Thanks for reminding me that I haven't written a blog in a while, guys! Oh right, you didn't. That thank you has been revoked. Actually, I have been putting off writing a blog for so long because I may or may not have forgotten to write one. This is strongly due to the fact that I have been playing World of Warcraft again, and let me tell you, it has not been good for my hygiene issues nor my blogging but that story is for another time.
I realized this morning that I have not written a blog for over a month. It was also brought to my attention that my last blog was part one of two. That means for a whole month, my loyal readers (all three of you) have been distraught with suspense wondering how my vacation concluded. I am sincerely sorry for putting you through this but I am afraid its going to be somewhat like the release of Star Wars Episode 1. It will not even come close to being as brilliant as my other blogs and it will only be worsened by the introduction of a annoying and brainless character. But because I am slowly losing money and fans, I will release it for public consumption. This is the second and final installment of the series so if you haven't yet read part 1, I suggest you do so by clicking this link Click Me! If you just finished reading it, or have previously read it, continue reading. Let's continue!
Last time I told you of the things we did in PEI. This time, however, I will tell you about New Brunswick. First off, I have to tell everyone about this strange place called Andy's Dummies. What exactly Andy's Dummies is still remains baffling to me. It's one of those things that just needs to be seen in person to be believable (like the KFC double down sandwich). It also is one of those things that is just too bizarre to see in person. We started noticing these hand-made wood and cardboard signs by the road as we were driving through New Brunswick. "Andy's Dummy's 5 kms" - signs like that. By the time we got to the turn-off where ANDY'S DUMMIES was announced in a bigger homemade sign, we missed it but thought maybe we should go back and check it out on our way home. That was the plan until that night when we are the hotel in PEI I decided to check it out via the intraweb, and at first it seemed all charming and such. Note the segment from a website that has an article regarding Andy's Dummies:
Rounding a corner on the highway half-way between Aulac, New
Brunswick and Cape Tormentine, en route to catch the P.E.I. Ferry, your
vision is accosted by a large and rather peculiar gathering, a colony of
unmoving and mute figures who sprawl over an embankment in front of a
roadside country farm. These are Andy MacDonald's "people" - put together from Javex
bottles, discarded remnants and other assorted oddments, and usually
accompanied by a liquor or beer bottle. Arranged in a superb assortment
of attitudes to resemble
a pantomime in suspension, each figure has pinned to him a piece of
cloth or plastic on which is written his most distinguishing thoughts.
These wonderfully flamboyant
people, holding conversations with each other, are infused with their
author's witty perception.
I would recommend you click the link to not only get a better understanding this place, but to also see images of his creations. He also has a Facebook fan page that has images of almost all of his creations.
It was while browsing through photos of his "people" that I came accross this terrifying character...
Oh great now I am never going to be able to read this blog again, nor will I ever be able to wear these pants again. This picture still scares the ba-jeebers outta me. After I saw this freaky scary dummy monster, I began to realize that Andy is not a charming, cute little Santa- man at all but a crazy Javex-Frankenstein building weirdo. After that if I was bad on the trip my parents kept threatening to take me back to Andy's Dummies on the way home. Never again will I disobey my family.
Okay, back to roadtrippin'. After we left PEI we headed south to the city of Moncton, New Brunswick. One distinguishing factor of Moncton is that it is divided into a French speaking side, and a normal speaking side. The french reside on the french side, and the regular people on the normal side. We had not realized this until after we got to Moncton and had booked rooms at a hotel, unfortunately, on the French side of town. That means for the first time in my life, I could not communicate with hot chicks because I couldn't speak their heathen language. The only saying I know in French is "Je suis un renifleur de résidus" which translates to "I cant speak French." So when the hot chicks would flock to me, all I could tell them was "Je suis un renifleur de résidus" and they would frown and walk away. It was weird being in a country that didn't speak my language. Even the signs were wrong, they had the French on top of English, whats with that? If I know anything about being English and Canadian, its that we like it on top! (just look at the map, Canada is on top of USA, England is on top of France. Simple). But I did learn something interesting that day. I learned that if I, an English speaking person, were to learn another language, such as french, to native French speaking people I would have an English accent. That blew my mind to think that I would have an accent if I chose to speak another language. Insane.
New Brunswick
The day after we arrived in Moncton we went to the Magnetic Hill Zoo, which is conveniently located next to Magnetic Hill. Magnetic Hill is a hill that is supposed to be all freaky cool, where if you put your car in neutral at the bottom of it, you magically roll UP the hill! (http://www.magnetichill.com/english.htm) Sounds cool, right? Wrong. In all the TV shows it shows this hill to be fairly good sized hill, which it isn't. It is actually a gentle slope. It also claims that your car is being pulled up hill by a strange mysterious force, which it isn't. The whole gimmick here is that it only appears to be a hill gentle slope when it's actually an optical illusion. It appears as if you are traveling up a slope when in fact you are going down it. While it is something that is kinda fun, it should really only be checked out if you are already in the area, don't plan your whole trip around it (like I did). Oh and go during the off season like we did so you don't have to spend $5 of your hard earned money to be underwhelmed by the experience.
The Zoo, on the other hand, is something you can plan a trip around. It's a small zoo, but it's a great zoo. It was here in this zoo that I got the closest I've ever been to a lion (I was in arms reach of it!) It was right there, scratching its back against the fence, and I could have touched it! It was amazing. It was also at this zoo that we witnessed two Leopards trying to mate. For some reason this fascinated my mom who wanted to stay and watch them claiming that it wasn't gross it was "natural" to which I responded by saying "it is also natural for them to eat their young. Do you want them to do that in front of you too?" Just because something is "natural" doesn't mean you should watch it. Taking a dump is natural but I don't want random people watching me while I'm in my office, that's just weird. The cougars were also being all freaky with each other, and there was a depressed Mandril that bared its teeth at my dad, and some Ostriches pecked my eyes out. I punched them in their throats and they coughed my eyes right back in my eye sockets so it all turned out okay. There were also Otters being all cute and swimmy aroundy and playful and cool. I don't normally get all excited about zoos but this was pretty cool.
