also more likely to have custom license plates, and i am a big fan of collecting photos of custom plates. they are as unique as the person who got the plate, especially seeing as there can be only one spelling of that plate in the province.
next stop, friendly manitoba and the capital city of winterpeg.
a little disc tossin' in the bright and warm manitoba sun
before the sun had set, we had finally made it to ontario. hooray!
even though we were in ontario, driving across ontario takes longer than driving through alberta, saskatchewan, and manitoba combined!
my own park, fuck yeah!
i was dying for a beer, so graham agreed to stop off in kenora so i could quench my thirst. thanks graham. you fukkin rool dood!
the bugs in kenora are rather unusual.
grrrrr
we actually saw a momma black bear and two of her cubs cross the highway. i thought black bears would be much much larger, like 800lb bears! momma was more like 400lbs, though still large enough to eat me!
normdate 4.8.7
after a little nap, we greeted the morning sun in city of thunder bay, superior by nature.
only 18 more hours of driving to go! but first, a quick stop at eagle canyon adventures to cross canada's longest suspension bridge.
there were two bridges, with the larger spanning over 300ft! the views were simply breathtaking.
good thing for us, there were showers at the eagle canyon adventures resort. both graham and i were smellin' kinda funky. aaah, to be clean!
next stop, wawa, ontario! the landscape is beautiful there, but there's not really much else to see in wawa besides the big wild goose.
as we left wawa, we came across this rv that was also travelling across the country from alberta, more specifically rocky mountain house. i love that they were recording their journey in the dirt of their vehicle. noice!
the big looney (not the big nickle). i have no idea what town it was in. their claim to fame is a big loonie. maybe there's a reason why i've forgotten the name of their town.
more unusual bugs on the journey home...a stretched one, just for you fred!
after visiting more tim hortons on our tripthan i have fingers to count, we finally came across a tim's that had the big tim! yes, we had been searching for the big tim since we left calgary. it had been discontinued because too many people were seriously burning themselves by trying to drink out of it. it holds one and a half pots of coffee. i can understand why people would want to try and drink out of it.
in winterpeg, graham had purchased a flashlight that is powered by shaking it. he wondered if shaking it for an extended period of time would make the light shine brighter and longer. so he proceeded to shake the flashlight for a full hour, non stop! i kept on heckling him about giving the flashlight a better handjob than he gives himself. after a full hour of shaking it, graham turned the flashlight on only to find out that he had broken it from excessive shaking! ahahahahahahahaha! *tear* ahahahahahaha!
with only a few hours left before we arrived in toronto, graham and i were eager to bring our journey across the country to an end.
we arrived in markham at 2:30am, and stopped in to visit our friend chris and meghan at chris' house. it was so good to be out of the car that had been our home for the last 50hours. it was even better to be around good friends that i've missed. the reason for my journey was beginning to spiral from being in the company of friends once again.
after a beer and some incredible company, we made the quick 5 minute drive from chris' place to graham's parents' home and passed the fuck out. aaah, sleeping in a bed instead of a car seat. to say that i slept well was an understatement.
normdate 5.8.7
did i mention that sleeping in a bed kicked ass?
i woke up around noon and enjoyed a nice hot shower. i emerged feeling refreshed, new, reborn, and in familiar territory. my older brother was very good friends with graham's older brother, bryan, and spent a good deal of time at the cairns' home. i've been good friends with graham for years too, and have also spent a good amount of time in the carins' home. i dont think they're going to move out of this home any time soon.
graham and bryan
once the car was unloaded, graham took me to scarborough town center to meet up with my sister. on our way there, we made a quick stop at the markham cemetery to visit my dad.
scarborough town center was a trip for me. for the first time since i moved to calgary, i was no longer a visible minority! everywhere i looked i saw each colour of the rainbow - white, black, brown, yellow, red. it was an awesome reminder of how multicultural and diverse the greater toronto area is. i had almost forgotten what it felt like to NOT be the only coloured guy in the room.
seeing thalia after a full year was great. i really do miss her and her silly antics. she is a shopaholic, and was upset that we were late to pick her up. being late left her in the mall to shop, and she just can't control herself. its all about the deals...and optimum points at shoppers ;)
graham was kind enough to drive my sister and i out to brooklin where my mom lives. it was my mom's birthday, and i was excited to be able to spend it with her.
mom opening her presents from thalia and i
being around family again felt good, it felt right, it felt like home.
my mom's friend was hosting a combined bday party and baby shower, around the corner from my mom's home. i'm used to hearing my mom speak, but most of my friends have never heard a chinese woman speak with a jamaican accent. it really is quite funny if you're not used to it. actually, i am used to it and its still funny!
