Random monday blatherings... Golfing... Criss Angel...

Just random blatherings today.  Its monday night, and I feel like writing.

I've started this online challenge called 'Songfight' (songfight.org).  What happens is, they give you the title of the tune and you have 2weeks to write and record your tune.  I nailed the first week challenge in a night, but this week's challenge has been difficult.  This weeks title is, 'Canadian Girlfriend'.  Its due thursday and I'm going to do my damnedest to get a submission in.  Runnin' to the wire though.  If ou want you can still go and check out my last recording, its still up there on the site.

I got sick yesterday and it walloped me today.  I went to work but I regretted doing that afterwards.  I also regretted biking in today in freezing temperatures.  I checked the temperature and it was 7degreesC but the windchill made it a minus celcius day.  I had to decide whether to wear my touque or my helmet, and I chose the helmet.  Both of those were the right decision.  What I needed was a snowsuit.   I only wore a sweater and a pair of cotton pants and froze myself stupid going in.  The helmet saved my head when I slammed into a road construction sign.  I just didn't see it, I was bent into the wind giving it everything I had to try and get there.  It spit rain on me, then snow, and eventually the icy wind took all my strength away and got deep into my bones.  My muscles gave up and the fever set in to stay with me all day.  Its been a pretty miserable monday.

So yeah, I'm workin!  I had my eye on this print shop pretty much from the beginning.  I dropped Tanya off to work one day and noticed it.  Then we moved to where we are and it became an even better prospect.  Its right across from Tanya's office, a 40min walk to home or 15mins on bike.  I'm pretty lucky, jobs have always materialized right when I needed it to happen, and I dropped off a resume at exactly the same time another fellow was leaving.  Being able to walk to and from work is a huge bonus with me cause I like to walk.  Its a pre-press position, back to what I was doing in Ottawa 12 years ago.  Lots to learn.  Here's a kicker too, I'm making the same amount of money as I was in Moncton, except I'm taking home about 30% more money.  This was one of the reasons we wanted to move here, the taxes are low.  I mean, we were making decent money in Canada, but it was utterly impossible to build any kind of savings.  Me personally, I have never had or have been able to save any of my own money.  As long as I've been working I've been poor as hell, just barely surviving.  If not for Tanya, I think I'd live a pretty down and out, mean existence.  I don't know how families do it.  And it kills me to see all that money being so carelessly thrown away on the machines and tables here in Vegas in the name of fun... I just don't understand it.

Tanya's dad was here all last week so we visited quite a few casinos.  We also got out golfing which was our first outing here.  It was a nice little community course called Desert Willow in Henderson.  It was a beautiful day and I shot as well as I always do, on the green in two, plus 3 or 4 putts.  The greens were pretty horrid.  The beer cart came around the 10th hole and Tan and I each got one, and then we learned a hard lesson about golfing on a community course in the desert.  Its not like back home where you can run off to the woods!  There was absolutely nowhere to piss!  I lost my first and only ball of the day on the 18th hole into a water trap that had a big fountain spurting water.  That was it, I just couldn't finish the game in that state of mind so I left the cart and Tan and her dad and ran to the clubhouse.

We also went to see Criss Angel's show at the Luxor.  I didn't really know who he was, or that he had a TV show all those years.  But his show and the supporting cast was pretty good.  I could use less of the rockstar screaming and crowd pumping stuff, but he seemed like a genuine guy who loves his craft so he sold me on it.  And he IS a rockstar.  He did some pretty cool tricks that I'm still trying to unravel in my mind, so I'd go back to see him again just to focus a keener eye on things.  He has an amazing collection of custom motorcycles as you walk into his theatre.  It wasnt' a full house for a friday night either.  I've heard that his show isn't doing too well.  No matter, I liked it and I'd recommend it.

Tha's all for tonight folks.  Thanks for reading.

