Tonight I went out to see Islands at the Opera House, with Sasha, Katrina and Alice, but I neglected to bring my camera with me. Naturally, a series of really humourous events occurred. Here's what I would have taken pictures of if I could have:

1) Alice eating pumpkin pie out of a tuppercare container in the middle of the crowded Opera House amongst the underage hipsters. (The pumpkin pie stuffed into my purse was actually the reason I didn't bring my camera. It was either spread the joy of the random baking I did last night, or else annoy everyone with my flash.) It was also pretty funny when Alice had her purse searched and she had to pull out the tupperware containing the pie and the fork I had brought for her to use.

2) A French guy kept hitting on us all night. This in itself is not funny. What is funny was his method on hitting on us- it involved telling us that we were like the girls from The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. And then, in French, he proceeded to recite the entire script of the movie, relating the events which happen to the characters in the movie to us. Weird.

3) Alice ran into this guy:

Brie,

Lately I've been missing you tons. We got your postcard yesterday.

1:55 pm

"Seriously Alice, what is wrong with us?"

We passed the time, easily. Melissa was Melissa.

And I demonstrated the sheer sex appeal of turning my pants into shorts which subsequently cut off the circulation in my legs.

We managed to go more than half an hour withou talking about blogging. However, later in the night Melissa confessed that while I was upstairs getting dressed she had been moderating her blog comments.

My favourite thing about pictures of Melissa are what her hands look like.

Alice was uncharacteristically tired, probably a product of dancing at Mod Club the night before.

But Monique and Melissa were ready for action.

Thanks Scott. You were there in spirit. And somehow, even though you weren't there, you still managed to make it onto the blog.

I was trying to tell Monique that her cell phone really isn't that bad. She proved me wrong by comparing it in size to her home phone. (Really, can you tell which is which?)

Purely coincidental.

Also purely coincidental.

We left the house without any specific location in mind, so when we passed by this house and saw the kegger taking place, we looked at one another and thought, "Why not?"

Unfortunatly, they were out of beer, so it was time to move onwards.

But not before helping a random guy in the alley zip up his pants.

We went to a pub, Alice went home to sleep, then we had some nachos, before we decided we were done drinking. "What now?"

Three girls, slightly intoxicated and bored in the Ottawa? What was there to possibly do?

The math was simple. Get Off That Thing!: The Official Game of Cool Kids Everywhere. A game was in serious order, and I could tell Monique and Melissa were dying to play.

The random bystander at the bar, as the thing to get on has been done before, I really don't think it's ever been done this well.

We immediatly headed up to Parliament Hill.

The funniest part about this picture is there was a homeless guy sleeping in the lower right hand corner by the statue. Now, just to clarify, a sleeping homeless guy is not funny, in fact, it's not even slightly humourous. The hilarity is directly correlated with the fact that we didn't even notice the guy sleeping there, despite the fact that Melissa basically had to crawl over him to climb this thing, until we went to walk away and realized we are terrible people.

Monique was nervous about getting on her first thing, but we insisted that there was no one around. As Melissa yelled out, "Get Off That Thing!" we heard a voice call out from above from the darkness, "Get Off!" Apparently he had heard of the game. It only makes sense, since it is the official game of cool kids everywhere.

Another random pulled into the game, while Melissa makes iconic religious figures a part of the game.

The war monument. This was fun to climb.

So fun, in fact, that Melissa climbed it too.

Around this time, I started pulling out the Highland dance moves. "What are you doing!?" Melissa and Mon asked me. "I'm dancing, can't you hear the bagpipes?"

"No, you're crazy."

Monique looked at Melissa shaking her head in disbelief, "Jessica hears bagpipes." The look on her face read, "What next? She sees bagpipers?"

But, I really did hear bagpipes. Mon and Melissa thought I had lost it.

My favourite picture of the night.

We were surprised that no one approached us while we jump over the ropes on Parliament Hill. Obviously they had to have security guards and cameras all over the place, but no one approached us, and we climbed each statue with the utmost ease.

