Less write more see

Here it is in all its expert lay out glory.






Downtown



















Uptown


My house and the back yard behind my backyard. The dot on the right is a heron.




















The horse next door.

















The Mayor's house and Kirby, the mayor's cat.








































A trailer house. The building is the haunted hotel. The pink house is my favourite house (photo courtesy of Nan). And finally, lets lift weights and watch the sunset.





















The Mad River
(Nan)

New Entry with bonus belligerence and recipe

"Who's your landlord Betsy Ross"
- Steve

It might be easier to clarify what we don't do: no balloon animals or juggling. If you're cramming a lot of people into a small car, it's on your own time.
Internet became scarce for a while after leaving the hotel. I have been keeping notes however so here are some random snippets of the past month.

One guy at the school has one of those American circus backgrounds where you juggle and make balloon animals. Balloon animals are apparently the cash cow of the street performer. People go nuts for bright latex twisted up in creative ways. So at some point in early October it got me thinking... Balloon animals make every situation lighter … Since the municipal government isn’t willing to spend enough on addressing the issues in the down town east side and there’s a lot of talk about what’s going to happen to the residents during the Olympics. Why not just put everyone in clown costumes and we’ll tell the tourists it’s a circus… which it kind of is.

I don't endorse this idea as the first approach but is it any more cruel than gentrification and police brutality? Hmmm.

At around the same time I came to another conclusion:

I have to admit, I’m not that into juggling. It looks cool and is the ultimate party trick. But it drives me nuts, especially starting out when it’s just one ball being tossed back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Last Saturday at 4am I decided to take a break from drinking for a while:

The drinking was all civil and under control until a drunk 2nd year went on a Capoeira kicking and picking up people spree at a party. One got her hand mangled, another got dropped into a table and I got kicked in the nose. I didn't mind the kick so much but the thought of visiting an american doctor terrified me. I must have been vocal about this so the albertan started handing me bottles of hard liquor and told me it was medicine. I just couldn't see an American doctor, I wasn't wearing expensive shoes so there's no way I'd get the help I needed.
One final image for that night - Standing in the middle of a dark small town street, an unfiltered camel in one hand while the other makes a fist in the air - "No Yankee Doctor..." Why do hangovers happen only on the most beautiful days when someone is bound to cook something amazing. Meanwhile, I'm just waiting for my toast to pop and my broth to boil. What a waste.

And as for the school - A lot of it is focused on deconstruction right now. So a lot of what we're doing has to do with finding a neutral place or starting with a clean slate. For example, not every character you play will have eighteen years of dance or body building or whatever it is you've done - so how can you find a place of movement outside that. We move around a lot and so we should, it's in the name after all. We're in class from
9 - 5 and then we rehearse at night in groups of 5 to 7 for our weekly performance lab.

I may be off the sauce but there's still room for Babo's Ragu. Babo is an old Italian man that lives next to the hotel. Provided you don't park your car in front of his living room or thump up the stairs, he's quite congenial. Babo means Father in Italian - so even in his eighties he's still got young women calling him Daddy.

Babo's Ragu

Get a meat mixture that's half hamburger and half Italian sausage
Add 2-3 bay leaves
When meat is brown, add 1-2 cups of red wine
When cooked grind in a food processor

In a seperate pan sautee onions until clear and then add s&p, parsley, carrots and celery
Grind up in a food processor

Add the tomato puree which consists of
Diced tomatoes
tomato puree
whole peeled tomatoes
I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to puree this either.

Let it all simmer together. When oil becomes red, you know it's done. Add s&p
This recipe is flexible - do what you want to it.

Cheers,

Lani

Freedom Forever!

I realized I'm a foreigner in a strange land...

If you find something good?
You have seen where you are living haven't you?

I’ll try to start every blog with a quote from my brother. Don’t worry Steve, I have found a new place to live. I’ll miss the ghost whores though. It gave me someone to blame when things went missing – keys, floss, my big toe. Silly ghost whores, floss is for mortals.

I resigned myself to a week of solitude but that changed on Monday night when Eric from Rhode Island arrived. My two nights alone in the Ghostitute Hotel do make me a lot more sympathetic to Jack’s plight in the Shining. While I don’t agree with the choices he made, I can certainly understand where Jack was coming from.

