Sigh.

The Master’s team is heading off to Montreal this weekend to play in the Montreal Jazz Tournament. It’s our one real opportunity to play a tournament at an elite level (i.e., get our asses handed to us) before Nationals. The tournament does not actually have a Masters division, which means we are playing in the same division as all the young guys (see “asses handed to us”).

But — shocker! — My Lovely Wife decided on Friday that she wanted to come up with me! She NEVER comes to tournaments with me, so this is a big deal. It did mean dipping a little further into debt to buy her a plane ticket and getting us a separate hotel room. (Previously, I was just planning on sharing a hotel room with a passel of sweaty guys. Heavy emphasis on “sweaty”. Hell, the emphasis on “sweaty” is so heavy that bolding and italicising the word just won’t cut it. Imagine the word is on fire. That might give you the proper feeling of emphasis. And now back to our tale.) But debt is a constant — us taking a vacation is a rare, rare occasion, especially a vacation that doesn’t entail going to visit family.

To add to the excitement, we finagled our dear friends Otto and Jen to come up for the weekend too! I managed to get a spot for the Otto on the team for the weekend, and Jen was coming to hang out with Beth (i.e., NOT hang out at the fields with us).

So, everything’s coming up freaking cookies and teddy bears, right?

Ha.

Last night, this notice appears on the tournament website:

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT – Monday, June 26th, 2006

Dear MJT teams,

There is a possibility that this year’s tournament will be cancelled due to inclement weather, as the forecast is calling for rain all week in Montreal. So far, the city has seen a very wet spring and early summer, and some of the Douglas fields will not be in useable condition if the rain continues this week as forecasted. Unfortunately, there are no alternative sites within the city that can host the number of teams scheduled to attend the tourney, nor are multiple sites available during that weekend.

We will continue to assess the situation and will keep you informed. A final decision about whether the tournament will be cancelled will be made late Wednesday/early Thursday morning. The news will be posted on the website as well as emailed out to all captains.

Crap on a stick.

So right now, the Karma Gods are hovering on high, karma sticks lightly held in their multitudinous hands, just waiting… waiting…

I will be spending the next several days making burnt offerings of Gummi Bears and salt & vinegar chips, praying that they appease the great and terrible Karma Gods.

All I ask of you, my pine-fresh readers, is that you send your voices on high on our behalf.

Pray to the Karma Gods.

Pray.

Ya’ll might notice a brand new addition to the sidebar. Yup, I’m actually suggesting you go out and buy something.

I get absolutely nothing out of this deal, so don’t worry that I have sold my soul… or even minority shares in a soul-like substance (“Get xOUL®! Now with 50% less existential inertia!”)

Rather, over a hearty meal of eggs, hashbrowns, and enough sausages to build a credible log-cabin model, I tried to explain what the whole purpose of Space Monkey Pants was to my buddy Josh (final diagnosis = time-waster extraordinaire). He quietly mentioned that I could, if I was so inclined and didn’t feel that it was too much of an imposition, possibly mention his two published plays in the hopes that maybe one or two people, out of the three or four of you that come here for anything other than pictures of animals or amusing tales of my own personal mortification, might actually consider purchasing them… before the vodka gin/wine/scotch haze settles over your eyes once again (yes, I’m looking at you, Jenny).

So, gamely trying to be a good friend — and in attempt to counteract the unfortunate karmic backlash of somehow ALWAYS being out playing Ultimate every single time he calls — I promised Josh I would go forth and wield my massive zeitgeist-influencing powers and shill his books.

So.

Josh is my oldest friend. We have known each other since Grade 7. He lets me read his comic books. All valid reasons to support him.

But another valid reason is that his plays are GOOD.

The first play of his that was published is called Halo:

When an image of Jesus appears on the side of a Tim Hortons restaurant in Nately, Nova Scotia, life is forever changed. The town’s inhabitants are challenged to ask difficult questions about faith, life and love with sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious results. Complicating the matter, of course, are the more mundane questions of whether this appearance is a miracle, an accident, or a quite possibly even a hoax.

