An Anthropologically, Geographically, Architecturally and Personally Fetishistic Photo Survery of Edmonton, AlbertaBy your pal CamI realized the other day that very few of you may ever visit Edmonton in it's Current state, let alone visit with me as a guide to the best places or at least the places which mean the most to me. So, it is my privilege...nay, DUTY to give you the most elaborate photoblog I've ever attempted.
Is it pointless? You bet.
full of "witty" commentary? But of course
Solipsistic? If i can spell that, which I can, it is.
But i digress, AWAY WE GO!
What better place than with the gruff patriarch of downtown Edmonton, Sir Winston Churchill himself. Now, there's a whole park/amphithteatre attached to him and city hall but seriously that shit is useless and for streetpreformers and bums to sleep on. Which is redundant as they are one and the same.
Regardless, much of my misspent youth was spent saying "meet you at churchill" or standing under it eating carnival food or watching fireworks. Many cute childhood memories under this angry-looking Rodin ripoff. I remember as a kid distinctly thinking it was just a blob with an angry human head.I obviously didn't understand impressionism.
Oh and if you climb up him you can put the little red berries growing around him in his eyes and make him look super evil.
Fast fact!
Here is City Hall. It looks like they tried to build something grander but it fell over. Still, there's bells on the hour and a fountain which was the unofficial place to go after exams in Jr.High and Highschool to wade. Wet teens in the fountain.
It's no wonder I get erections when i see war Memorials.
Ahh the Francis Winspear center for the arts. It's important as it was a hotspot when I was a member of the Orchestral elite, constantly going to recitals and preforming there...seeing astronauts talk there. Lots of me being high feluten etc. but the true importance lies just to the side of it...
Beneath this statue is a vaccum sealed time capsule scheduled to be opened in 2096 with an essay by yours truly about "The Futue of Music". All i remember is it's played by humans and aliens and the conductor is something akin to Motherbrain from Metroid. Oh, don't fret, There is a picture attached. Its good to know though that if I live to be a very old man, no matter how many years of being awesome and maintaining cool, there is still something out there that will make me look like an idiot. Unless I'm right. So the goal of my life is to make myself right. I have about 90 years.
Head then across the street to the Citadel Theater. Again, here's me being all bohemian as a kid again. Many plays seen here. But really the place to head is up to the amphitheatre which housed my various Improv and One act rehearsals. Much fun was had here, though also it was nerdiness again, so you know, I can't claim being awesome. There is now Lancelot's boat from Camelot floating in the water which is less awesome...*sigh* sic transit gloria...
ba ha ha
But the real reason I remember this place is when we had the month long teacther's strike in grade 12 we secretly were crossing picket lines here still practicing our One act for preformance and gleaning advice from teachers who were having a union meeting downstairs. Huzzah for scabbery.
Also to the side is the Metro theater. The place i first was pretentious enough to view the Creamaster Cycle. The place where i've been stood up for movies more than anywhere else. Where i saw the magnum opus that is "The Happiness of the Katakuri's", where i saw a double showing of "Spun" and "Irrevercible" which made nobody talk to eachother for weeks. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I only wish that I was still in town for the international horror festival now hosted there.
Why can Vancouver be a film city but not show as good stuff as a tiny corner of Edmonton?
Well, for all the fun of one theatre , the movieplex in Eaton center holds another feeling. Stand on this balcony and experience pure angst as seemingly all of my dates in Jr.High/Highschool happened here.
I'd always be early, driven by my parents or brother and stand here, gazing at the elephant and castle pub and watch every little elevator come up, hoping my date would show.
I was only stood up twice. But god i sweat a bucket every time.
Now when i turn though and look at the sun shining on the bronze of the hotel above the theater i feel a little better. HA! I've beat this stupid 3rd floor and it's terrible arcade with the broken Metal Slug machine. Now I wait with confidence. Oh and I can have a beer before I wait.
though i never did get that blowjob Andrea promised me. ...
Outside then brings the mecca of my drinking (see
other journal for the innards). It's not what it used to be but based on convenience, pliability of the staff and the hilariousness of the old guy who used to work at the liquor store, this somehow came to be the only place we ever drank when i was of age. Well this and the strat , but seriously, it's New City I always want to look at when i come back.
New Years with tiny bottles of champagne being kissed by fat goth girls and people called Professor Shirtless .
It cannot be topped.
actually it can. Please top it.
Here's the Giegerian facade of my old community college. Can you believe I moved away from this? ha ha. It was like going straight from Highschool to jail for a year. Plus the year i went there it was so cold the 4 blocks from my train station to here were enough to make me not go some days. fuck. what a bad time. Behind that big "back to the future" clock though is a library with one of the best ancient history collections i've ever seen.
When I'm a dead genius there will be a plaque on this couch within the school remembering me. I spent the better part of that year lounging and asleep on this couch.
First, it was simply being emo over the girl who had dumped me. Languishing in my own idiocy. But after a semester it was just , getting there an hour early because i let my mom drop me off on her way to work. I'd sleep for an hour and wait for the cute handball player I liked or another friend to wake me up, go for a muffin and attend the best English class I ever had.
Oh , if you are in there , visit Amin Malak, my old English professor. He knew 6 languages just to read the original text of books. He called kids stupid and suggested they stop asking questions. He was obsessed with post-colonial lit but almost just to mock it. He told me who i should and should not hang out with to develop my intellect. He was a dictator.
but he was my dictator.
Then head to the LRT station. Corona. we used to joke when it stopped there putting an "I need a.." before the announcer said the name. Come on, we were in community college, give us a break.
