Judy’s Joint

Joe and I left the island yesterday for the first time in 4 years to see Dweezil Zappa play his dad’s music. Zappa plays Zappa in Vancouver. Although we had visted the airport several times, we are largely unfamiliar with Vancouver but we have heard about it! Nonetheless, we girded up our loins and set sail from Swartz Bay during the 4th largest wind storm this winter and arguably in the history of the BC Ferries Corp. Wild eved pursers and some other offficially garbed staff tried to stuff us with Gravol but we were and are made of sterner stuff. We did get a little seasick on the ferry, but the pure anticipation of hearing Frank Zappa’s music played live again, after so many years, was overwhelming. Non-plussed, we disembarked from the ferry and pressed on by car into the wilds of downtown Vancouver.

Our drive was accompanied by that same dark and heavy rain storm from the ferry ride, but now we were also surrounded by millions of crazed Vancouverites driving like, well. . ., Vancouverites. I spotted the first chinck in our holiday trip armour appearing. Somewhere around 2nd Street, quite close to the Cambie Bridge, we turned on each other. After being cutoff by several lunatic motorists on the highway , we were nearly sideswiped causing us to run down a few poor saps on bikes, and almost careening into an invisible pedestrian crossing against the light. We were then forced to pull a Ueey on Burrard Street just to flag a cop down to help us navigate to our hotel. This in spite of possessing 3 maps for downtown Van and one of those was a really good Google map with a star showing our hotel. At this point I began to gnaw on Joe’s liver and he responded with some really hard pinches. We were very unhappy.

It was an hour to showtime, so we checked into the hotel, parked in the wrong place for hotel guests, dumped our stuff in our room, belted a shot of Tequila for fortification, checked our armpits, locked up the room, reparked in the right guest spot and climbed in a Black Top Cab and rocketed off to the show (the driver was a Vancouverite).

Now, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre looks pretty cool from the outside, with lots of those white Broadway type lights. The surprisingly large crowd however, had an overall unsavoury look to them. At least I thought so. There was a generous sprinkling of aging freaky types like Joe and I, as well as some young hip-hoppers, but surprisingly, most of the crowd were Dweezil’s age! I just never thought of that. Dweezil has a following! And they look pretty normal, like my son-in-law Craig. Like Dweezil looks, decent and smart. I think his dad would like that.

Anyway -here is a short clip from this tour and if you have a chance to catch it. . . .Do It!

Victoria, the island and the southern mainland got slammed last night with the 3rd major winter storm this season. Many people are still without power from the last incident and now, as you can see, trees and powerlines are down all over. Driving is a nightmare. Last night winds in Victoria topped 100 kilometres an hour and Race Rocks at the entrance to Juan de Fuca Strait measured wind speeds at more than 150 kilometres an hour. If this is the result of global warning we are all done for in the not too distant future.

Joe and I are going to see the Body Worlds Exhibit in Vancouver next week. These are real cadavers that have been dehydrated and filled with plastic. I think that my dream of being an objet d’art when I am dead may come true!

I don’t know what to say about this. It’s just really funny!