My Corporate Challenge event was cancelled today, due to lack of participants (which in turn was due to the Cobalt Reduction unit, but that’s all I’m saying about that), so I decided to go to Celebration in the Square, which kicks off Edmonton Pride Week. I unfortunately slept in till 1 pm and missed the parade, also reasonable temperatures, but I still ended up hanging out there for a couple of hours. Good times, good times.

First impression: nice turnout! This was actually at the periphery, in the shade. There were a lot more people in the centre of the square where all the good stuff was happening.

Rainbows everywhere!

This guy was also everywhere. Ev-uhhh-ry-where. Fluttering here and there with a big grin, mirrored shades, Hom-brand Y-fronts, and an unparalleled willingness to shoot you with his imaginary arrows of love. Morpheus muttered something about how this guy was pulling all the straight girls and how totally unfair that was, and after that I didn’t want to seem like a groupie so I shot him from the back.

Many folks looked as if they were being horribly strangled by their balloon capes. Hilariously, at various points in the venue you’d hear the occasional yelp, followed by firecracker noises as these people bumped into people with body piercings or leatherfolks, and then you’d walk past and there would be a sad little heap of popped balloons on the ground.

The nice people staffing the Society of Edmonton Atheists booth were quite willing to pose for photos, ramen for that. They had the cutest FSM model, but I discovered when I got home that my photo of it was too blurry to use. Noodly interference I suppose.

Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ as performed by two of many talented drag queens.

Oh, how prim!

TILL SUDDENLY

Had to get a shot of this, I think it’s been about ten years (maybe more?) since I had a snowcone. Seriously, the last time I remember eating one, it was at whichever K-Days I attended that had Love Inc performing during the evening. I think it was blue flavour.

Some hula-hoopers just hanging out and hooping in front of the stage before I left.

It was a really nice day, except for coming home and finding out that as predicted, seventeen tons of glitter had attached itself to my sunscreen as I was walking through the crowd. (As a final note for the day, it was 29 degrees out and the UV Index was probably off the scale, but my SPF 55 held up amazingly well. Not so much as a tan line on my feet from my new runners, seriously. I happily predict an end to the stupid criss-cross patterns I’ve been plagued with every summer.)

…and my face hurts from smiling.

I just got back from the greatest concert! With some useless observations:

1. At some point in your life you may feel tempted to attend an organ concert early. Do not do this. I kid you not. You will be subjected to things like this:

Face in organ (calling down to stage): OK, one… two… three.
Tech at organ (pressing one key): Bwaa.
Face in organ: That sounded good. Next one. One… two… three.
Tech: BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

To get the full effect what you need to do is stand in front of a semi truck and get someone to lean on the horn for twenty-five seconds straight. Seriously, my eyeballs were vibrating, and then of course you get the comedy act afterwards:

Face in organ: Can we do that one again?
Tech: What?
Face: What?
Tech: What?
Face: I said, can we do that one again?
Tech: Whaaaaaaaat?

2. This was Cameron Carpenter’s Canadian debut! And yes, folks, fuckin’-A. I’ve never been to a show I would have actually turned around and seen again immediately afterwards till now. Pure, unadulterated joy.
a) Initially I took him to be Liberace’s skinny and neglected lovechild, and I was getting all ready to hate him; do not, however, permit yourself to be taken in by the Swarovski-encrusted winklepickers. This guy is the real deal. At one point during a Bach toccata, playing with both hands and both feet on four keyboards and about fifteen pedals, he was a blur – like the Tasmanian Devil in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. You know the phrase ‘pulling out all the stops’? Yeah, after one particularly vigorous credenza the folks in the front row were literally ducking in their seats.
b) He turns out to be incredibly charming and well-spoken, aside from being very sparkly. I was stirred by his explanation of both the Schubert piece he chose (based on Goethe’s ‘Der Erlkonig,’ a dark and disturbing poem) and the two pieces he chose to improvise.

c) It would not previously have occurred to me to do a fugue based on Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’ It was so clever and cheerful I wished I could have put it in pill form for when I feel down.
d) Thanks to a healthy diet of CBC Radio 2, I never really thought of the organ as ‘church music’ – I really see it as the sensuous, disturbing, passionate, slightly wacky, slightly chameleonic instrument it’s always been. And Carpenter just played the HELL out of the Davis organ. If you could compare his sound to anything without fear of hyperbole, it would be the organ at Unseen University. Like, to the point during his organ solo that you could shut your eyes and not even guess what instruments were on stage. Piccolos? Electric guitars? Tubas? Ninety-one guys having a tubular bell fight? I actually tried it a couple of times and it was still jarring to open my eyes and see one guy on stage.

I mean, just a wonderful, talented, cerebral, startling, and pleasurable evening, with two gracious encores, and the most excited lobby chatter I’ve ever heard. Thank you, Cameron Carpenter! I had only vaguely heard of you before tonight but now I luff you and am blowing you a kiss from very far away.

3. As a sidenote, I noticed a solid trend tonight in women’s fashion, to whit, a lot of ’40s and ’50s stuff, and all really well done. Wide-legged dress trousers in a Katharine-Hepburn-type cut, high-waisted pencil skirts, tight cardigans, puff-sleeved blouses, pearls, dainty flats, off-shoulder ballgowns, all brilliantly and unabashedly retro as well as quite sexy and up-to-date, and not costumey or self-conscious in the least. I’m actually wearing a retro-inspired outfit to a wedding next weekend so we’ll see if I can pull that off half as well as the dames at the Winspear tonight.

No, I’m still not done my hydrogeology paper. I still have tomorrow and Thursday thank you very much!