It wasn't planned this way, but my family and I wound up in Victoria, BC for Canada Day (Or as my kids insist on calling it, 'Canadia Day').

This wound up being a lucky coincidence; the dates were picked around my mother-in-law's trip to Everett for a high-school reunion, my work schedule, and my kids summer school. We had no idea, when booking, that Canada Day fell on july 1st, nor did we think about the significance of this.

July fourth means little to me, apart from being the day we used to have fireworks (before local communities decided to punish the responsible many in order to weed out the irresponsible few, by outlawing all fireworks). America may be my country of birth, but now, and even when I was a child, it all too often it represents what's wrong in western culture. While I will root for American teams in the Olympics, and think the ideas upon which this country was founded are pretty damn good, I can't in good conscience stand for the national anthem or salute the flag; these things carry too much aura for me of mindless, reactionary, love-it-or-leave-it patriotism.

Particularly in this bush-era, post 9/11 world, the stars and strips says to me, 'we don't care of we're stupid and wrong'. Yes, I'm cynical, but I remember the sixties, when we fought another war far away for no reason anyone could justify; I remember when we wore american american flags on our jackets to say 'it's my country too.' We fought a culture war then, and thought we were winning. I don't always have the resolve to keep fighting it.

So it was particularly refreshing to come to a country in the midst of celebrating it's symbolic birth, when it's a country I have no emotional baggage with.

Canada is a northern neighbor, a country that's produced some of my favorite bands and musicians, a place where they share my passion hockey. Ok, sure, they don't know how to play football correctly and they kind of sound like Bob and Doug; but they have far saner policies on drug enforcement and gay rights, and they make much stronger beer. The sum is still pretty largely positive. So I could embrace the festival spirit easily, letting go my own opinions on nationalism and politics. Today, it was about red and white flags, fireworks, beer, and pretty girls (have I mentioned the girls in Victoria? Ok, let me put it this way - grrrrrowl.)

Victoria does a pretty good job of throwing a party. My hotel faces the Legislature building across Victoria's Inner Harbor; this means I was greeted at 8am - yes, 8am - by loud, live music from a stage across the water. This pretty much went on all day; bands, DJ's, speakers. It was going on when I went to breakfast, a couple hours later when I walked into town, and it was still going when we came out of the Empress Hotel after having afternoon tea.

I felt wildly out of place; I wasn't wearing red. It looked like everyone walking up and down the street, locals and tourists alike, were decked from head to toe in red and white, including a number of girls who'd found clever ways to fashion Canada's flag into tops and mini-dresses. Every car seemed to sport a flag, and everyone looked happy. No one was protesting anything; no anti-war demonstrations, no rallies, no nonsense; it felt like the entire city had set down it's issues for a party.

The best part about all this was how my kids reacted to it.

We planned a brief foray into Canada just because Ruby, my youngest, has no memory of being anywhere but the USA; I wanted to give her the experience of spending money that isn't all uniformly green. I wanted her to see road signs in metric; I wanted her to see what it's like to cross a border. But today's celebration gives her more than an experience of place, it gives her a sense of national identity. A week ago, she thought of Canada as a name on a map, and a place where sports teams or certain family friends used to live. Today, it's a people. It's a culture. She'll never forget seeing people in red, celebrating a flag and a nation that meant nothing to her only days ago.

Businesses were giving out small Canadian flags; our hotel has pins in a dish on the concierge desk. My kids decorated themselves with flags and pins, and dug through their luggage for any red garments they had. Happy Canada Day, they said, to anyone they talked to.

The party went on into the evening, culminating with a terrific firework display which was launched directly in front of my hotel; we were able to see both the display in the sky, but also the pyrotechnicians on the ground and the apparatus they used to put on the show. People had been camping out for hours to get a good viewing spot; but we had best possible vantages, both from our room, and from the hotel's rear patio, only a few yards from the launch point.

It was a terrific day; one of those experiences one can't really have, other than traveling with kids. Watching some vague concept become real and tactile and human; watching how that lights them up. I've traveled a lot, and those moments don't come every day, not even in every trip. But when they come, they make every penny spent pay off a hundred-fold.

