Break Dividing Walls...

One of the things that Anna mentioned last night was that she misses things about her Black Baptist church back in Portland. I was just thinking about some churches that I used to attend (one of them regularly, and one whenever I visited my parents).

Blood n Fire in Atlanta was literally located in the projects. I used to sometimes ride my bike there, and every service was an amazing experience. There were more homeless / poor / drug addicts at church each week than at any other church I have ever been to. The pastor had given up a successful career in order to work with the poor, and one day that I was there he gave away one of his few remaining cherished possessions, his Harley Davidson, in an offering to be given to Jackie Pullinger. After that week, it was no longer parked up front in the warehouse/church building each Sunday.

This church regularly gave away more money than possibly any other church I have ever been too. Massive amounts, given to other ministries and outreaches, from possibly the poorest congregation I have ever seen. Massive amounts. (If I recall, I think one particular offering was in the thirty-something thousand dollar range).

Anyway - forget about the money... Some of the happiest, most radiant people I have ever met lived at that church. I'm talking about people that were crack-head crazy street folks before Jesus was involved. They lived in an old crazy building beside the church, and ran a ministry for homeless / drug addicted men getting their lives turned around.

Also, I helped out a bit one summer with a kids program. Once a week I went and helped some insanely patient people run an insanely crazy kids program with neighbourhood hood-rats; kids with names like 'Peanut', that would literally climb all over you if given the chance. One week we took them all to a public pool - half of them couldn't even swim!, so we would wade around the crowded noisy pool with three of the smaller kids clinging to each of us...

And church each week was definitely a 'clap-and-sway' kind of event. That was the minimum, actually. The first time I ever went, the pastor had all the young people (20's and younger, I think, 'cause it included me!), run around the big warehouse building, as part of the worship service. So we did; all the kids and the college folks like myself, running at full tilt in a huge loop around the building, while everyone was singing church songs. It sounds crazy, and it usually was, but it was all a part of the amazing exuberance that was in people's hearts... It just exploded out of them, and they knew how to express it outwardly, as praise back to the God that had done SO much for them. Actually, I don't know if half of them even had an option!

Anyway - I should do some work now...

Let's see...

Friday night we went to the One by One art (and fashion) show. It was a good time, and some of the art was pretty darn cool. Also, the fashion show was hilarious, since a good few of the models were folks from church. Luke was especially hilarious, with his eyeliner and Zoolanderesque poses.
I think they made some pretty good bank too, which will be passed on to an orphanage in Africa...

Saturday we took the pets to the vet, and ran some other errands... I stopped in at the Fluevog shoestore, since they were having some huge sale, and I seriously could use some new shoes. Turns out all they had was ugly, and on sale for hundreds of dollars. Seriously, this one pair was marked DOWN to, I think it was something like 700 dollars. And that was 300 bucks off the regular price...
Needless to say, I will continue to rock the white Nu Balance/flipflops for a while yet.

Sunday... laundry, Rice Bar, church. Leah played at church, and I had a hard time running sound. I finally got everything sounding good by the last song. Bradley had his first go at playing guitar in church too, and it sounded pretty sweet.

After church we went to Brian and Anna's for dinner. It was really fun, and cool to hang out with them, since we hadn't ever really. Brian showed off his mad cooking (Leah friendly) skills, Anna showed us their wedding pics, and a good time was had by all. Needless to say, I am tired, since we went to bed at around 12:30...

One by One...

Marty!!

This guy from Montreal has started a petition...
to get Nike to make that Back to the Future sneaker - yeah, you know the one!

Yay!!

Two things...

At lunch a found an old lady trying to mow her lawn. It was super hot, and she was having trouble with the mower. Her usual high-school yardworker was away at camp, and she was worried that the grass was getting too long. I mowed the rest of her yard and she gave me 10 bucks. That's more than I make at work, if you figure it at an hourly rate!

Also, I glanced through the new Canadian Architect, and there is a teeny picture and paragraph from our Orphan Spaces competition entry. Just look for the paragraph with my name at the top of it!

So that's that. One step closer to world fame, and 10 bucks closer to being independently wealthy.

Weekend update

So, the weekend.

On Friday, we went and picked up a rental car, dropped the cats off with some friends, and then drove to Indiana.

It was a pretty long drive, and I was ridiculously unprepared in terms of maps, addresses of where we were going, and phone numbers. Nevertheless we managed to find our way to the Elkhart County fairgrounds, in the middle of Amish-country, Indiana.

All we knew was that My Korean Friends was supposed to be playing at a battle of the bands, along with the Owens' band, Thurman. We got there around 8, and had to pay 8 bucks each to get into the fair. We walked in and saw my dad's truck, with a U-Haul trailer behind it and a tall-bike stowed in the back. We entered the fair, and found a stage amidst the carnies, middle America families, and hardcore/Avril-ed high school kids. Our timing was amazing, 'cause there on stage was my brother Reeve, and the rest of the band, finishing up there soundcheck.

They proceeded to run through an award-winning 3 song set, after which Thurman played another sweet three song set. I say award-winning, 'cause they ended up winning first place (Thurman came in second), and $100. It was kinda funny, since the kids in the crowd flocked to see the other, younger, screamier bands, but the older indie beard kids schooled the fairly uniterested crowd in how to play some freaking good songs. Turns out the judges knew where it was at...

We crashed at Jeremy and Greta Owens' place, and the next day we just hung out. We went to the farmers' market downtown, and checked out the Amish/Mennonite produce and some crazy bluegrass/country folks. We barbecued some lunch, and then that evening went to a cafe where MKF played a much longer set of sweet tunes, followed again by Thurman.

