There and Back Again: An Elf's Endeavour

CC: The Blog Continues

2010-01-02T16:52:00.001-05:00

If you haven't noticed, it's been a long time.

Here I am in Wellington already, and I've left you all stranded back in Jammu half a year ago.

The latest? *Spoiler Alert* I'm still alive. *Spoiler Alert*

The hobbit doc? Unlikely. I think that Andy was a lot closer to the mark then we expected him to be.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MoralPariah#p/a/u/0/OkmGkMAXyj8

Becoming an elf: Still on. I may even have some new companions joining me.

The blog: We're going to Kashmir! I'm picking up where I left off half a year ago to take us all the way up to the present moment. I'm gonna be publishing on my personal blog now though since it's not strictly documentary related.

So if you're still up to come along for the ride, divert your attentions to:

chrisciosk.blogspot.com

CC: Jammu

2009-07-08T14:35:00.002-04:00

“Oh yeah, I am still in India.”

When you’ve been sitting in a backpacker town like McLeod for a month and have find yourself repeating the above statement more than a couple of times a week, you’ve come across a fairly good sign that it’s time to move on – if only for a short expedition.

And what better way to seek out a bit of adventure than a trip through Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh! The minute I stepped off the bus after my seven hour trip to Jammu every single thing that I saw seemed to scream out at me “Yeah, you better believe you’re still in India.” Not a single white person in sight for the next two days. There’s not even a map of the city in my Lonely Planet book so I have no idea where I am or where to go. Perfect!

After escaping my rickshaw driver’s attempt to stick me in an overpriced hotel, I leave my bags in a more reasonably priced place and head out onto the street. I’ve only got one afternoon here, and I’m gonna make it count.

A policeman on the street who can’t seem to believe his luck at meeting a Westerner fills me in on how to get to the station tomorrow morning and recommends the best spot to eat in the market (later that night I was able to confirm him to be a man of discerning taste). I then spend the next couple hours wandering through the endless sea of stalls and shops selling everything from the coolest imitation Western fashions to air conditioning units, to new sets of teeth.

The most ridiculous street stall in India!

On my way down, I notice a small looking entrance to what looks to be a temple, but I decide to pass it by since I’ve already been to too many Hindu temples to count, this one doesn’t seem anything special, and you have to leave all bags and cameras in a store room – Jammu gets more than it’s fair share of terrorist attacks from Kashmiri separatists and radicals from Pakistan.

As I passed by the second time on the way home, something made me slow down for a second though. I recalled reading Paulo Coelho’s list of advice for a meaningful travel experience. Number 9: A journey is an adventure. It’s far better to discover a church that no one’s heard of than to go to Rome and feel obliged to see the Sistine Chapel surrounded by two hundred tourists.

Alright, let’s give it a try. This is the self proclaimed city of temples after all. And what ever happened to my decision to have one excellent night in Jammu? I step through the dingy entryway into a small room and walk through a door in the back corner. It feels like I’ve just walked through the wardrobe door into Narnia!

I’m standing in a courtyard the size of an entire massive city block. It’s surrounded by outward facing shops along the perimeter which protect it from the view of passers by on the street. The spires of the temple are covered in coloured lights and the moon hangs in the sky right over the central courtyard. The courtyard is full of Indian pilgrims sitting under the trees and wandering from room to room, but it’s nowhere near as busy or frantic as any other temple I’ve seen.

Dimly lit rooms with mysterious statues of strange gods performing unintelligible feats and walls painted with mystical symbols. Strange rituals performed with peacock feathers, lingams, necklaces of flowers, and other things I can’t quite understand. Walking around the temple between alcoves, each dedicated to and containing statues and images of a different god, a sense of mystery and adventure surrounds each new discovery.

An hour later, I walk out of the temple complex, necklaces of flowers around my neck, marks on my forehead, and no idea where I’d been (no map after all), what it was called, and without a single photo. It sunk away back into the night as I walked away for dinner - as mysterious and unexplained as ever and without any idea of where I’d been. Talk about romantic!

Thank you Paulo Coelho! The rest of you tourists can keep your Taj Mahal, I’ll take my unheard of inner city temple complex any day!

CC: May 2009 Revelations

2009-06-03T10:15:00.002-04:00

Sometimes we experience moments so powerful, so real, so intense that our hearts feel like they’re going to overflow.

Immediately we start grasping. How can I explain what I’m feeling?

But the more we try to describe it, pin it down, examine it, the more it eludes us. The clutter of words that we surround it with seems clumsy, painfully inadequate. It only pushes us further away from the experience.

The only way we can do it justice is with silence.

Some things are meant to be known, not understood.

Shown, but not explained.

The most important thing you can learn to do is stop thinking.

Breathing meditation:

Inhale the world.

Exhale yourself.

What is he rambling about this time?

_________________________________________________

Since I’ve just published five entries all in one go, I’ll save the rest of my entries about sime more of my experiences in McLeod until I return from my adventures in Ladakh.

CC: On a More Practical Level

2009-06-03T10:12:00.002-04:00

There are eight of us standing in a room with four beds. The walls are covered in pictures of the human body, yoga charts, and cryptic drawings with notes scrawled on the side. I notice a banner of the blue Medicine Buddha next to me (my time at Tushita paid off after all!). It looks as though there’s a pair of girls and another couple who have come together. That leaves three of us guys and one other girl.

Ten minutes later as I’m lying half naked on one of the beds watching one of my fellow male participants rub oil on another hairy man’s chest, I say a silent prayer of gratitude to the massage lesson gods. There’s a Texas (massage?) oilman looking out for me somewhere (Sorry, inside joke. If you read our Ryersonian article…)

After learning some very simple, relaxing massage techniques and practicing them on our partners we move on to a few more dubious sounding parts of the traditional Tibetan massage. We’re taught to locate our partner’s top four chakras and instructed to just touch a finger to them without pressing at all and just hold it there for 3 sets of20 seconds.

Alright, now the bullshit hits the fan, I think to myself. A minute later our teacher is over at our table showing how it works on me. “You have asthma” he tells me from touching my lung chakra. “You’re gonna wanna hold your finger here for about a minute every day and it will start to get better in a couple weeks.”

Ok, so maybe there is more to this than ancient superstition. As a number of other techniques that hardly even involve touching the body start producing their advertised effects I’m already starting to doubt whether Western medicine is everything it’s cracked up to be. And so nice to spend the time involved in a practical hands on practice after a week and a half of abstract Buddhist philosophy.

So if any of you want to sample a bit of Tibetan massage from someone who’s spent ten days getting fully (alright, barely) certified in the practice be sure to pull me aside for a couple hours next time you see me.

Diploma and Everything - I must be good!

And the Verdict Is…

2009-06-03T10:09:00.001-04:00

Alright, I know a few of you have been asking what I made of my time at Tushita at a whole. Difficult question to answer. One night after chanting mantras in the gompa, I felt such a wonderful body of energy hanging in the room that I couldn’t bring myself to leave for half an hour after it ended. Another day I felt as though I was being brainwashed, and rebelled against the experience with every fiber of my being. In short, I found much of it amazing, and much entirely distasteful. Everything that you need for an intensely meaningful experience. I may not have learned from it exactly and exclusively what they meant to teach me, but learn from it I did.

