Oooh, watch out for sunburn

So, I don't know what this says about me, but apparently I have become your official source of news when it comes to events promising randomly harmless nekkidity. Thanks to NOW Magazine's calendar of upcoming events, I am possessed of the knowledge that Saturday June 12th is World Naked Bike Ride Day, and now, you know it too. I felt compelled to check their website, and I think my favourite part is when they say, "the Crown has acknowledged that participating in an orderly event naked is not illegal, so long as you are wearing something, such as shoes."  Seriously? Shoes are the limiting factor in how naked you are? Man, was I playing doctor wrong. It reminds me of years ago, when I was trying to figure out exactly what kind of documentation you needed to cross the border into the states, and I discovered that it was forbidden to transport a switchblade knife internationally, unless of course you only had one arm, in which case you were good to go.

I'm out of town for the next couple of days, and it's entirely likely I won't be back in the city on Saturday at all -- but if anybody was to make plans that just happened to involve being, oh, say, on a patio on Queen Street or a table in Dundas Square early Saturday afternoon, keep me posted. Of all the spectacles I should see before I die, 100 or so naked people on bikes is probably on the list.

Antidisestablishmentarianism

So, for those of you interested in an update...

Atmosphere:

     The event took place in Tallulah's Cabaret, the bar adjoined to Buddies, which meant that both audience and participants were suitably fueled for a raucous evening. The place seats, oh, probably 150 people or so, and I'd say we were pretty much at comfortable capacity. Pretty much exactly the right amount of perversion in the air, too -- I mean, it's a room full of people who just paid money to attend a strip spelling bee, you know there's a decent lust quotient at work, but it never hit creepy. The vibe was pretty relentlessly positive and supportive, and the biggest cheers of the night were usually reserved for when somebody actually spelled something correctly. Good time had by all.

Contestants:

     There were 13 brave souls who took part, 7 men and 6 women. (There was a moment when an unusual bulge seemed to indicate a transgendered contestant, but later visual evidence proved otherwise.) There were varying degrees of readiness for what lay in front of them -- a couple of them looked like they had just stopped by on their way home from the library, while others had some specialty lingerie going on underneath. One guy showed up in a luchador mask, and stayed in character by Hulkamaniac-ing his shirt off when the time came. The amount of disrobing was totally up to the individual participant, with one girl dropping out completely after the second round (to disappointed applause, if there is such a thing). Everyone who stayed after that would be expected to get down to their underwear or to naked, whatever they were comfortable with, and there was probably about a 75% conversion rate. Obviously, there wasn't a whole lot of shy on stage to begin with, but it's worth pointing out the little known fact that people become 64% more confident and attractive when they're on stage in front of a room full of wildly cheering people. It's been proven by science, or possibly Girls Gone Wild.

Words:

     Well, there were 13 contestants who went through three rounds of one word each, plus a one-word spell-off at the end to determine the winner. Taking in to account the speller who dropped out, that means there were 39 words used in the competition. Four were spelled correctly.
     The organizers were pretty up-front about it -- they're here for the skin, so they deliberately chose words that would mess people up. To be fair, I think the people on stage were more interested in the strip part of the equation, so if you were looking for spellers you'd probably have better luck in the audience. You could often hear a buzz as people whispered guesses to the person beside them, but I'm guessing the scores weren't too much better than they were on stage. I consider myself a pretty good speller, and I can remember 7 that I would definitely have gotten: choucroute, algorithm, nebuchadnezzar, gusset, flibbertigibbet, verisimilitude, and detumescence. There were probably a couple of others that I might have guessed right at, but there were also a whole lot of others I had never heard of -- nisi, nuchal, and autochthonic, to name a few. It's not for the faint of heart.

Verdict:

     From a conversation overheard during a between-rounds break, it seems the organizer has done a few of these events in Montreal, but wasn't sure how it would go over in Toronto. Now that he's done one, and he's pretty confident that the cover charge will pay for the room rental and his train ticket back and forth, he'll almost certainly be reprising the event in the future. I could definitely be convinced to go again -- if it happens, I'll keep you posted.


Now, just for fun, I'll leave you with some spelling-related video.


UPDATE: I never really expected to be linking to the Toronto Sun in anything but an ironic way, but it's funny how life goes. We appear to have contrasting information on the size of the venue, but otherwise we're pretty in sync. Granted, she has a bit more biographical info/participant quotes, but I mean, come on, she was obviously cheating. She had a notepad.

