Ignore the date that you see up there. The end of January has been called off due to lack of interest. Go flip your calendar, right now! …Today’s date is February the minus third.

I drove my bike to the mall yesterday. I had to go to the Sony Store, because Queen Elizabeth wants me to have a video camera.

The west end is like a whole other world. I biked up a couple of streets that I’d never been on before.

On the way back, I was bootin ‘er up Berlin Street when I hit a patch of black ice. Jennifer skidded out from underneath me. I landed hard on the pavement; my leather jacket–rock’n’roll armour of the ages–cushioned my fall.

I rolled out of the way just in time, as Jennifer exploded into a dazzling ball of flame! Ka Booom!!!

Actually, her chain fell off. I flipped her upside down in the middle of the street and got her all sorted out. I was singing, it was below freezing but the sun was shining, I didn’t care about anything.

Last night I worked at some film screening at the Marquee. The whole thing ended early and I was home by 9pm. Between the club and the studio, this was my first evening at home in 2003. I was pretty excited. I could read, write… sit in my room by myself and get drunk… have a bath… Whatever it is normal people do in the evenings.

I was also thinking I could go to bed early and get some sleep. I figured that wouldn’t be too likely. Shows at the club usually start around 10:30pm. It would be like someone with an office job going to bed at 9am.

In any case, I was asleep by 11 o’clock. Maybe that’s why I’m so hyper today.

This morning I was doing some work on Jennifer. I accidentally inhaled a whole big cloud of WD-40. Now I feel sick. Machine oil churns in my stomach. Aside from a couple of tooth-fillings I don’t contain much metal. My body’s rejection of the substance reminds me that I’m not a robot.

I’m working on it though. Tonight I perform a set of live electro at the Marquee. My hands reach out to touch machinery and coax out clanking rhythms. I pulse with the heartbeat of a cyborg, programmed to make your body move. Pounding sub-bass will engulf the room with the scientific symphony of sickness…

Ahhh, I could sit and write this shit all day, there’s work to be done.

Zed wants content. Everybody else wants a place to stick their 27MB QuickTime rock videos. I sense a beautiful friendship in the works.

A/V – Slow Moving Ambulance

I took a long time to make this video by working on the images in PhotoShop and then importing them frame by frame into iMovie.

And then on the weekend I started my video editing course, and I learned you can get some of these effects in about 2 seconds using Final Cut Pro. C’est la vie.

Tonight at the Khyber Club, I’ll be DJing, having a few drinks, playing Ms. Pac-Man and dancing all around the bar. Nicholas Macmillan hosts “The Satisfaction” every week but tonight I’m crashing the party with a crateload of electro and obscure indierock singles.

It’s the one-year anniversary of hot action. Wear red.

Performances by A/V and Spinoza will air tonight on Zed. The programme will broadcast at 11:20PM, right across Canada on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

I’m going to miss it because I’m playing the Marquee. Unfortunately, we don’t have a working VCR at our house either. If anyone could record Zed tonight for me, that would be great.

I suppose I could phone up my parents in Saint John and ask them to tape it. But I don’t want them to know I’m a musician.

I’m really excited about tonight’s show at the Marquee. It’s the tribute to Joe Strummer and The Clash that I’ve spent the past couple weeks organizing. Revolver will be playing, Peter Arsenault, Yellow Jacket Avenger, members of the New Breed… I’m going to be doing two sets. A/V is going to throw down and then I’m going to perform in a rock band with Allison Outhit, Selwyn Sharples and Ben from Revolver. We jammed Wednesday night and had a blast. You haven’t seen Allison rock like this since her days in Rebecca West. It was great to play with Selwyn again too.

God I need this. I’m in the middle of working fifteen days in a row. In fact, I’ll be doing sound for Jazz Night in Hell’s Kitchen tonight, and then running upstairs to perform.

This show will mark the first time in five years that I’ve played electric guitar on the Marquee stage. I’m so hungry for rock, I might as well just put ketchup on my guitar and eat it.

Ha, gitalong gitalong.

I took a long shower today and picked bits of broken glass out of my body. Spent the afternoon hobbling around the house on my cut-up feet.

My set last night didn’t start off so well. Instead of playing on the stage, I had set up my rack out on the dancefloor, to be in the middle of the action. I got ready to play and the indifference in the room was palpable. People didn’t seem interested. There was something seriously wrong with the vibe. It had all the makings of the worst set ever.

I looked down at my rack of gear and thought, It is my job to own this room. Then I shook hands with a couple friends and let ‘er rip.

I turned everything up as loud as I could get it. It still wasn’t enough. I was up on a table, kicking off beer bottles. I climbed up on a ledge beside the dancefloor while I was singing. Picked up full glasses and threw them overhand.

By the end of the third song, I’d smashed every bottle and glass within a 20′ radius. Half the crowd immediately headed for the exit. Clearing out the deadwood.