It was almost too easy.

And then we saw the ultimate challenge- The Eternal Flame.

"Guys, I'm sure this is sacriligeous or something," Melissa said.

I gave her a look. "We just climbed the War Monument, and now you're suddenly worried about being inappropriate?"

Melissa was up for the challenge. (If someone could photoshop this picture a few degrees light for us, that would be awesome.)

However, she was so busy trying to avoid falling in the oil-fuelled flame, that she totally forgot about the fact that she was standing on top of wet, slippery marble, and fell in on her way out, possibly breaking her toes and seriously hurting her knee.

Out of nowhere, three police cars show up, and out got two French Canadian police officers.

After going through the usual collection of information with us, the two women looked at Melissa, understanding that we were just having fun.

Being unbelievably nice, they decided to give Melissa a freebie and asked her leadingly, "So, you were just trying to get a closer look at the flame, then?"

"No, actually. . ." Melissa started.

Monique leaned into me, hiding her face, embarassed. "Oh, no. Don't tell me she's going to. . ."

And then she did.

". . .actually, we're playing this game, where. . ."

Melissa could have just said, "Yes, I was trying to look at the flame closer." But instead, she opted to tell the cops the logistics and rules of GOTT. It was definitely a classic moment in time, although I really wish she would have used the phrase, "It's the official game of cool kids everywhere," in her explaination.

The police were embarassed at having this explained to them to, it seems, and they didn't know how to react. "You know there are security cameras all over this place, right?" they asked.

It then became clear to us that we had been being watched the entire time. We were probably providing the Friday night security guards with some serious entertainment, between the climbing on statues, molesting statues, and the sporadic highland dancing.

Let free to go home, we started walking down the hill. And then I saw them.

The bagpipers! I wasn't crazy after all!

The bagpipers were all too eager to engage in some GOTT. Melissa, however, was confused and playing an entirely different game: LATT! (Look At That Thing!: The official game of confused GOTT players everywhere!)

Limping back into the house later that night, Melissa said to me, "I think you're a bad influence on me Jessica."

I only needed one sentence to fully shut down that claim: "Melissa, you peed in a cup."

"Oh. Yah."

And then we stayed up until five in the morning looking up pictures of people that we went to high school with on hi5 and made fun of their ugly babies and wedding dresses. It was awesome.

Afterward, I headed over to Craig's House (well, Alice's house, but if you know anything about the situation, it really is Craig's house) for pre-drinking before headed out to MTV's LoveFest at the Mod Club. While we were putting our shoes everyone suddenly became very concerned, since I had yet to take a single picture all night.

"Jess, where's your camera?!"

"My camera is in. . ." Before I could continue trying to justify my behaviour and reassure the masses that my camera was, in fact, securely in my bag, ready for action, Jessex came down the stairs and interrupted, "WHAT?! Blog didn't bring her camera?!"

Suddenly, there was a mad scramble of people offering to lend me cameras, trying to resolve the imminent fictional crisis.

The appearance of my camera instantly soothed everyone's nerves.

Junior participated in his first "cab shot."

Jonny, Court and I.

And it was just another typical night for us.

The Thursday night drinking team in action!

I got lost for a while, and wandered around for myself before I finally found everyone again.

They had started up their own little dance party on the balcony area.

I met Jeff for the first time last night. I like Jeff, because he's so good for my already inflated ego.

"You're Blog! We love you! You're world famous!" he said, and then he made the statement of his adoration ten times stronger, "We love the blog!" (That's blog with a little "b" not a big "B"). In accordance with this, I also now love Jeff.

[Whoa....I'm going to go to present tense right now. I'm actually in Ottawa right now at Monique's house, and Melissa just showed up. Alice is here too, and we're having a dorky computer party, drinking wine, and have the laptops out. So this blog entry might get a little disjointed. Also, that was like a little sneak preview. Who knows what will happen next?!]

I thought for a moment about what Jeff had just told me, watched the crowd and my friends for a while, and turned back to him. "When life is this good, you have to document it," I said, completely high on life. (Or something.)