TRJ

Meatfest... Cirque du Soleil: KA

Ahh, another year of adventuring in Las Vegas.  This week, I'm going to offer you a glimpse into the wonderful worlds of the Cirque du Soleil and what I like to call Meatfest at a local eatery called 'Fogo du Chao'.

It had been a long week, my first full week of work since I moved here actually.  So as a congratulatory meal to myself, Tanya and I and Frank decided to visit a Brazilian steak house.  These places are special.  What happens in a Brazilian steakhouse is, you have a marker on your table which is green on one side, red on the other.  There are many waiters roaming the restaurant with long skewers of 10 different kinds of the most succulent, fire grilled meat you will ever have!  And so, if your marker is 'green side up', they come to your table and offer you a slice off of their skewer.  It could be beef, pork, chicken, lamb, ribs, ... All meat.  If your marker is red side up that means you've had enough, for now.  Maan, what a meal!  That meat is friggin' fantastic!  We settled in for a good hour and a half of piggotry.  That's not even a word but I'll use it and you know what I'm talkin' about.  The salad bar is great too, with all the fixin's to go along with all that meat.  It had some of the best smoked salmon I've had yet here in Vegas.  But the meat.... oh man!  It was pricey at $45/person, but that's what you normally pay here for a meal so its not extraordinary.

On saturday night Tan was able to get some 'locals' deal on the Cirque du Soleil show KA.  So it was a lot cheaper than normal for us and we wanted to see it again.  The first time around, well folks,... it blew my freakin' mind.  Words cannot describe what I witnessed that night.  This second time around, I'll give it a whirl just to try and share that experience.  They won't let you take pictures in there, so I didn't find any worthy of sharing.  You'll just have to take my word for it, or come and see it for yourself.

First off, its nice to get a good jag going before you go in.  The Cirque shows are mind benders, so its good to be nice and lubed up for it.  Beer was relatively priced at $7, water was $6 and a bag of chips was $4.  Luckily I knew this and had a good rum-soak going for me before I went in.

The KA theatre was built especially for this show and upon entering, its as though you've entered into the hull of an old wooden ship.  If you wait long enough in the lobby, high above you, an old man will come out and play this huge wooden piano-like instrument with its strings strung on the outside over its wooden shell, far over your head and across the room.  The music is pumped in through the sound system, a bass cello or something, but to your eyes, that old guy is playing some fantastical instrument with a deep foreboding sound.  Like an ancient seaman warning you to stay away.  You get into the theatre and its like you've entered an otherworldly village.  There are many towers hanging from the ceiling on both sides of the stage, and from those towers the native characters are chirping and getting all worked up.  They are dressed up in full-body, skin colored tattoo suits and meager leather armor.  They rule the roost before showtime, and are jumping from towers which are probably 75' high, swooping in low on bungee cords and bouncing to land on another tower.  They also roam the audience, climbing over the seats to get in your face to wonder who you are and what the hell you are doing in their theatre.  They don't like us.  They're harmless creatures, but strange and a bit unnerving nonetheless.

This Cirque show follows a story, unlike any of the other Cirque shows.  Two royal twins get separated  and the story follows their struggle to find one another again.  But the thing that makes this Cirque show so worthwhile is the theatre and the stage.  That stage is a whole thing all its own!

Picture this.  Its a theatre of course, but the stage is hovering there before you over an open void.  There is no 'stage-proper'.  When the show starts, that hovering stage rotates and tilts towards you so it changes your viewing perspective.  And for the rest of the night, the whole stage area... up and down, becomes an enormous performance area that seems to defy space and physics.  The main movable stage is 50' wide and 25'deep, and the main set for many of the acts.  In the beach scene, it is covered in sand (granulated cork actually, which looks exactly like sand), and as the scene goes along, the bad guys attack and the stage begins to rise and turn 360degrees, more and more steeply as the main characters try to get away.  All the sand drains off and you can hear the arrows hitting the ground which produces rippled graphics (projected digital) that go out from each strike.  Those ripples (arrows) that have hit now become pegs that have popped out of the stage itself to become pivot points for the characters to use to climb and swing from as the stage rises ever so higher.  The chase ensues as the stage rises steeper and steeper until its almost a straight up and down, a 50' drop!  A hundred feet into the chasm below.  It is absolutely mind blowing seeing that chase scene.  Its like the scene has all of a sudden become a two-dimensional thing, like its on TV and we're watching it from a sky-cam.  The sheer scale of that stage and the mechanics involved is incredible.  Its so well done.