Tomorrow, we leave Victoria for the states. The only good thing about this, for me, is that my iPhone will once again work over EDGE without paying insane international data rates. Apart from that, I can't think of anything I look forward to. I want another week in BC, at least. But the three days I've had are some of the best travel days I've had in quite a long while.

I'll admit, though, that I've been singing Blame Canada all day.

Victoria, BC; land of pretty waitresses.

I know. It sounds funny. But oddly, it's true. I've been on Victoria Island for roughly 30 hours. That's a dinner, a breakfast, a lunch, and another dinner.

It's not just that every waitress who's waited on me has been unusually pretty. It's that every waitress I've seen has been unusually pretty. And not just the waitresses; this includes busers and hosteses. Hell, there are even pretty waiters.

What do they do, farm them? Is it the water? That clear Canadian air?

At lunch today, the waitress who served us looked every-so-slightly like Christine Taylor. She was distractingly cute. The woman who seated us at breakfast, a dark-haired british girl, had a sort of school-teacher, marion-librarian look, like she she had a little bit of wild thing lurking behind a a professional demeanor. And she wasn't even the prettiest of a staff of pretty girls (and boys) at Canoe Brew Pub.

This afternoon, I sat in my hotel's lounge watching a bartender and cocktail waitress who could have been sisters; olive-skinned and exotic, and even when I pictured them together.

Even the girls who waited on us tonight at the snack-shack at Butchart Gardens were cute as hell; one corn-fed, plump and sweet, the other skinny and pale with way too much back eye makeup.

The killer, though was Saturday night's dinner. The hostess looked like a twenty-year-old Mira Sorvino, in a dress that came about as close to naked as one can be and still work in public. This girl was so stunningly pretty I had trouble paying attention to my meal, ordering the wrong dish and forgetting (three times) what I meant to order to drink. I can't remember a thing I ate, and was almost completely unable to maintain a thread of conversation.

Her dress was made of some sort of clingy white jersey; cut loose in the front, it had the effect, almost, of some greco-roman toga. But when back-lit, the dress went nearly see-through, with that light-between-the-thighs thing that makes me insane. When she turned, the back managed to fit her hips and butt like a second skin, revealing the color, and every seam (and the exact location of the label) on her lacey thong.

This is the kind of girl who should be getting paid to take off her clothes; the fact that she'd look amazing out of them could not have been more clear. Every single time she walked though the dining room, I lost track of my meal. She's the kind of girl who's going to stick in my head for a while and might turn up, some day, as a character in some piece of fiction.

Is this some secret, that Victoria has cornered the market on beautiful women? Is this where they're harvested, then taken to L.A. to be starved and then plumped with silicone and then stiffened with botox?

Or is it some plot among the restaurant managers of Victoria, to hire uniformly stunning people to serve food?

I will say, Victoria has turned into a very cool city. I Haven't been here in twelve or thirteen years, and in that time, it's grown up a lot. There are many, many new buildings, and many old ones are currently closed for upgrade and renovation. But what's cool about it, now, is that it's managed to preserve a european sense, while also developing a very organic sort of hipness. This is what Seattle must have been like twenty or thirty years ago, what I think Portland was like ten years ago. It's a city that hasn't quite been discovered as a hipster scene, but is heading there, in it's own way rather than because people are coming here seeking a scene.

Thirteen years ago when I visited Vancouver I thought, I could see living here. Today, I thought the same thing about Victoria.

Of course, both trips I've had the luck of unusually good weather; both times, temps in the high eighties with clear skies, then gentle night-time breeze. I might have a different opinion if I'd been here in February or so.

But as with every trip I've ever taken to the Pacific Northwest, I look around and think, yeah, I see why people leave California for this place. Particularly this month when California has the Stench of fire and brimstone in the air.

A friend of mine just stepped up with an offer I couldn't refuse, in terms of a trade for my Utilikilts credit. I worked a lot of very entertaining, but very hard hours in booths all over the bar area, getting men out of pants and into kilts.