At the centre of this wickedly entertaining play resides the more existential and personal question of what has happened to our notion of meaning and ethics in the strip-mall culture of concrete and crass competition which has replaced a more pastoral and rural life of care for the earth, the cycle of the seasons and its festivals, and the blessings of renewal in the family. Has religion lost the ability to mediate these two conditions, or did it ever really have that power?

Halo is a brilliant examination of the need to believe and the power of forgiveness.

His second play is Whereverville:

Dragging Newfoundland “kicking and screaming into the 20th century” (a quote attributed to Joey Smallwood), resettlement was a carrot-and-stick approach to depopulating the province’s fishing outports. Communities were encouraged to abandon themselves in exchange for financial aid and the promise of better services in centralized “growth” towns. Between 1954 and 1975, the Federal and Provincial governments brought about the move of over 300 communities and 30,000 people. First and foremost, Whereverville is a work of fiction and its setting, the imaginary community of Loam Bay, does not appear on any map–tellingly, however, neither do many of the 300 communities by which this play was inspired.

Set in a one-room school house during the decisive evening of the community’s vote on whether to stay or leave, Josh MacDonald’s play is an intriguing reversal of and homage to Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. While in Brecht’s play, the conclusion of the conflict over a community is that “those best able to take care of the land should possess it,” in Whereverville the conclusion is that “those no longer able to take care of the land should leave it.”

In both plays, it is the heart and mind of a young woman bereft of her future on which the action turns. It is Loam Bay’s schoolteacher, Abby Shea, herself “from away,” who holds the deciding vote as she struggles with her own phantom attachment to the community, its citizens and its ghosts of times past, and it is she who must learn that sometimes, in order to keep what we hold most dear, we must give it away–that “nothing lasts.”

So, I implore those of you interested, go forth and purchase some fine examples of Nova Scotian drama.

Final Josh Fun-Fact: Josh was in Titanic. For 38/100th of a second.

(Our story continues…)

Now that we were committed to going, the “mad dash” began. (I.e. My Lovely Wife spent the next hour frantically beautifying herself, puntuated by sporadic commands for “More Wine!”, while I made some pizza, ate some pizza, watched some TV, ate some more pizza, surfed the web, played with the cats, and then — 3 minutes before departure — put on a clean t-shirt and brushed my hair. There. Mad dash completed.)

Once we were pretty (well, she was pretty — I was presentable) and ready to go, we hit the road for Downtown Halifax!

Having received periodic updates that the line-up wasn’t as crazy as feared, we arrived at Reflections at 8:30 to no line-up! Yay! Quick metal detection, $20 exchanged for two washable hand-stamps, and in we were. And there were Ramzi and Allison at one of the very few tables, with two stools saved (which we would proceed to alternate sitting in, standing next to, lose, and then regain as the night wore on). Then we got to introduce My Lovely Wife to Allison. (They seemed to hit it off just fine.)

The volume of the club was pitched at the exact volume where everyone else can hear everyone else while I am stuck vainly trying to read lips and spent much of the evening smiling stupidly and then saying, “WHAT?” However, I did hear one bit of info from Ramzi that surprised me:

“YEAH — WE SHOULD GO TO NATIONALS IN TORONTO NEXT YEAR — IT’S JUST BEFORE THE WEDDING!”

Shocked, I shot out, “WHAT WEDDING?”

“ME AND ALLISON!”

“YOU’RE ENGAGED?!”

“YEAH!” (Pause.) “DIDN’T I TELL YOU?”

“NO!!!”

“OH!” (Pause.) “WE’RE ENGAGED!”

I proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes loudly berating Ramzi for not sharing that little detail.

By the time 10:00 rolled around, the place was starting to fill up, but it was no where near packed. However, the stream of people continued.

The first act of the night hit the stage: Andrew LeDrew. God love him, but he just wasn’t what the crowd was looking for. His first song was good, competent folky-rock in a Blue Rodeo style… but as he played song after song, and they sounded remarkably similar to each other, the crowd sort of tuned out to him. It must be hard playing a show where you know that the crowd just isn’t there to see you. He plugged away at it, but the crowd just wasn’t there for him. They wanted FUN, and he wasn’t FUN. Cool organ player in the band, but an organ player a band does not make.

