Girls spend night

Kiki and Kristin came into the city, spent the night with us. William introduced them to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and they watched most of season one. 

Spiderman to escape heat

Very hot day. Margaret got called in to work so William and I watched Spiderman Homecoming. In the evening, it rained and sort of broke the heat spell. 

Brickspo, ice cream, and a party

Drove to Brickspo in Moose Jaw this afternoon. Lots of cool stuff there again this year. The heat of the day sort of got to me by the end, even though the place wasn't as crowded.

Following Brickspo we headed to the Moose Jaw Art Gallery where I really enjoyed the paintings by Grant McConnell. He has been inserting the characters from Diego Velazquez's painting "Las Meninas" into different backgrounds with many others layers of paint. The mixture of formal paint characteristics and postmodernism were very amusing and entertaining. Beautiful work.

 My head cleared with a great cherry pina colota milkshake at a joint we discovered in downtown Moose Jaw called the Deja Vu Cafe. They have a hundred flavours of milkshakes and soft serve and almost as many chicken wing flavours.
 We attended a lively birthday party for Kimberly Fyfe. Many great conversations. 

Cooling off with movie and a pool

Very hot day. We slipped off for a matinee of "Atomic Blonde" which I liked. It had lots of action and a selection of songs from the 80s that I liked and respected. Nothing corny and nothing soft. It worked.
 Afterwards we avoided the house by inflating the pool and spending time of the deck. It's the neighbour's cat.

Musical fundraiser at David McIntyre's house

As a fundraiser for Noreen's terribly damaged home, we attended a magical music event at the composer David McIntyre's house. He performed a number of his own works. Other performers were the violinist Carmelle Pretzlaw, saxophonist Tim Gerber, and the amazing singer George Evans. We had many great conversations with the whose who in the crowd, but the truly tremendous aspect of the party was the intimate performances we were privileged to hear. It all felt so easy. William did some cool drawings in the middle of it all. It was really, really, nice.

Backyard party

Leslea, Leif, and Teagan came to town for a family reunion event. We had them over, along with local favorites Martin, Barb, Emma, Andrew and of course Paul for bbq and jambalaya. Wonderful time, wonderful people. Leslea and Leif are always so great at propelling a conversation forward. We miss them so much since they moved to Winnipeg. The kids got onto playing SuperFight and went hard at it for about five hours. 

Allan and a super-8 party

We'd not seen Allan in a few weeks due to our busy schedules but this evening he came for some nice steaks and a retrospective of William's super-8 films projected in the living room. 

too much red?

My new boots arrived, which coincidentally was the same day I decided to try out my new red pants. Problem with the pants is that none of my short sleeved shirts seemed to go with it except (and even I thought this would be overkill) my red shirts. The boots are, of course, red.

Sunday on the farm

Hosted brunch (mostly bacon and waffles) at the house Sunday morning and then almost everyone went to the farm. 

William and I avoided the major heat of the day (31+) and watched "The Wall". After supper we joined up with them all for a big bon fire in front of the farm house.

"new" stereoscopic viewer and more Bessai boys

Thanks to Ian Campbell, I found another stereoscopic viewer at a weekly antique/collectibles sale at the Eaton/Dominion Mall (or whatever they call it now). It doesn't have a holder for the cards band it quite worn, but is in one piece, functional, and a very good price (only $25).
Did some shopping and the Colin O'Bryan store for their annual blowout sale. Bought two pairs of red pants that fit too comfortably not to buy. William got a couple of shirts.
Carl's son Julien and Tom's son Santiago arrived in Regina and stayed with us Saturday night.

Santiago Bessai and Julien Bessai

Gum comics sneak preview

William and I are working on a relatively secret project with gum wrappers and the swamp monster. Images were leaked to the public today over facebook. Here is a glimpse...

Dunkirk

It's Griffin's last day in Regina. He and William shot yet another film this afternoon, this one being an extension of one of Griffin's epics. I drove them to the museum so they could shoot a scene there shortly before the museum closed.

