What a Christmas present

I saw the trailer for this recently thanks to the attentive Lorna Appleby (thanks again, Lorna!) and I can hardly wait. It opens in Canada on Christmas Day! What more could I want?

Clever animation + comedy + rabbits + magic + Scottish islands... who could honestly ask for any better combination?

I suppose many people could. But not me. I have a cinema gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket and I think I've found what I'll redeem it for. Interestingly Snowdon (the white rabbit) has taken to lying on the throw rug in front of the television at times, legs stretched behind him, facing the screen. Not that that in itself is interesting, but he only seems to do it during action movies or creepy shows like Supernatural. Put on a comedy and he sneaks away or turns his back and starts investigating his genitals or looking for something to chew holes in.

Vampires and bunnies.

I hadn't seen this in years til a friend put a link on Facebook this morning. I laughed even more this time around.

What can't we face if we're all together? (Except bunnies?)

Trickster 2010

The Trickster Project is a brilliant thing. Put together under the auspices of the Calgary International Children's Festival, it consists of a superb collection of professional entertainers who (in this specific case) spend a week at the school on the Eden Valley First Nations Reserve, about an hour or so south-west of Calgary in an idyllic spot. That's this photo - the instructors in front of the school.

They shut the school down for a week - no lessons at all - and we move in. The kids spend four days learning juggling, tightwire, unicycling, stiltwalking, magic, clowning, balancing, hip hop dancing and aerial work (hoop and swinging trapeze), and on the fifth day they put on a choreographed show in front of the entire community in the school gymnasium. This is the second consecutive year we've done Trickster at this location so most of the kids are building on skills they started with last year. Quite remarkable progress in some cases.

I decided to go bigger this year, and introduced escapology to my groups. By the end of the week I had a handful of the older kids doing a wonderful thumb-tie + mail-bag escape in only seconds. The thumb-ties we used were standard black plastic cable ties; while one student ties another's thumbs together I handed out a couple to the audience to examine. Best moment of the week: one of the fathers decided to test the cable-tie himself while watching the show. After our act he sheepishly came up to me with his thumbs firmly cinched together; it took us five minutes to find a pair of side-cutters to free him with.

At least it proved they were real.

As I happen to live in a small town only 30 minutes from the reserve (unlike most of the other instructors who are from elsewhere in Alberta, and in some cases Toronto and Vancouver as well), on Halloween night I saw a handful of 'my' kids come to my door trick-or-treating.

In fact, some of them came back twice.

I like to think it was because they like me.

But it was probably the extra candy.

Jailbirds

Hey, bunnies are cute. Sweet, adorable little fluffy balls of fun.

Oh yes, and territorial agressive fur-chomping paper-ripping pen-rattling little monsters that'll kill you as soon as look at you. Yeah. That's them.

You may remember that at the age of about eight weeks Augustus decided to assert his dominance over his six-week old companion Snowdon by chasing him around violently and taking chunks out of his fur. We separated them for a couple of weeks before allowing them to be together again and they've been fine ever since, doing bunny-trains around the living room, grooming each other, snuggling up for comfort. Ahh, yes. Bonded, though definitely with a pecking order.

Things were good.

Then about a week ago there was a sudden surge in butt-sniffing and one or two little chases. Snowdon, the slightly younger, was not quite 1500g (the minimum weight our vet considers it safe to neuter at) but he was close enough and we didn't want the bad behaviour to get worse so we booked them in for their little snips.

The day before the operation things kicked off again briefly. No worry - they're booked in to get fixed the next day!

Operation: successful. Laser surgery. They ate well afterwards and seemed fine. For a few hours.

Then frantic chasing and fur-ripping again. We tried separating them for a few hours. Put them back together. Twenty seconds later it kicked off again. Separation. Reintroduction. Fighting.

Damn.

Did we leave it too long? Augustus could feasibly have been fixed a week or so earlier but we thought it would be better to get both done at the same time, and there were no warning signs to presage the oncoming fury.

The vet says we have to separate them for 3 months (though allowing them to 'visit' through the bars of their respective pens). We alternate which one gets to have the run of the living room and which has to settle for the pen, and they don't like this. Foot-thumping, cage-rattling and Tasmanian Devil paper ripping. Rip rip rip rip rip.

Lots of anger.

The hope (I stress hope) is that after three months when the testosterone currently in Augustus's system dissipates they will still feel the bond they've had until now, though apparently there's no guarantee. The whole point of having a pair of them is that they can keep each other company. Having to keep them separated after that point would be awful. I must say I'm feeling a little...down about this. Not sure what else we can do though.

Here's Augustus B. Bad doing hard time for crimes committed, surrounded by savaged broadsheets.

Bring out your dead.

I'm not dead yet, but I'm doing my best to look that way.

A few magicians (myself, Ryan Pilling, Yeats Wong and assistant Gwyn Auger) have been booked to put on a Halloween magic show at Club Paradiso in Calgary later this month. Not your family-friendly gig, we decided. The title is "A Brush With Death...and bunny rabbits".

No, there won't really be any bunny rabbits.

Or death.

I've revived my Ghoul character though, and Yeats' girlfriend has offered to do my makeup on the night with the intention of making it far more sinister than comical.

Yeats will be doing needle-through-arm, and if I have the time to practice enough I'll be doing tiny-chunk-of-metal-up-the-sinuses-and-out-the-tear-duct. I don't think the trick has a shorter name.

Wish me luck.

Hiding from the roof monster

This summer's dismal weather has served to highlight the problems we already knew existed with the roof on our house when we bought it two years ago. In other words, when it rains, it leaks. So yours truly is taking advantage of three forecast days of sunshine and cool temperatures to replace the roof. Spent today up above, ripping off all the old shingles.

Do rabbits like hearing endless hours of heavy boots and dragging, scraping noises coming from overhead? Not particularly, it would seem.

But they'd better get used to it if they're going to become the adventure-buns we expect them to be in years to come.

Calgary Highland Games

Calgary Highland Games yesterday. Woo-hoo! Always fun, and this year they've got a new venue - superb. More people, more space and a beer tent that could comfortably have housed something very, very big and funny.

I was booked for a couple of stage shows and MC-ing the ceilidh in the evening. Mother Nature decided that we couldn't reasonably have a Highland Games without our share of black skies and pelting rain which chilled things down, but the die-hards that stuck around pendant la deluge got their money's worth.

The headliners for the ceilidh were Celtic Spirit, three Glaswegians who flew in at 2pm the day before, propped up the bars around the city until 2am and then spent the next day gigging at the Games. Frankly I'm amazed they were still upright by 9pm. And so were they. And they're up at the Canmore Games today which means a two-hour drive and no respite from jet-lag. If downtown Canmore gets trashed by a trio of rampaging sleep-deprived and delusional Weegies, I won't even be faintly surprised.

Two highlights: bumping into old friends from the Buccaneers (now also playing with Staggered Pints - the name says it all) and being introduced to Third Reel, a local band who ought to be far, far bigger and better known than they are. Get a CD out, guys! You're too good not to.