Other events not related to my vacation
Because my New Brunswick blog is kinda short, I figured I could muster up another story. Here's one about my drama production. For those who don't know, I am taking drama 10 this year. Part of the curriculum requirements is to preform a collective play, or drama production. Basically, the whole class wrote a play, practiced it, and performed it in front of a live audience of judgmental parents. The character I was assigned was somewhat of a minor character. I had several small lines to deliver, oh and a monologue that was a combination of various Shakespearean prose. I have never needed to memorize anything of this magnitude nor have I ever had to perform in front of a live audience, so naturally I was super nervous. For weeks I practiced and practiced my lines until I had them completely memorized (I could rap them too). Well, for a week I practiced.
The play we were preforming was a "play within a play." My character,
Spontaneous Steve, was auditioning for a role in the schools production
of Romeo and Juliet. Spontaneous Steve was supposed to be, well,
spontaneous. He was supposed to run around the stage, using different
voices, and being crazy. All of which I can do, when I am not worrying about
crapping my pants out of shear nervousness because I have to be on stage in front of people. And, as a larger fellow,
running around on a rickety mock stage was not something I like doing, in fact I try to avoid it. In all honesty, I don't think I accomplished any of the requirements for my character largely due to the fact that I was super nervous and scared. But, on with the show!
It was minutes before the show and we were all lined up waiting to get to our places. I stood in line in full costume that consisted of; a bright orange shirt with reflective tape down the front, swim trunks, two different colour shoes, and my sisters colourful tuque. As I stood there I could feel the nervousness swell inside me, my bowels turning against me. I began to shake, shiver, and cry. "No!" I thought to myself, "don't be discouraged! You can do this!" Yes! I could do this, after all I was being forced to do this. No turning back now, act or be killed! I stood there trying to silently pump myself up, giving myself compliments, and chanting the haka war chant. I had done well in the dress rehearsal, so that must mean I will do even better in the real thing! Then silence, the lights when down, and we were ushered to our various places (by David Usher and regular Usher), my nervousness had come back tenfold, and my bowels were determined more then ever to ruin more then just my performance.
My scene was the first one, so I stood next to the stage waiting for my queue, still pumping myself up. "I can do this, I can do this..." Then, the lights shone down on the stage. The actors took their places, and the show had started. "Spontaneous Steve, can you come in now please?" That was my queue, on I go. But I didn't go, I stood still. My mind said go, my body said no, but my legs said "screw you, I'm going on." I stepped on stage, the lights reflecting off of my tape. This was it, here we go. I delivered my first few lines, failing to muster up the courage to do different voices. Then came the monologue.
For beginners to theater, they tell you not to look at the audience. For good reason, a large audience focused on you can be (and is) very overwhelming. Unfortunately, my character was supposed to look directly at them. Luckily the stage lights that were shining on the stage were so bright that I couldn't see most of the audience (also burning my retinas). So here I was, standing middle of the stage looking the audience straight on while trying to muster up the remaining courage I had to belt out this monologue and have this night be over. I opened my mouth, and almost without thinking I began to rattle off line after line, all while walking around the stage (still couldn't bring myself to run around) and interacting with the cast members up there with me. It was all going so good.... Until my mind decided to stop working. I completely blanked right in the middle of my speech. I stood there thinking, trying to find the line somewhere in my brain. What was my next line? Was it, "If you are to look into the seeds of time and say which seed will grow and which will not, speak now to me?" no, that's not it, that's after. Oh no... what are any of my lines?! I had completely forgotten everything. Every word that I have ever learned had just vacated my brain. I couldn't remember anything.
I stood there in the middle of the stage for what seemed like an eternity. Do I retry? Do we restart? Do I cry? Did I fart? Was it a fart? I hope it was a fart. My mom recalled that I looked like I was going to cry. Probably due to the look of terror I had on my face. I glanced around and noticed that my cast mates also had a similar look of terror on their faces. All these weeks of hard work, crumbling before their very eyes all because some bumbling buffoon cant remember his simpleton lines! Luckily, my always encouraging conscious was there work me through it, giving me advice such as "Say something, dammit!" I did say something, "Stuff!" I called out. And what do you do when something doesn't work? You do it again. "Stuff!" I called out again. And then something happened. All this time I had been trying to be Steve, and not myself. Then finally, after what seemed like hours, my mind was like "eff it, I'm Ayden again! Im going to improv my way outta this sh(poop)!" So that's what I did, I improv'd my way out of it. Claiming that "this never happens" and that "I can usually preform my Shakespeare perfectly" Steve was politely declined the role of Juliet, just like planned. Once again, my hilarious improv skills got me out of another tight jam.
My mom had dragged along her friend who captured my performance on her I-phone, so I got to see myself later and turns out the 800 hours I thought I was standing there, blanking out, was actually only a couple of seconds. Turns out nobody but my mom and fellow castmates who knew what I was supposed to say could tell that I was screwing up. So there, I did it, I got up on stage and said lines in front of people and didn't crap myself. Hooray for Ayden.
Well that's my time for this week, I hope you all have a fantastic last days of school. Good luck with tests and such and I will see you all... sometime. As always, follow me on twitter by clicking the link on the side there, follow my
Tumblr, It's like this blog only I update it with links, videos, and other stuffs. Ayden out!
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