Like the survivors from a nuclear fallout, others began to surface. There’s a student from Kansas via NYC – she’s got great stories of homemade ice cream on the farm and horrendous ones too – like the time she got locked in the coop with some nasty roosters. Cockadoodle deadly. There are also students from Louisville Kentucky, Boston, Chicago, Calgary and Norway. They’re all really nice and will even let you mock their president. Just don’t let them see you put mayonnaise on your fries. You’re safer taking a carcass out of a bear’s mouth.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent this long in the USA before and it’s a great opportunity to really embrace the culture. Individualism, patriotism, and love for God will now be expressed in my “Freedom Forever” personalized cheques or “checks” as they spell it in the only place worth living in the entire universe. Imagine a soaring eagle, its wings brushing past the stars and stripes banner. Meanwhile, Ms Liberty stands proudly in the corner, proud. What’s even better is I get to have my own personal saying on my personal checks that let me supersize my individuality. There are a lot of diverse sayings to choose from such as “God make this country free and strong”. “God give us the strength to balance this check book”. “God, God, God, God, God”, “Jesus is footing the bill”. “I place my overdraft in the hands of the Lord”. “Gun control means using both hands”. It was hard to choose but you’ll soon find out as all who read my blog will be sent a check in the mail.

Besides freedom, justice, Jesus and milk shakes - I don’t think it will be long before I start saying “y’all”. I give myself until Thanksgiving. And by Thanksgiving I mean November Thanksgiving. Not some pinko commie pagan October thanksgiving that comes with a free physical exam and a bottle of discount prescription meds. October thanksgiving is dead to me. DEAD. But y’all aren’t. And by “y’all”, I mean “all y’all”. Not just “y’all” over there but “all y’all” over there too.

Oh yeah, Arcata turns out to be the place where 1967 got to retire. I’ve seen five people without shoes in seven days. The farmer’s market has a reggae concert in the middle of it. I’m also getting nervous about school. Once I got my Freedom Forever checks, I had to wonder how it could get any better than this.

Ghost prostitute room mates

"You can't stay here", "You can't stay here" my brother insisted. I asked him if he'd ever been in this situation and he hadn't but arriving in small towns and settling in a vacant creepy residence has become oddly familiar by now. The place is clean and empty and creaks a lot. One of the students unknowingly agreed with my brother by saying "you can't stay there, you'll go crazy". He later when on to mention that it's haunted and used to be a brothel (I'm thinking a century ago and not a week ago I HOPE). The whole prostitute thing is oddly coincidental because on the ride up yesterday I was thinking about wild west saloon prostitutes and how good they look in movies and decided that was probably inaccurate. So I changed the picture in my mind to allow them to have haggard party faces, unwashed corsets and fishnets full of runs.

Since I'm living amongst their ghosts right now, I better add a "just kidding" because one of the ladies could be looking over my shoulder as I write. You look fabulous ladies...

As for the rest of the town, I find it quite charming but my brother disagreed. There are old character homes with big yards. Some have been beautifully painted and landscaped and others have not. There's one place that has enough property to have horses in their yard. Another place has ducks and chickens which their dogs don't bother. There are cats and dogs everywhere both in the yards and on the street.

I love the random rural residential melting pot - some houses are beautiful and old, some just old and others are double wide trailers. There's a great cafe in town called stardoughs and it really is the hub. Other features include the logger bar and a giant casino and gas station/mini mart/ 24 hour slot machine room just on the edge of town.

Slot machines are so shiny and pretty. I remember once when I was 3 I found a shiny blue pill in the crevice of the couch at the doctor's office. When I showed it to my mom I was thinking shiny blue candy but she was thinking deadly drug. That's kind of what the slots are like so I'll try my best to stay away.

Hmmm, oh I should mention I'm here to attend Dell'Arte which is a physical theatre school. Physical theatre is mask, and movement and clowning etcetera. It's going to kick my ass and work me to the bone but I have not a clue how I'm going to make my living once I'm done. any ideas??? Classes don't start for another week and a half. It's finally sunk in that I'm here but the idea of going to school won't sink in until I'm doing it. I'm not just here to hang with hanted hookers and gamble so it's good I'll have school to distract me from these tempting options.

That's it for now,

Lani