thediastema's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The rest of the trip in a nutshell, because time is marching on with or without me. I already established that Humber's comedy workshop was heaven and I thought of Allan and Joe as gods, right? Okay, onto the other stuff! Shortly after Riv Night we appropriated a fourth anchor for our core clique at the workshop -- a guy in his early 40s whom we shall call Harmless Older Guy. He, Amber and Heidi appointed me navigatrix for the trip, which was sometimes quite a successful strategy (getting us to the new Yuk Yuk's to see amateur night) and sometimes a pretty damn awful idea (getting us back to Etobicoke from Vaughan). Again I've gotten ahead of myself. HOG was balding, married, unimposing, and very receptive to the deluge of They Might Be Giants and Sloan music foisted upon him by the rest of us in our dorm rooms and car trips. Ah, that. One of the sweetest things about the trip was Amber's willingness to rent a car -- an Oldsmobile with Quebecois plates and a decent CD player -- so we could get ourselves to Niagara Falls or, later on, Dave and Buster's. (We only do classy venues, see? Heh.) On the subject of sightseeing, we also dragged our driver to the top of the CN Tower (so touristy) to conquer her fear of heights. (She was very brave, and now, because of a deal made prior to the engagement, Heidi now has to dig in her heels and get her learner's permit.) Niagara was touristy, also, and a little closer to the border than I wanted to be because I'm such a pigdog about these things, but Horseshoe was gorgeous as ever. That night we got our palms read (my reading foretold a long, painfully comfortable and uninteresting life) and I broke my vegetarian credo to try escargots for the first time. Not bad. (The escargots themselves weren't too pricey, either, which would lead one to wonder where the snails were gathered. No matter. I've eaten one, dammit.) En route back to T.O. from the Falls, we had what I considered a "moment" in the car. I know for me at least the reality of having to leave was setting in, and the cash flow was diminishing steadily, and pretty soon all these fantastic people would be replaced by coworkers and relatives in my day-to-day realm. "I Wanna Thank You" -- a tune in which Jay Ferguson sounds like the bastard child of Freddie Mercury and Billy Joel and one of the Fraggles -- came on the stereo. Of course, I just 'blogged about it and destroyed the sanctity of the whole thing. ~~ The night of our show I was surprisingly not-nervy, given the fact that I'd not performed in two years and been less than stellar in some of the improv exercises. My assignment for the evening, I did know: two-headed expert with a tall, redheaded local. The fact that the audience would pick "brave incubators" as our topic of expertise, I did not know, but I prepped as best I could, taking a pre-show tonic prescribed by Joe Flaherty himself (known colloquially as "beer") and engaging in all sorts of crazy behaviour with my castmates to streamline our adrenaline. I was at our reserved table with Heidi when Flaher-tah plunked his well-renowned ass into the chair across from me and gave us a go-ahead to ad lib a little in our minute or so of stagetime together. He then randomly grinned and said, "Erin, you could be Dave Foley's little sister! The resemblance is crazy! I was working with him just the other day..." After brief deliberation I accepted it as a compliment. ~~ We were on. I think we did okay. ~~ Postshow we went out for drinks, and somewhere between a shot of Jaeger (I'm sure you're disappointed in me) and a shot of tequila (again, sorry, Laura L!) and more beers than I can since remember, I found myself dancing to Van Morrison songs and living it up on the patio at My Apartment with my castmates. Flashing forward an hour, I was on a toilet at a pizzeria, too drunk to concentrate on the tast of urinating and vomiting between my own legs while this delightful and talented brunette from my class held my hair out of the way (a few sheets to the wind, herself, to be sure). I puked again on the side of the 27. I recall wailing nonsensically about having been weaned in Utah, then denying same when I had the statement repeated back to me. ~~ My puke-nurse wrote a sweet note which I read, trying not to cry, on the plane out of Toronto. Dammit, that place has its hooks in me as deep as ever. ~~ Last night I joined the campaign staff. Have yet to sell. After work, Imelda, P'head, Dimples and I met up at Casa Imelda and watched The Wrong Guy, which they all loved to pieces. I pointed at the screen repeatedly, going "that's my teacher! I know that guy! It's JOE!" ~ETK 23:10 - 16 July, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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