At one point, My Lovely Wife pointed out my buddy Josh across the room. Josh was the one who I have to thank for introducing me to Sloan in the first place… along with most of my other music favourites… and most comic books… and movies… the list of things he has introduced me to is really really really long. I went and did my best to chat it up with him, but when everything is coming through your ears like white noise, conversation becomes a tad unwieldy. He came over and hung out with us for a bit. He said stuff too. I have no idea what it was.

The next band at 11:00 did a much better job at getting the crowd revved up: Slowcoaster. These guys were pumped and played hard for the crowd. They played a funky ska-jazz-rocky stew of music that was a blast to listen to. At this point, the club was really filling up and people had filled the area in front of the stage. As we were just behind this area, our sightlines had gone to hell fast. I could see the heads of people on stage, but My Lovely (But Shorter) Wife could see absolutely nothing. I was starting to get worried that this night would be a bust for her.

Slowcoaster finished up at around 11:40 — 20 minutes until Sloan! However, my excitement at seeing Sloan was countered by a worry that My Lovely Wife was not going to see anything once Sloan hit the stage.

Then Allison stepped up.

“THAT’S IT! LET’S GET UP THERE!”

“WHAT?”

“WE CAN”T SEE ANYHTHING HERE! WE’RE GETTING AS CLOSE TO THE FRONT AS WE CAN!”

My Lovely Wife tried to demure, but Allison was force of nature. Thirty seconds later, we were a chain worming our way through the throngs. We ended up 10 feet from the stage — at which point My Lovely Wife’s shyness in public won through and she wouldn’t push any more people. However, we had a good spot and Ramzi and I worked to form a shield wall around My Lovely Wife to protect her from the shoving crowd. (Allison needed no shield wall — the crowd had more to fear from her than she from them. She was itching to get even closer.)

Our spot in the crowd attained, it was time to hold on until Sloan came on. It was 11:55. Sloan didn’t come out until 12.30. Bless her, My Lovely Wife stuck through the wait. She is not a crowd person. She is not a late night person. But dammit, she stood there and waited with us.

So… 12:30 — Sloan hit the stage…

Holy crap. I thought it was loud when Slowcoaster was on. But Sloan took the volume to 11.

The place was not large — maybe 300-350 people filled the place. And the ceiling was low — standing at the front of the stage, the lead singer Chris Murphy could reach up and support himself with a hand on the ceiling. So that sound was not just loud — it was compacted, hitting my ears like a gale.

It was so apparent that Sloan has been playing together for 15 years — they are tight. They barrelled through classics like “The Good in Everyone” and “Losing California” and newer songs like “The Other Man”. One of the biggest cheers was when they started “Coax Me”. But the real stand-outs of the main set were “Money City Maniacs” and “If It Feels Good Do It”.

During “Maniacs”, one audience member did a stage-dive from the side of the stage and crowd-surfed all the way across to the other side of the crowd. Then, he somehow got all the way back to where he started and tried it again. This attempt was not as successful and he fell to the floor right in front of us, knocking the people in front of us down… who then knocked My Lovely Wife down. For a moment I saw absolute red, but then she got up and said she was all right and not to worry. And then she was right back in the show.

Halfway through their set, Allison said to hell with us and made her way forward. Next time I saw her, the crowd just happened to break open enough for me to get a glimpse of her at the very front of the stage turning sideways to scream at the crowd to get louder. She was an animal that night. (She later popped up next to us again. It seems she actually got on the edge of the stage itself, when the bouncer picked her up and pulled her away from the front. This seemed to please her.)

They finished the short intense set with “If It Feels Good Do It” and then left the stage. And then began the expected call:

“SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!…”

“SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!…”

“SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!…”

“SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!… SLOOOO-OOOAN!…”

And they were back. They actually looked a little sheepish — Chris Murphy came on the mike and said that they felt bad taking an encore on a showcase night (and with another band yet to come) so they would just do one more song.

And then they started “Underwhelmed“.