Oh and just the contrast of the terrible ghetto trains in the "what the 1920s thought the future would be" station is like living The Great Gatsby for a second.
Then as all tourists you must head to West Edmonton Mall. Mock it if you must, yes. It's just a mall. It doesn't have crazy stores but it does have every store you've known ever. The charm lies elsewhere. In the stupid places.
Like, say you want to pet a baby tiger, or watch a highdive show or look at a ming vase or watch an a capella singing battle or see a Bollywood Musical shooting on a pirate ship. BAM! there it is.
But you're all like "thats good , but does it have a hooker statue?"
I said BAM, didn't I?
This photo is a testament to my neurosis. There is my old work. This is how close i was willing to get and how much i was willing to be still and focus for fear of my old co-workers seeing me.
wow...just wow.
In contrast to Gatsby this is the station you'd see if you headed my way. It's my ghetto station. Voted worst station in Edmonton. The only one to bear the warning "please step back from the platform" before a train arrives based on the amount of people who throw themselves in front of it.
That said, I love it. that view there used to look on a crush's house and I spent many a time waiting for her or skipping trains hoping to have the same as her. Oh i was such a little cute wasn't I? Imagine a big coat and floppy hair and you've got a good image. waitin' fo a gurl i likes.
I was a katzenjammer kid goddamnit, ADMIT IT!
This is the view from my bus. I like to look at prostitutes on my bus.
Here's my house, shaded by my mighty trees. The one on the right is as old as my brother. the one on the left houses a bunny and birds. Oh yeah. and you can kind of see one sticking up from the back. That is actually two trees melded into one and the biggest.
Can you tell my whole family hates people? But at least we love massive trees. Arbour day at our house is like fucking mardi gras.
You know how I go on and on about my brother who is an artist? No? well he is. Its hard to see but this is one of his masterworks "the bride". It's supposed to be the evil arm they lopped of the Venus De Milo. Or something. All i know is in our backyard there's a badass metal arm holding all the garden equiptment. Our neighbors dont talk to us.
Inside's a bit better. Wood panel, clown painting. That seems all in order.
My dad collects this stuff. Its funny because, even though a clown he collects the oil paintings with a sense of Irony. He has a big book of famous clown paintings which just make fun of them and he loves it. I think he'd collect the terrible velvet ones if there was somewhere to put it.
My mom is a bit more tasteful. Plants and nude busts. Very hip if you just ignore the gorilla plant caddy to the right of the vagina.
My dad also collects Elephants. I dont know why. Irony for our familial history of alzheimers? Man my dad is Ironic. Gen X writes him letters every day.
This is seriously one millionth of the amount of clowns in our house. I really liked a girl but she said on a date that she was afraid of clowns. I just had to give up. My dad would literally fight her over it.
But really ,its a normal house. With cut out pictures from the paper of my brother. ha ha, trucker hats.
Here' s me as a baby. I was a fat baby. My head is still that size though which is nice. I think I'll look like that again when I'm an old man. Or 35. I still have that Koala. I should recreate that picture later. do they make footy pyjamas for adults?
So i was a pretty badass baby so I figure i'd better embarass myself by showing this stupid watercolour of me. Yeah. its impregnably gay. Old man glasses. Red P.J.s . Dog. Man. Stupid 4th grade art teacher. the one of my brother he's all sliding down a roller slide standing. God damn.
Thankfully last year I took this photo and forced my mom to hang it. Mod Tommygun Cam erases the rest from your mind.
Speaking of erased, apparently the rest of the photos have been so we'll do the rest of this tomorrow.
Oh man , a cliffhanger....
of barely noticable proportions.
Who shot J.R. my ass
CAM
Ha ha.
I know you looked at my house and thought "Sure its wierd but not wierd enough to produce Cam's Genius". I forgot to mention i spent almost all my time in the basement pictured above. Its like a 100 year old hermit's place. full of so much crap. Clown stuff/ magic stuff/ toy stuff/ old computers/ 1000 books (probably literally). Its just fantastic. I dug through the piles to try to find good stuff but got tired.
Thats just for Dan. Sadly i dont have an awesome Camera that focuses on anything small at all but seriously. So awesome. I kind of wish my dad was still a tabacconist just to get wierd crap like this. Commemorative matches...geeze.
I jsut took a picture of these matches because i could totally imagine a priest coaching the team. Priests should always coach things.
This is the only actual historical artifact I own. Its like a 100 year old watch my great grandfather owned. If i was less hip and more indie I'd wear a Joey Jeremiah hat and carry this sucker on a chain around with me all the time.
Also I love my parent's wierd liquor collection. I always loved it as a kid. These are kind of normal bottles because the others were obscured with clown stuff but if anyone has seen my half-burned copy of the 1970 "Playboy bar book" you know the kind of shit they'd have in there.
Do you remember your favorite childhood toy? Mine was this. No , not the wireless networking device but the bottle of Bol's "Ballerina" a crappy 70s Apricot Liqeur. But it has a windup ballerina in the bottle so when you rest it she dances. And the liqeur is full of gold flakes, bigger than Goldschlager. I remember her tiny feet always kicking and the song too. I also remember my parents always took it away from me probably because it was depressing to see their kid playing with a liquor bottle.
WOAH! Its what you've not been caring about or waiting for. My crappy bedroom. Though check out the awesome outside. All hoops magazine and Nintendo Power posters. I guess I retain some cool though with the Fear and Loathing poster and radical Chip n' Pepper sticker on the bottom.
Ahhhh nothing says emotionally unavailable manchild like an immaculate robot collection. No seriously , there is a book on it and the guy who wrote it went on to make this...so I dont feel so bad.
That or the bunk beds.............