Utilikilts has come a long way since then; they have a flagship store in Seattle now, and wholesale to select kilt vendors nation wide.

In the old days, the booths were run on a shoestring, by a staff of very few employees, and many volunteers, who did it out of love for the product. The pay? If you worked a long hard day, you'd get a kilt. and maybe a t-shirt. But we didn't do it for the pay, we did it because it was so goddamn much fun.

Part carnival barker, part sales rep; part freak show, part haberdasher, part lifestyle counselor, part pirate, part street performer. I've never accosted so many strangers, copped so many feels, been flirted with by both genders, as much as I have at fairs and fests and games, when I used to shout things like "Sir, have you considered FREEEEDOM from TROUSER TYRANNY?"

It was some of the most fun I've ever had working.

It was work though. Hell on knees and ankles; long, long hours bending, stretching, fetching, measuring. Hours roaming and passing out cards, offering what was, for most people, a first look at a concept. Because that's what the utrilikilt was; not just a garment, but a new kind of garment. We've all seen a kilt before, or a sulu, a sarong. But this wasnt exactly any of those. It was a technical object, an exaggeratedly masculine garment. A skirted garment for men without a cultural reference.

The thing with MUGs (Men's Un-bifurcated Garments), is that they mostly come from somewhere. Scotland, Indonesia, Africa, Polynesia, or even Rome. The Utiliikilt, though, comes from nowhere but Seattle, WA. It wasn't a reference to 'what we wear back home' or 'what my ancestors wore'; it was a statement on it's own. "This is what I wear," it said, for no reason other than because I want to.

That's come a long way in four or five years. Now, when I wear my Utilikilts, people don't say 'is that a kilt?' or 'nice skirt'; they say "hey, Utilikilt!" The concept is winning it's way into the culture. And I feel I've done my part for that. I own seven or eight Utilikilts; I wear them, if not daily, then at least weekly. I own no suit, no tuxedo; I wear kilts for fancy dress affairs.

On the other hand, I've stopped fighting the fight. I don't usually wear my kilts to work (they just don't suit sitting at a desk that well; ladies, you know what I mean). I don't feel I have to wear a kilt just to make a statement. I wear them because I like them, because they're flattering, and because they're comfortable.

All those fairs I worked brought me a lot of joy, some *action* (if you know what I'm sayin'), and a lot of kilts. I didn't buy most of my kilts, and I still wound up with several Utilikilts worth of credit.

Thing is, I don't really need another UK right now. I look at the lineup and can't think of anything they have, that I need.

So my hard-earned kilt fund is getting turned into another kind of kilt.

I just ordered fabric samples from my favorite Highland Kilt maker, J Higgings in Kansas City. When I get back from Seattle, I'm going to place an order for a new kilt in some variation of Red MacRae Tartan, a compliment to the one I already have in MacRae Hunting.

It'll be something like this:

Hey, sometimes a guy needs to go old-school.

My brutha-man Dirty Uncle Joe, another skull ring enthusiast, just sent me a terrific picture of his collection.

I need to post a similar one of my rings.

These are left-to-right:

First four: Dave's Custom (RIP, Dave), including an en-graveer option, and a full-jaw skull.

Middle: Deadringers, engraved in honor of a N.I.N song.

Last four: Tony Creed, another Dave's engraved BTW (born to work), and two more full-jaw Dave's.

Great pic, Uncle Joe. I'm hoping you add some more to that soon; but there are so many great choices now!

(Click for a full size version)

Joe Cocker at Woodstock - captioned for the clear-headed.

Prepare to howl (well, if you're too young to remember Joe Cocker this might seem slightly less funny).

(thanks for sending that to me, Jeff)

I'm in that last-few-days-before-vacation zone.

You know how it is; the spirit begins to leave and go elsewhere, while the mind deals with a steepening ramp of details, crossed with a descending curve of time.

