homeless peanuts

this good friday franz and decided to celebrate like any regular early twenty year olds fearing the recession would, spend our day on a patio day drinking. oh and we invited some friends.

1:54 pm

dan and i show up at our old stomping ground elwoods. located in kits, it's the ultimate neighborhood bar that has been my drinking grounds of preference since i moved here in 2005. last week the blond aussie waitress that usually serves us tells us they will be open by 1:30. dan and i are in front of elwoods and it's closed. punk'd.

1:57 pm

franz texts me, he's in a cab on his way over. "k i will be there in 5 then we can assess the situation".

2:05 pm

dan, franz and myself are starring at closed elwoods, confused. we see a bar 2 doors over called The Shack with an open patio, we decide to settle for that.

3:01 pm

second pitcher of rickard's red. dan is eating pulled pork nachos and can't seem to talk, he has fallen in love with the pork and is speechless.

3:10 pm

graham kew and lola stop by for a pint before heading to lunch with lola's mom. dan is still recovering from his nacho orgasm. more pitchers are ordered. 

3:30 pm

bianca shows up.

3:40 pm

when telling an awkward sex story, i pull a meg ryan and do a fake orgasm causing the two 40 year old dudes at the next table to notice and congratulate me on my performance.

3:50 pm

Byron shows up. the 2 old dudes have bought our table a round of jaegar shots. apparently my fake orgasm warranted shots. byron does his shot. byron has never done a jaegar shot.

4:00 pm

the waitress picks up our empty shot glasses, she calls out 2 of the glasses still having jaegar in them, franz downs it.

4:30 pm

justin, janet and shawn show up. we're now a solid drinking gang. graham and lola come back as well.

4:45 pm

an old greek man walks by our table and throws us a punch of peanuts and says "canada is a beautiful country!"

5:02 pm

we're all eating the peanuts. the waitress is grossed out.

5:15 pm

bardia has joined us. the 2 old dudes keep trying to join our group but they are super creepy. one squeezes my waist when walking by. they keep asking bianca for pot.

5:20 pm

a drunk middle aged man with no accent whatsoever walks by and greets us. the conversation is:

man - i'm from australia and i just love -

franz - you don't have an aussie accent.

man - oh well i grew up in nova scotia -

byron - you don't have an accent.

man - i'm just here to say hi.

5:30 pm

one of the creepy old dudes announces he wants to get laid. we decide to finally head to elwoods.

5:45 pm

the old dudes follow us to elwoods.

6:00 pm

we've settled into the back of elwoods. we are all switching to hard liqueur. kyle has joined us as well.

6:15 pm

one of the old dudes decided he wants coke so he leaves. the other one does too. finally.

7:00 pm

franz is trashed and is downing caesars like no one's business. i'm ordering tequila shots. 

8:oo pm

franz starts his own dance floor at elwoods after switching the music to old school rock and funk. the waitress lets him control the ipod.

9:oo pm

franz finds out that the blond aussie waitress is actually english. considering she's been serving us for over a year and we didn't know this yet makes him feel awkward.

the timeline gets fuzzy after this but basically kyle puked and had to go home. poor janet almost fell asleep but got a second wind. chelsea barrie joined the party and we all kept drinking till 11:30 when finally we decided we were all trashed and had spent enough money. i tell you, going to bed at like midnight and getting a full nights sleep is glorious, no hangover!

of course franz and i decided to go to ikea the next day and haul a new 102 pound dining room table home by bus and walking. christ.

i'm so 3008, and you're so 2000 and late.

my jazz class is on tuesdays at 8 pm. it's one of the highlights of my week. i love ballet with a passion but have to be extremely focused and concentrated during that class on mondays. 

as in jazz, it's my fun class. the technique comes easy to me, thus I rarely have to think and I can just let go. the only time i'm thinking is when we're doing set ups during warm up and i feel like i'm dying.