Mostly on my niece's interest, we attended the opening night of Dunkirk on Imax film this evening. It was pretty good. The imax is very loud and visceral so nothing seems subtle. We all got opening night t-shirts at the end.

William more prolific than I am...?

William was working on yet another film today: this one a collaboration with Griffin with Emma's help. It is a mash-up project with scriptless dialog shot against green screen. Each of the three are going to have the footage, which includes 2-3 characters played by each of them, and will edit freely and wildly.

We took a walk and found Christine and Ken's impressive new garage mural. Awesome!

William makes a movie, Dad has a birthday

Working with increasing independence, William took up my super-8 camera, loaded it, planned a film project (along with his friends Emma and Griffin) and shot the whole thing today. Three or four shots near the end had all three of them in it so he asked me to run the camera for those. Otherwise, this one was untouched by Gerald's hands. I'm excited about it. I'll be sending it to the lab along with the rock circle film and the two "One Take" films so we'll have video versions.

Dad's birthday was Monday but he had his last clinic appointment with medication that day and that has been making him very tired so mom had us over for cake on Tuesday. Dad got worn out early but had way more energy than before and was in quite a good mood. It was a nice evening. 

cool day to catch up

Temperature dropped to mid-20s today so I started getting caught up in a bunch of things. The morning was spent helping out mom with dad. Had lunch with group at Martin's. The department got a camera donated, which is always nice. William built a wall from the three dozen pieces of Dubble Bubble gum that we opened to find two comics we'd not previously found. He's over half way through his Pud project, but that should mean that we should find new comics in half the pieces we open. 

Saskatoon day 3 (Sunday)

Brunched at the Underground Cafe on 20th Street before heading home. William and I played "The Game of Life", which has been changed a bit since I was a kid. It's not a great game but we had some fun. I had to use a dime in stead of a car because there was only one car and no people-pips left in the box. He chose no education or other upgrades. I was sure I would win but he did. 

Saskatoon day 2 (Saturday)

I got up early on Saturday and took in the pool. I love being the only person at a pool, it is very meditative. Someone else arrived at 8:30 so I left. We had lunch at a pinball diner. It costs a buck a game so it is more or less like the old days except the machines are well maintained. We popped past the book store to surprise Ed Willett as he was signing his new book.

We then drove out to Wanuskewin Heritage park were there was an opening of a new exhibit (bob cat traps from sticks) that was cool. I also went on the walking tour. Very hot out but worthwhile.

ancient bison bone

In the evening we attended Richard III at the Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan. It was fairly well done but I felt overall it was a bit rushed and lacking in depth that pacing may have helped with.

Saskatoon day 1 (Friday)

We drove up to Saskatoon Friday morning. William and Kiki both had (different) appointments at UofS. The day was very hot and we got caught in a speed trap on the way back tot he hotel. George finally caught up to us and we all went to see "Twelfth Night" at Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan. It was set in a sort of early 20th century southern USA with banjos and mandolins.

One Take Super 8 was super time!

I tried not to worry about One Take this year and I almost succeeded, but in in the hours leading up to the event this evening the annual doubts crept in. What if no one comes? Would my film work out? If my film doesn't work out, what if lots of people come and I'm embarrassed in front of all of them? What if I invite people and they are disappointed? What if, what if, what if? None of the bad stuff happened. The films were great this year. My film worked out, as did William's, and we both got laughs and applause. The RPL theatre was full. I doubt there were more than five empty seats. Gertrud made it out, as did William's friends and cousins. I couldn't have asked for a better evening.

AGR print opening

Eric Hill

Art Gallery of Regina opening this evening contained some good work. It is a group show of print work. The only person coming in from left field, as he always does, was Eric Hill with a video screen running a GIF loop. The image is actually sourced from Muybridge photo prints, extracted and remade into very small rubber stamps, stamped onto 16mm film, manipulated a bit and then run through a projector and videotaped from the screen. I meant to ask what sort of ink he used as I've never had any luck stamping onto film myself.

Robert Truszkowski

Rowan Pantel

I was able to give the prototype comic strips to Amber for the swamp project. She was surprised and happy.