I had this vague notion I would have some free time toward the end of the week; as it turns out, I've barely time to manage what I need to do before I leave. I have months worth of I should-document-that-in-case-I-get-hit-by-a-bus; my tendency to keep everything in my head is part if what makes me good at problem solving, but it always hurts when I need to leave. Because I'm that guy; the one who knows where the bodies are buried, the one who knows who everything works and why it works that way.

On the other hand, in four more days, I'll be in the PNW doing pretty much nothing. So there's that. Ok, it's not a tropic isle, with a dark-haired maiden, but it'll do.

I have virtually no plans for this trip. I'm not doing any diving; I'm not going to be doing any work (I mean it this time). I have no tickets to events. I have no agenda at all. The closest I get to plans is that I kind of want to spend a gift certificate I have at the Utilikilts store, though honestly, I don't really *need* another utilikilt (so if someone wants to buy a $400 gift certificate for a significant discount off face price, I could then spend that money on a new highland kilt I've been eying.)

Meanwhile, I can barely summon enough attention to pack, and no attention at all for anything else beyond getting through these last few days without my head exploding.

Forget Crystal SKull (or, you know, try to). Let's talk about a much more satisfying, if sometimes frustrating, version of Indiana Jones.

I'm talking about The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

I watched - and loved - this series when it was originally on. And I've been waiting, ever since my kids first watched Raider of the Lost Ark, for Young INdy to turn up on DVD so I could watch it with them.

For those who never saw this show, it was imagined as, for want of a better word, a sort of "edutainment". Aimed at kids, it fused age-appropriate action-adventure with educational content. Each episode featured Indy, at different ages, meeting historical figures in various sorts of adventures.

It didn't always work. The ten-year-old Indy (Corey Carrier) was cute in a pudgy-and-precocious way, but the episodes featuring him appealed more to younger kids. The older, teen indy (Sean Patrick Flanery) had almost a teen heartthrob look to him. While both versions of Indy made sense, they appealed to different audiences, and the show, being built around the lead character's age, wound up very different.

The network, or the producers, or whomever, eventually dropped the younger Indy; presumably because of it's greater audience interest (Shows featuring a ten-year-old protagonist may be very successful today, but in 1993, they didn't play to enough audience for it to work). IT made sense; the teen-indy episodes featuring Flanery worked incredibly well; the weakest ones were pretty good, and the best of them (like Congo, January 1917, featuring Dr Albert Schweitzer) were truly great teevee, with both adventure, and a convincing sense of the real human story behind history.

Because that's what Young Indy was all about; putting a face and a personality to history. And they nailed it.

Sometime late last year, the DVD release finally happened. And I Couldn't have been happier when I noticed it on netflix a couple of months ago. I've been watching it with my kids for teh last several weekends, and was pleased to see that the show I remembered was just as good as I thought it was.

More importantly, though, I found that it worked just as designed.

A week after we'd watchedRussia, 1910 (where Indy meets Leo Tolstoy), my older child told me with big, sad eyes that she'd just read about Tolstoy dying in a railway station; she now had an imagine of who Tolstoy was, and cared about him. A few nights ago, my younger mentioned how much she liked Picasso's work, and how she's like to meet him; a week before we'd watched "September 1908', in which Indy had met a young and flamboyant Pablo Picasso. In both cases, they dry historical figures were suddeny people.

The thing about this that makes it magical is that my children were not fooled; they understood they were being slipped education in the guise of entertainment. BUt they didn't care; they loved it. Which is an almost sorcerous feat.

There's a down-side, of course.

We know how some directors can't fucking leave it alone. Look how many 'Director's cut, versions there are of Bladerunner. Look at the the butcher job Adrian Maben did when he re-released Pink Floyd at Pompeii. And look at - *choke* - the director's cut Star Wars.

They've done it to Young Indy as well.

Now, they haven't in any way ruined it. The episodes are mostly intact, and just as cleverly done, just as well written, just as entertaining as ever. But they made a classic bad choice about order.

