Saturday, June 12, 2010
Stone Cold Crazy
Tonight, Mr. Assmuppet and I had a rare opportunity. We had an invitation to go out, we were both off work, we had childcare and we had a little cash.
So, I put on makeup (which I hardly ever do) I put on some smellystuff (just body cream, Opium) and a bunch of jewelery (three rings, a bracelet, some earrings) and we headed downtown to the Railway Club, a fantastic venue established in 1931; I believe the original customers were those men who worked on the railway (I know, an astonishing leap of deduction).
I even shaved my pits in anticipation of the evening, which for me is a big concession, seeing I'm not so much into the shaving thing. And I'm sure you wanted to know that.
It's a way cool club and I've gone many many times over the last 20 years or so, but this was the first time I'd taken Ben there. They have a train track up near the ceiling and an electric train runs around the whole club all night long. I really wanted to share a special night with him.
They are a REALLY big supporter and promoter of local talent; if a local band needs a place to play, the Railway Club is the place for them to do it.
Tonight there were a whole shitpile of bands (I think four or five or maybe even six), but we went to see Stone Cold Crazy, a Queen Tribute band. I think you all know how much I love Freddy Mercury, and so I was a little apprehensive, but the bass player, Ferdy Belland, had assured me that they had a kick-ass Freddy, and so I thought ... what the fuck? Let's go see.
The first band that we saw was called Crimson Roots and um. Um. I hate to trash anyone's artistic talent, but they had little of that, as far as I could see.
The bass player and lead singer was a very nice-looking very young man, with a decent voice. He was on-key nearly all the time and he had the Rock 'N' Roll hair going bigtime. He was a little pitchy from time to time but who isn't? The music itself was ... excruciating. No, that's wrong. That insults a lovely word like excruciating. It was, perhaps, execrable (which is also a lovely word but in this case more accurate.) It could be that I'm too old to appreciate the sort of music they were playing, but it seemed to me to be a horrible waste of time, talent, energy and electricity. I would be happy to never see them again.
I'm just not so into thrashing electronic noise with no discernible melody. Call me a purist, if you must.
The second band, Girls 'N' Roses, was a Guns 'N' Roses tribute band. I was pleased to learn that one of the guitar players, Mel, was a former Capilano College student (I did office admin in the music department there for five years and I love running into the kids again.) The lead singer who was supposed to be the Axl Rose guy clearly had some serious performance anxiety. I have it too, which is why I don't do standup comedy any more (did I ever tell you that I used to? I only did it like six, eight times. No more, I just can't, even though I was good.) The first couple of songs, he was stiff, and sang to the band instead of to the audience. After he relaxed and got into the groove he was pretty good, although really, he shouldn't do that to his voice. Mr. Rose does the high-pitched screaming a lot and you could tell it was taking its toll on the boy. The few times he stopped with the screaming and sang in his own voice you could tell that he has a LOVELY voice. I do hope that at some point he uses it for good ...
That's not to say that it was a bad band; I enjoyed it and sang along, a lot. I just hate hearing people hurt themselves vocally. I'm a vocalist, I have two and a half octaves (not fantastic but decent) and I know what it does to you to stretch it out like that.
The third band? Well, that's what this post is about. Stone Cold Crazy utterly rocked my world. ROCKED. I never had the privilege of seeing Queen while Mr. Mercury was alive, but I'd like to think that had he known of this tribute band he would approve.
The man who did the Freddy impression had a FANTASTIC set of pipes. Fantastic. Huge, huge voice, easily hitting all of the notes. I think he went a little flat once, which is nothing, considering. He strutted, he posed, he did it up brown (I don't even know what that means but I heard it said once and I liked it.)
I was happier than a pig in shit.
Cold beer, hot music, and a man who loves me by my side. Can YOU think of a better night? Because I really really can't.
Now, you could tell that "Freddy" was straight. For one, he mentioned his wife (BIG CLUE there) and for another his wife-beater wasn't skin-tight.
But he still rocked my world.
Apparently they're doing another show in August and/or a Labour Day show.
And you can bet I'll be there.
With bells on.
If you're smart, and a Queen fan, you'll be joining me.
Well done, gentlemen. Well done and thank you.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
I Am A Speshul Snowflake
OK, it's been long enough, I've been back from Stitches West for months, and I have to finish the story, but first I need to finish telling you about my boob.
Because, you know, it's all about the hooters.
Here I am, two and a half weeks past surgery and yesterday I was comfortable enough to be able to skein yarn again, which is a good thing, as I leave for Fibre Week in Olds, Alberta in two weeks.
