So I really like Victoria. It reminds me a lot of the town I grew up in, Oakville, which is odd because I didn’t really like Oakville. Having spent another day in Victoria, I quite appreciate the laid-backness of the town, how polite everyone is and how serene it all seems. Granted, a surplus of gorgeous weather and pretty girls in skirts have influenced my overall impressions, as have the disproportionate number of good comic book stores in the city. Really, who knew. The record stores are decent enough as well. Besides rooting around in second-hand geek stores, I also went down to Beacon Hill park at the foot of the city and climbed up to the lookout point, from which I had a good view across the straits at Washington State. Craggy state, that one. Otherwise I spent a lot of the day just sitting in the sun by the harbour or on the campus by the bunnies, just reading. Vacation-like stuff.

Also went to see King Arthur this evening. While it’s not as awful as some reviews made it out to be, I do question why it was made in the first place. Were people crying out for a more historically accurate (though I use the term loosely) depiction of the Arthurian myths? Because I can’t see the point in stripping a tale so rich in story down to it’s drabbest raw essence, and then dressing it up in a cliched Hollywood style, complete with plot holes you could lead an army through. I personally would have rather seen a big-budget take on the fiction, complete with the magic, romance and intrigue. And while I will never complain about seeing Keira Knightley onscreen, casting her as love interest to Clive Owen was just gross. He looks like Nicholas Cage and is obviously old enough to be her father. Yech.

I am still trying to shake the jet lag and will probably manage to do so just in time to head back East. I would prefer to not be falling asleep at 9pm tomorrow night in Seattle, since it’s my only night there, but that’s sort of assuming that I’ll find something interesting and worth doing on a Tuesday night on my own in a city where I know no one. Should be a party.

I’m writing this post on my friend Will’s laptop at the University of Victoria. It’s true – this place is absolutely teeming with bunnies. Rabbits rabbits everywhere, it’s fantastic. They’re not tame but not really fearful either – I got a baby one to come right up to me by pretending I had something yummy in my hand. I’m big on bunnies, if you couldn’t tell.

I got into Victoria about noon Sundaym taking the ferry over from just south of Vancouver. A nice trip across the Strait of Georgia, great view of Vancouver island and the mainland, as well as some truly swank houses on some little channel islands. Once into port it was an hour and change bus ride into downtown Victoria and then another half hour to the University campus where I was meeting up with Will. Then some rabbit chasing and back into Victoria for some wandering and a whale watching trip.

Victoria is a really beautiful city – incredibly clean and immaculately kept. It’s got that big small town charm. Everything seems really new, as though it was built in the last five years or so. I’d like to see some pictures of what this town looked like 10 or 20 years ago, just to compare. I especially liked the harbour, with all the ships and sea planes and ferries coming and going.

One of the goings was our Zodiac heading out to sea to try and spot some orcas. We were quite successful out at San Juan Island, technically in US waters, when we came across a pretty large pod of killer whales heading south. There were maybe a dozen or so in total and a couple of them put on a show, breaching high into the air. I got a couple pictures that I’ll post when I get home. I think they turned out alright. Also spotted on the trip out were gulls, cormorants and harbour seals. Very neat. Being out in the Zodiac raft clipping along at 40 mph was quite a trip, it gets damn cold out on the water. This was my first time ever being out on the ocean (well, technically not the ocean but whatever) and it was a humbling experience. Not just seeing the whales, but the sheer scale of nature out there. Really amazing.

And then after marvelling at the wonder of marine life, we went and ate some for dinner. More sushi, but this time it was really fresh, like I had hoped it would be on the West Coast. I hope it doesn’t ruin me for the sushi back home…

I’ve got another day in Victoria tomorrow that I’ll probably spend wandering around downtown some more while Will is in class. I’d like to see more of Vancouver Island, but there’s not really time to get out there. It’s interesting being on an island like this – I’m very conscious of the fact that the only way on or off is through the ferry (excepting private boats or planes). I find it a little unnerving for some reason, and it makes me feel like the whole city is a sort of gated community (helped by the fact that it’s so clean and proper). I’ve just never been on an island city before, and find it fascinating. On one hand, in case of zombie attack on the mainland, you’d be safe and isolated on the island because the odds of zombie hordes figuring out how to run the ferry are pretty low. On the other hand, if the zombie outbreak were to occur ON the island, you’d be screwed since there’d be no way off. These are the things that will keep me up at night, I’m telling you.