I'm a staunch beliver in creation order over chonology order. I'd happily slow-roast whomever decided the Cronicals of Narnia should be released out-of-order; some of the series key moments are sucked dry of resonance by being played out of original sequence. BUt it isn't just chronology that makes the re-packages Young Indy problematic.

What they've done is taken the episodes, and re-packed them as two-hour movies, linked together by transition scenes shot in the mid ninties. This is problematic because some of these edipsodes were fimes a year or more apart (hence Indy suddenly looking three years older and 10 lbs lighter in teh middle of the first disk). Worse is that the bridge sequences are obvioulsy shot later, with every character looking different for four minutes mid-film.

The other thing that makes this work poorly is that certain themes were intended to play together. The episodes originally alternated week to week between little indy and teen indy. The first two introduced a story in egypt, then completed it with teen indy in mexico, closing a story arc and creating a continuty. That continutity breaks when we have ten hours of film in between these two episodes. Worse is that the Mexico episode tells us about INdy's monther dying, so we know, at the close of the little-indy shows, what it means when Mom collapses. As played on the DVD, the collapse seems oddly out of place, and then two epsisodes later, we hear a sudden mention of her dying, far in the past. The resonance of her collapse is lost, and the mention of her death later seems all too causal.

I was going to write a detailed review but fuck it.

Iron Man rocks. Go see it while it's still in theaters. It is, in my opinion, the best superhero movie of the modern era. I loved it.

Iron Man was my favorite superhero comic, and the movie completely did justice to the character. I even loved Gwyneth Paltrow in the part, and that takes some doing.

Go see it twice.

This is just so goddamn funny.

I wish I had a better quality copy of it, some of the best bits are obliterated. But still.

Details here: Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure

NSFW, but honestly, unless you're looking close you'd never notice.

(found on BoingBoing)

After Disneyland was opened in 1955, for whatever reason (economy? inspiration? copycatism?), many communities seem to have opened small local theme parks.

I say this because every park I read about seems to have opened between 1958 and 1962.

In 1961, we didn't have much to do at home on summer days; we had longer summers (because school got out when summer started and went back when fall started, unlike today's ten week summer vacations). We had no home video, no arcades, no wii, no ipods and internet. We had to go someplace.

In the bay area, we had parks like Frontier Villiage, Santa's Villiage, Happy Hollow, Children's Fairyland, and Marine World.

These parks were simple, inexpensive to visit, often incredibly cheesy. They had no roller-coasters, minimal rides. They were more akin to what we'd think of as a carnival today. No one traveled here from elsewhere for them; they were local attractions. By today's standards they seem quaint and ridiculous.

However, for those of us who grew up with them, they were wonderful places.

Most of them are gone now; and I imagine that's true most everywhere. Victims of better parks with wilder rides, of increased travel, and later, of sheer quantity of other entertainment, few of them could make make it. hose that survive are mostly now part of chains like six flags, and cater to modern crowds with cookie-cutter rides.

A few of the old ones survive. One such is Happy Hollow, a park every bit as silly and down-home as it sounds. This is a park my family visited often in the summer. Decades later, the park survives, changing little and slowly decaying. I haven't been back since I was a teenager, even when my kids visited with other friends and family. I couldn't quite bring myself to go see how small and silly it had gotten when in my memory, everything was new, shiny, and huge.

This weekend, Happy Hollow auctioned off some old artifacts. The claim is that they will modernize without changing the look and feel; new attractions, more environmentally friendly rides (ie, no more diesel). I assume some of this is seismic retrofit, and some of it may be a need to bring things up to modern safety standards for insurance reasons. The story sounds good, and the park remains under the same ownership, not part of some huge corporation. I hope what they do is to preserve this piece of americana, rather than obliterate the other-time-and-place sense old parks have.

I hadn't planned to buy anything at this auction; I went more to see what the old park looked like, and to see what was being sold. But auctions, you know, they have a way of catching one up.

Next weekend I take delivery on the lamp, below.

This thing is fifteen feet tall; I've no idea who built it, but it was one of four, built in 1961.

Sometimes, one just has to own a piece of childhood.