It planted the seeds of a lot of interesting ideas in my head and helped strengthen my belief in some concepts I’d been playing around with a while. I was surprised to find that lots of it is remarkably similar to Christianity – it share many of the best and the worst characteristics, and there’s a surprising number of overlapping ideas. As a zen master might say - different fingers, same moon...

2009-06-03T10:07:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty sure I'm living in the thunderstorm capital of India. Every three days! Too gorgeous.

CC: Zen and the Art of Falling Out of Your Upper Bunk

2009-06-03T10:04:00.002-04:00

One morning I woke up in midair.

Smack!

I painfully climbed into an empty lower bunk, apologizing to everyone I’d woken in the dorm, and tried to sleep it off.

Several hours of limping through the next day later, I suddenly remembered something I’d seen the previous night.

After our last meditation session of the night, I’d continued to sit outside on the steps to the gompa, staring at the full moon rising above the trees and taking in the scene before me. Below, someone was circumambulating the stupa not far away, immersed in a walking meditation. Every step he took radiated confidence, mindfulness, grace. There was such intensity and purpose in every movement that it was as captivating as the moon hanging in the air above.

Lama Yeshe's Stupa

Before going to bed I had walked around a couple of times myself but always felt clumsy and awkward in the process. I couldn’t sink my attention into my steps to the extent that I wanted to and my unconscious impatience with the task disrupted the rhythm of my movement. I felt like a bumbling idiot.

The next afternoon as I limped with every step while trying to walk at a normal pace, I felt the previous night’s clumsiness amplified to a comic level. Very funny. After a while I gave up and slowed down to a snail’s pace. And I noticed something. If I took small, slow steps, I could walk perfectly normally without any pain. Even though it was much slower and probably much less efficient, I immediately started to felt better about myself. I set my pace several notches slower.

Everytime I got restless and started to speed up, or ceased to be mindful and removed my attention from each step that I was taking, the pain in the hip that I’d landed on last night was quick to bring my attention immediately back to what I was doing. Inattention was no longer an option.

Before the day was through I found myself fully absorbed in every step that I took; giving my utmost attention to every shift in weight, bend of the foot, and change in rhythm that I experienced. As I walked around the stupa that night – intensely mindful and with a fluidity and grace that was entirely absent the day before, it all suddenly became clear to me. Life really has a funny way of teaching you what you need to learn sometimes.

All the same, I think might stick to the lower bunk in the future.

Add ‘walking with an elven grace’ to the CV…

CC: Tushita Meditation Centre Mix ’09

2009-06-03T09:56:00.001-04:00

Definitely one of the most interesting things about spending a week and a half in a monastery is adhering the rule wherein you can’t talk or listen to music. Although I must admit that I did break the silence a couple times (A monkey made me do it! Literally), I was surprised how much I learned just by not talking. Everything becomes more immediate. Since there’s no words to hide behind or justify yourself with, every action you make screams out at ten times its usual volume. When five of you are standing around the sink brushing your teeth, that’s exactly where your mind is. You’re not fishing for thoughts, trying to express your feelings about anything, or worrying about anything other than the act of tooth brushing. You see people as your friends that you’ve never spoken to in your life. It was really intense! I learned at least as much from the experience as from the teachings.

On the flip side though, that many days spent in silence is a surefire invitation for any song you’ve ever heard in your life to pop in and get stuck in your head for a while. So, for your benefit (and that of all sentient beings), here’s my Tushita Meditation Centre Mix ’09 (alternately referred to as Drunken Elephant Mind Mix ’09) of all the songs that managed to get stuck in my head for the longest amount of time. Now you can reproduce the experience of being sequestered in a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center from the comfort of your very own home. Please note that a song’s inclusion does not necessarily indicate that I like that song. This especially applies to the conclusion that Clare Hill is about to jump to.

The Art of Dying – George Harrison (Reincarnation and other obvious reasons)
Tomorrow Never Knows – The Beatles (song about The Tibetan Book of the Dead)
A Taste of Honey – The Beatles (I put a lot of honey on my bread and this song arose in my mind. This one’s really sad)
It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding – Bob Dylan (Just cause it’s too good to stop thinking about once you start)
Daddy Cool – Boney M (I think it may have something to do with my Mr Cool T shirt. I felt particularly lame having this in my head)
Like a Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan (The constant ‘how do you feels’ in analytical meditations)
I, Me, Mine – The Beatles (Got some ego dissolving to do)
Stop Your Sobbing – The Kinks (Just stupidly catchy)
I’m Down – The Beatles (Actually pretty fun to have stuck in your head. Maybe my favourite of the lot. I may have been feeling down at the time, I don’t know)
Human – The Killers (Lord knows what this was doing there)
Om Mani Padme Hum mantra (That’s one catchy mantra! It doesn’t help that it was playing in every CD vendor’s shop on my trip in Nepal either)
I Dig Love – George Harrison (Bit of compassion and loving kindness. It’s a pretty cool song too)
Moose and the Grey Goose – Paul McCartney (I was reading one of the Jakartas about one of the Buddha’s previous reincarnations as a goose)
Lady Be Good – George Gershwin (I was just really happy. It was the version from the film Manhattan)
My Sweet Lord (Pirate Version) – George Harrison (I have no idea)
The Levee’s Gonna Break/Plastic Man mashup – Chris Ciosk (Bob Dylan/The Kinks) – (Guess I was just bored)
Oh! Darling – The Beatles (There was a gorgeous thunderstorm after a great meditation session and I was feeling a bit intense)
Falling Slowly – Once Soundtrack (Gotta have some romance in there somewhere – I certainly wasn’t going to get it from the monks)

CC: The Road Goes Ever On and On

2009-05-22T04:27:00.002-04:00

After having spent some time with the Tibetans living in the mountains of Nepal and read the Dalai Lama’s autobiography, “Freedom in Exile” (really worth a read), I’ve realized that a change in plans is in order. There is now absolutely no way I could even entertain the possibility of paying a mandatory Chinese tour guide hundreds of dollars to take me through the few reconstructed areas of the country that they’ve spent the last fifty years destroying.

The best alternative I can see is to head up to Dharamsala in northern India instead – the home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile (and the western backpacker population in exile as well, as I soon came to learn). The result of this decision turned out to be perhaps five of the most uncomfortable days of my life. My travel itinerary:

Riding the roof of a bus in the Terai

Thanks to the strikes in the Terai, it takes a single 19 hour ride in a bus whose seats are designed for someone a foot shorter than me to reach the border (which is maybe 200 or 300 km away at most). Between hours spent waiting for enough passengers to show up for the trip to be profitable, being stuck in traffic, and countless snack and meal stops, the bus manages to get me there at 2am.
From the bus stop it’s a one hour walk to the border. A nice chance to stretch my legs actually.
After spending a couple hours finding the bus despite endless misdirection from Indians trying to scam me into buying expensive private transport (nice to be back – and I say that without sarcasm), a 4 hour bus trip through the plains almost makes me wish it was a 19 hour bus trip through the mountains thanks to the 40 degree pre-monsoon heat.
After a night of marinating in my own sweat in my hotel room, I get to the train station for a trip that gets me to Amritsar 27 hours later.
I spend the night in the Sikhs’ extremely welcoming and friendly Golden Temple (where I seemed to be of more interest than a temple made of solid gold to half of the curious pilgrims there). The next morning it’s a 3 hour bus ride to Pathankot where I transfer to another 3.5 hour bus ride into the hills to lower Dharamsala and finally one more half hour ride up to McLeod Ganj. Phew.