Damn — I thought the crowd was loud before. The shrieking that I heard out of my right ear actually started doing odd ripply things to my eardrums. “Underwhelmed” was Sloan’s first single and the one that is nostalgic favourite for most people. Boy, could you tell. (Hell, I was singing along just as loud as everyone else there.)

Then, when they got towards the end of the song, Chris Murphy got an audience member up and gave her his bass, showed her what string to keep strumming… and then he dove into the crowd. And the crowd lifted him up. And back.

Straight to us.

Next thing I knew, I had both hands holding up Chris Murphy’s “lower back”.

(His lower back = his pooper.)

One thing they don’t tell you about crowd-surfing — those people on the bottom have a lot of responsibility. I could tell how much of his weight I was holding. And I could tell when enough people were taking the weight that I could let go. And it wasn’t a short period of time. I basically walked him across the floor for 10 seconds before I dropped out. When I looked around for My Lovely Wife, she and Ramzi were 15 feet away.

Chris Murphy ended up at the very back of the audience — and on an upper level. There was no way he was getting back to the stage. They ended the show with him up there, looking a little surprised that he made it out alive.

We made our ways back to our little table and stools, somehow remarkably unoccupied. We debated staying around for the last act, and even stuck it out for while, but some of us were really tired at that point and the next band was taking fowever to come out. So, eventually, we gathered our coats and left.

And thus we spent an eventful Saturday.

Well, my ear-drums are still reverberating.

Saturday started off fast and quick. My Lovely Wife and I woke up at the baffling time of 7:45 am and were unable to fall back asleep. So, up we got and had ourselves a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs with sauteed mushrooms and cheese. My Lovely Wife complained that there wasn’t enough cheese — as my eggs were drowning in cheese, I took it as another example of her over-powering cheese addiction. However, when she gave up eating her eggs halfway through (meaning, of course, that I got to finish them off) I discovered a definite lack of cheese in her eggs. It seems the Karma Gods of Cheese had chosen to skew the cheese distribution heavily in my favour. Abashed, I did feel.

Then, showering quickly, we decided to head on out to a sample sale of sportwear going on on Almon Street. Driving over, I regaled My Lovely Wife with Gorjus’ “favourite” band LCD Soundsystem. The sample sale however was a bit of a bust for us — great stuff at what I guess were well-discounted prices. However, when the original price for a pair of shorts is over $80, and the heavily-discounted price is $45, the level of discounting loses some of its shine. We left empty-handed… and went instead to spend money at — child-workers of the world, hate me now — Old Navy. Once we had glutted ourselves on cheap pants and shorts, and seeing as we were at the mall already, My Lovely Wife decided more shopping was the order of the day. So… she went from store to store, as I receded further and further into the background.

Finally, she was sated, and we went to Starbucks for a treat before heading home. I picked myself up a peanut-butter square (of great deliciousness) while she ordered a Caramel Macchiato. Waiting in line to pick it up, the call went out from behind the counter, “Tall Caramel Macchiato!” I stepped forward to grab it, but stepped back as someone else swooped in first. “Weird,” I thought, “Same order.” Another call: “Caramel Macchiato!” Yet another person grabbed before us. In the end, five orders were processed before My Lovely Wife’s was made — four for Caramel Macchiatos. The fifth was for an Apple Cider… with caramel. It seems it was a day for caramel.

So off we went home. And then I checked my email. And saw the email that Ramzi sent me on Friday:

“Wanna see Sloan at Reflections?”

For those not in the know, this weekend was Juno Weekend in Halifax. For the first time, the Juno Awards were being held in our fair city and with it came a whole cornucopia of concerts all over the city. And one of the events was Sloan playing at Reflections.

Sloan is a big deal in Halifax. They are hometown boys and were the band that really exploded out of the Halifax music scene of the early 90s. And them playing at Reflections would be pretty awesome — Reflections is not that big a space, so it would be a very intimate club show.

And — though I had been a fan for 11 years — I had never seen Sloan live.

Buuuut… I had told My Lovely Wife that this weekend was for us. We would do stuff together. I had backed out of a tournament to be with her. I was putting off school-work to be with her. If she didn’t want to go… I wasn’t going to go.