The next day we drove a long long way back home. We got back in to Toronto, and after an unfortunately eventful evening, involving, among other things, picking up the cats and dropping off the rental car, we went to bed at 1.

That's the short version of the weekend. It was fun, and I will post some pictures sometime, and maybe some more details about Amish buggies, award-winning rock shows, tetris, free bikes...

Almost the weekend...

Last night we went to Paul and Becky's house for church (Dining Room). Their place is pretty darn sweet, with a dope back yard and everything. They share the house with another couple, and seeing the place made me miss living in an actual house.

We also checked out their homemade bed (which makes Leah and I trendsetters! Yeah, we invented homemade beds...) and their sweet homemade desks. They also have homemade wood flooring in their room, homemade soap, homemade awesome food...

Furthermore, we took Petrie and Mabel along, since they were going to maybe spend the weekend. We wanted to see what would happen when they met Scotia Hubble (Scotia is a ferret-beast). Turns out they will not be spending the weekend afterall.

I don't know that they wouldn't be friends, given a bit more time, but they were nervous enough to be dangerous. I didn't want the kittens to get spooked, and swipe Scotia's face off, or for Scotia to get feisty, and disembowel one of the cats.

Oh yeah, Mabel can growl!?

Tomorrow we pick up a rental car and get the heck out of the Tdot for a day or two... We will be checking out some MKF action in Indiana... It is going to be sweet.

Weekend blah blah blah

Friday:

Friday night we went to Katherine's friend's cat's condo, where Katherine was cat-sitting for the weekend. There were quite a few people there and it was crowded and noisy. Katherine made some amazing food for us all.

At this party/dinner we were introduced to the game Guitar Hero. It is a pretty ridiculous videogame, and involves a little plastic guitar interface, with five buttons on the fretboard. You get to play along to a wide selection of classic guitar-rock anthems (everything from Joan Jett to Black Sabbath to Franz Ferdinand...)
There is also an internal sensor in the thing that can tell if you lift the guitar to a vertical position (this is occasionally required, if you manage to rock out hard enough)

Needless to say, you should check this one out if you ever get the chance.

Saturday - We went to the Festival of Clowns, to see Jen McN's show, Primal Broads. Since Jen is brilliant, it was great to see her in clown action again.

Sunday - Church.

The Bohemian Dreamian

Last night at Living Room (that's the embarrassing name that my church uses for small groups that meet in people's homes to pray and stuff), Becky told us about a dream that she had some time around January...

In the dream there was this space with big white walls. On the walls were canvasses and paintings, and there were people painting and people playing music and it was a big freaking artist commune type co-op studio gallery deal. It was all about a space for people to share and focus on worshipping God through art and music and community, with space for events, and a place for people to sell their art and music too.

It was extra interesting, because what prompted her to tell about this dream was when I asked people to pray about a couple of places that some of us are looking at renting, pretty much to set up as a shared studio type space. Her dream just pushes what we were planning to a whole new level.

If this sounds interesting to you, and you are in the habit of praying (or even if you aren't!), you could pray that we would be given wisdom and guidance and direction about when/how/where this whole thing could go down...

Metal

So I figured somebody from church might actually want those metal tickets, and I posted it to our church website... Sure enough I had a bunch of hands go up, and I hooked up a couple of metal loving church kids (a nanny and a barrista) with some free 40 dollar tickets, thanks to my work.

Email

I just got a mass email at work from one of our admin assistants (she always ends up with any free tickets etc. that make it into our office)... here is an excerpt:

I have two tickets available to see Sounds of the Underground featuring As I Lay Dying, In Flames, Trivium, Cannibal Corpse, GWAR plus 7 additional metal and hardcore bands!

That is funny, if you know the type of people that work here...

Yup... the weekend

Let's go in reverse order.

Monday morning - Got to work and found an AMAZING mp3 posted at the One Louder blog...

Sunday - yes, Italy won. Congratulations to all fans. Now please stop driving past our apartment with your hand firmly planted on the horn!
Church was great.

Saturday - we went to Ronelle's place for a church gathering involving singing and praying. This was after we walked around the city for hours.
For breakfast, we made crepes, but first I rode my bike to Loblaws to pick up some wife-friendly rice-based ice-cream. Crepes, with loads of fruit, and ice-cream, for breakfast... Yes.

Friday - we went to the Rice Bowl on Augusta for dinner. You should go there too. Seriously.

Werner Herzog

“You shouldn’t mix up fact and truth,” Herzog says. “I do not trust facts so much as I trust human ecstasies.”

Forget Superman, I want to see The Wild Blue Yonder...

Happy Independence Day

The long weekend was pretty fun, and now I am back at work on the 4th of July...

Friday - we went out for dinner with Jen and David - the Rice Bowl (check it out...), and then Mars for coffee/tea/pie. Everybody was tired, but it was fun.

Saturday - we went to the AGO, which was pretty unimpressive, since the whole place is a construction site. (It was also free, thankfully, or else it would have been a total rip-off). We also went to Kensington...

Sunday - I went to Value Village, and then I went to church (Leah was there early 'cause she was playing). Afterwards, some church folks all went to Lisa's for after-church pizza / hanging out. This was our last chance to hang out with Lisa and Dylan before they disappear for a couple of months to their respective distant summer homes... and it was very fun.

Monday - Leah did some recording. We also did some grocery shopping. That evening, we went down to Bloor street and walked around...

As you can see, it was pretty uneventful... which is by no means a bad thing.
Oh yeah, Reeve also called us this weekend. Hopefully, we will be driving to see his band play in Indiana in a couple of weeks...
Wanna come??