Next time someone goes on about how tough it must be to sit on a plane with meals and movies for 20 hours to get to New Zealand I think I may have a fit of the giggles. I may as well have made the journey to Mordor to get here as far as I’m concerned.

CC: I'll Soon Be Seeing You.

2009-05-22T04:20:00.004-04:00

After a few days in town, I’ve finally found the Kathmandu that Cat Stevens was singing about.

To be honest, I was by no means looking forward to arriving. When you’re talking to trekkers you can’t mention Kathmandu without being barraged with words such as loud, pollution, beggars, dirty, and awful, to name a few. In fact I’d only met two people who seemed to really like it at all.

So it was with much trepidation that I peered out the window of the bus as we started to roll in to the outskirts of the city. Not so bad yet - maybe it doesn’t really hit you till you get to the city centre…

Kathmandu from Above - ok, a bit polluted

I step off the bus. Huh. There’s no shit in the streets. I can’t see a single person relieving him or herself at the side of the road or even detect the smell of urine. A cow politely moves out of the way for the traffic – consisting mostly of pedestrians and just a few motorbikes.

“My friend! My friend!” Here it comes. Time to get besieged by touts, shop owners, and beggars. “No thanks.” I reply (unusually polite after my time in the friendly mountain villages). He nods and walks away. Wait! What? He left as soon as I said I wasn’t interested?.

Big stupa in the middle of a square

This doesn’t seem right. As far as I can see, Kathmandu is an India veteran’s wet dream. It’s as though someone took note of every cry of frustration I’d ever uttered about all of the worst problems in big Indian cities and just removed them from Kathmandu. Walking through Thamel (the big tourist district), I’m surrounded by comfortable hotels and immaculate restaurants serving spot on western food. This place just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the subcontinent! It’s like a theme park!

Expensive Thamel restaurant

But then again, it’s like a theme park. I didn’t come all this way to sip chai (inflated to six times the normal Nepali price!) and munch on salads and pizza with Westerners on short vacations whose budgets are as big as they are boring. After a few days it’s time to migrate to Freak Street (yup, that’s actually what it’s called). I don’t even think I rationally played any part in making this decision either – I suspect that my month and a half old beard in conjunction with my Aladdin pants made that particular decision for me.

Looking down Freak Street at night

Away from the travel agencies and souvenir shops, and right next to the city’s Dubar Square, it was seriously like walking through a time portal. Four decades melted away before my eyes. A few hotel inspections later I chance upon the Moonstay Lodge (costing about $2.50 a night). This is more like it!

My room!

CC: In the Jungle

2009-04-23T08:57:00.003-04:00

I’ve been picking up skills in the jungle that I’d never even thought about learning.

For instance, we’ve all heard of how incredibly quiet and stealthy elves can be. I had a bit of a crash course in stealthy movement the other day actually with perhaps the best teacher that one can have - a wild rhinoceros. When you’re less than ten meters away, on foot, in the middle of nowhere, from a two ton animal that can run at 50km/hour and regularly attacks visitors to the area, you find that you’ve suddenly become a very stealthy person indeed. Your breathing slows down; each foot is softly and deliberately place on a spot on the ground carefully preselected for its absence of dried leaves or twigs; and all the while you’re intensely aware of the smallest movement or sound anywhere around you. Luckily the rhino saw and heard a lot less of us than we did of him. And my guide graciously decided to tell me all the terrible stories about people he knew who had been irreparably damaged in rhino attacks.

Not quite the rhino in question. I saw this one from safely atop an elephant - the last thing we needed at that time was the whirring of a comera turning on.

I also took a bit of time off to practice for my next battle with a war oliphant, although in a much more relaxed setting. I think I may just be the only with ‘elephant climbing’ on the skills section of my resume when I go for the part of an elf. Legolas would be proud.

Climbing onto an elephant via its trunk.

CC: Yak Attack!

2009-04-18T02:11:00.003-04:00

Got charged by a wild yak today up on a steep path off the main track.

Too bad old four legs couldn’t scramble down to a lower platform like I could (and oh how I scrambled).

Standing in the middle of the path in front of me before it happened

Makes a much better story than an experience. Not fun.

Rockslide

2009-04-18T02:05:00.002-04:00

Most people complain about the road on the other side of the pass, and quickly express their disapproval of roads being built along treks by paying a large amount of money to take a jeep along it and proving the profitability of its existence.

I personally found the road to be an excellent excuse for some of my better adventures that came about looking for ways to avoid walking along it.

For instance, how often has an opportunity come up in your life to ride a rockslide down a steep slope into a river valley? After following a smaller path several hundred meters down, I found that it had come to and end leaving me with two options: to scramble up hundreds of meters over loose rocky ground to the road high above me or to sit down, slide the couple hundred meters down into the valley and then follow the river to the next town. One option struck me as being considerably more entertaining.

Looking up the slope I went down to the top of the valley where the road was. Me and the road met up later a few hours down the line.

Even walking at the bottom of the valley was an exciting experience – looking for safe spots to ford the stream, finding massive fossils the size of my face lying around the ground, and just getting an opportunity to explore the landscape along a route that no one else had taken.

Sure it took me twice as long to reach the next villiage, but it was definitely worth the extra effort. All in all, a quite successful detour.

My next attempt to avoid the road ended up with me falling into a river though. Maybe it’s not entirely the worst idea to just follow the road…

CC: Refuge

2009-04-18T01:53:00.002-04:00

Coming down on the other side of the pass, one thought was constantly present on my mind. If I see another identical trekking lodge or have another inane conversation with another boring trekker, I think I’m going to be sick. If you can only walk for two hours in a day because of the altitude gain, you don’t need to start packing up to leave before the crack of dawn. Sure, they’re all seeing the mountains as they walk and have their guide and porter to talk to, but they’re living in a trekker bubble not Nepal. The identical lodges that they prefer and identical people they talk to really have nothing to offer after a couple of days. It’s like walking through a mountain valley and never taking your eyes off the path under your feet to see the views. I really miss backpackers – trekkers make a very poor replacement.

I walk an extra half hour past the lodge resort at the far side of the pass to a small town that the main road misses (the hardest half hour I’ve ever made myself walk after that two kilometer descent). Within two hours I’m chatting happily with my new unofficially adopted Nepali family in Jharkot who make it their mission to keep me company for the rest of my stay. In the next few days I hear my fill of all the local gossip, get taken out on a day trip by the hotel owner’s niece to visit all her friends and relatives in the valley, roam the city with all the boys on vacation from school, and even get an archery lesson. (Although I couldn’t quite hit an orc right between the eyes from a hundred meters away, my skills are now developed to a point where I’d be quite useful at, say, Helm’s Deep). I was really too happy to even begin to try expressing anything about the experience properly.

It’s amazing how an extra week to take your time on the trek and the motivation to walk just a few meters of the beaten track can add such an immeasurable level of depth to the experience. My trip in the mountains was instantly transformed from a mildly tedious experience to the best part of my trip.

CC: The Thorung La

2009-04-18T01:45:00.002-04:00

Your legs feel a bit like you’re trying to walk along the bottom of a swimming pool. You feel as though like walking on the moon. Cue the Police song getting stuck in my head.

