J.M. Filipowicz's Blog, page 2

Call Noah

No, I didn’t take this pic, but do you see that park? That park is two minutes from my house. Yesterday my good friend Cara stubbornly decided to not to cancel her backyard barbecue. While most of us guests stayed inside her house, she barbecued hamburgers in a torrential downpour.

This was a party with small children in attendance, not meant to last more than a few hours. As such, I only felt slightly rude leaving to attend the improv jam happening that night in Hamilton. My friend Kate came with me and off we drove, confident in my rain driving abilities. We’re not made of sugar after all! We were going to pick somebody up at Guelph Line before heading to Hamilton. It was bumper to bumper all along Dundas. Along the way, we passed roads that had become rivers. Literally, and I’m not even misusing that word.

Less than a kilometer from Guelph Line a cop car blocked the road. Why? Because the road past that point was now a lake.

We tried an alternate route but were blocked by a police officer in a raincoat. When I asked him how I could get to Guelph Line his response was “You can’t. Just hang out for a while.” This meant that not only could I not get to Hamilton, I couldn’t even get home.  We turned around and returned to Cara’s party.

For those of you who don’t know Burlington, the distance we had to travel was less than four kilometers. To go nowhere and come back, about a 7 k journey, took us over an hour.

Today the water has receded and if you drive around town it’s like nothing happened. Except that my basement is slightly damp.

Rainy Day

I decided to turn a quick trip to the corner grocery store into a family walk. On the way there, the sky began to rumble and and flash. We scurried into the store as the first drops fell. We bought chocolate chips to make cookies with and some blueberries to eat on the way home.

By the time we got outside again a great lake of water poured from the sky. We huddled in the small amount of cover offered by the building and ate our blueberries. Finally, we took a family vote. We weren’t going to wait this out. We were walking home. We were getting drenched.

Halfway into our 15-minute journey, something happened that I would have thought impossible. It rained harder. We were pelted by sharp nodules of wetness. Wait, was that hail? The angle of the rain changed as we turned a corner so that patches of my skirt and top which had remained dry became instantly drenched.

We laughed, we shrieked, we splashed. We huddled together. We jumped together. It was the best walk ever.

The story of my first kiss

I’m not sure why this event popped into my head, but it did so I’m telling you the story. I looked the part of the stereotypical nerd back in the day. Not only did I wear glasses, but through some combination of misguided feminism, nerd pride, and nineties fashion, my seventeen-year-old self wore over-sized t-shirts which disguised any evidence of my voluptuous female form. My favourite read “I’m out of bed and dressed, what more do you want,” though I never really practiced what it preached and made the honour roll three years in a row.

There was an exchange trip that year for French Immersion students like me to go to Switzerland and stay with a fellow teenager and her family. Before we went, we filled out surveys meant to match us up with our Swiss doppelgangers. By some fluke of the system I was matched with a boy-crazy party girl who drank, smoked, and collected shoes.

On the night in question, Sandrina (my Swiss party girl), took me out to a club with some of her friends. I was wearing a white t-shirt with a Twister spinner on it. I remember she asked me if I wanted to change, but all I had were nerdy t-shirts and I didn’t want to wear any of Sandrina’s clothes, so I didn’t. We drank kamikaze shots early in the night, but I wasn’t drunk or even tipsy. In fact, I only had one. I wasn’t a drinker.

And then we were up and dancing. Rather than dance in a group of girls, as is the Canadian custom, we paired off with random guys on the dance floor. It happened very organically, so that suddenly I was dancing with a mildly cute black guy with an intense gaze. No one had ever looked at me like that before. For the first time in my teenage life, I felt like one of the girls. With a twinkle in his eyes, he held his hands in front of the cartoon hands of the twister spinner, stopping just short of touching my chest.

He took me by the hand and lead me off the dance floor, to a quieter area of the club. We chatted for a bit. He was a soccer player from Brazil (I think), who spoke English but no French at all. We didn’t talk long before he leaned over and kissed me. I was surprised when he slipped his tongue into my mouth, but when he pulled away I went back for seconds. No guy had ever even taken an interest, let alone made a move on me. It felt good. And I thought I did pretty well for a beginner.

He asked me if I wanted to go outside to his car. I definitely wasn’t ready for THAT and anyway I didn’t really know this guy, so I declined. At some point I showed off my French skills by asking the coat check girl for a pen and paper and he wrote down his address for me. He talked about coming to Canada sometime to visit.

When I got back to Sandrina’s house I tore up the address into tiny pieces and flushed it down her toilet. I wasn’t about to contact this guy! (Though now I kind of wish I’d kept the paper as a souvenir).

Let’s go fishing for alien mermaids

Here’s Bill Nye the science guy talking about the possibility of finding life on Europa, the most famous of Jupiter’s moons:

I remember reading about Europa as a kid and being excited that aliens could be swimming just under its icy surface. Alien sea monsters, a whole underwater civilization, mermaids. Okay, most likely not mermaids, but who knows?

Creating art and artists

I was recently inspired to get a sketchbook and start drawing again. I’ve always been more of a painter than a sketcher, but sketching is more affordable, more portable and less messy. Also it’s therapeutic. Of course it has been many years since art school and I am sorely out of practice (not that I was ever that talented to begin with).

