Time Marches On

Venturing Out In Public

Got together last night (I did) with a small group of friends at the Hudson's Landing Pub in Marpole. Actually, each friend was of average height. Apparently this is now an annual event; all of us having gathered in this spot for the past three years running. Actually there was no running involved. Gifts were exchanged (much to my annoyance) and the whole evening wrapped up in about 4 hours. Actually, I had done all my wrapping in the afternoon.

Bonus feature: One of the people in attendance was THEE Bartholomew Woods (see picture below). The reclusive blog master himself made a rare appearance in public (he seems to prefer living the online life) and we were all much entertained by his retelling of personal dreams he'd had while sleeping at night.

Homemade Cheapskate Christmas Cards

I never considered myself a 'cheapskate' for doing it, but each December, when 'Christmastime' would stomp its mighty black boot across the path of our carefree stroll thru the year, I would speed myself down to the nearby card shop at Oakridge (Hallmark) and purchase ONE (1) suitable Christmas card that I could then send out to all my friends/family.

And no, I don't mean to say that I bought ONE PACKAGE of 25 or so cards; or that there was only one person in my 'friends/family' catagory. I mean to say that I'd go down to the shop and purchase a single, solitary, individual, all by its lonesome, 'zero plus one' Christmas card. ("Why buy two when one will do.") However, the key phrase here is the mention of a 'suitable' card and not just ANY card.

The yearly plan always required that I find a Christmasy scene (outdoorsy; snowmen; xmas lights) that had enough room left over in the foreground to allow the placement therein of my own cartoon characters (drawn on a clear cel page) that would, when placed overtop the image, seem to be interacting with the original scenery. As if the two segments had been sharing the same page together from the git go. (If that's being a cheapskate, so be it.)


From that point, it was just a matter of printing off copies of the now bastardized card in the quantity needed. While most of these Frankenstein card creations have been lost over the years or mailed out until stock was depleted, I still have a few of the 'postal series' that I created for any of the people on my mail delivery route that dared to give me any Christmas tips.

On the day following any 'tip giving' (which ranged from $5 to $100) the unsuspecting home owner would awake to find one of these nasty hybrid cards lurking in his/her mailbox that said: 'thanks' and was signed: 'from your postman'. It seemed like the least I could do to acknowledge the giving of gift between strangers.


As of this writing, I have yet to head out to the shop to find this year's card to be bastardized - a ritual I look forward to as much as I do the roasting of chestnuts. But time is ticking and, being the one time postal employee that I am, I should know better than most, that the looming deadline for successful pre-Christmas delivery of xmas cards is close at hand.

The Kerrisdale Experiment

It wasn't that I was getting bored with the normal world of '24 frames per second'. Heavens no. But when I decided to capture brothers Don & George on a shopping trip to Kerrisdale Cameras with my super 8 camera one day (1974) I decided to use an attachment that allowed me to shoot the journey in a series of single frames instead. This was merely an opportunity to say that I was using all the equipment in my camera bag at least once; a successful finished production was secondary.

The visual result above (my first blogger video!) shows Don at the wheel of his beloved 'Great White Tongue VW' speeding west along 41st street on a warm summer evening; eager to pick up a much needed part for his basement darkroom at the handy Kerrisdale Cameras store (which you'll be glad to know is still in operation at the same address today). George and I somehow managed to survive Don's wild driving (including a short stop at Woodward's) with only minor bumps & bruises. All of this was necessary in order for the satisfying hobby of developing photographs into the wee hours of the morning to proceed as scheduled.

And just in case you missed it near the end of the ride, here's a frame grab of the old Woodward's back entrance at Oakridge.