I’d spent the last twelve nights’ sleep at carefully selected altitudes to acclimatize well enough to make it comfortably over the five and a half kilometer high pass. You could tell who hadn’t. All the super fit groups of trekkers who figured they could make it in less than the recommended time were already back home days ago. As were all of those who didn’t schedule a few contingency days for sickness and snowstorms. The woman nearby that’s losing the power of speech mid sentence only tried to rush things by a day or two. Same with the one slumped over a horse being led up by a porter.

Basically the higher you go, the less oxygen you get with each breath. By the top of the pass you’re getting about half as much in each breath as you’re used to. Apparently at the summit of Everest it’s down to about a third. If you decide to sleep too much higher than the previous night on any given day, you’ll know that you have soon enough. The headache you start feeling is from the fluids leaking in your skull creating too much pressure. It’s best not to find out the next symptoms.

My mind slips back into focus on the task at hand: moving my right leg to a position slightly higher and further along the pass than my left leg and pulling my body forward. The landscape is barren and grim. Gone are the towering mountains over the valley – here the peaks rise only nominally above the ridge that I’m climbing.

As I finally reach the highest point, I’m feeling pretty good. Especially after watching the other less acclimatized trekkers struggling with the altitude. Looking back behind me to appreciate the mountain landscape, one thing catches my attention. I haven’t left any footprints in the deep snow. Looks like my elven training has been paying off after all. The layer of ice frozen over the snow had nothing to do with it.

CC: The Ice Lake

2009-04-18T01:42:00.001-04:00

The first time you make it up over the snow line feels as though you’re walking into another world. It’s an incredible, gorgeous, surreal place to be. It’s also a place that really doesn’t want you to be there and makes a point of making that clear. The mountains don’t make you feel small quite to the extent that they make you feel fragile.

CC: 5416m

2009-04-18T01:35:00.002-04:00

As I dragged myself to the top of the ridge, wet and exhausted, I took a moment to catch my breath and see how far I’d come. Watching the eagles soaring by below me in the valley and looking up at the insane mountain views, I started to feel pretty pleased with myself. It felt like I was on top of the world. It had taken me an hour of steep uphill climbing from the base of the hill, but I’d made it! I decided to look at my map to see how far I’d come. I was up to 1300 meters - 500 meters higher than the start of the Annapurna Circuit - the trek that I’d started yesterday.

I think my heart broke just a little bit at that moment. I was set to be ascending to 5416 meters. My triumphant climb – not to mention two days of a steady uphill slope had taken me just 10% of the way to my final altitude

It was that moment that I realized what I’d gotten myself into. The Himalaya jumped into their proper perspective: a half hour run, but vertically toward the sky instead of along the ground; 10 CN Towers stacked on top of each other; the summit of the highest mountain in the Rockies plus an extra vertical kilometer; just a bit more of an ascent than from Everest’s base camp to its summit – and that was just as high as I was climbing, that height came no where close to the height of most of the mountains in the area.

Nothing to do but put your head down and keep walking.

CC: A Farewell to India

2009-03-20T11:19:00.003-04:00

I’m going to miss India. But that’s not to say that I’m not glad to leave (or even that I could have dealt with another week right now). It seems to be the case that most people either love or hate traveling in India. Not being one to take sides, I’ve taken it upon myself to both love and hate if at the same time. There are few places where I’ve felt so happy and at peace, though nowhere that’s been able to frustrate or upset me to this extent.

To some people you’re a walking ATM from which the object is to extract as much money as possible, to others you’re some sort of freak to be stared at (and you have not been stared at until you’ve been stared at by an Indian for an entire bus trip), and to others you’re someone to be treated as a dear friend. For every fifty people who won’t accept your refusal to get in their autorichshaw, give them money, buy their drugs, or take them as a guide; there’s always at least one person with so much love and concern for you and everyone they meet that it almost makes up for everyone else. Some people won’t lift a finger without the promise of an unreasonable number of rupees, but some will take an hour out of their own time to make your day as pleasant as possible and refuse any sort of payment for the service.

It’s really just a massive paradox; one that any Indian will admit that they don’t understand themselves. Sometimes the religion seems like a commercial, meaningless, theme park like activity – while sometimes it hits on something so beautiful and profound that you can’t help but feel it.

It’s a culture where girls aren’t allowed to leave home from when they hit puberty until after they’re married (and usually bitter and overweight). Where people won’t treat others from lower castes as equally relevant human beings. Where hygene and environmental concerns are irrelevant. But it’s also a culture where everyone is on a spiritual quest. Where curiosity always trumps indifference. Where you can find people with so much love in them that you can feel it.

Even though it’s so completely foreign to your sensibilities you never feel alone. So many people are so happy to draw you into it that there’s no question you might have that will go unanswered. Or no bus ride where you’ll be left in peace. I’ve heard stories from people my age about their families and their arranged marriages, about having to sneak around with girls so their parents never see them together, or on the other end of the spectrum about militantly defending their conservative way of life against western influence.

No matter how you spin it there’s a lot to learn from India – both through imitation and through avoiding their example. And if nothing else you can’t help but admire their uncompromising pursuit of their way of life. But in the meantime I can’t help but pursue a little bit of peace and quiet in Nepal.

CC: On the Road to Rishikesh

2009-03-20T10:31:00.005-04:00

The further along Swarg Ashram Road you go, the more the guest houses,touts, beggars, and merchants start to thin out until the road turns into gravel path and the only buildings to be seen are the small huts where some of the sadhus live by the river. If you walk right past the main turn off where guards are watching the gate, you can take a tiny path along the side of the fence, slip through the ineffectively placed barbed wire, and emerge into the ruins of the Maharishi’s ashram where The Beatles once stayed.

It feels more like walking through the ruins of an ancient city than a recently vacated spiritual retreat. The forest has reclaimed most of the buildings, and there are few windows or even toilets (western style) still left unbroken. Even more astonishing, no matter where you go, you’re surrounded by one of the rarest things one can find in India – silence. Apart from the singing of birds, the wind in the trees, and the rustling of an occasional monkey passing overhead, there’s not a thing to be heard.

It’s really quite a trip to be there. To walk by the room that (dear) Prudence locked herself up in, or the spot where George Harrison would have sat working out the lyrics for While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It's certainly felt more historically significant (for me anyway) than any of the palaces or temples I'd dropped in on so far.

But even stronger than that sense of historical significance, after spending some time exploring, was the slow revelation that despite the incredible things that had happened there, the geography – the exact physical location - was irrelevant. The inspiration for the white album didn’t come from that specific spot on the hill where they were staying. It came out of the energy of the place. It comes from being at the opposite side of the world, living in a bubble with other foreigners in the middle of a strange and exciting culture. It grows out of the community of people full of exciting ideas and dedicated to finding something bigger than they've grown up knowing. If I really wanted see where it all came from, I’d have done better off to stay back at the ashram where I was staying. The farther one travels, the less one knows.

Now if only I were a musical genius, I could really make something excellent of the experience.

CC: Everybody’s Got Something to Hide

2009-03-19T06:31:00.003-04:00

One of the things that upsets me most about my trip to India is that it’s lead me to hate monkeys. I used to love them so much. Before they started trying to steal my stuff and attack me. The locks on my zippers have so far protected my belongings not from people but from monkeys.

They wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t always travel in gangs. You’d better hope there’s someone else to help fight them off once there’s four or five of them hissing at you at once from all sides in the middle of a suspension bridge.

If you ever find yourself being cornered or stolen from, make sure to bend over and pretend to pick up a rock to throw as quickly as possible if you don’t want to fall victim to a gang of our primate brothers.

Bastards!

CC: Jai Sri Krishna

2009-03-19T06:01:00.002-04:00

It seems that no one in India can understand or pronounce the name Chris. They either nod politely and forget what my name is or just laugh out loud when they hear it. So while I’m traveling the subcontinent, I’ve adopted the name Krishna after the hero of the Bhagavad Gita and favourite God of most Indian women. Krish for short. The name of a famous Bollywood star – as I’ve been told everytime I tell anyone my new Indian name.

Elementary penguin singing hare Krishna. Man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe.

I still haven't mastered the art of holding a flute quite so erotically though.

CC: Bollywood!

2009-03-07T03:32:00.004-05:00

I’m standing at the entrance of a futuristic looking, blue pulsating club. I was originally meant to enter, escorting my female companion, down a grand stairway covered in brightly coloured flashing lights. Perhaps wisely though, the powers that be decided to cover the stairway with scantily clad dancing girls instead, so I’ve been relegated to the bottom.

“You will all groove to the music! I don’t want to see anyone sitting idle! Nobody!” An AD yells at a group of people seated on couches to the side of the stage.

“Before you start walking you need to react to the music. Look like you are having a good time,” says another AD to me and my partner.

“Yeah, just pretend that we’re fantastic!” Says Kylie Minogue as she walks by on her way to the stage.

My fellow clubbers and myself hanging out on the lot, (questionably) dressed for a serious night out.

The shot is set, the music starts, and it begins. Kylie starts lip syncing to her song that’s been played on the speakers all day as ten Indian men in shiny pants burst forth from the wings and start dancing. We all start acting like we’re having a great time. For about ten seconds. Then they cut the music and send us back to ones for the next half hour that it takes to set up another shot. Meanwhile the ADs continue giving us conflicting instructions and treating us like cattle. In the western style of cattle treatment that is – they don't just let us free to wander through the city and block traffic.

It seems like being an extra is the same thankless work in India as it is in Toronto. Except that since all the other extras are all interesting Western backpackers, you get to avoid the usual crowd of the serious over-actors, the clinically insane, and (as Dan Voshart would attest) vampires, that usually populate the extra scene.

And I got to be in a Bollywood dance scene with the green fairy from Moulin Rouge. So mustn’t complain.

CC: Kalpetta, India

2009-02-23T02:15:00.003-05:00

I think this may be the closest I’ll ever come to being some sort of celebrity. There’s few enough western travelers in the south of India to begin with, but it seems like I’ve hit a spot that very few of us make it to.

I've yet to take a bus trip without having a random person squeeze in next to me and tell me the story of their life, initiate a philosophical conversation, tell me about all of their children, or start talking about movies once their line of questioning reveals the fact that I’ve ‘completed my studies in filim’. Apparently I look like Harry Potter.

Usually though I just have to go through the standard ‘What your name? Where you from?’ with every person that I see before they shake my hand and walk away (giggling as often as not). The strangest thing was the jeep ride home the other day when we had to wave back to at least 20 or 30 groups of people on the way. I felt like the queen.

Maybe all of this will help me to discover what it's like to be Orlando Bloom

CC: Mamallapuram, India

2009-02-11T05:31:00.006-05:00

Alright, so I'm not really sure how I'm gonna operate this blog thing while I'm away. I'm sure you don't want to hear all the tedious details of where I've been and what it's like and what I'm doing next. And even if you did, I can't give away all my best stories online! So I think I'm probably just gonna be putting up some random thoughts and situations whenever I feel the urge without trying to give you a blow by blow of everything that I've been doing. That way I won't feel any obligation to keep up to date or anything, and you'll be spared from reading a lot of filler to get to anything interesting. Like you're doing right now.
So anyway, here's one I wrote last week but never got around to posting.

__________

In a strange reversal of the natural order of things, it seems that my pants have turned out to be too sexy for me. I knew that I probably should have bought a more comfortable pair. What I didn’t know is that in the tropical climate of Southern India, pants as tight as the ones I’d brought are a one way ticket to heat rash. It didn’t help either that I’d managed to rip the crotch open two days ago while climbing to the top of a cave, chasing monkeys.

One of the monkeys in question

It was a bittersweet moment yesterday when India lost the privilege of gazing upon my finely formed lower appendages in their natural form-fitting habitat as I donned that same style of pants worn by every Indian man I’ve seen so far. My legs couldn’t help but rejoice though.

The ruin of my former pants

__________

In other news, if you missed my screening of An Adventurer Is You or just loved it so much that you need to see it again, I have good news for you! You can now buy it online on the Kingdom of Loathing Store. Check it out!
http://store.asymmetric.net/

CC: On the Road at Last

2009-02-03T03:34:00.004-05:00

I'm going to be honest, I pretty much just started this entry as an excuse to post this photo of our friend Daniel from my farewell party.

But I may as well take this opportunity to thank everyone for coming by to visit this week and sending me all their well wishes. I'll make sure to keep you all updated on the latest happenings here on the blog. I'm really going to miss all of you when I'm gone, especially after such an excellent couple of weeks. But my nervousness has finally given way to excitement and I can't wait to take off tomorrow afternoon! But if you'll excuse my brevity, I really have a lot of packing to do and hopefully even a little bit of sleeping. Talk to you from India!

CC: Running out of Time

2009-01-27T02:31:00.005-05:00

So, there's just a week left until I leave and I’m starting to get an unsettling feeling that very soon it’s gonna hit me like a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster on an empty stomach. The frequency of the “last times” I’m going through is increasing at an exponential rate as the days go by. It sounds easy to go away for years in theory, but you really start to feel it once you’re getting ready to leave everything comfortable in your life and everyone you know so well behind you.

I've basically been spending my last month taking the time to enjoy Toronto one last time before I move on while trying to avoid thinking about the near future as much as possible. It’s really a little bit crazy. A few days from now I’ll be driving out of the city for the last time. A bit scary, but definitely one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done!

Looking forward to seeing everyone at my farewell party this Friday, hope you can make it! All the details are up on our facebook group “There and Back Again: And Elf’s Endeavour”.

CC: The Reason for the Season

2008-12-24T13:16:00.003-05:00

When you wake up this Christmas morning, make sure that you don't lose sight of the true meaning of the day. It's not about Santa or presents, shopping or cooking, family or Jesus. December 25 is the anniversary of the day that the fellowship of the ring set out from Rivendell (at least according to wikipedia). So this Christmastime as you're enjoying your time with your family, spare a thought for poor Legolas embarking on a dangerous mission against the hosts of Mordor.

A happy Christmas to you all from all of us here at There and Back Again: An Elf's Endeavour (except for Dan who doesn't believe in fun)!

Keep checking in next month for my final preparations before I set off on my adventure.

DV: Sticks and Stones

2008-12-11T14:04:00.007-05:00

Sticks and stones will break my bones...

but soon you leave the country

CC: Daisy, Daisy....

