you know, unions
Sep. 6th, 2010 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davemerrillThat's who we have to thank for this holiday. Yeah, I know. Get over it.
So is anybody else really enjoying this season of MAD MEN? I think this season is kicking last season's butt. They're back to why people started watching the show - ad agency shenanigans, shameful mid century behavior, the enigmatic Don Draper.
In the meantime Mister Kitty resumes its regular updating schedule with a new ZERO FIGHTER strip by me. Found Sound and Stupid Comics will be up later this week and there's some new stuff Shain is working on as well, so stay tuned!
Here are the pix in question of our Labor Day Weekend shenanigans.
We went to the Canadian National Exposition, which is mere blocks from here and is wrapping up today with a whoosh of air show jets and a sprinkle of rain from an uncooperative sky. We went on Friday and the weather was just about perfect for an adventure amidst the crowds and the rides. One of the first things we checked out was the History Of Rock And Roll exhibit.
If there's anything that says "rock and roll" like a giant sand sculpture, I don't want to know what it is. Then of course we hied ourselves over to the agricultural exhibition, which in the past would be where you would parade award winning cows and pigs. Nowadays I guess they feel the audience would not know a prize winning pig if a spider wrote slogans in a web above its pen, so they just show off regular, non-judged animals. And butter sculptures, which ARE prize-winning.
Yup, that's a butter sculpture of Popeye. Now you have actually seen everything. Well, have you seen a llama?
You have now! Baby llamas spend most of their time rolling around in the hay and posing for photos. As opposed to baby lamas, who spend most of their time getting their head shaved and praying to manifestations of Buddha. At any rate afterwards we went to the food pavilion and got some lunch. But we also had a vital function to fulfill at the CNE, which was to find the cheesy airbrushed carnival ride art. And did we? Yes we did, at the Fireball.
The Fireball ride art was dominated by a giant Silver Surfer, obviously photoreferenced from the recent Fantastic Four movie. But to the left was a very 70s looking spaceman, an image that I've seen somewhere else, on a pinball game or a video game cabinet or a record album or a SF book jacket. It jogs something deep in the cheesy SF centers of my memory. Luckily the image on the right side isn't nearly as obscure.
Well, okay, it's obscured by girders (I couldn't get any closer without spending $6 worth of tickets on this ride) but it's a preliberated Jane Fonda as Barbarella, thus completing the spaced-out cosmic vibe this ride clearly needs as a selling point.
Meanwhile in the Canadian Forces exhibit, the spectators are monitored by a camoflaged dummy wielding a .50 cal machine gun.
When dummies are outlawed from having machine guns only outlaw dummies will have machine guns! And if that wasn't enough spectacle, the CNE had actual flagpole sitters!
No net, no safety cushions, no tagline, just a guy in a leotard climbing a flagpole. Who says spectacle is dead?
And soon it was time for us to take some death-defying rides of our own on the ferris wheel.
You can see our house from up there! No, seriously, you can see our house from up there. In between the green billboard and the crane, that building with the water tank on the roof, that's the Toy Factory lofts where I'm sitting right now typing this, remembering the crowds and the dizzying heights and the cotton candy and the ice cream waffles.
We also went in the haunted house which was pretty lame even by travelling carnival standards. The scariest thing about it was worrying whether or not our little car was going to tip over with us in the back and nobody in the front to balance it out. And that was our CNE. Saturday we didn't do a whole lot - edited Anime Hell together, had some Phil's BBQ, watched "Spinal Tap", but yesterday we took advantage of the sun and went out into the sticks for some nature. Went up to Forks Of The Credit Provincial Park. It's pretty up there.
There's a kettle lake, which is a glacial pond scrubbed out of the rock millions of years ago by retreating glaciers. Water's still that cold. But, again, very pretty. And not full of crowds of CNE-attending people, which is the important part.
Part of the park's trails hook up with the Bruce Trail, which goes all over Canada. We didn't go that far, but we did walk past the ruins of a farmhouse.
And then we went home! Today we might go out to the Pacific Mall. It's kind of wet out there so I don't know that we'll be doing a lot of nature walking, unless gray-market DVDs and Ajisen Ramen to be your natural element.
So is anybody else really enjoying this season of MAD MEN? I think this season is kicking last season's butt. They're back to why people started watching the show - ad agency shenanigans, shameful mid century behavior, the enigmatic Don Draper.
In the meantime Mister Kitty resumes its regular updating schedule with a new ZERO FIGHTER strip by me. Found Sound and Stupid Comics will be up later this week and there's some new stuff Shain is working on as well, so stay tuned!