That’s it for now. I may not check in tomorrow unless I get some more amazing insights (zombie-related or not) about Victoria. But after that, Seattle. Whoo.

Man, they’re not kidding when they say “if you don’t like the weather in Vancouver, wait”. I checked the forecast before heading out yesterday morning and it said nothing about rain. Maybe I should have intepreted that as “no MORE rain than usual”, cause we got showered to poured on two or three times in the course of a few hours. Big-ass rain, too – no wimpy rain. Punch a hole through your brain pan and make soup of your brain-calibre rain. I swear to you I saw one raindrop crush a man where he stood. I saw it with my own eyes.

But rain notwithstanding, my first full day in lovely British Columbia was good. My cousins and I did the all-you-can-eat sushi which was decent enough. I certainly ate all I could eat. Reports of how fresh the sushi was on the west coast seem a little exaggerrated though – it didn’t taste any fresher than the stuff in Toronto on a good day, but I’m not complaining. They limited the menu to basically salmon and tuna nigiri and sashimi, but combined with healthy amounts of chicken teriyaki and maki, it was just fine with me. After lunch we grabbed the SkyTrain rapid transit into downtown. The SkyTrain is great for getting INTO downtown from around the greater Vancouver area, but crap for getting around in it. There’s only three SkyTrain stops in downtown proper, so once you’re in you’re basically walking or taking a bus. Also curious is how their fares work on the honour system. There’s no ticket takers or turnstiles, just vending machines for pass cards that you’re expected to use correctly before boarding. They say the odds of getting caught by a spot ticket check are about 1-in-20 so a gambling man might never pay to take transit. Crazy.

Our first stop downtown was Gastown, which with all respect to Vancouverites, was kinda lame. It’s a single street just off the downtown core that’s been tourist-ified to look all historic-like, but is really pretty artificial-feeling and uninspiring. Run-of-the-mill tourist-trap shops, that sort of thing. That it’s surrounded by somewhat seedier parts of town also detracts from any sense of authenticity. We took a quick walk around but headed to where the locals were soon enough. Downtown Vancouver is really different-feeling from downtown Toronto, a lot cleaner in design and more constrained-feeling. The streets are narrower and the shops more chi-chi – most of what I saw was pretty boutique-like and upscale. It didn’t have the same ‘people actually live here’ feeling that somewhere like the Annex has, but this is only the retail centre of town. I’m sure it gets much more lived-on a few blocks out. I didn’t do much shopping as anything the shops here had I could get at home for about the same price, and without having to lug it across the country. I did however find a bunch of the non-SACD Bob Dylan remasters for mighty cheap, so that was a nice acquisition.

Sadly, I still haven’t seen the ocean since I arrived. Some of the rivers and such coming into the city, yes, but not the mighty Pacific itself. That’ll change today when I head out to Victoria for some whale-watching action and then down to Seattle. I’m not done with Vancouver yet, though. When I get back mid-next week, I’m heading back into the downtown to check out Stanley Park, UBC and the coastal region of the city in general. I’m betting that’s the part of the city that’s really going to ‘wow’ me.

It’s a good thing I found that extra book on the plane, because I already finished the first book I brought with me, Tim Sandlin’s Honey Don’t. It’s a bit of a departure from his previous stuff, being a broadly satirical slapstick-y political farce, but still decent enough if lacking the depth of the Gro Vont trilogy. And it’s not set in Wyoming, amazingly enough, although Jackson Hole does get lovingly name-checked. Next up I’ve got Tom Robbins’ Villa Incognito which has gotten some lukewarm reviews, but it’s a slim enough volume that it’ll be over soon enough either way.

Okay, got a ferry to catch.

So it turns out I have a computer with high speed internet in the bedroom I’m staying in at my aunt’s place in Vancouver, so you won’t be getting rid of me that easily, at least for the days I’m here.