I also have a platonic crush on Chris.

Franco and Jessex.

I think Alice looks hot in this picture.

Pure sexual tension. Brilliant.

Court, this is the reason I said no when you asked me if I wanted to go on stage.

Last night, an inordinately high amount of guys hit on me. As I was explaining to Jessex the other night, guys never hit on me in Toronto. But last night it was out of control. One guy hit on me by saying, "You could have chosen 1007 different hair colours, but you chose the perfect one. The way that the lights shine off of it is brilliant."

Boys, please note that this is not a good pick-up line. The ability to dye my hair is not something I should be complimented on.

This picture is to conteract recent accusations that I only put attractive pictures of myself on the blog.

I love going out to dance with Courtney, because with the power of the socks combined, we're like some sort of magnetic life force that causes guys to form a circle around us, giving us as much room to dance even on the most crowded dance floor. (Well, either it's a magnetic life force, or maybe it's just the flailing. One of the above.)

Junior, once again, I have to apologize for repeatedly stomping on you. [Junior, in true action figure character, maintained his stance throughout the night.]

I'm not too sure who this guy was, but he was taking last night's party-esque pictures all night. And attracted to the magnetic life force (and/or flailing) his camera was on Jonny, Court and I for a large portion of the evening. If anyone knows who this guy is, or where the pictures of last night are, I'd really like to see them.

The appearance of this guy have us a major run for our money, though.

His balloon dancing was a little out of control, so Court and I had to pull it up a notch.

Which led to the boy in the plaid shirt (who I developped a non-platonic crush on throughout the evening, mainly because he spent most of the night staring at me, and I tend to like anyone who likes me) coming up to me and saying genuinely, "You can tell that your friends really love life. They look like they're having the time of their lives."

"I'm having the time of my life," I told him.

Instead of trying to compete with the balloon guy for dance floor space, Court and some others decided instead just to learn from him.

Pure sexual tension. Brilliant.

This guy came up to me, and complimented me on my scarf. Every time I've worn this scarf out in the past month, and gay boy has complimented me on the scarf, and this guy was obviously just following in suit. He and his friend also gave a full-up description of how much they liked my outfit using metaphorical and literary references.

I was cool with my new friend, until he started grabbing my ass, and hitting on me.

The gay guy didn't know he was gay! Then today, I started thinking my gay-dar may have been slightly off-balance.** Perhaps he really was straight? Every part of my memory insisted he wasn't, but I reluctantly admitted to myself that I might have been wrong.

That is, until I showed Alice the pictures today on the bus. "Oh, I remember that guy!" she said, "He complimented me on my necklace!"

Gay-dar still in full working order.

Courtney was making friends, too.

Pure sexual tension. Brilliant.

"Junior," Alice said affectionately on the way home, "I think you're my only straight male friend."

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*Us being Alice and I. To quote Alice, "Everyone loves us, but they don't love us."

**Just to clarify, my assumption that the guy was gay was based on a number of variables beyond his propensity to comment upon the awesome fashion taste of Alice and I.

Thanks to everyone for all your kind words over the past two days. I really appreciate it. After taking some time to think, I realized that I needed to turn this blog, and my mood around.

The solution?

It takes true talent to look this good dancing while sitting down.

There's a good possibility we were way too rowdy to be in House on Parliament.

It was only last night that the sheer weight of the realization that I just might be a scenester hit me. It first started dawning on me when Katrina and I were picking our outfits for the night and she commented, "You can't wear something you've worn recently before, because it's all the same people at these things, and they'll have seen you wearing it before" and we agreed that we would have to start "saving outfits" for the nights that we "actually go out."

But what really solidified it was that not only was I headed to see Joel Madden DJ, I was on the list to see Joel Madden DJ. You know you've hit rock bottom when you're going out to see a member of Good Charlotte "spin."