The next scene, with the stage still elevated to 90degrees, is that of an ice cliff.  The ice cliff is projected onto the stage surface, very convincing, as the characters climb up the pegs, 50' up to the top, complete with the cracking sounds and falling ice graphics as they climb the wall.  There are so many tricks of the mind and eye in there, that's why I had to see it again.  And of course there are all the aerobatics and circus stuff built into every Cirque show that defy normal human abilities, so its always great entertainment.

Truthfully I don't think it was as good the second time around.  The story got in the way this time, but all the mind-bending stuff was still there so its still just as potent a visual treat.  If you see one Cirque show, though it may be pricey, I would highly recommend KA.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ

PS ... for those geeks out there who love the science of things, here's a cool site on the mechanics of the KA stage.

Tisfoon Ulterior Systems

Trip to Sedona... Spirituality... and the Bell Rock trek

Pondering Courthouse Mtn, and the Vortex...

Hey folks, welcome to 2013.  I'm way behind on my writings, so I'll get right to the adventures.

Tanya had some time off for Christmas so we decided to take a little jaunt over to Sedona, Arizona to see what that was all about. It was a fitting trip, considering our planet's passing from the Piscean Age into the Aquarian Age, and that Sedona claims to be one of the spiritual power centers of the universe. They claim that there are 3 vortexes of spiritual energy that converge in Sedona. And indeed, Sedona's 'New Age' tourism industry is doing very well.  I am very sceptical when artists and hippies and religulites start talking like frootloops about whimsical things that cannot be scientifically proven. Spiritual energy vortexes? Crystals and minerals, gemstones with metaphysical properties with which to heal the physical world? There's absolutely no scientific proof to prove nor disprove any of it. So like all spirituality and blind faith, if you believe it to be true, then it is.  And in this day and age, or course, it all comes with a price tag attached to it.

There were many crystal and gemstone shoppes in Sedona, each stone having a detailed description of the metaphysical properties that it holds and what it could do for you. The descriptions were so wild and varied, so artsy and whimsical that I just have to shake my head at it all. A peddler at one of the shoppes we were in was having fun with a little kid, trying to explain to him what the energy of the gemstone would feel like in his hand, "a slight vibration," she said. His older sister exclaimed, "Yeah! I feel it!". And the little boy kept saying, "its not doing anything..." After the saleswoman tried some more convincing, his mom chimed in to defuse the little boy's frustration and asked her husband, "David, is Tony left handed?" as if maybe he was using the wrong hand.  I think the kid had it right. But who knows. I purchased some stones for myself that had descriptions of the metaphysical properties I'd like to work on in my life, wondering if maybe they'd help me envision a better future for myself. My new blue goldstone is supposed to help me develop my telepathic abilities and attract success and fame. I also got a Lapis Lazuli, the Philosopher's Stone, which I'll let you read about if you follow the link. I can't even begin to summarize the powers that the lapis holds. But I have it, so I'll let you know if I suddenly am able to do miraculous things :)

