Firstly, please forgive me if I'm not totally accurate with the dates here. Because I get pretty confused when I try to figure out the timeline of my personal history. Frankly, there is just way too much stuff that all happened around the same time, and it gets not only extremely confusing but downright impossible timewise. Of course I think certainly that much of this blurred confusion can be attributed to the somewhat excess of chemical agents in my body over a number of my formative years... of course I'm talking hormones here... whatever did you think I meant? Despite the lameness of puberty though I did manage to meet a few girls from time to time. I thought I might tell you today about my first kiss. It shouldn't be too long a story, and possibly just interesting to me.
So let me take you on a journey to 'back in the day', I believe I was 13, I was on summer vacation, I presume it was just before grade 9. I hadn't ever had any luck with girls in the past. I was weird, and somewhat geeky. I'd been on only one date before with a girl I met at a school dance. That didn't go very well though, and I never went out with her again. No, I'm not going to relive that horror story to you. Don't worry, you're just missing my awkward lameness. Anyhow, this summer I had started hanging out with some new friends; we spent a lot of time at the beginning of the summer hanging out in basements playing Street Fighter II, and listening to the metal stylings of Iron Maiden. But soon enough we got bored with that, and moved onto bigger and better things. Like roaming the streets of Toronto at night, having roman candle fights in the park, lighting things/each other on fire, and generally degenerating into young hooligans. Soon though even this wasn't enough, what else could some young men about town get up to? Why drinking of course.
First thing we tried was the old standard.... steal your parents liquor and replace it with water. Little here, a little there and no one will be the wiser. Well, I guess we didn't realize how much we'd taken because we got completely busted the next day. Cut to next weekend and we decided that a different approach was needed. I don't know what you call it wherever you're from but to the kids of Toronto it was Shoulder Tapping. Basically that's going to a liquor store and asking some stranger to buy for you. In Ontario all beer and liquor are controlled by the government and sold only through official outlets of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. Nothing at your local convenience store, nothing at the big grocery store, everything is only available at The Beer Store or The Liquor Store. Anyhow, we successfully booted out way into a 12 of Molson Export and a mickey of peach schnapps that night and had what was to be the first of many drunken mights in Winston Churchill park. There's a heck of a lot more to our young drunken stupidness that summer, but I'll leave that up to your imagination.
The girl came in near the end of the summer. For my purposes here I'll call her Jen, and she'd just moved to town like literally 2 weeks before I met her. There's really only two things you need to know about Jen to understand why I fell for her: she was British, and she had a nose ring. After that nothing much else mattered. I met her in the park one Saturday evening. She was out walking with her sister and a friend who were both over from England for a few weeks to help her with the move. As she walked by she asked us for a light for her smoke and young love was born.... God I'm rolling my eyes at myself writing this.
There's a well known code with guys. you and your buddy are at a bar and you meet two women. It's usually decided before you ever start talking to them, but if not, there is a decision made within the first few seconds as to who is going for who. I'd guess much the same thing happens on women's side of things. One of the rules about this decision though, is that generally once its made, you don't change around. Sure, if there's a really obvious match that you realize after talking for a few minutes, then maybe, but generally you stick with the gameplan. Well, I didn't exactly do that this time. I ended up going for the girl who was leaving town. And my friend made a play for Jen. Since of course we were stupid, drunk 13 year olds though, none us made a particularly good impression.
However Jen decided to take pity on us, probably because we were her age, and the only people she knew in the country. Thank goodness for small wonders. So Jen started hanging out with us whenever we could. We started going to clubs with her, lots of them would let you in underage after putting a mark on the hand to show you couldn't drink. Of course the first thing we'd do is go to the restroom and furiously scrub the fresh marker off our hands and then be good to go. So we all hung out. A week or so after we all met, Jen's friend went home, and it was just us guys and Jen. Maybe a week or so after that, my buddy who had been wanting to make a play for Jen went out of town for a week, and that's when things got complicated. Honestly I never wanted to go against the code, but damn I mean I was 13. I couldn't control my hormones.
So we went out one Sunday night in early August. Her, me, and her sister. I think the only way I was able to make it through the night without a total spaz out was that I was still trying to convince myself that I wasn't interested in her. But, it was summer in the city, a nice romantic purple sky night, and all of a sudden I found that her sister had mysteriously left us alone. Sitting there in her backyard, listening to The Orb, and what did I do with this perfect timing? I totally choked.
Yup, That's right I stood up and said good night. Practically ran out of her house, cause I realized what was about to happen and I was seriously about to have a heart attack. Of course, I was kicking myself the second I left for not having the balls to go through with it. And what happens? But second chance comes a callin. Half a block away and Jen calls after me from the sidewalk. Embarrassing much? oh yeah. So she kind of accusingly says to me "Geoff, just wondering what exactly you didn't kiss me?" and what do I do in response... I start to stammer saying something about the code etc etc, and then halfway through the sentence my brain finally FINALLY tells my mouth to shut up. Something along the lines of "you're an idiot. Just STOP TALKING!" So I did. Then I kissed her and that was that.
Jen and I dated for maybe 2 months total. She was pretty much out of my league, at least for the time being anyways. And I was destined for much better things, once I got my head out of my ass. Granted that took a good 14 more years... Jen dumped me right after the Aerosmith concert, forever tainting my enjoyment of the band. And I never really found out why she did it. But I was really kind of too stupid for my own good back then. Oh and yes, I totally made up with my friend that I had snaked. So everything worked out. Happy, healthy, well adjusted Geoff here now. hooray.
So that's the whole story. At least that's how I remember it. Off now. Talk to you all later.
Andrew Stanton (the man behind Finding Nemo). A whole heap of interesting information hit the web today about this film, in the form of an excellent article written and hosted by Jim Hill Media that you can read here. This should be the Pixar film that comes out after Ratatouille. It is called Wall-E and is a sci fi story of love, and self discovery starring this little guy pictured here. This is Wall-E he is a Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth class, and his job is to clean up the garbage heap that the planet has become by the year 2700. Humans have abandoned the planet, opting for the opulence of swank hoverchairs in their orbiting civilization ship. a slew of Wall-E robots have been deployed to clean the human mess on earth, but over generations of neglect and disrepair this single Wall-E unit is all that is left. He is the sole life on the planet, other than his best friend a cockroach, and in him abundant time alone he has become not only self aware, but a bit eccentric. Wall-e collects human artifacts which fascinate him, but the only real information he has on humans comes from a battered old VHS copy of Hello Dolly! Thats right Streisand is in the hizzy... So what do you think happens to Wall-e when a sleek newer model robot land on the planet... well thats where things get interesting. If you want to know a bit more of the plotline, go to the article and read away. It's pretty interesting stuff. I'm not out to spoil anything though, I just wanted to give you the set-up. A few... weird things to note. Not all of the film will be in CG. As far as I understand it Hello Dolly is really Hello Dolly, and as the article notes Fred Willard has signed on to play the head of the company that makes Wall-E. Are you ready for Pixar animated toons meeting face to face with Fred Willard? I'm not sure I am. Also this sounds like it's leading to a very strongly environmental message. Is that going to play well with everyone? And finally, apparently as the script is set now there is virtually no dialogue in the entire film. Can kids these days handle an effectively silent films? I don't know.... In my opinion Pixar has always come through with great films, so I definitely won't say anything negative at this stage, but this sounds like a very interesting, very significant departure from the standard kiddie fare. We'll have to keep an eye on this.