So there you have it, there's the truth. I just might be a scenester. (Then again, that raises the hypothetical philosophical question along the lines of, "if a tree falls in the forest. . ." If a scenester calls themself a scenester, are they suddenly some level about or below hipsterdom? Is it the equivalent to when someone says, "I'm lying" and you're not sure whether they're a liar or not?)

Then again, I can remain confident that there is one main difference between us and the scenesters; we're not there to be seen. We're there to have a good time.

[Insert here the typical half a dozen classic pictures of Alice, Scott et al. going wild while the rest of the crowd stands and focuses on looking cool and unapproachable.]

And then we went to a Chinese food restaurant that had about as much vegetarian food as the Australian east coast.

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*Mark and I were discussing Court today, and how she always makes the best out of any situation, and takes it as it comes. So from now on, just going out and having a good time despite everything else will be known as pulling a Courtney.

This is my therapy. This is my acsension to the next astral plane, my meditation, my reincarnation. This is my out of body experience, my primal scream, my lucid dream. This is my road trip, my shared tub of ice cream, my board game on a rainy day.

This was me and you.

I never told you this, but do you remember that time you came with my brother into the city to pick me up from that political conference I was at? It was a surprise, I had no idea you were coming. We went out to Therapy that night, and the ravers threw pennies at me. (So much for being an "accepting" subculture.) In the morning, you woke me up gently and told me, "Hey we have to go." I pretended to still be sleeping. "Baby, wake up," you said. You only used the word "baby" because you thought I wasn't awake. But I heard you. And I kind of liked it, even though I wouldn't admit it. Even though I wasn't the kind of girl who even liked flowers. (Do you remember when you hid behind Darryl to give me flowers on Valentine's Day, for fear that I would punch you?) Sometimes when I think about you, I think about that- the gentle tone of your voice when you thought I was sleeping.

One of the first things I told you was that I thought the morning was the most personal time of day. Maybe that's why you let me curl into bed with you in the mornings before school.

When my grandma died, I called you first. "She really liked you, you know?" My grandma always thought you were really funny. Which you were.

You let my little cousin Brett play your drums, and come to your practices. Did you know he has his own drum kit now? He's 13 this year. He still asks about you.

I've been waiting for the perfect opportunity to post this, and if the lovefest going on in my comments section below isn't the prime moment, I'm not too sure what is.

It wasn't until I got out of the cab at the Madison for Adam's going-away party (with Katrina, New Roomate Yvonne, and Old Roomate Courtney in tow) that I realized I had uncharacterisitcally left the address for Charles and Brendan's housewarming party, which we were supposed to go to following the Madison, on my desk at home.

When Sasha found out, she wasn't impressed, since we had alcohol and pre-mixed drinks waiting for us at their house, which had been transported by Sarah and Sonja. I was distraught, because usually I'm incrediably prepared for social obligations- with complete address, contact information, directions, and sometimes even a little map readily prepared in my wallet. I knew I had to remedy the situation.

"Why don't you just call them?" Karen suggested. "I would, but I don't know their number," I said woefully, my own neglect weighing at my concious.

"Well, do you know anybody who is going to be there?" Karen asked, grappling for a logical solution. "Yah," I told her, "but all my friends are luddites. None of them have cell phones."

There was only one possible option- walk to the close by Brunswick to see if Pierre, Jake or Drew were still living there, in order to get the new address for Charles.

Tuesday Night

On Tuesday night, we headed to Oakham House to watch the Sustainable Fashion show, and cheer Sasha on. The winner of the competition would be getting $250 as well as organic material, which as you may (or probably don't) know, is incrediably expensive.

Hmmm. . .I wonder if I could negotiate a sponsorship deal with the United Church? Because I'm pretty sure I could offer them better service deals than God.

Thursday Night

The LCBO finally has Kokanee! They only have the supercans though, which annoys the hell out of me because then your beer gets warm. Unless, of course, you drink it quickly. And I really don't think I need any more encouragement of that activity. (I also like how it's a "New Product.")

And then, of course, I took some narcissitic pictures of myself while I was waiting for Katrina to be ready to go.

Assymetry: I'm a big fan.