Its a 4hour drive to Sedona, a really nice drive. To sum it all up, it was like we had a mini-trip across Canada, just across the border into Arizona the highway begins to climb and soon you are passing through high mountain passes and then out onto great plains of golden-silvery grasses as far as the eye can see, dotted with clumps of green trees. On and on, an hour of straight, flat highway across the desert prairies. Eventually we started climbing higher and higher into another mountain range. This is what is referred to as the high mountain desert, higher and higher, until snow appeared in the shadows of the mountains and the trees started getting bigger and bigger and closer to the highway. And then, before long, snowbanks(!) appearred where the plows had pushed it off the highway! You folks back home won't get any kicks out of this, but for my desert-adjusted eyes seeing nothing but boring brown for the last 9 months here in Vegas, the snow was quite a welcome sight. Especially at christmas to counteract the freaky Vegas christmas phenomena, which is a whole other story. There were cars stopped all along the highway with the tourists getting out to take pictures of themselves in the snowbanks. When we reached Flagstaff, Arizona at 7370 feet above sea level it was certifiably winter! We stopped at a park to let the dogs out for a run and test my tires on the icy park road. There were lots of families out with their kids in full winter-gear, building snowmen, sliding, snowshoeing. The dogs loved the snow and I found out my car isn't equipped for winter driving, which is good to know. I still had my sandals on, so I wasn't dressed for this at all. It was cool to find winter so close, but at an arm's length away.

We left Flagstaff and noticed our onboard navigation system displaying a most unusual road pattern that resembled a small intestine. We soon found out why as we started down a steep, narrow, curvy mountain road that hugged the cliffsides, a quick drop of 3000 feet down to the valley on the other side. Down and down we went, and I couldn't shake the thought of a boulder landing on our car as there was rocky debris on the road everywhere. Eventually the road straightened into a deep valley and came out of the mountain's shadow to skirt along a deep gorge with bright orange cliffs and lush greenery surrounding us on all sides. Then we came into Sedona.

What a beautiful place! Sedona is nestled snuggly into a lush valley landscape, so neat and tidy. Its a small town, about 15,000 people or so, and it seemed to my eye that many of the buildings are built into their landscape setting as to not disturb the scenery. As such, there were lots of earthy colored houses camoflauging themselves into the landscape with big windows to take advantage of the magnificent views. The whole valley is so lush and green and the mountains surround it with a bright spectrum of orange cliffs on all sides, everchanging with the day's light. There were lots of wow moments, I couldn't imagine living here. I would love to have the time and money to play and explore this area. There are about 150 hiking/biking trails so its very much an outdoorsy, artsy lifestyle sorta place.

We stayed at the King's Ransom hotel which thankfully accepted dogs. We're always wary about bringing the dogs with us, but we wanted to go on a hike while we were in Sedona and wanted them with us. They were pretty good. They got a good dose of 'mommy and daddy don't care if you're howling' sorta treatment when we left them in the car for several extended periods of time. They work each other up and explode in a howling two-part harmony. Its funny, but also annoying.

Sedona seems to value their small-townness, and they seem to want to keep it like that.  As such, their buildings are reminiscent of a long gone past, an old farmtown existence, very natural.  There are three main streets and very few traffic lights.   Most intersections still rely on traffic circles to direct the flow, which were quite annoying.  I'd hate to see it at peak traveller season.  They also had slanted parking which I haven't seen in a long time.  It is also a haven for artists to come and set up shop, so there are a ton of studios selling art that no normal working person could afford.  It seemed to me that the powers that be want to keep the town small and endearing while keeping the prices extraordinary to maintain the high value of their community.  It was very inspiring to visit all these shoppes and galleries, and made me wonder once again why the hell I am not making art that sells for thousands of dollars and setting up shop in Sedona.  In a lot of the galleries the artists were present if you wanted to talk to them.  It was a really cool experience visiting all those art studios, some of the artworks we saw were absolutely amazing.

Sedona truly found its stride as a community when Hollywood came to town to film the old western movies.  Then it became a destination, and the big names started passing through and taking up residence.  On the whole, I got a mix of a ritzy sorta country vacation feel to Sedona.  Touristy but not trashy and plastic-like.  Touristy more in the sense that this was a spiritual trip to experience a lot of art and enjoy the nature of the area.