The flight out was alright. The new Terminal 1 at Pearson is cavernous. Very clean, very sterile, very efficient. It’s only a few months old though, so I’m sure it’ll get all grungy-like soon enough. My travelling companion for the butt-numbing trip was a large man who decided to read his Sikh newspaper out loud, very slowly, for the entire five-hour flight. I’ll say this much, he got a lot of mileage out of that newspaper. It panicked me a little at first to think that I’d be listening to this for the whole trip, but once the headphones went on it was fine. The in-flight film was Laws Of Attraction, which wasn’t very good but wasn’t offensive either, and it did the necessary job of killing an hour and a half so I’ve no complaints. A nice bonus was finding a brand new copy of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time in the front pocket of my seat. I needed something more to read over the next week, and the free book gods took care of me. I don’t think the owner was coming back, anyway.

The flight was otherwise uneventful, landed in Vancouver and am enjoying the view of rivers and mountains. I haven’t seen the ocean per se yet, but will no doubt be getting plenty of that in the next few days. I think someone mentioned all-you-can-eat sushi for today. Mmm mm good. I think I’m definitely feeling the jet lag, though – I was barely able to stay awake till 10pm local time last night (though that was 1am EDT, not bad for such a long day) and I slept through till 8am. 10 hours is a lot of sleep for me.

Okay, this post is boring me now. Bye for now.

Rolling Stone talks to New York City’s Ivy about their just-completed fourth proper album (fifth if you consider covers album Guestroom). In the article, the band mentions that the new album is a return to their rawer Apartment Life-era sound and if that turns out to be the case, I’ll be happier for it. I found their last studio album Long Distance to be pretty, but too adult-contemporary sounding and generally weighed down by the production. The new tracks they recorded for Guestroom (as opposed to the ones taken from older b-sides and whatnot), however, were stripped-down and great. Fingers crossed that this new record puts them back on track. They’re hoping for a January 2005 release – add that to their promise to release a compilation of rarities and unreleased material sometime next year and a new Fountains Of Wayne record in April, Adam Schlesinger and company are busy indeed… but not too busy to help you make chili.

The Arts & Crafts website has Broken Social Scene at the Harbourfront Centre on August 27 taking part in the NOW-sponsored Gobsmacked festival. Details are sketchy on exactly what this is, but one thing that is known is that this show is FREE. Eff arr eee eee. Yay. Also appearing at the festival will be NYC lit-rockers (no, I don’t really know what that means) One Ring Zero – they’re scheduled for the 28th.

Comic Book Resources reports that Halle Berry will not be reprising the role of Storm in X-Men 3 after it was decided that she would not be given a larger part in the third and probably final film – after all, they telegraphed the Dark Phoenix story a mile away. I personally won’t miss her – after all, Storm never really did much. Which I suppose is sort of the root of her complaint…

This may well have been one of the most stressful two weeks in recent memory. Which is extra sad considering I had a four-day weekend sandwiched in there. It hasn’t been pull-my-hair-out nervous-breakdown stressful, just really really busy. So many things to do, my life of late has been an endless series of lists made, revised, crossed off, rescheduled, thrown away, and new lists made. MAN. Needless to say, I am glad today is just a half day and I’ll be on my way at the stroke of noon. Of course, I’ve still got a crapload of stuff to take care of at work before I leave. And speaking of craploads of stuff, it’s obvious to me that I don’t know how to pack. I swear I’m not bringing that much stuff yet I feel like my bags are way too full and heavy for just a week. I don’t understand. Am I spoiling myself with too much clean underwear?

ANYWAY.

I obviously won’t be posting daily while I’m away, but I’ll have access to computers pretty much everywhere I go so I will likely make a few updates. One from each of my various destinations, at the least. Apologies to anyone who comes here for a daily news fix, you’ll just have to do without for a week. Unless something earth-shaking happens, I’ll probably just let it slide and catch up when I get back. I will be checking my email, though, so if you need to get in touch go ahead and do so like normal. I’ve also set my mp3 of the week to update at the stroke of midnight on Saturday night, so if all goes well I won’t be missing an entry there. See how I take care of you? You love it.

np – Elvis Costello & The Attractions / Blood & Chocolate