I relaxed a bit. A few people were dancing. I relaxed some more and started to have fun, even though I had lost a boot and I was dancing in a pile of broken glass. “I know I should have crawled away” and suddenly I was down in it, writhing around and howling into the microphone. A thought passed through my head: I have problems. There’s too much that I’ve been putting off for too long. Certain aspects of my life need to be a lot more intense.

I really wanted people to have a good time and I tried to put on the best show I could. Afterwards I was surprised how many people came up to tell me they’d enjoyed themselves. Maybe the crowd wasn’t as hostile as I’d supposed.

Afterwards, the dancefloor was a mess of dirt, beer, broken glass and blood. So was I. I tried to apologize to one of the bouncers, but he just smiled and patted me on the back. Moral: if you like trashing bars, go join a band.

After the show the DJ took over and the normal dance crowd started to arrive. I found my boot. The shoelace had broken, so I taped the boot onto my foot with duct tape. Punk rock.

I was in the mood to get down. I was dancing to MARRS, and something didn’t feel right. So I went to the bathroom to check things out. I wound up needing pliers to pull a big shard of glass out of my boot sole.

I like gay bars. Friendly!

~I Escaped For Six Weeks [3MB mp3]
Fourteen days in the belly of the beast again. Day or night, it’s all the same. Two weeks, time to forget my name again. I know I should have crawled away.

Fourteen days in the belly of the beast again. I know I should have crawled away. Two weeks, time to forget my name again. Spit is all I had to say.

Welcome back, break my teeth, feel my skull crack as my head’s slammed against the door. But I beat them all and I will beat you too, pig. I just forgot what freedom’s for.

And some things I do very well.

Tonight at Reflections, it’s the “Hang The DJ” CD release party. Five bands: The Richard Bachmans, xEnvisionx, King Benny, The Clap, and A/V.

Show starts at 10. Cover is a lousy $2. First 50 people get a free copy of the CD, which has something like 19 local bands on it.

The cool kids will stick around afterwards and dance to DJ Bon Scott.

Arrrrr!

One of my contact lenses ripped about a month ago, so I’ve been wearing glasses for a while.

I just got new contact lenses last weekend. On Monday, I put them in and wore them around for the first time.

They’re a little bit different from my old lenses. For one thing, they have a slight blue tint to them; presumably to make it easier to locate them when they are swimming around in clear solution.

Anyway, it had been a while since I’d worn contacts. On Monday night I went to bed and completely forgot to take them out.

I woke up Tuesday morning and lay in bed for a minute rubbing my eyes. “I wonder what time it is, it must be half past ten,” I thought. I opened my eyes and sure enough, my digital clock read 10:30.

And I could make out the numbers without squinting.

That’s when I realized what had happened. My eyes felt a little tougher and thicker than usual.

I probably should not have fallen asleep with contact lenses in. I got up and dragged myself into the bathroom and closed the door behind me.

The bathroom in my house is painted blue. “Blue,” I thought. I turned around and looked in the mirror.

My eyes had turned blue.

I blinked and opened my eyelids as wide as I could and tried to shake off sleep.

I don’t mean that my irises had changed from green to blue, either.

I mean that my entire eyeballs, whites and everything, had metamorphosed into a metallic shade of royal blue. Glittering cobalt cataracts sunk deep and dark into my eye sockets.

My vision was still okay, so I wasn’t immediately worried. But there was definitely something weird going on with my eyes.

I turned around to leave the bathroom. I could feel the doorknob jumping out to touch my hand. Except my arms were still at my sides. It was kind of creepy. Then I opened the door and went out.

I was lying on my bed thinking about it all. I opened my eyes and rolled them back and forth from side to side. My eyeballs seemed to be sitting heavier in my head.

I reached out to pick up the phone, and stayed my hand on the receiver. The phone hadn’t actually rung.

Then the phone rang under my hand. I picked it up. “Hello, Shelley,” I said.

Over the course of the conversation, I found myself knowing everything she was going to talk about. By the time I hung up, I was starting to get used to the sensation.

I was seeing things a few seconds before they happened. Like little echoes of time, only in reverse.

I got up and ate an egg sandwich. Then I put on a pair of sunglasses and went downtown.

I’m ready to do some serious work now.

Kaico Green couldn’t make it to soundcheck because their car broke down. So now I have this weird little pocket of free time on a Friday evening.

I’m just sitting in the studio with the boss’s DV camera, experimenting with audio and video feedback.

~feedback.mov[1.7 MB QuickTime]
I was going to give this portion of the website an arty new design for 2003, but I haven’t had the time. Still planning on buying a digital camera though and leaning more heavily on sound and picture.

If you want words, you can join the Pirate Club, which is the swordfight.org interactive mailing list.

If you join the Pirate Club you can get a free 1″ button while supplies last. There are three designs: A/V logo, swordfight jolly roger, and hot action ~~

Still have A/V t-shirts as well (as modelled by the fabulous miss b). Write me if you want one of those.