my life

bye bye for now

so i always told myself that i’d stop over-sharing my life online once i had my name in a book, and now i do, so it’s about time i shut down the blogging.  for now.

stupid internet. somehow drunken vegas stories don’t really seem like a good idea anymore with teachers getting fired over pictures on facebook and what have you.

stay tuned for the 3.0 update.  coming soon.

update: i’m back!  75% less embarrassing and career-threatening!

photo week 5/7: dan and kristina’s wedding

my buddy dan, who i’ve known ever since i began to form memories. and his beautiful wife.

seeing as i was actually in this wedding, i didn’t get too many pictures… or any of the actual ceremony… but the reception was a hell of a lot of fun…

did you know i was donahoe’s prom date? that was like, a million years ago. she is now totally embarrassed of this fact. i bring it up as much as possible.

lil guy’s pre-rug-cutting intense focus

when laura is less than impressed with her sparkler’s performance, it is written all over her face.

so we got them a foosball table, which we thought would be an easy set-up post-wedding. getting those little men on the poles, however, proved to be a tremendous challenge…

…which led to a lot of “lube it up” and “push harder” and “pole jammin” type jokes. us vanderschtroellys are slowly getting married (and one is preggos!), but we don’t intend on actually growing up.

3 hours later (seriously), it was set up. we played a single match and promptly went to bed.

another year

in what was supposed to be my first september without school, it is now the night before school starts. for which will be grade 21? is that math right? wow, i am a lifer. and lookin at another 4 or 5 for a phd? though now i’m actually in more of a limbo than another proper year of school. my department was in need of another teaching assistant, and my supervisor wanted me to be his research assistant, copy writing for his book series, and my thesis was coming along, but it would have been hell to finish it by august, so i’m a ubc’er for another term (maybe two, i kind of really like being a TA so why not). once i decided i was staying on, the thesis work became almost non-existent. instead, the priority shifted to poutine. figured i would use my magical free flying powers (meg i luv youu) to go to montreal and home again, and since i was checking out mcgill and concordia as potential phd schools, i can rationalize 8 days of visiting friends and boozing as a ‘working holiday’. bri and dal showed me around their envious school and city, despite all their own thesis prep/stress. much thanks..

my battery charger was lost, so i didn’t take my camera, but dallas was there to capture all of the beer-hotdog-and-poutine-fueled sacrilegious, picnic-in-the-park good times.

photo credit: dallas @ rationalpassion.blogspot.com

and then i went to ontario, mostly for paige’s party for mobilemoment.ca, which she booked annie to dj. my favourite part was when she played flat beats.

and annie has a new album, “don’t stop,” which is really good. the indie world has its kylie minogue.

 
icon for podpress  Annie - I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

photo week 1/7: pemby

and i’m back. hadn’t taken a photo since vegas, but i took more than 500 in the last month, including canada day (or cannabis day as it is also known here in vancouver), broken social scene in detroit, wedding #1, cottage, wedding #2, and the most stressful and high pressure “photo shoot” i’ve ever done and probably ever will. so it’s photo week (probably month by the time i get around to it), starting with pemberton fest this past weekend.

the golden horseshoe wedged up my ass is still very much in place, as we somehow managed to avoid almost all of the traffic, shuttle lineups, and security checks that were the only downside to the first pemberton festival. we got there just as interpol was starting their set, rushed to find an empty spot to pitch our tent, threw our shit down and rushed to the stage. incendiary might be a good description, rest my chemistry was the perfect slowburn to accompany a sunset in the mountains. the rest of the weekend involved jay-z, nin, my morning jacket, the hip, black mountain, fiery furnaces, tom petty, and coldplay (i didn’t get any pictures of any of them though, oops)

Pemberton 2008

Pemberton 2008

terra is not a camper

Pemberton 2008

Pemberton 2008

Pemberton 2008

Pemberton 2008

sam roberts

Pemberton 2008

Pemberton 2008

flaming lips

Pemberton 2008

Pemberton 2008

hacky sack!

yeesh, what a bad post to leave on for that long. but how long ago was rudolph guiliani? seems like ages ago. i feel like i’m tired of the whole election thing, what a carnival it’s become already. i’m just gonna tune in to the thrilling final 2 minutes like it was a basketball game. these have been my feelings toward the election as of late, which you can listen to below:

we think you’re a joke, shove your hope where it don’t shine.
- santogold, “shove it”

Oh, give us your vote
Give us your vote
If you know what’s good for you
- tokyo police club, “your english is good”

complete misinterpretations, both of them, but that’s my favourite kind of interpretation.