2008-12-08T11:43:00.011-05:00

I'd just like to congratulate Dan on discovering the most boring possible arrangement of 41 words that the world has yet to see in the previous blog post. I know he's been spending a lot of time lately working on becoming even duller than ususal, and it just makes me so happy that he's decided to share the fruits of his labour with us. Look out HAL, the world has a new sentient computer that will soon take his place in the history of cinema. He wouldn't hesitate for a second to cut out my life support systems either if he could.

DV: An editor is me?

2008-12-08T04:08:00.006-05:00

I shot a documentary the summer before last.
I'm making a longer cut.
This has nothing to do with Elves.

Nov 20: Full Transcript (done)
Dec 15: Paper Edit
Dec 25: Rough Cut
Jan 15: 2nd Cut
Feb 10: Picture Lock

CC: The Horse and His Elf

2008-11-24T16:38:00.003-05:00

“Show me the meaning of haste!” I whispered into the ear of my mighty steed, clasping his reigns, prepared for a wild ride. I mustn’t have been speaking clearly though – he seemed far more intent on showing me the meaning of his indifference toward anything I wanted him to do.

My elven training had lead me to “The Ranch” in Oakville. For who could call himself an elf who could not ride a horse? Though I had a girl doing a radio documentary as well as my loyal producer there with me, Voshart was nowhere to be seen. He had decided to ignore the fact that we’d been trying to set up these lessons for weeks and go visit New York instead. That’s ok. When Peter Jackson needs to cast someone for the horseback scene we know who he’ll choose.

Trying to jump onto the horse

The lesson lasted only an hour, but we didn’t waste a minute. The first order of business was to teach me to get onto a horse. But not in the usual way. Being an aspiring elf, my instructor decided that it might be more appropriate that I learn how to grab onto the horse’s main and swing myself onto its back. She was also of the opinion that elves would be beyond saddles, so I got to learn to ride bareback on my first lesson. It was a crash course on learning how to work with horses designed to teach me as much as possible in as little time as we could. Needless to say, my comfort or the idea of easing me into it were completely irrelevant.

Nonetheless, I emerged from my adventure more confident, and able to direct my horse to take me where I need to go. I even made it through a driver’s test style series of pylons. Although I only made it to riding at a jog and not quite a full gallop, I can’t wait to show Dan up the next time we both make it out next time for more lessons.

DV: The Quantum of Ciosk

2008-11-14T16:56:00.009-05:00

The "Chris is a Failure Party" has passed like a kidney stone.

With almost 30 attendees Chris reached his goal of finishing his film by November 13th and managed to screen something that was "watchable".

Quantum of Solaceme on the other hand was unanimously panned by everyone who migrated from the party to see this midnight screening. I heard from multiple sources that this year's Bond film was "worse than Chris' film"

How is it possible that man with the intellect of a dead penguin could out-do a bond film?

#1 The most likely scenario:
Bond was so disparagingly awful that guests were thankful for Chris's straight-to DVD release.

#2 My theory:
The Director of 007 spent all his spare time cleaning his kitchen.
Chis however, neglected his duties as a member of society and focused only on finishing his film.

CC: The Final Push

2008-11-13T02:43:00.004-05:00

Just now as I've been killing time while my video renders, I read that Baz Luhrmann (one of my favourite directors) is now in his final 24 hours of production on Australia, a film that he's been working on for the last four years of his life and is now scrambling to finish on the last possible day, less than a week before its premiere. It looks as though we both have something in common. Although with only two years on mine, I'll concede that it may only be half as good as Baz's.

Meanwhile, on this side of the equator I'm currently expending my last reserve of energy to try to get Adventurer finished before Vosh's 'Chris is a Failure' party. Only difference is Baz doesn't have a DVD to author too. Lazy. I'm gonna need every ounce of processing power on this computer to get this DVD finished by the deadline. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out. I wonder if Dan is going to have a trailer for our documentary ready for me to put on the DVD like he said that he planned to on our facebook group. That would be embarassing if the tables were turned tomorrow night.

So if you find yourself free of any sort of plans this Thursday, come by our place for a 'Chris is a _____ (soon to be determined) party'. Drinks! Adventurer screening! Midnight Quantum of Solace! What more could anyone ask for?

The menu is ready, but will Dan deliver his half of the content?

CC: We Have a Runner!

2008-11-02T02:55:00.004-05:00

Tonight at Milestones I found myself working at the service bar next to the kitchen. Every minute or so the expediter in the kitchen would yell “Can we have a runner?” (to run food out to a table) which basically became the key element in my night’s soundtrack. As time went on and I got increasingly tired, I started to feel like I was back in the trenches again, waiting for my cue – “We have a runner!” – for me to pull out my rifle and run the length of the trench.

It was one of my first ever experiences being an extra, and also probably the most uncomfortable. Dressed in a Canadian outfit from the First World War, I spent the majority of my days huddled for warmth with the other soldiers in our flooded trench, waiting for our brief moment of action. I know the actual soldiers we were portraying had to live in those conditions for ages and deal with the stench of death, but putting in a twenty hour day in a genuine uniform in a genuine replica trench was more than enough to convince me that if I ever find myself reincarnated in the 1910’s, there may be one particular historical event that I want to steer clear of.

On the other hand, singing and dancing in a forest glade might be an entirely different experience when I’m an elf. Unless I’m fighting orcs in the Battle of Five Armies!

You'll never see a shot this clear of me in Geoff Webster's Beyond the Line.

CC: What a little moonlight can do...

2008-10-29T00:07:00.004-04:00

According to legend, elves came into being before the earth had a sun. Basking in the bright light of the stars and the moon, they would play music through the everlasting night.

I’ve unfortunately found myself in a situation similar to those early elves. I now spend most of my time sitting at my computer underneath Dan Voshart’s giant Chinese moon lantern. Its function: to make the night seem as bright as the day and keep me awake through the (seemingly) endless night as I struggle to keep up with my editing schedule. I underestimated how long the inserts would take me and have fallen horribly behind. Thoughts of the upcoming Chris is a failure party haunt me as I race toward the deadline.

I have pulled out my old electric guitar though, and spend my break time trying to learn to play properly for once. I’m not sure how an electric guitar would sit with the elves, but I feel closer to them already, filling my rest time indulging in their foremost passion of music.

Full Moon Fever

DV: Degrassi Knoll

2008-10-27T19:19:00.005-04:00

Chris entered my room this morning, scratched MY head in the most pedophelic way, and said " "You should post about Degrassi"

I didn't want to post until we got the images from Degrassi but I also don't want him touching me again. I digress.

Being an extra is boring, and depressing. During a 3 hour wait in the holding area some dude closed the only window we had. Not only is being an extra the most depressing job in the world apparently it attracts vampires.

On set I was nothing more than a meat puppet and it sucks hard. My 5 second appearance on Degrassi will be the worst television experience since the JFK assassination. I try not to think about why I'm planning 18 months in advance to be one in The Hobbit. This flight of fantasy is much too real.

Degrassi lost 164 dollars to Apartment 705 today

CC: Past the Point of No Return?

2008-10-22T00:37:00.004-04:00

Last week on my way to the set of Degrassi, I figured I might as well pick up a book to read since I'd probably have lots of down time. So I headed up to Elliot's Bookstore, just north of Wellesley, to pick up a copy of The Hobbit, which I am ashamed to say I haven't read in years. When we got to the Tolkien section though, there wasn't a copy in sight. There was something else though that did catch my eye: a copy of The Simarillion, Tolkien's legendarily boring book about ancient middle earth containing all of the stories and legends that are referred to in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Apparently it's almost exclusively about elves and chronicles their long history. The sort of thing only a die hard Tolkien nerd would ever read, and has been hailed by The New York Review as "an empty and pompous bore". But really how bad could it be? All the bad press has to be exaggerated. Right?

