I got in touch with my inner juvenile and saw Snakes On A Plane. It takes a certain mindset to enjoy fare like this – and fortunately I was able to dig deep and find that mindset. But "kiss my eye" is not a cheesy internet-junkie-injected line from this awesome and shlocktastic movie. Rather, it was a censor's choice in handling a line of dialogue from Young Guns, when it aired here on local television some 15 years ago.
Obviously since those days, with the advent and spread of choice in how TV gets relayed into the home, those who want to see movies in all their uncensored glory can do so easily. Heck – aww, to heck with it: hell – restrictions on what gets onto basic prime-time programming have slackened also. But watching Snakes On A Plane on a Sunday afternoon in a near-empty theater; and more to the point, the scene – you know, the one with the quote – it made me recall, quite fondly, the days when the networks had to get creative with how they dealt with TV broadcasts of expletive-laden movies. And also how their attempts unwittingly became fodder for jokes around the high school cafeteria table the next day. To wit – and I'm aging myself here – a scene in Darkman in which the title hero viciously breaks a carnie's fingers when he was too slow in handing over a prize plush pink elephant, and hands it to his shocked fiancée:
The movie quote: Take the f**kin' elephant!
CTV's late-night cover-up: Take the fuzzy elephant!
Or this nugget sequence I caught as a teenager while watching the curse-ridden Do The Right Thing; a scene in which Radio Raheem berates a Korean grocer for not understanding his request for batteries (in this case I'll spare what the original lines are, on account of sheer obviousness):
Radio Raheem: D, mickeyfickey, D. Learn to speak English first, all right?
Grocer: How many, you say?
Raheem: Twenty, mickeyfickey, twenty.
Grocer: Mickeyfickey you.
Nowadays, so much can filter through censors like a kid with a phony doctor's note can slip into class late. All most networks require is a warning after each commercial break, and they can let loose a torrent of krunk and blood on par with any cable outfit. And frankly, that kinda ruins the fun of it.
I up and tackled a concept I attempted about a month ago – an idea I had for Illustration Friday's theme of 'sacrifice' (as in sacrificing the body, a hockey terminology). Back in July I had much more on the brain and the concept defeated me pretty soundly. So I scrapped the sketch and decided to give things a rest. But, glutton for punishment that I am, I didn't let the idea go entirely and decided to reattempt the illustration for I-F's current them of play. In Canada – and select northern outposts of the United States – play comes often in the guise of bloody carnage otherwise known as hockey. Myself, I'm also a fan, but I mostly keep to a more sedate version carried out in gyms and parking lots – avoiding the fate of the fellow pictured here (let's call him Lew, for the sake of giving him a name).This illustration was done up as a pencil sketch on Saturday in a new hardcover sketchbook I bought last week, then inked the following day – with special attention given to working on thicks and thins. These portions of the process combined took about three hours. Once a colour and background scheme was thought of, the time spent in Photoshop realizing it took roughly another hour or so, all told. A closer look at some of the detail can be seen here. Let me know what you think.
My family doesn't get together very often - partly out of dynamics, but more due to plain and simple geography. However, a recent spell of family visits that just wrapped up was so unique my brother dubbed it FamilyFest – two weeks of familial bliss and general busyness, highlighted by my niece Cadence's first ever visit to Winnipeg. Cadence is almost two now, and she's as precocious as a tot of this age can get. She enjoys running around the house in circles (counter-clockwise only), loves blueberries, chicken fingers and getting spooked. She repels incoming raspberries (the belly-fart variety, not the yum-yum fruit kind). She calls jewelry "pretty" and loves the book One Duck Stuck. She gives high-fives and clinks glasses – or in her case, sippy-cups – when you say "cheers". She did not make friends with my brother's cat, Roscoe. And she makes for wonderful pictures.
Another pulled from the vault; this week's theme offered by Photo Friday is the word private – and I immediately thought of this image I took in the summer of 2004. And not so much based solely on the date and place of this picture, but rather the feeling it emits through composition and mood. Kerry and I had joined much of her family for a trip on the Prairie Dog Central, a vintage train that runs just north of the city. It was a hot day, and there was plenty of room to spread out among the cars – leading to this image that gives the illusion of a private train ride.
You can click here for a bigger look at the image.
Speaking of photos, be sure and make your next click to PhotoFortnight, to vote on the submissions for their latest theme of work. And be kind to my entry while you're at it.
Photo Friday's theme-of-the-week – common – reminds me of this image I took when Kerry and I were on a 2003 holiday to Ireland. Mute swans, like these ones packed together in Galway harbour looking for handouts, are common across the pond, but have only localized populations in North America – mostly in city parks and zoos.
Top row (left to right): Me and Kerry at the Winnipeg Folk Festival; teaching Duncan to make an origami crane; Kerry searches for a seat at the festival's afternoon Sadies concert. Middle row (left to right): Anna mugs; skipping stones at dusk; Anna gives her brother a boost on the Gimli pier. Bottom row (left to right): Sunday sunrise, Lake Winnipeg; on the porch on a hot evening, curing what ails me. I'm shutting down for an indefinite amount of time, for a variety of reasons - some good, some not so good. Firstly, it's summer – and I'm having a harder and harder time justifying the act of using my time to sit at the computer tinkering with photos or crafting other creative jobbies while it's either too sweltering or too beautiful outside to fully devote myself. Also, with summer come summer doldrums – recently I’ve found my ability to concept is outracing my ability to properly execute; too often I'm scrapping ideas at the sketchbook stage for lack of craft, concentration or the seemingly outright ability to draw. This I have to attend to on my own, without the self-imposed pressure of posting stuff here each week (this sounds strange as I type it, but it's oddly true). On the plus side, the days ahead are also busy with fun and fantastic things. The Winnipeg Fringe Festival will roll into gear this Wednesday, and Kerry and I plan to get our fill before the end of next weekend when my sister, her partner and my niece come for her inaugural visit to Manitoba. Quickly on the heels of this is a visit from my dad. Then it will be the all-too-brief local corn season, and fingers will be far too messy to type. And then it will be the MS Society's "Biking To The Viking" event, a 170-kilometer weekend charity ride to Gimli, which Kerry and I are attempting for the first time. The thought of a strong north wind scares me even now, more than a full month in advance. In the meantime, I have to quickly cobble together a concept for the fall edition of the HOWieZine (theme: pirates) for mailing to the States next week. And below I've attached submissions to both PhotoFortnight (theme: work) and Photo Friday (theme: remarkable), to fill the void. Have fun with your summer. I'll be back as soon as I rediscover my creative mojo. 
