come sail away: June 2009

this past week/end was the 15th annual nxne.

my sissies and i work at it every year (for the conference part) so that we can get passes to see whatever we please at night.

this year the lineup was stellar and it was definitely hard keeping up.

wednesday night i worked the door at the nxne kickoff gala party. no one played at it but i had enough drinks to get me lubricated for the Mighty Defenders show later at the Amsterdam Brewery.

Mighty Defenders consist of Arish and Mark Sultan from King Khan & BBQ

plus the fellas from the Black Lips

thursday was a busy one. worked at the conference in the morning (hungover) and then bussed back to hamilton for my pop's annual office bbq. then hopped back on the bus in time to bike up to yonge/dundas square to see black lips.

and then slowly made our way to see king khan & bbq show at the horseshoe.

it was sooo good and sooo sweaty. mark sultan's voice is golden.

after that we decided to call it in early, but not before going to 24 hour pho.

friday was supposed to rain but didn't. it was good because we went to a bbq at tim mccready's place for the launch of the long-awaited dream machzine.

i contributed two illustrations and was pretty stoked to see them in the huge 100+ page book.

(one of the two drawings in the zine. this one accompanies mich's dream story)

During the bbq i left to go see coeur de pirate at the dakota, but it was at capacity by the time i got there and i couldn't get in, so i went back to the party. after that i biked over to yonge and dundas square to see wintersleep.

after the boys finished up, we sat around for about an hour shootin the shit, all the while missing out on the show i was meaning to catch at lee's. it might have something to do with eating these

not all motivation was lost, however, because we eventually made it to wrongbar to catch matt & kim.

and then for some reason we thought it'd be a great idea to cab it to horseshoe to drink more beer. as a result we saw a band called my shaky jane

but i have a feeling that absolutely no one remembers.

we eventually made it back to laura's and passed out.

though saturday was a very eventful day, it started out pretty slow because my first panelist, gza, of wu tang clan, was 2 hours late for his celebrity interview.

but he finally showed up and i found out that i had to introduce him and fab 5 freddy, the princess hip hop historian that interviewed him.

i was so nervous, primarily because i have terrible stage fright. but i broke the ice by the only thing i could think of, the wu hand gesture:

after the conference was over, we headed over to the pop montreal/vice bbq where we kept getting everyone's leftover drink tickets. slowly and steadily getting drunk, i got emotional when a man proposed to his girlfriend right beside me. she said yes. the ring was pretty manly, but i looked past it. i also noticed that he popped the question by SHOUTING and that she was like 3 levels hotter than him. we later found out that they weren't really engaged, and they weren't even a real couple, they acted out the proposal in order to score free champagne from the bar. pretty clever, but i felt duped.

we then headed over to whippersnapper gallery to see the wonderful julie fader.

such a babe.

then by divine right took the stage.

they have a new lineup, but they were still great.

we missed brian borcherdt to go see cold cave from philly at sneaks

too tired to really enjoy it, we went downstairs to mow down on some nachos. after getting some nourishment, we went back upstairs to see crystal antlers.

entirely exhausted, we went home an went to bed, but not before being ambushed by 7 drunk meatheads who were also staying the night at my sister's house as guests of her roommate. it reminded me why i hang out in the places i do. though it was annoying, it was also refreshing.

the next day we got up and went for brunch in liberty village for father's day to celebrate having the best dad in the world.

we then proceeded to take slash to the downtown island airport.

she moved to new york on yesterday for her internship at stylecaster.com

i already miss her a lot. now i have no one to smoke weed or watch felicity with before bed... :(

after she left i went to yonge and dundas to see gza perform. though it was too packed for me to see very well, it was still fucking awesome.

shimmy shimmy ya!!

then i went to help michelle hang up some myspace posters at circa for their much music award after party. since circa is quite close to much music, mich and i decided to walk up john street a bit to check it out. we were standing right beside the stage when we heard them introduce kelly clarkson.

unfortunately she performed on the stage around the corner from us so we couldn't see, but we could hear at least. damn that girl can sing.

then we left to go see japanther at the nxne wrap up party.

they are so good, but one thing that annoyed me was that ninjasonik jumped on the stage during their set and sang every song with them. i think one or two is nice and fun, but more than that is overstaying their welcome. japanther didn't seem to mind as much as i did.

again, i was too tired to fully enjoy everything but at least i didn't fall asleep on my drive back to Htown.