The most disheartening thing about this reentry into the art world is the realization that my five-year-old and seven-year-old are more skilled with the pen than I. Observe:

This is one of the first sketches I did upon purchasing my new sketchbook.

And here is a character that William my seven-year-old drew this morning.

Art credit: William Filipowicz

Here is my picture of the statue of Liberty drawn from memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here is William’s picture of Central Park also drawn from memory.

art credit: William Filipowicz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’ve ever been to Central Park, you’ll see how accurate that drawing is.

Finally, here is a totally awesome sketch by my daughter Jadzia.

art credit: Jadzia Filipowicz

I’m going to continue drawing despite my mediocre skill because, as I said before, it is therapeutic. Besides what better way is there to turn my children into lifelong artists than to show them that Mommy still draws?

Alternative Titles for “Saving Hope”

Saving Hope is a Canadian medical drama currently filming its third season. I started watching it after worked on the set as a background performer. My husband and I rarely watch new shows, usually finding an old series on Netflix and binging on it until we reach the end and/or get bored with it. Saving Hope is not on Netflix.  The show is delightfully formulaic and features a doctor who can talk to ghosts (dead people or coma patients). Here are some alternate titles for the series:

Coma doctor wears a tux

Lois Lane and the man sluts

Horny dead people

Ghost of the week

Sixth Sense, hospital edition

Fainting in the OR

Canadian ER

Canadian Grey’s Anatomy

The hospital show

Lois Lane gets left at the alter

Star Gate: Hope Zion

Astral Projections in the Hall

Kissing Dead People

Cool Surgeon Squad

Stonewall background talent show

Cute doctors who are afraid of commitment

I still haven’t seen the episode I worked on (it’s in season 3). Adam and I are into season 2 now. No spoilers!

A cure for the doldrums

My air conditioner konked last night and while the repair people came to look at it (they’re coming back tomorrow with a part), my parents’ dog (who is staying with us) went outside and got sprayed by a skunk. Our house is weighed down by humidity and stench. What better cure for these doldrums, but to experience live theatre as a family?

I know that some might consider it rude to review a play after its last showing. This is akin to saying “Nah nah, I saw this play and you can’t see it!” followed by a particularly wet raspberry. But I doubt that we’ve seen the last of Jesters Incognito. Harrison Wheeler, the star and creator of this one man show, brought energy and life to the stage and to every character he embodied and I doubt very much that he will be willing to put the jesters into a box (even a box with an explanation mark on it).

Though the play wasn’t made specifically for kids, I brought my kids anyway. They loved all the wacky characters taken straight from Harry’s futuristic novel. The poignant story (interlaced with cartoons) of Harrison’s personal life may have gone over their heads. (Particularly for Jadzia who can’t read the text portion of the multimedia presentation).  Still we all enjoyed our money’s worth. (Which is saying a lot because it costs a boat load to take a family of four to anything, even an inexpensive Fringe play).

Though you may not be able to see Jesters Incognito on stage right now, you can still procure copies of Harrison’s novel of the same name, or catch his incredible positive energy when he performs with the rest of us at Staircase improv.

New York Bagels

When staying in New York we only ate out sporadically, packing most of our meals or eating them in front of the campfire. When we did eat out, we ate out in Manhattan after scouring the internet for the “best”. Gerritsen Bagels, on the other hand, my husband found by accident while on a laundry run. It’s a few doors down from a laundromat in Brooklyn, not far from our campsite. Adam happened to bring back some bagels for lunch.

These were the best bagels I’ve ever tasted.  I feel sacrilegious saying that because I’m from Montreal, a city famous for their bagels. These were better; soft and fresh, and so large that the hole had begun to close in on itself. Those first bagels were loaded with an inch of cream cheese.

It quickly became our breakfast hangout. We ordered everything with eggs and bacon and cheese. The kids had plain with nutella and cream cheese. Some of them were still warm from the oven. We ate them in the park across the street, next to three baseball diamonds (Americans love their baseball).

If you’re ever in Brooklyn, check them out. I have no idea if this place is famous or not, but it should be.

Bubbles

My husband is on a mission to create the most gigantic bubbles. He’s been mixing soapy ingredients in a large bucket, combining various internet bubble recipes. Last night he spent two hours cutting apart a mop to use its string. Tonight we took our concoction down to Spencer Smith park. We attracted a crowd of gleeful children, adults with cell phone cameras, and old ladies in motor scooters. At a certain size, a bubble ceases being a perfect round orb and becomes an unearthly blob wobbling through the air like some alien amniotic sack.

A poem about Cats (as requested by a cat-lover friend)

I don’t have a cat

Because I’m a dog person

And because cats make me sneeze

And they always seem bored

And don’t seem to care that humans exist

Unless you’re allergic

Like me

In which case they’ll rub their furry bodies all over you

And purr

Until they suddenly decide that you’re touching them wrong

Then they scratch and bite and shake their heads

Or simple scurry away

To chase imaginary mice

This poem doesn’t rhyme

Cats are too sophisticated for rhyming couplets