Here are the pix in question of our Labor Day Weekend shenanigans.
We went to the Canadian National Exposition, which is mere blocks from here and is wrapping up today with a whoosh of air show jets and a sprinkle of rain from an uncooperative sky. We went on Friday and the weather was just about perfect for an adventure amidst the crowds and the rides. One of the first things we checked out was the History Of Rock And Roll exhibit.
If there's anything that says "rock and roll" like a giant sand sculpture, I don't want to know what it is. Then of course we hied ourselves over to the agricultural exhibition, which in the past would be where you would parade award winning cows and pigs. Nowadays I guess they feel the audience would not know a prize winning pig if a spider wrote slogans in a web above its pen, so they just show off regular, non-judged animals. And butter sculptures, which ARE prize-winning.
Yup, that's a butter sculpture of Popeye. Now you have actually seen everything. Well, have you seen a llama?
You have now! Baby llamas spend most of their time rolling around in the hay and posing for photos. As opposed to baby lamas, who spend most of their time getting their head shaved and praying to manifestations of Buddha. At any rate afterwards we went to the food pavilion and got some lunch. But we also had a vital function to fulfill at the CNE, which was to find the cheesy airbrushed carnival ride art. And did we? Yes we did, at the Fireball.
The Fireball ride art was dominated by a giant Silver Surfer, obviously photoreferenced from the recent Fantastic Four movie. But to the left was a very 70s looking spaceman, an image that I've seen somewhere else, on a pinball game or a video game cabinet or a record album or a SF book jacket. It jogs something deep in the cheesy SF centers of my memory. Luckily the image on the right side isn't nearly as obscure.
Well, okay, it's obscured by girders (I couldn't get any closer without spending $6 worth of tickets on this ride) but it's a preliberated Jane Fonda as Barbarella, thus completing the spaced-out cosmic vibe this ride clearly needs as a selling point.
Meanwhile in the Canadian Forces exhibit, the spectators are monitored by a camoflaged dummy wielding a .50 cal machine gun.
When dummies are outlawed from having machine guns only outlaw dummies will have machine guns! And if that wasn't enough spectacle, the CNE had actual flagpole sitters!
No net, no safety cushions, no tagline, just a guy in a leotard climbing a flagpole. Who says spectacle is dead?
And soon it was time for us to take some death-defying rides of our own on the ferris wheel.
You can see our house from up there! No, seriously, you can see our house from up there. In between the green billboard and the crane, that building with the water tank on the roof, that's the Toy Factory lofts where I'm sitting right now typing this, remembering the crowds and the dizzying heights and the cotton candy and the ice cream waffles.
We also went in the haunted house which was pretty lame even by travelling carnival standards. The scariest thing about it was worrying whether or not our little car was going to tip over with us in the back and nobody in the front to balance it out. And that was our CNE. Saturday we didn't do a whole lot - edited Anime Hell together, had some Phil's BBQ, watched "Spinal Tap", but yesterday we took advantage of the sun and went out into the sticks for some nature. Went up to Forks Of The Credit Provincial Park. It's pretty up there.
There's a kettle lake, which is a glacial pond scrubbed out of the rock millions of years ago by retreating glaciers. Water's still that cold. But, again, very pretty. And not full of crowds of CNE-attending people, which is the important part.
Part of the park's trails hook up with the Bruce Trail, which goes all over Canada. We didn't go that far, but we did walk past the ruins of a farmhouse.
And then we went home! Today we might go out to the Pacific Mall. It's kind of wet out there so I don't know that we'll be doing a lot of nature walking, unless gray-market DVDs and Ajisen Ramen to be your natural element.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-06 11:24 pm (UTC)Didn't get to go to the Ionia Free Fair this year, so I'm not current on trends and motifs on the attractions. I suspect something Avatar-ish would be the thing but...
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 01:54 am (UTC)I waffle on his stuff. Sometimes it's beautiful and grand, and sometimes it just looks like he's making the donuts, dig?
But at least his stuff never burned out my eyes like the work of Chris Foss. yeesh. I'm coming to a slightly better opinion of him now but wow was I a hater back in the '80s.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 05:54 am (UTC)I have this book called "Mechanismo" by Harry Harrison that's more or less just a big acid-trip of those kinds of illustrations.
What I like about the spaceship work on the 'Fireball' display - I mean, what I like about the originals - is the really organic shape of the vehicles, detailed but not cluttered. Casual yet high-tech at the same time.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-07 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 01:30 am (UTC)