First we went to the Coach House's Open House, where free beer and amazing food was served. My cousin Stan (okay, okay, my second cousin Stan) started the Coach House Press in the early 1970s and was the first to publish authors like Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje, which by association, makes me that much more awesome.

Katrina in the Magical Sleeper Chair. There were a surplus of good-looking legitimately straight looking boys at the Open House, but all of them were intimidating somehow, so we ended up taking off to head up to meet with Alice et al. at Scott's place.

"There's more homosexuals coming?" Katrina asked after a few drinks, "I thought they were all here already!"

"No, honey," she was assured by one of the boys, "there's definitely more out there!"

Sure enough, more guys came. But one of them was getting a little frisky with me. . .

. . .and Katrina!

And Scott? (Is this Scott? Or Mark?)

The guy was out of control!

He finally settled on a life-long love affair with Adam though, rather than philandering about.

Around this point in the night, a blogging crisis ensued! The batteries in my camera had died! Calamity erupted, but Alice quite willingly gave me her camera batteries for the better good of man-kind. Good on you Al!

Scott's boombox. That's right. I said boombox. Wanna fight about it?

\

You can tell Alice and I haven't downloaded music onto our own phones when these are the first songs that come up when you hit the Walkman button.

Adam is going back to Australia on Sunday. But I'm not acknowledging this, because I find it too saddening.

After finishing our drinks, we started walking down to the Drake, where Adam showed off his Tom Cruise skills to me one last time.

I don't know when I'll ever again be able to say that I have a friend who will do back flips down the street for me.

Jessex and Adam.

I don't what's more awesome: Jessex and Adam for doing this, or for me managing to capture it on the first take.

More handsprings and roundoffs down the street.

Adam was really impressed at how well Jessex's clutch matched his outfit.

CLUTCH!

"Jess Blog conquers the world!" Adam started yelling.

I'd have to agree.

We had gone to the Drake to see the Presets, but this painfully awful band was on before them. I'm including this picture because they were so crap, they deserve a crap picture. And because I just wanted to clarify that I don't love every group I ever see. I kept looking for redeemable qualities in the Silver Hearts, but there just weren't any. They were promising with their line-up of banjos, an upright bass, an accordian and a fiddle, but their eclectic choice of instruments was immediatly outweighed by lyrics like, "It's like a garbage can. . .it smells like welting flesh."

Hmmm. Funny, because that's how I felt about the Silver Hearts.

Luckily, the Presets rectified the situation by being fuckin' awesome.

As per usual, the company helped too.

Alice and Mark fondly tried to remember their beginnings at NXNE.

Diamond Dog for life!

Mark and Heather.

I originally took this picture of the crowd having an amazing time, and only now do I realize that I took a picture of some Vikings! How did I possibly miss them last night?

If anyone knows these guys, can you please get them to e-mail me? After all, there are still over 100 days left in the Year of the Rash.

We had no stickers to let people know that we're clean, so we had to resort to the standard, but always classy thumbs-up.

Since the bonus of the free condoms at the clinic just isn't enough of an incentive for having a cold metal spectulum inside of you, Katrina and I are patenting our brilliant idea that sexual health clinics should distribute stickers after regular check-ups in order to promote sexual health awareness.

The only problem is that we're lacking in clever slogans. Any ideas?

After travelling for nearly an hour via public transit, we only managed to see Ben Lee perform one song, "We're All In This Together." I'm not going to lie; swaying may have occurred. (This of course, was directly correlated with the endorphins we had produced from our dash to the stage. That's my story, anyways.)

The sad part is, he was the sole reason we had come to BeachFest. I, for one, was definitely not pulled in by the alleged Canadian allure of Stabilo and the Trews. (Or at least not their music, anyways. The lead singer of Stabilo definitely has the fantastic beginnings of a smokin' hot beard.)

So we decided to compensate for it by standing in line to meet him with all the 14-year-old girls who were sauntering around the park in their Roxy jeans and big sunglasses. After all, the "Thank you Toronto. . .thank you music," he shouted out at the end of his show had us sold.

