Night of Musical interludes

photo by Jessica Babineau

Dear boys,

If you want me to fall in love with you, get yourself some Buddy Holly glasses. More on that later.

Friday night was a delightful night of sushi and musical interludes with the library girls (and boy). At the beginning of the term Alison saw that I liked Feist via my facebook profile (oh facebook, you do help make friends in real life!). As Alison is a very smart lady, she had bought two tickets for an upcoming Feist show before she had any friends, with the plan to use them to lure people into her web of awesome. I was the lucky luree.

So the show was Friday - at a giant stadium (I haven't been to a stadium show since I was fourteen and I went to see No Doubt and Weezer). It was really great! Feist was amazing as per usual with her ridiculously lustrous vocals. It was quite awesome to watch her on stage with a guitar being all rock-goddess-y too. She was such a little nymph - full of raw feminine. She is very fun to watch. Even better, there was a cool projection/shadow puppet-type show going on along to all of the songs, and parts of it were amazing! I loved that there was always something to see as well as hear.

photo by Jessica Babineau

Hayden opened - and as we were watching (he has really developed nicely as an artist), I turned to Alison and asked: Do you ever develop musician crushes when you go to shows? Apparently only once.

I, however, am notorious for it (if only in my own head). I have an awful predisposition towards musicians, especially when they are on stage. At almost every show I go to there is at least one person on stage to whom I am eternally devoted for the night. I am not a groupie. I don't go find them after or anything. But anyways.

The logical progression to this story is that I, of course, had developed a crush on one of the band members. The guitar player. The one with the vest and the Buddy Holly glasses. This was from half a stadium away.

The rest of the group had been talking about going to see Cuff the Duke play at the Seahorse, and I had been skeptical of the ten dollar cover charge. I actually haven't gone to see a band play in a small venue where there won't be enough seats for a very long time. Plus, I had never even heard Cuff the Duke, although I have heard people wax poetic about them more than once. So I probably wasn't going to go. Until I found out my (pseudo)boyfriend would be there. Nothing gets me to a party faster than the possibility of true love (ha).

So I went.

It was amazing! The power of music and cute boys.

Cuff the Duke were really fun, and there was lots of clapping and sing-a-longing, which I love. But what I loved even more were the opening band: The Wooden Sky. Eff. They wrote and sang songs that I would love to sing. It's like when you read a novel or story, or see a movie, and you want more than anything to have created it - that's what it was like listening to them. It made me really want to be part of a band. A lot. So if you want to start a band... I want to sing. I'm sorry, I tried not to, but I do. So if you also want to be the lead singer, it probably won't work. Anyways, that was unrelated.

So yeah: I think I will be buying an album for the first time in years.

Here is The Wooden Sky:

Words and images and sounds

I just started thinking about how cool it is that modern text can also incorporate moving images and sounds. That is really really awesome!

I wonder how long it will be before we can also taste and smell and touch articles and stories.

Dogfight

If you have never seen the movie Dogfight, please do. I watched it last night for the umpteenth time, and I loved it just as much as always.

I love this film because I believe it. I believe the characters. Lili Taylor is especially amazing.

It's about the moments in which we become the people we are.

5/5 stars.

My last name

My last name is Friesen. I've never really loved it. Apparently it may have come from von Riesen at some point, and I think that sounds really nice, and thought about changing it back to that for a time...

I have a white board outside my room where I can post messages, and people can leave me notes and drawings. I love having it. Recently I came to my door that someone had changed my name from Angela Friesen to Angela Free/Zen.

Free.

Zen.

I love it.

Blissful things

I think this will be a new feature:

(Woo! A feature!)

Recommended blissful things.

Today:

Find a sauna. Take a bottle of cold water in with you. Sit in the sauna until you're really really hot. Open the water bottle and poor bits of the water onto your head. Shiver delightfully. Repeat.

This is especially great with a group of people.

You're the best! Woo!

Whenever I send myself an email (not for fun, although I should - when I send myself a document to print, or something like that), I add a nice little note to myself - something along the lines of the title of this blog post.

I highly recommend this.

Everything's Gone Green

Um, if you really want to make yourself homesick over Thanksgiving, when everyone else you know has gone home for the weekend, watch a movie set in your hometown.

I enjoyed Everything's Gone Green (screenplay by Douglas Coupland), but the experience was bittersweet. I spent the entire time being like, "Look how pretty it is!" There were all kinds of beautiful mountainous vistas ("Look! There's water! And Mountains! In the same place!") and trees and the number eight and the Grouse Grind and glass buildings... I had forgotten how beautiful it is. And how open.

I guess when you feel closed in by a place you don't notice how open it actually is physically.

So the movie was not bad, but worth watching just to experience Vancouver on screen, actually playing itself for once.

3/5 stars.

Waiting for Guffman and Thanksgiving

If you have never seen Waiting for Guffman please go watch it right now. You should have tomorrow off, that would be the perfect time.

I'm on campus for Thanksgiving, and so are a bunch of students, so I decided to host an evening of fun entitled "Nothing says Thanksgiving like Chinese food and a movie." The best part of my job is that I get to do "programming" - which just means I get to have events with food involved and they will give me money to pay for stuff. It took me ages to decide on a movie to show, and finally I had a flash of inspiration. Waiting for Guffman.

Among the most likeable, nay, lovable films I've ever seen. Everyone who asks me what movie we're watching is like, "What's that?" My response: "A most hilarious comedy about a small town theatre group who invites a New York City theatre critic to come see their show. " I don't think I actually phrase it that way, although I live at a University where that would be entirely acceptable.

So yes. I am grateful for movies, chinese food, friends, family, books, love, white sheets, wood, trees, leaves, TV on DVD, brunch, water, breathing, apples, colours, lavender oil, pillows, and on and on.

Happy Thanksgiving! What are you grateful for?

I want to be her friend

I've spent all day listening to her talk about words!

She blogs about dresses! She blogs about dictionaries!

And she's a great speaker too!

I wish we were friends.

The Other Man

One of my favourite music videos ever.

Sloan - The Other Man | Music Videos | SPIKE.com

Also: Did you know this song was written about Feist?