“where has andrew been?” you probably didn’t ask, but i’ll give you the answer anyhow. you see, because i’m in the midst of writing my thesis, there’s really nothing exciting for me to talk about unless you’re one of the 7 people, like me, who thinks intermediality is like, totally rad. so i have to wait quite awhile to gather up enough stuff to “report.” it’s like george costanza: “You know if you take everything I’ve ever done in my entire life and condense it down into one day, it looks decent.”

which reminds me, i’m reliving the seinfeld days from start to finish as i fall asleep, so i have some seinfeld theories. like that its the root of self-indulgent reality tv. it was the first show about nothing, but now it seems like every show is about nothing, except it’s called “reality”. seinfeld was scripted of course, and transformed the sitcom genre, but it’s spirit was in the minutia of life in late capitalism, with its urban malaise, petty exchange, semantic bickering, endless repetition, and decadent selfishness. and in the fourth season they make “jerry,” the show-within-a-show starring jerry as his himself (to the third remove), which solidified it. this would have been a great theory had “the real world” not premiered till after this episode, but wikipedia tells me it started in 1992, while the “jerry” subplot wasn’t until 1993. damn. still, i bet the people who came up with “the real world” stole the idea from the spirit of seinfeld, which started in 1989. aanyhoo.

i’ve been spelling that word as “anywho” for the longest time, but “anyhoo” is way better.

i went to vegas a whiles back, bit of an adventure. i only ended up with about a dozen pictures, and half of them were of us drinking tallboys and playing wall-ball in the airport parking lot because our flight was delayed.

there was limited time between waking up mid-afternoon and then getting back on the red bull and booze, so i only managed 2 pictures outside

staring contest, you and me, right now.

the lizard wins, he always does.

and we spent an inordinate amount of time drinking and wrestling before heading out, as we tend to do, in our hotel room (which was awesome at least, at the mgm grand, thanks to craig)

so we didn’t end up seeing cirque to solee or the bellagio or old vegas or anything we planned on doing, but no one really cared. highlight was probably the grand finale on sunday morn: beyond-drunk last-minute craps & hooters buffet followed by rapid packing and jumping in a taxi and passing thru security at the airport at 9am. worst flight of my entire life. “entire” includes the rest of my life too, because there is no possible way, barring any oceanic flight 815 type-disaster, that i will ever experience such a flight of death again. i was praying for a hijacking just to stop the throbbing in my head.

don left (hence the vegas trip), which was sad. three is a good number for peer pressure, because the other two can gang up and harass the other until he or she gives in. it doesn’t work with just two obviously, and anymore than three is ganging up, plus you just leave the whiner behind if you already have three or more people. but with two pressuring one, it’s just the right amount of guilt/pressure. and thus the three amigos were born, so as long as two of us wanted to go out, the third would inevitably join/be dragged along. actually, don was never that third person, he was always on board, which is probably why we loved him. now he’s in australia and having way too much fun, so he’s dead to us!

and i was wrong to say music videos were dying: whoa, fuck. and did you know it was bjork’s birthday today? happy bjorkday.

 
icon for podpress  Santogold (feat. Spank Rock) - Shove it: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Tokyo Police Club - Your English Is Good: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

the big quarter century

“You cant be 20 on sugar mountain”, and
“nobody likes you when you’re 23.”
my last day of being 24…

Until a man is 25, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for 10 years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

- Snow Crash

puno to colca canyon to arequipa back to lima

whoops, last time i forgot the puno pictures, here’s the view from the bird thing.


click for bigger

the peruvians love them some condors (and llamas and jaguars)

though this one looks a little ragged up close

after the lake titicaca trip, we embarked on our aforementioned bus ride from hell, then a trip out to colca canyon. we met a new friend at a roadside stop for tea.

and then we built our rock statue of the gods…

…which seems slightly less impressive with perspective.

the never-ending countryside

pimp your llama

dancing in the square

church and dog, i’m not sure how the sky looks so spooky…

this picture cost me a donation to god

this picture cost me a donation to this baby’s owner

colca canyon is condor central

arequipa

one last drink with the swedes and yank, ponchos to keep us warm

pisco sour! a kind of potent brandy with frothy egg whites and sugar, they give em out to entice foreigners. it often works.

another town, another plaza de armas, another confused ian

back to lima, where the assault vehicles are actually manned

we were uhhh… celebrating… peru’s version of thanksgiving… i’m sure they have one…

since i left you

where were we… somewhere in saskatchewan… well we gotta outta there quick (i’ve been to saskatchewan twice this year and that is entirely two times too many), then stayed at a friend of laura’s family ranch in alberta, where we rode horses and ate bbq’d venison. laura’s friend is pretty much like a modern day cowboy — minus shootin the ingins — and he brought us out to their family’s lake where the horses he was raising/taming were just hanging out, enjoying the stellar sunset going on across the lake. it was like the most serenely beautiful moment, so of course i had forgotten my camera. we partied in calgary, and saw a badass car accident downtown. we’re walking down this wide street with towering buildings on each side, and then all of a sudden this van flips over right in front of us! it ran a red light and got jacked by this little white car, somehow flipping the whole van and it skidded to stop like 20 or 30 feet in front of us. it was surreal, and like totally awesome, haha (everyone was ok, minus a bloody arm). and we went to the big dinosaur museum in Drumheller where i envisioned a zombie dinosaur movie, but apparently ben stiller already made that movie as a comedy?

next stop, the glorious stretch of land from banff to jasper. banff national park has to be the best part of canada, and i’ve only been there twice, briefly. the lakes and mountains are just incredible (pics are comin, but gettin thru them and all my south american ones is too daunting right now). after some camping, ultimate frisbee, and very cold, crystal clear skinny dipping in the valley of the five lakes, we booted it to vancouver. it feels good to be home… and kinda weird that vancouver feels so much like home now…

and how could i not with events going on down my street like “parks are for people not pigs”