Above: a penned goose at an organic strawberry farm. The geese are let out to the fields while the berries are still green, and devour just the weeds. While they also adore overripe berries, they do not touch the good ones – nice work if you can get it. 
Above: my remarkable niece Cadence at six weeks. Nearing her second birthday, Cadence is about to make her first trip to Winnipeg.
Summer brings with it the latest incarnation of the HowieZine (I won't describe the project again, but you can click here for all the info you'd ever want). Themed lost toys, the seventh issue of the group project might seem easily comparable to HowieZine 5 (theme: lost and found), and the new theme gave contributors possibly the tightest boundaries yet to work with. However, the narrow focus made me really think hard for a suitable angle, and the search for inspiration led me to a standout childhood moment when I lost one of my favourite toys – an Inuit ookpik named Ija – on a Greyhound bus trip to my grandparents.I wanted to build something akin to a scrapbook page, and I remembered I had written a book about it as a class project in elementary school. So the zine page was essentially written by me – as a ten-year-old kid. All I had to do as a 30-year-old adult was to find the words in the book, scan them and turn them into a cohesive Coles notes version of what went down that day in 1985. About 90 per cent of the words popped up in the book; the remainder I had to create by building an alphabet out of individually-scanned letterforms (this led to a few moments chastising my kid-self for not having a better vocabulary – and misspelling Winnipeg, my home town for chrissakes!).Once the story was pieced together, the visual elements fell into place – including a doodle of Ija, a photo of my brother, me and some ookpik toys, and a scanned excerpt from my diary the day it all went down. The backside of the zine page (below) features a self-written bio from the original grade six book project. You can click here for a closer look at the layout of the first page.
The folks over at Photo Friday have, suitably enough, offered up a weekly theme of summer. And summer was no more apparent last weekend at the lake as we celebrated Canada Day. Above and below are a couple of my favourite pictures from the lake in summer. The first is Kerry at the base of the swimmers' pier taken just last Saturday, a calm and muggy day where the grey/beige lake and a blanched sky merged with a near-invisible horizon. Below is a photo taken a couple of summers ago of Kerry's nephew at a beach a few kilometres north. In both images I was fascinated by the subject's sense of calm and isolation while being dwarfed by a giant expanse of sky. 
I wasn't set to do an Illustration Friday submission this week. The site's theme of sticky had me thinking of a couple of ideas, but I didn't follow up. Then – as it is often prone to do – inspiration came crawling across the floor and up my leg, this time in the form of a woodtick. Ticks can be sticky things (or stick-y, in a truer sense of the word), but fortunately this bloodsucker didn't get the opportunity. Instead, it earned a date with the department scanner at its highest power of magnification, and immortality not in the literal sense (that I made certain) – but rather as the centerpiece of this quick digital concoction. So bear with me in that no illustration ever took place to build this; instead, try to view it as a form of performance art – and a fast bit of summer fun.
Those less squeamish can click here for a closer look at a scanned wood tick. The rainbow effect on both images was a happy accident; but that's what you get when you don't stay still while being scanned at a bazillion DPI.
Top (left to right): Kerry on the pier's parallel bars; a farm goose shows her good side; I show off my long weekend stubble. Center (left to right): a goose ate my camera lens!; me and Kerry; the pier from below on a hazy day. Bottom (left to right): precious berries; precious Kerry; an incredibly purple flower. Two of my favourite holidays happen a week apart, and one of 'em ain't even Christmas. Canada Day marks the beginning of July and this year it was spent at Kerry's parents' cottage in Whytewold – a block from Lake Winnipeg and an hour or so north of the city. The cottages on this side of the lake are a throwback – many left untouched for decades – giving the village a distinct and timeless feeling, with just about the only cottages left in the country still attainable to the common man. And with the exception of a few long-weekend revelers, it's a quiet and relaxing destination where time slows down. The lanes are gravel, the birds and dragonflies fill the air and lanky wooden piers are rebuilt every summer to help swimmers over the stony shores. On the other end of the spectrum, let me introduce to you my coworkers Jacques' and Nathalie's annual St-Jean-Baptiste Day party. Kerry and I dropped in on last year's revelry, which was extra-celebratory on account of a visiting Mexican deligation to work that Jacques invited. But with or without the Latin tinge, the party held at their house in the city's french district is fast becoming legendary – complete with bonfire, all the joie de vivre one could ask for and toasts of Caribou (fortified wine) on the quarter-hour. The day, originally held in honour of the patron saint of Québec (St. John the Baptist), now marks the Fête nationale du Québec – an official stat holiday recognized only in that province.
Top (left to right): Jacques prepares the obligatory Caribou; I acquire the mark of approval; Dusty looks the part. Center (left to right): Kerry and I get cultured; our umpteenth toast of the evening. Bottom (left to right): It ain't a party without a fiddler; un petit feu keeps the bugs away; house party!