We visited the Chapel of the Holy Cross that overlooks the valley. It is a magnificently simple building that, standing at its altar and looking out, ... I've never been to the holy land, but the stillness and the peace and tranquility that pervades the whole scene at the Chapel is a very moving experience. The building is so simple and magnificent, a giant concrete box built into the mountain with a long curving walkway leading up to the rear main level and full, building-height doors that humble you as you enter. And then there was the high pitched, two-part harmonized howling coming from our car and echoing off the canyon walls. Beautiful. But that cross... its sooo massive and imposing, built into the front wall of windows so it extends through both sides with a most impressive view of the valley. Its very impressive.

Then we took a hike out to Bell Rock, one of the supposed Vortex sites. For a nice December 23rd day, the sun was really warm and the worn down orange-dirt trails were screaming for mountian bikes, which we seen a lot of. Thankfully we packed a lot of water for the trek. Tanya has finally learned not to depend on me for her own water consumption. I packed a trail pack with food and bottles and a first aid kit, but I forgot to put it in the truck when we left Vegas. So all we had were Tanya's water pack and Reese's Xmas chocoates. We rounded Bell rock and explored its trails and climbed atop the gentle giant. Zuma, for his 12" height, is a mighty little trekking dog! He doesn't stop for anything, unless one of his pack starts lagging behind. He will always wait to make sure the last person is still coming or he'll go back to find you. Clancy is our forward scout and hardly ever looks back unless you tell him to wait.  

Bell Rock is supposed to be a tranquil spot with unusual spiritual energy, and it was tranquil and beautiful but the only energy that was ever-present was that of the tourists everywhere climbing and playing on the mountainside. Other than the incredible views at Bell rock, I can't say that the Vortex had any affect on my day or my perspective. It was just so nice to be out hiking with Tanya and the dogs, that was my ultimate satisfaction. But then, as has so often happened in our lifetime, my sense of adventure and direction once again led us astray and the hike ended up being much, much longer than expected. I figured there was a connecting loop, there wasn't. The only connecting loop was around another mountain, Courthouse Loop. 2hrs into the trek, we stopped to consult the internet (!!!). At that point, we found ourselves to be directly in the middle of the big loop, 2miles to go in either direction, and so we forged onward around Courthouse which was a much more rugged trail and the right decision. The change of landscape was awesome around that mountain, very harsh and frozen in the shadows, then around to the sunny side where the sun beat down on us, eventually winding out into great wide plains of golden grasses. What an awesome day! A 4 hour trek with the family that left us all winded and tanned and needing to sit for a while to recouperate.

That night we decided to go to an Irish Pub beside the hotel for a final capper to the weekend. There were only 4 people in the bar including us and one of the patrons was a cowboy who tipped his hat to us upon arrival to say hello with a big smile. He reminded me of one of the north shore boys up home. He left and said his goodbyes but then a short time later he came back into the place and made a beeline for us and asked me who I was, which was very strange but not unwelcomed. He said I looked like the type of guy who enjoyed a smoke every once in a while and dropped a christmas present into my palm. Wow! I can't even describe how much I appreciated that. What a great capper to 2012!

We left Sedona the next day with the threat of a snowstorm in Flagstaff, so for the first time in a long time, we had to actually tune in to a weather program to see what we'd run into at the top of the mountain. We knew we had to get out early to beat the storm, so we grabbed a quick breakfast on the way out of town and began our ascent into the mountains. So strange to go from the orange desert environment of Sedona into the winter wonderland of Flagstaff, what a dramatic change. We gassed up in Flagstaff and standing out alongside the car with the ice cold wind relentlessly whipping through my cotton pants, I was right back in Campbellton NB. We left winter behind over snowswept highways, through the mountains, back across the wide open plains, and down down into the sunshiney, dull, boring desertscape of Las Vegas. Home, our home away from home.

Thanks for reading!

TRJ