I think we were the only ones in line above the age of 16, with the possible exception of the man in plaid behind us who was proudly sporting more than one "Canadian Idol" button.

Ben Lee had the strained smile on his face of, "I've been signing autographs all day for 14-year-olds who don't even know who I am."

In accordance with this, I resisted from the temptation of inviting him to engage in a game of Get Off That Thing.

______________________________________________

*I promise to never again use phrases like "arrived in panting excitement," especially when in reference to family events in public spaces. Just this one time, though. . .

The peons of the corporation I now work for showed me the latest marketing strategy that is a step-up from the cherry flavoured petroleum product- it involves a backpack with speakers on it.

Of course, I had to test out the latest hardware.

I'm really glad I'm not a peon anymore. On the other hand, I really don't care about all this technology. Who needs a backpack with speakers that you can attach your cell phone to, really? Is this really necessary?

Alice told me that she's improved her picture face in my absence. I'd have to agree.

It's everywhere.

Dell took part in my impromtu photoshoot.

And it was obvious Karen was warming up to my constant need to photo-document.

Dell, Karen, and Sasha in the way to the Mod Club.

Dell met this guy, who looked incrediably familiar. We placed his face right away, and I looked at my memory card on my camera to discover that he had been the same guy who had been dancing with Alice at mstrkrft at NXNE. "Is this you?" I asked him, thinking that as soon as he saw the picture of him and Alice together, he'd lay off hitting on Dell. "Yeah, that is me!" he said, and then wrapped his arms around Dell again.

My eyes were bloodshot because this was soon after the first time I cried in the night. On the official "Jess & Brie's Scale of Taquito Inebrieation*" I wouldn't have been willing to eat even one taquito. Nonetheless, I initially wasn't allowed into the bar (we're still not entirely sure why) and got into a fight with a bouncer, which led to me crying.

They eventually let me in, though.

And as always, we had a fantastic time. (I love this picture because everyone else at the bar just looks like static figures while we're having an awesome time.)

Jessex was there too, of course.

Alice giving me the, "Uh, Jess, why are we on stage again?" Look.

I lost Katrina (who was channeling Peaches) and Sasha early in the night. It turns out that they ended up partying with Uffie.

And while they were partying with Uffie, I was having the polar opposite experience. I was sitting in some little back room at the Mod Club with the manager and a paramedic, being yelled at, and accused of calling the cops. It's a long story and I'm still really upset about the whole incident and really appalled that there are such mean people in the world. I really had no idea.

After yelling at me for 10 minutes, for no valid reason, I was told that if I didn't leave the premises within 30 seconds, they would be getting the police (who they were convinced I called) to take me away for trespassing, or some other bullshit accusation.

What had been crying earlier turned into absolutely bawling, gasping sobs. I can't remember the last time I've ever been treated that atrociously.

Wandering down College Street by myself, I had everyone and their dog trying to console me. Meanwhile, I called everyone I knew, because I needed a friend.

Adam, Alice and Scott pulled up to get me in front of Sneak E. Dee's. "Blog!" they called out. "We've come to save you!"

Apparently as they were driving in the cab to get me, they had yelled out the window to people, "We're going to get the Blog! We've got to save the Blog!"

I was miserable at the time, but there was a certain hilarity when Adam started yelling out the window randomly, "Jessex, it's okay! We've got the Blog!"

Humourously enough, Adam's cell phone rang moments later. It was Jessex.

"Did you hear me?" Adam asked.

"Yah," I heard Jessex respond through the phone, "you've got the Blog!"

I cried too much last night. I think I'm experiencing a bit of culture shock.

But it's still good to be home, and know that I have friends who will come and rescue you from crying on the curb at any time of the night.

Thank you guys.

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*This measure of how drunk we are was developped after one night where we made an unfortunate trip to the Cold Lake 7-11 after the bar. 2 Taquitos=Really trashed. 1 Taquito=drunk, and not capable of making proper judgement calls.