So I nonchalantly mentioned it to her — no pressure or anything — to see if she was interested. She was… hesitant. Basically, the most I could get out of her was that I should find out from Ramzi what the details were. Knowing that Ramzi was off at the tournament that I had backed out of, I left a message with him to call me back.

5:30 comes and I’m on my way to the grocery store when the cell phone rang — Ramzi.

The details:

• Sloan is playing tonight.
• His “girlfriend” (more later) Allison would leave him for any one of the members of Sloan in an instant. Taking her would likely mean a reprieve from this occurrence.
• Sloan is one of four bands playing. He doesn’t know what the other ones are — do we care?
• Tickets are $10 (Holy crap!).
• The club recommends that people show up betwen 7:00 and 8:00 to be sure of getting in.

And then what would likely be the deal-breaker with My Lovely Wife:

• Sloan is not on until midnight.

Urk.

I told Ramzi I would check with My Lovely Wife. I called her and let her know the scoop. She told me… she would think about it.

Sigh.

I proceeded to finish the grocery shopping and headed home.

I loaded the grocery bags on the kitchen counter when My Lovely Wife called for me to come upstairs. She was in the bath. She was thinking about it and she wanted to know — on a scale of 1-to-10 — how much I wanted to go. Now, I know that there are some times that the absolute truth is called for… and other times that the “correct” answer is called for. I decided this was the second.

“6.5 out of 10. This is our weekend, and if you don’t want to go, then we are not going to go.”

(She later admitted to me that she knew “6.5 out of 10″ was complete bullshit.)

She said she would think about it some more. Off I went to unpack the rest of the groceries.

Two minutes later, I’m called upstairs again. Then she told me, “If you REALLY want to go… and if you are REALLY nice to me… and if you accept that I will probably complain A LOT… then I say we go.”

Then she repeated it four times, so I knew that she was not just saying it but really MEANT it.

Then I paused for… oh… 0.0052 seconds.

Then I called Ramzi and said, “We’re in.”

(To be continued…)

It was a glorious and sunny Monday morning. I was chugging along in the Aerio, coming up to the intersection of Windsor and Quinpool on my way to work, when who do I see in front of me but Ramzi! “Yay, Ramzi!” I think to myself, “I’ll pick him up and we’ll drive to work together! We’ll chat and joke and have a fine 5 minute trip! Yay!”

So, right at the crosswalk, I honked at him and opened the door for him to get in. He saw that it was me, smiled, and jumped in the car. From the moment I saw him to the moment my foot hit the gas, 7.37 seconds elapsed. It was almost military in its precision and speed.

And during the entirety of the 7.37 seconds, the driver of the crappy black minivan behind me drove his fist into his horn like it was an arterial wound he was desperately trying to close.

Which made what happened next all the more shocking.

As I pulled out of the intersection, he squealed around from behind and shot by us to the right, his middle finger tattooed to the driver’s side window.

And then he drove full-speed into a flatbed truck carrying a load of flaming pig feces.

And then as he got out of the car, his wife leaned over and said she was divorcing him. And that she had faked all her orgasms.

And then his dog threw up on his shoes. And then bit him. And then ran away.

And then his father drove up and told him he was a failure as a son. And that he was a mistake.

And then his mother ripped the head off his childhood teddy bear. And ate it.

And then a cop stopped by and arrested him for exposing himself to senior citizens.

And then a marching band on the sidewalk played a jaunty version of Beck’s “Loser”. And pointed at him.

And then a breeze blew his jacket open, revealing a pink and sparkly shirt that read, “I’m A Little Pony — Can I Give You A Ride?”

And then five supermodels walked up and said that the mere sight of him had just driven them to celibacy.

And then a team of paleontologists rolled up a blackboard and proceeded to demonstrate how he was an actual present-day example of the missing link between monkeys and modern-day humans.

And then he pooed his pants.

And then Ramzi and I laughed and laughed and laughed all the way to work.

…

Of course, this may be one of those instances where I skip off the rails of reality and drift into the Marvelous Land of Fantasy and Wish-Fulfillment. You should go. It’s awesome.