From the minute I saw it, I knew that I had to read it, no matter how painful it may be. How could I claim to be the perfect person to play an elf if I hadn't learned all of their long back story. The man at the counter confirmed my suspicions that I was entering seriously nerdy waters. "It's like reading stereo instructions," he told me when he saw what I was buying. "It gets better once you get into it though. The language stuff is pretty cool, but everything else is really dorky." Hmmm... dorkier than a make believe fully grammatically functional language created for fictional characters in a fantasy book. I was baffled. We told him about our plan to be elves to explain the purchase. "Did you lose a bet or something?" he replied. "You're seriously starting to enter 'dying a virgin territory'". This is coming from a man who's working in a used book store and has read The Simarillion on his own accord for fun of it. I'm starting to wonder what I've gotten myself into. On set I managed to read the first twenty pages, a creation story of middle earth that reads like the book of Genesis. I'm about to give it another go right now, since my computer is being fixed and I can't work on Adventurer tonight. Wish me luck.

CC: Tough Words from Dan Voshart

2008-10-18T16:51:00.012-04:00

Isn't it nice to hear a rant about how people complain too much about working from someone who regularly has as many days off each week as he has at work? Or who just came back from a week of film screenings and parties in Vancouver? I'm sure it's tough. And no, I don't think life is about doing something that you don't enjoy for money. I know that lots of people sell out like that, and I know I'm spending a lot of my time now doing that in order to get this trip off the ground, but I don't think Peter Jackson's foremost thoughts as he was working his ass off on The Lord of the Rings were about how he wasn't enjoying it or how he was filling a niche in the marketplace.
Anyway, moving on...
In other news, we're revamped our blog to make it less rambling and more imagefull, so if you haven't gotten around to it, now's a better time than ever to check out our back entries. We also have an RSS feed so you can constantly keep up to date. Add us on your google homepage!
I've also finally got around to scanning our Ryersonian article. Please forgive my hurried efforts at pasting it together in Photoshop as it was too big to scan at once. It's a pretty nice overview of what we're trying to achieve and does a good job at capturing the tone for the project. So once again, our thanks go out to the (now confirmedly) wildly talented Clare Hill and all the good folks at the Ryersonian who helped get this out there.
You can click on the image to read it in full resolution or take a look at the text version online.

Text article online

DV: The End of Ranting

2008-10-18T02:04:00.012-04:00

As I type this I'm imagining Peter Jackson biking between 5 sets all filming simultaneously with garbage sized bags under his eyes. Why didn't he just take a nap? get drunk and go to a crazy party last night....

If the world economy comes to a crashing halt you can surely blame it on Chris and I. I'm not talking; housing crisis, 700 billion bailouts or some other rubbish. I'm talking about people whining about doing work they don't want to do.

This is the fabric of our economy. People doing what they hate and getting paid for it. Good ole' fashion: "I hate my job, but I do it anyways".

Economists have a saying about business: "Find a need and fill it" which roughly translates to: "You will get paid to do something that someone else doesn't want to"

What am I getting at? I'm referring to this crazy idea about becoming an elf in The Hobbit and whining on a blog about how things are tough.

I'm talking about Chris giving his two weeks notice for his serving job at Jack Astor's . I'm talking about the woman sitting next to me on the Toronto Transit reading The 4 Hour Work Week (If only those starving Africans read the same book). I'm also talking about our recent blogs that have the literary depth of a teenager's Diary.

Can we get back to working hard without complaining?

This letter is real. I have Video.

I followed to make sure it was real. Can you spot the red ribbon?

The smile that triggered the end of mankind.

CC: Running on Empty

2008-10-17T13:33:00.003-04:00

This whole thing is finally starting to get the better of me. I’m sure it’s just this particular week, and just the wrong combination of circumstances – for all I know I’ll be giggling about everything like a child by the end of the night – but I’m really just feeling incredibly drained. I’m just not engaging with everything like I usually do – something just isn’t clicking!
I’m barely keeping up with my editing schedule (though I am keeping up!) and find myself coming home from eight hours of work (a slow, slow week with little money) to find Vosh waiting in my room to look at the cut, and then launch straight into a long night’s work only to get a few hours sleep and then repeat the cycle. So sick of working multiple service jobs every day of every week to get enough money together to do this thing. I don't even want to get started about what hasn't been getting done on this doc that should be finished by now, and the heroic amount of effort it takes to get people together and keep things on track.
I’m not really the complaining type, but I figured I may as well try not to be one sided about the awesomeness of doing a major project like this. If it was easy, I’m sure many more people would be doing it, but it seems like the more you want out of life, the more you have to work tirelessly at it. It will all be worth it when I’m standing in Rivendell or Mirkwood with legions of fellow elves.
On the bright side, things should hopefully be turning around for the better today. I made it back to the gym again after a couple unintentional days off (wrapped up in editing) which was amazing, plus me and Dan are about to embark on our first experience together of being extras. In a couple hours we will be on the set of Degrassi playing “university students”. Might be tough to get into character. Plus our friend shoots the behind the scenes on that show, so we should get all kinds of awesome footage.
Dan’s very specific criticisms of Adventurer are really helping me to rethink things and bring the doc to a better level, while Clare’s recent comments after seeing it for the first time are rather motivating. It’s nice to see that even in its present state it is something that is very entertaining/interesting to someone who's entirely unfamiliar with it.
Anyway, enough whinging (I’m starting to sound like Karl Pilkington), time to get out and make things happen!

Vosh passed out on my bed after a long night's critique of the latest edit. If only that could be me!

DV: "Chris is a faliure" party

2008-10-13T02:50:00.013-04:00

So... a week in Vancouver and home in time for thanksgiving ... Full with turkey and joy I find a legal size piece of paper with miserable handwriting.

On my door are four requests: contact our producer Rich, get measurements for an elf costume, post on the blog, and comment on his long-neglected documentary. I was hoping for more of a letter of apology.

Now I'm hitting two birds with one stone by letting you know that the OCT 13th edit is a boring disaster. The "Chris is a failure" party will happen with amazing success.

His Documentary starts off good but quickly dissolves into a bunch of talking heads for 20 minutes. I don't know who's-who, no 1/3 captions, audio is all over the place I'm holding the volume knob while taking down notes. No music, I don't know what the question is sometimes.

This is an assembly, not a rough cut. A "rough" cut is just a term. "Rough" is NOT a description of what your aiming for.

The good news is that I laughed hard twice (having seen it in before) and I know there is enough to make a good edit. Not the 28 minute audio-visual misery that I witnessed today.

The doc is about a video game that women play in large percentages. I know about 100 million nerds who's brains just exploded hearing that. We, the audience, only find this out until 20 minutes in. My constructive criticism would be to focus on breaking this doc into three pieces. Mix things up every minute or two with music and footage of the gameplay or anything else for that matter.

Where do they live in Arizona? Why Arizona? Use stock footage from Arizona! The characters talk about the great culture surrounding the film... but no footage from the comic-con or sound bites from their archived radio show. They must have plenty of funny sound bites you can use.