jazz is very effortless to me and comes naturally. and after a particularly brutal week of work frustrations and not getting picked to be a finalist in the crazy 8 film competition (sure pick the script about the kid and his pet dog, whatever, GAH!), i wanted nothing more then to get to class and finally pour all my frustrations into class and DANCE IT THE FUCK OUT.

so i get there and some blonde model looking chick walks in and is all like:

"oh hai Laura is sick this week so i'm teaching her class. 'kay so i know this is jazz but i like lyrical more so we're gonna do lyrical, yay!"

entire class:

"..........."

lyrical. ugh.

lyrical is a mix of jazz and contemporay and looks retarded when not done right. why? because it's RANDOM MOVEMENTS. there is no structure to it. listen, i've seen some great lyrical pieces that do what they're supposed to do, make you feel the emotion of whatever the dancer is portraying. it can be very beautiful/intense/inspiring. but it's not ANY type of dance i'm interested in learning. i'm just not that kind of dancer. i was taught under severe rules and technique, it's hard for me to get into the mind set of free flowingdowhatyouwantthrowyourarmsaroundandjump. i only do that when:

a) i'm in da club after 5 rum and cokes and ac/dc comes on.

b) i'm drinking champagne at home with franz and we're dancing in the living room for no apparent reason.

lyrical is a state of mind, you either get it or you don't. i firmly believe it can't be taught. you can teach a dancer the steps of a lyrical piece, but they need to bring out those movements and expressions or else it falls flat.

jazz can have it's lyrical moments, but it's done subtely.

see crazy lyrical piece:

see jazz:

thus in my head i went "FUUUCCCKKK MY LIIIIIFEEE" when this little pixie stick decided to randomly change the class that PEOPLE HAD PAID FOR. we wanted jazz. and now we were stuck learning how to move our arms in a circle.

so she starts off with a BRUTAL warm up. i mean the girl beside me keeled over and had that "i'm gonna vomit from the pain" look. the teacher, named tara jean by the way (seriously?!), is all like "oh come on, 5 more minutes!". here's the thing, our jazz class is at level 1. which is either advanced beginners or dancers who have been out of it for awhile and need a refresher before we go to next level (myself). this chick was doing warm up for pro's and straight up, none of us had that strength or flexibility yet.

so after that was done and she assured us we were nice and loose, as in we're all keeled over with muscle spasms and cramps, the choreography started.

lyrical, ugh.

christ, it's this uber slow piece about heart break and the first minute i'm supposed to rub my face and then fall to the ground. it's like, come on. the whole time we're learning her piece she keeps saying "dance how you FEEL. just whatever's going on with you right now, dance that. let it out. that's what's it about"

all right i'll dance how i feel, which is pissed. fucking script about a DOG got picked instead of me. also, don't tell me "oh we loooooooooooooved your script, we feel kind of bad for not picking you". don't tell me that. tell why i didn't get picked so i can learn from this experience. if you loved it so much, but me in top 6 biatch.

needless to say my movements were a lot sharper, quicker, and stiff. then she kept looking at me like, you're not doing it right, feel the heart break.

BUT I'M NOT SAD I'M PISSED.

and there is my problem with lyrical. you're telling me to dance how i feel but then tell me how to really dance it, thus you are telling me how to feel, thus completely contradicting your theory of lyrical dance.

"dance how you FEEEEELLLL. no feel this way."

so my plan to dance it out failed, apparently i'm not allowed to dance angry in lyrical. only sad to sad emo songs. our jazz teacher better pump herself with meds and be back in full swing next week so i can go back to shaking my thang to M.I.A choreography and continuing to prep my skills to crush someone in a random dance battle. you never know when those things will pop up.

ta!

julia gulia

*** i'd just like to add that tara jean is a beautiful dancer and if i would have walked in with the knowledge that this was a lyrical class i would have enjoyed it more. but when you come into a class of people who are there for jazz, kind of hard to get them in that mind set. lesson learned tara jean.