Come sit for a spell

I was thinking -- I like to cultivate the impression that I am a well-rounded individual. I'm a theatre major who knows what Avogadro's number is, I can rattle off five Coen Brothers movies or the starting five for the Miami Heat, and I know both what the T in James T. Kirk stands for and what it's like to have kissed a girl. I mean, I tend to steer clear of politics, but if I was thrown into a random cocktail party and told to mingle, I could probably hold up my end of the conversation.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if, given a large enough sample size, certain patterns started to appear. Like, with all of these posts, I assume it would become apparent that I talk about some things more than others. For example, I haven't personally done the math, but those handy label thingies over to the right indicate that basketball and lacrosse pop up sorta frequently. And, if I just cast my mind back to the most recent missive, I have a hunch a couple more representative topics popped up -- namely, when I got all excited about a Rubik's cube giveaway, and when I discussed the prospect of people disrobing at a concert. If I had to guess, I'd say my oeuvre would skew heavily towards promoting the geeky and the people gettin' nekkid -- full frontal nerdity, if you will. (By the way, I'd love to take responsibility for coining that phrase, but no, I can remember Ben Seaver using it in an episode of Growing Pains around 20 years ago. Side note: I feel old.)

I bring this up because an event has come to my attention that seamlessly combines these two -- heck, if you allow 'competition' to be the umbrella my sports posts fall under, then I've hit the trifecta. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you -- a strip spelling bee.

Yep, that's correct, basically a strip poker game, only instead of cards, the contestants spell things. The very concept leaves me nigh-speechless. The other thing that I can hardly wrap my head around is that it is happening in Toronto, and in less than 48 hours from now, and that tickets to attend and observe this phenomenon are $10, well within my price range.

You understand, I have to go to this. It's not really an option not to. I mean, it's like if someone told you that they found a show where a monkey had been dressed up like a pirate and was going to be punching a cow -- you'd have to go. It's just non-negotiable. However -- this is where I discovered a touch of latent homophobia in myself. The shindig in question takes place at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, which has left me unsure as to the gender representation of the contestants. It's not the fact that I might be in for a night of all-male spellin'-and-strippin' that worries me, so much as the thought of looking like a single man who paid for the privilege of sitting by himself to watch a bunch of dudes get naked. I could take a deep breath and get over that, but if anybody here is interested in coming as my back-up, I'd feel a little more comfortable, all the more so if that person or persons possesses more ovaries than I do.

I would also whole-heartedly support any acquaintance who feels the urge to participate. You know, strictly for altruistic reasons.

Do not go gentle

This one has been knocking around in my head since before Christmas, but I hadn't figured out how to write it down. I still haven't, so this may be a bit more slipshod than I'd like it to be, but I've started now, so what the heck.

Around Christmas and New Year's time, I was feeling old, and it was really pissing me off. I'd like to chock it up to holiday depression, but there are a couple of things that have stuck with me. First -- my Mom's huge extended family is too big for normal Christmas Dinner at somebody's house, so every Boxing Day we rent a hall. This hall is conveniently located above an ice rink, which we also rent for a couple of hours of spirited over-30 versus under-30 shinny. We've been doing this for 20 years or so, and in that time you get pretty well acquainted with what people can do on the ice. That uncle doesn't know how to pass, that cousin doesn't know how to skate, that sort of thing. I have one cousin who's probably about 25 who has always had better skills than me (although he only passes to the open man if it's his brother or his father, so he's usually pretty easy to neutralize), but even if he was able to dipsy-doodle around me, I never had any problem keeping up on the speed side of things. This year, however -- there were problems. He was just that little bit faster and I was just that little bit slower, and I found myself starting to play like it was a real game, like just kinda bumping him or trying to wrap him up a little as he went by. In short, I was using all the old guy tricks that my Dad uses, except that I'm 34 and he's 61 and he's been dragging the middle-aged gut of success around for at least a decade and a half by now. (Side note -- I use all those old guy tricks at lacrosse all the time, but because I hadn't grown up playing against these guys, it feels more like a general lack of talent as opposed to any erosion of my skills, which is somehow easier to take.) It pissed me off that I could neither keep up, nor accept the aging process with equanimity. Damn.

Episode two -- which actually happened first chronologically, but I like the flow of the story better if I talk about this second -- was at a White Cowbell Oklahoma concert. I've seen these guys a buncha times, and they have a well-earned reputation as a no-holds-barred live show. In the shows I've been to, I've seen a man dressed as Santa Claus pull a watergun disguised as a two-foot penis out of his pants and baptise as much of the front row as he could manage. I've seen a Christmas show where two, uh, exotic dancers dressed up as presents appeared on stage, and proceeded to unwrap each other down to outfits more suited for birthdays, if you catch my drift. I've also seen a show where the lead guitarist dropped trou, placed a shot glass over his lead singer, and played a solo on a slide guitar held just south of waist level by four lovely volunteers from the audience; and then later on watched as the band shelled out hundreds of dollars to convince young ladies in the audience to part with articles of clothing. They go out of their way to be a capital R Rock'N'Roll Band, with all the sex, drugs and cocoa puffs you can cram into an evening's entertainment.