my mom's bday party was hosted by a friend of my mom who is also jamaican. actually, the entire party was full of jamaicans...about 50 of them. i can't remember the last time i was surrounded by so many jamaicans. there were more jamaicans there than i had seen all year in calgary ;)
new life
the ladies of the day
i also can't remember the last time i was around so much good home cooked jamaican food.
happy birthday mom!
i was so glad i was able to spend my mother's birthday with her and my sister.
my whirlwind weekend was about to continue through toronto. thalia and i hitched a ride back to scarborough with some of my mom's friends. after dropping off my gear at thalia's place, i jumped in a cab and spent the night a friend's place ;) distance does more than make the heart grow fonder, it makes the loins grow hotter too. i'm not about to complain.
normdate 6.8.7
as if my weekend wasn't already jam packed and insane, my monday was about to be even more nucking futz. i was on the subway by 10am on my way to see darryl and isa, and meet the new addition to their family, ronin.
ronin was born at the beginning of june. i was so excited to meet him, and see isa, darryl, and their daughter valentina again.
seeing darryl and isa brought out so much light in me. i love them so much. i've missed them so much...and valentina has gotten so big!
meeting ronin was incredible. new life floors me. so much possibility. so much beauty. so much crying ;) i said to isa "look, he has your eyes...sleepy."
ronin wright olsen
the first family shot
i geeked out with darryl for a bit as we enjoyed a beer together. darryl has a ps3 and an xbox 360, both of them live and online. its kind of geek heaven at darryl and isa's place, and yes both of them are video game nerds.
spending time with darryl and isa was so amazing. i used to spend so much time at their place, watching survivor, playing video games, and just hanging out. meeting ronin was a highlight of my year! it was difficult for me to pull myself away, but my monday was about to get even more crazy!
my next stop was lunch at zelda's, my fav little trailer trash restaurant in the gaybourhood just up the street from darryl and isa's place. my sister and some of her friends were already there waiting for me.
the food, the patio, and the atmosphere of zelda's is like no other. i love it! its fabulous...and spending the afternoon there with good friends in the beautiful august sun made it even better.
my good friend taylor
scott and christina
3 pitchers of sangria later shared with danielle, scott, christina, allie, thalia, mark, greg, and more, it was time to head down to the lake for the promise cherry beach soundsystem. this event is the best free outdoor weekly event i have ever been to. awesome beats and incredible peeps, all down by the lake every sunday afternoon for free! i knew i'd run into so many people that i miss and love at cherry beach, and i did.
angela and i at cherry beach
dancing at cherry beach with friends that i miss and love made me question why i chose to move away. my friends in toronto are like treasure to me. you make me the richest man in the world. any opportunity i have to roll around in treasure, i will take...even if it means i have to drive 50 hours across canada to do it.
i love you guys so much! i am so blessed to have you in my life.
and just when you thought it was over...graham came and picked me up at the beach and we headed uptown to meet up with brennan, bev, graeme, and tucker at the rose and crown. they had just returned from a roadtrip to baltimore for the virgin music festival with our friend ron rivlin.
ron is a good friend of ours from university, and a successful booking agent living in los angeles. he is also the manager of the israeli psy trance duo infected mushroom. to put it simply, when you party with ron you party like a rockstar, and that's exactly what these kats had just done. they didn't just party like rock stars, their "all access artist" passes meant they were treated like rock stars. oh man, the stories these guys shared with me and the energy that was emanating was as intense as the vibes i was giving off. an insane weekend with friends.
on the drive back to my sister's place with brennan and krew, i don't think i've laughed more incessantly in my life. it was like we were riding a lughing rollercoaster with our best friends.
what a perfekt way to end off perhaps the craziest weekend of my life. i love you guys, and i'll see you in october at brennan and bev's wedding.
normdate 7.8.7
i didn't really get much sleep, more like a 4 hour nap. graham picked me up from sister's place at 6am to take me to the airport. by 7:30am, i was on a plane heading back to calgary.
what a nucking futz weekend. driving 50 hours across canada with graham, celebrating my mom's birthday, meeting ronin wright olsen, drinking on zelda's patio with friends, dancing with people i love at cherry beach, and laughing my ass off with more people i love and miss! yes, it was a crazy weekend. thank god i got to sleep on the plane.
and just to make things even more intense, when i arrived back in calgary i went straight to work!
craaazy!
needless to say, i passed the fuck out when i got home.