I swore that I was going to do Olds if I had to drive there with my poor offended tit in a hand-knitted sling around my neck. Amusingly enough I've had three offers from people willing to knit me such a sling, but it won't be necessary.
I'm still swollen, still sore, but most of the bruising has gone and I'm able to lift stuff again, which is good, as my hoar Sara and her lovely fiancé Trevor drove to Blaine last week and got a bunch of my yarn back from my other hoar Tracy, via yet another hoar named Carry.
My goodness, there is a multitude of hoars about these days, isn't there? And I, for one, am endlesly grateful. I have no idea what I would do without them.
During that trip, Trevor learned the truth about yarn. He picked up one of the two large bags and looked at Sara and said "I never knew yarn could weigh this much." Dude, 30 lbs of anything (which is about what was in that bag) weighs 30 lbs. I think he hadn't known there was that much yarn in the world. Heh.
And there were two of those bags. That's about a third of what I've got ready for Olds right now, excluding the roving.
Now ... a skein of yarn is about 110 grams or so, and five of them are a pound, so 50 are ten pounds. You do the math. There's going to be one fuck of a lot of yarn in Olds. Come and buy it, won't you?
I made it just for you.
BUT ... back to my boob.
The last tumour was 10cm x 7cm x 8cm. That's 4 inches by 2.75 inches by 3.14 inches for my friends south of the border. For people who don't do math, um, that's close to the size of your fist. I lost more boob than most folks had to start with, seeing he took that plus a margin of tissue around it. (Heh, I typed "tittue" at first. It made me snort. I have the sense of humour of a 12-year-old boy. I think that breast tissue should hereafter be referred to as "tittue") It should have been enough. But it wasn't, and the fucker came back.
The good thing? It was benign the first time. That pretty much made it a dead cert. that it would be benign the second time.
The bad thing? Well, it came back.
This one was WAY smaller. When I first found it I had tried to pretend for a week or so that it was just scar tissue and there was no recurrent badger, but really ... scar tissue doesn't just show up four years after surgery. And then I called the doc and it took me a couple of weeks to get in to see her.
During that time it doubled in size. These little fatherfuckers are way aggressive.
Fortunately my doc is seriously cool and understands that patients actually know what's going on with their bodies and the minute I said I had the tumour back again she sent me off to see my lovely Irish Gentleman, who managed to get me an appointment within the week.
He confirmed that it was back, and proclaimed that it would again be banished, forthwith.
(Heh, his office assistantnurseperson (I'm not sure what to call them) said that there wasn't time on the Friday in the OR and he said that there WAS and if the scheduler at the OR gave her grief, she could talk to HIM, but that the surgery would be done that day.)
He took it out again (and some time I'll tell you about how wise it is to "Play the Dozens" with your surgeon ... and win ... when you're actually ON the operating table) and we got the pathology results in and as I said in my last post, the good news is that it was benign.
The bad news?
Yeah, I was holding this one back for a bit so that everyone could be happy for a week, but there IS bad news, alas.
The spiral cells (I think that's what my lovely Irish surgeon called them) extended to the edge of the excised tissue.
That means he didn't get it all.
It's going to come back. Almost 100% for sure.
Again with the good news? It will be benign.
The bad news? I'm almost certainly gonna have to get chopped up again.
I'm going to go see him in September and then again in March and then again in June; we're keeping a close eye on this.
The next step will be to catch it when it's REALLY small and take a LOT of my boob (like a quarter, a third, maybe half) and then get a plastic surgeon to reconstruct the left one and reduce the right one to match. Because otherwise when I went swimming I'd be so unbalanced I'd just go round and round in circles and all of the cool kids would laugh at me.
So I'll end up having, at some point soon, the breasts of a 20-year old. (I do so hope that she doesn't mind. I'm hoping to sneak a tummy-tuck and a facelift in there too, if it's possible.)
I'm going to ask him in September if we can't just do it now before the tumour comes back, so that we can be done with it.
BUT ... no matter what happens ... it's going to be benign. I have things to do and yarnz to dye, and I will have the time to do it. I'm not heading out.
It's still time to dance; the bullet has been dodged.
tomorrow, more about the bitches at Stitches
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
He Had Me At "Benign"
And after that he could have had me any way he'd wanted but he's not like that.
Mah boobeis are healthy (if bruised and battered). Follow-up is in three months, but it looks like I'm going to be around to annoy y'all for a little while longer.
Endless thanks to everyone who was more supportive than the best brassiere in town.
I do believe this is the time when we dance, no?