That said -- this pre-Christmas show was kinda disappointing. It was their 10th anniversary show, and they pulled out some of the stops, in that they gave away near-ancient merch and managed to ressurect a long-rumored dead drummer, but there was still a sense of toned-down-ness about it all. I think they may have had some legality issues with their shows, because even though they still have the exotic dancers, there's no threat of 'unclad' anymore, it remains firmly in the domain of 'scantily clad'. They've downsized a couple of band members, too, including the lead singer, and while they were a large enough number to begin with that it wasn't overly noticeable, it still speaks to the fact that maybe not everybody's built to spend 10 years acting like the drinkin'-est mofo on the planet. The whole show, while rockin' enough on a musical level, just seemed tamer than it used to be, and it felt like maybe people were gonna outgrow it. I actually wouldn't be surprised if the band breaks up before they play Toronto again, and yes, that makes me feel old.

So -- I don't like being pissed off, so I've been attempting to do something about it. I could just accept it and try to be graceful about losing some abilities while gaining in experience and insight -- you know, turn turn turn and all that -- but screw that. To counteract my sporting decline, I am going against pretty much all of my instincts and trying to get into better shape. Exercising is one thing, but god help me, I've actually been reading food labels and checking the fat content. I figure I have maybe two or three more years where I can at least maintain what limited proficiency I have, and declining at 37 seems way less traumatic than declining at 34. I don't know how it'll go -- I have an embarrasing tendency towards tantrums when I think I should be better at a sport than I actually am -- but I'm giving it a shot.

And as for the other thing -- well, like I say, I don't know if WCO will ever do another Toronto show, but if they do, I will do my part to restore some of their former glory. Based on the twin pillars of audience participation and gratuitous nudity, I will steal a page from the band's playbook and offer cold hard cash to anybody who joins the band on stage and shows off an asset or two. I'm not exactly expecting a rush of people looking to take me up on the offer, but dammit, to make up for my wasted youth of responsible action and sober decisions I have to make it anyway. I'm not currently publishing rates because there's bound to be a sliding scale -- while I am duty-bound to support a Rock Out With Your Cock Out policy, it is likely to be less lucrative than a Rock Out With Your Boobs Out Policy, rhyme scheme be damned -- and in case of a Bizarro-world plethora of applicants there would be a first-come-first-served kinda limit, but suffice to say I will be open to negotiation. I am not known for being a hard-line negotiator and I could probably be convinced to reimburse the ticket price of any girl who wears a sufficiently cleavage-y shirt, so feel free to extrapolate from there.

Who dat?

The New Orleans Saints are playing in the Super Bowl this Sunday, which happens to be nine calendar days prior to the Mardi Gras celebration in that city. If you asked me to recommend a time and place to spend (just over) a week's holiday, I could definitely think of worse uses of your vacation time.

Milestone, sorta

Well, sweet gravy biscuits, the almighty search engine has finally found me. It's still a long shot that somebody will accidentally trip over this thing, but I guess just in case there's a rash of people Googling "Pops Mensah-Bonsu", "How to Look Good Naked" and "nostril-snorting angry", I should probably start adhering to a more rigourous posting schedule. I'll work on that.

By the way -- I just discovered that you need to use all three of the quoted search terms above in order to whittle your search down to my page and my page alone. If you omit the "nostril-snorting angry" bit, there are two other page options that pop up. Vast though the internet may be, I would not have expected that.

Public Service Announcement

So, recently a strange confluence of events led to me catching up with an old acquaintance of mine, late night TV. (Of course, by 'acquaintance', I more likely mean 'near-all-consuming-passion-of-yore', but we'll let that slide.) I've known enough artsy-type folks in my day that occasionally, I'll see some commercial and realize, "Hey, I used to work with her," or, "Isn't that the guy who drywalled my basement?" Once, I actually saw a guy I went to high school with win a chugging contest on some sort of low budget CityTV Beer-lympics, which was a bizarre blast from the past. However, it appears I'm making a demographic switch, as this time my little jolt of familiarity happened as I swung by some Kwality Reality Programming.

Now, it was a show on the W network, and I only caught the last few seconds, and I didn't know the person in question all that well, so I wasn't really sure if it was who I thought it was. It was kind of intriguing, though, so a little bit of internet research was called for, at which point I could confirm that yes, I have met someone (and I'm not naming names, but someone I know might have dated her) who is featured on this season of Stuck on the women's network.

However -- all that is kinda irrelevant, it's just the roundabout way of telling you that when you Google stuck womens network, the second link that pops up starts off with the words "How to Look Good Naked." I don't know about you, but I usually click on links like that, and in this case it led me to info about a show where:

In each episode our host will teach women how to embrace their curves, love their lives and learn how to best show off the figures they have. We will guide them through their negative body issues and help them demystify their ideas of perfection. Each week through styling, beauty tips, and direction from our style experts, we will lead a woman on an extraordinary journey to loving herself again.

Not only that, the pooh-bahs who make this fine telly-vision show are looking for participants! "Well, ho-lee smokes," I thinks to meself, "They're looking for women. I know some women. That's like synergy! I need to tell people about this!"

So, uh, yeah. If anybody here has a latent desire to use the power of semi-scripted television to work out some self-esteem issues, I fully support you in that endeavour. Obviously, the chance to see my friends in their pixelated birthday suits is completely beside the point.


W Network, How To Look Good Naked

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