Great company, cosmopolitans that burn your eyebrows off, geek talk, yulblog.

Entendu lors de la revue de presse ce matin à LCN:

“Certains quotidiens parlent aujourd’hui des six travaux de Jean Charest, d’autres des dix travaux de Jean Charest”.
“Ils font évidemment référence aux dix travaux d’Astérix”.
“Heu, non, pas tout à fait. Ne s’agit-il pas plutôt des douze travaux d’Astérix?”

Erratum: C’était à Radio-Canada, pas LCN. Mes excuses.

Will it suck?

I’ve recently joined an Ultimate Frisbee team. For those who don’t know, Ultimate is an outdoor, team sport that resembles football, but it’s played with a frisbee. Last night, I had my first practice. As I had suspected, I was the oldest person on the team.

As I practiced with this group where the average age was probably 23, I thought about the future. I saw myself five, ten years from now, still wanting to join new clubs, still wanting to be active, to try new things. I imagined myself still doing those things, but the gap between my age and that of the others getting larger and larger as time goes by. How many years of this do I have left? Is time running out to do new things, to take risks? Sure, you can say “if you’re young at heart, it doesn’t matter”, but in actuality it does. It’s simply easier to feel comfortable with a group of one’s own age. These people accepted me fully yesterday, but I think that’s because they don’t suspect I’m the age I am. Someday, though, it’ll be more obvious.

My mother once told me she worried about my being alone in life one day, if I didn’t hitch up and make babies right now. I comforted her and myself by saying that in my generation, more and more people were choosing this way of life, and that we’ll all be old and childless together.

However, these days I’m not so sure about that. As we get older, there are fewer and fewer groups and organizations to belong to. In university, it was ridiculously easy to find like-minded individuals. Learning institutions are replete with special interest groups. Most of your colleagues, also students, were your age. If you were into the bar scene, most people there were your age. Now I find we’re scattered, mixed in with everyone else. Well, I still hope Mom was wrong.

And by the way, Ultimate was great fun. I can’t wait for my first game. I’ll eat those young’uns alive!

UPDATE: Scratch that last sentence. Two days after the first practice, I can’t move. My running “coach” isn’t too happy with me, trying a new sport right before the race, which is Saturday. With another Ultimate game tonight, I should be stiff as a board Saturday morning. Fun fun fun.

For Halloween 2001, my friends Mike, Steph and I organized a HUGE 80s-themed party in Steph’s loft. We told everyone to bring all their friends, and to tell them to bring all their friends, and so on. We set up a neat web site with a pumpkin carved as a Pac-man, prepared 8 hours of 80s hits, and bought as many pumpkins as could fit in a Toyota Echo. We started getting nervous because in the weeks before the party, we were starting to hear about it from people we didn’t know.

Anyway, the party was a monster hit, and over 100 people attended. It lasted until 6 am, even though we had moved the time back one hour at midnight. We had Ghostbusters, Robert Palmer girls, Hans and Franz, Bill and Ted, the Clockwork Orange guys, Jessica Rabbit (me), Run DMC, several Blade Runner replicants, etc. As we had several friends who were out of town, Steph set up a webcam on the mezzanine to broadcast the party. And Mike ended up naked on the Internet.

We were wondering what to do for an encore this year, and we were trying to think up themes as fertile as the 80s, but not as overdone as, say, the 70s. I mentioned that the veterinary med school at U de M had once had a sex-themed party, and that it was hilarious. It wasn’t a disgusting ass-grabbing fest, but rather something funny where people had dressed up as drag queens, dominatrices, hookers, Anna Nicole Smith, pimps, flashers, Monica Lewinsky, and so on.

At the suggestion, T immediately said “oh you HAVE to let me design the invitation”. My DJ friend whipped up an amazing playlist. And think about the decoration possibilities! (no, we wouldn’t just lay down one big tarp, like some have suggested).

Problem is, this could sooooo be misconstrued. On the one hand, we have to make it open again, because just a small group of cerebral friends sitting around in PVC is not my idea of a good time. But the more people show up, the more over the top and out of control this could get. And we are talking about my friend’s place. What do you think? Good idea, bad idea?

UPDATE: it seems it’s on. It seems it’ll be called the Blue Ball.