Dear Chris,
You can't just package any-ole-edit. The majority of the people who watch it at your soul crushing party need to give you a thumbs up. And what you have right now needs major work.

CC: An Elven Physique?

2008-10-12T14:12:00.004-04:00

Watching the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring the other day, I was struck by a phrase that came up toward the beginning of the film. "Three rings were given to the elves, wisest and fairest among beings." It made me happy to think that I'm aspiring to be a character with such excellent characteristics. Then it stuck me, though I surely am the wisest among beings, I've kinda been in pretty bad shape for the last half year or so. It didn't help either when my friends kept saying they remember hearing that they cast tall supermodel types in the roles of elves, which even I won't go so far as to pretend to be. But why not try to change that, I pondered. It's certainly not the worst thing to sink some time into, it's definitely a step along the path to elfdom, plus it's never the worst thing to add a bit of jocky appeal to a fundamentally nerdy documentary.
So that being said, for the last couple weeks I've been starting to work on my regiment for developing an elven physique. Nothing too extravengent, first of all, I need to lose all the extra weight I've packed on in the last little while, and soon I'm going to start working on getting toned, perhaps talking to a trainer at the RAC about the best program to become more elflike (I'm sure that will be a fun conversations). I've taken some horribly unflattering "before elven training photos" that will never see the light of day until I have some lovely progress photos to follow, and now that I've admitted it to all of you I have even more motivation to keep on going.
So next time you see me grabbing a pop, reaching for a bag of snacks, or ordering an entirely unhealthy meal, feel free to tell me that with that attitude I'm shaping up to make more of a dwarf than an elf. I'll definitely keep you posted on how things are going.
I'm not sure if Dan is doing anything similar, he's been in Vancouver all week, promoting a film that he shot that's been accepted into both the Toronto and Vancouver international film festivals, so I've hardly had a chance to talk to him. He's skinny enough that you could almost miss seeing him when he stands sideways, but if you ever have the priveledge of seeing him topless, he looks a lot more like something you'd see in a locker room after a class of first graders go to gym than something you'd see on an Abercrombie poster.

Looks like I may have a bit of a way to go to catch up to Orlando Bloom, LOTR's most famous elf.

CC: An Editor Is Me

2008-10-08T03:49:00.003-04:00

Well, it's four in the morning after a long night of editing Adventurer immediately following a late shift at work and I really don't think I'll ever understand this whole process. Two hours ago I was spending half an hour losing my mind trying to get a twenty second sequence to work. Now I have the biggest grin on my face, just ridiculously excited about how many amazing things I've found to pull into this end sequence and how much better this cut has become than the class project it started out as years ago. Leave it to filmmaking to make you hate life at one minute and just lose it at how exciting it all is the next. Or that's just that the sugar and caffeine starting to kick in.
But it really does feel like it's in a very good place right now. Mind you, talk to me at work tomorrow morning and then see if I still feel so good. Or two weeks from now when I've been tweaking the shit out of it for days on end. This is why I absolutely do not want to edit our hobbit doc. Plus who wants to stare at Voshart on a computer screen for hours on end? It's bad enough seeing him in real life. I tell you now though, if this is done by November 13, we may have to take Dan's crush Chris' soul party and turn it into a screening/wrap party.
I'm really excited about the reaction that we've been getting for this project recently as well. Facebooking has honestly become a part time job for me. I wake up and there's five new messages in my inbox about people wanting to help out, wishing me luck, or helping me to arrange some new thing we're working on. I think about fifty more people have joined our facebook group since I revamped it the other night, and it still hasn't started slowing down. It's really great to see so many people excited about the project, and I'd like to thank you all for your good will.

CC: Photoshoot

2008-10-05T15:13:00.006-04:00

So, once again in our relentless publicity campaign me and Dan were thrust out into the public eye. This time we found ourselves being photographed wearing elven capes and filming each other in the middle of Dundas Square, while being gawked at by passers by as though we were idiots (an assumption that may not be altogether uncorrect). The occasion: our photoshoot with Lia Van Baalen of the Ryersonian.

If nothing else it made for an interesting afternoon, though I definitely was having an excellent time by the end of it. When we first met at the RCC, we were met with tales of Ryersonian arts editor Rita Poliakov and Lia's expedition to Kensington market to find elven costumes for us to wear for the photoshoot (bought with their own money!) and were presented with a green 'cape' and a golden leaf broach. It started out somewhat awkwardly as they seemed to expect us to know what we were doing, and we really had no idea what to do. But after a few awkwardly staged photos, everything started to come together, we got more comfortable with each other and got a nice collection of photos, moving on from the quad at Ryerson where we posed amongst (and in) the trees to Dundas Square. All things said, it was a pretty fun and thoroughly ridiculous afternoon. I think if we can handle a full on photo shoot focused on us, we should be able to deal with being background players in a huge scene full of elves. Here's a few highlights of what we got:

All photos by Lia Van Baalen

In other news, I think I may have built up Adventurer to it's longest running time at 35 minutes. Now I just need to make sure everything's in order and I have all the narrative bridges in place that I need before my October 13 deadline after which I can move on to the fine cut. With any luck Vosh's soul crushing party might never become more than a distant threat. But it's still too early to get my hopes up.

Make sure you pick up a copy of our article in the Ryersonian this week. We'll have it up on the blog before too long, but a hard copy will be a nice thing to have when we're wildly famous and they're selling ebay for hundreds of dollars.

DV: Regarding Chris's Incomplete Doc

2008-10-02T15:27:00.002-04:00

I can hear Chris watching hours of tapes giggling. It's 5am .

He may be diligently re-cutting and re-editing his documentary but I have faith in his ability to fail. His planned date of completion might be a little over a month... and you think that's plenty of time.. but for Chris who I've heard speak about time on a theoretical level "it doesn't matter what day it is because its all the same" completely sober "Saturday, Monday its all the same day really"

I might be misquoting him but I'm certain that what he actually said was considerably less coherent.

Ridiculing someone over a blog isn't as fun as in person so I'm actually planning a public party on November 13th. Our apartment.

If you live in the Toronto area and you want to taunt him in person send me an e-mail. I will provide some liquid courage to help you crush this man's soul.

dvoshart [at] gmail [dot] com

CC: Finishing My Last Documentary

2008-10-01T01:34:00.004-04:00

Ok, so the sad truth of my life is that I have another documentary, An Adventurer Is You, that's been recut countless times, rediscovered only to be ignored soon afterwards, and basically acted as a weight around my ankle that I've been too lazy to get around to definitively finishing. So, in order to free all of my time for this documentary, get some imdb cred as a director/producer/editor of documentaries, not to mention hopefully make a little bit of money, I've laid out an indesputable schedule that I must follow in order to put the finishing touches on Adventurer and finally get it out there. I hereby invite not only my fellow posters, but also any readers of this blog to publicly ridicule me both on this blog and in real life if I fail to meet these deadlines. Here's what they are:

October 13 - Rough cut at it's longest state
October 18 - Interviews in their final place
October 28 - Picture locked
November 4 - Sound mix complete
November 13 - DVD packaging and design done and ready to go

So have you most biting and disparaging comments for me on the ready, and hopefully I will work hard to avoid them. Plus it should be a pretty cool movie once it's finished, I'll link you to some info on it once it's up.

A still from the opening sequence of An Adventurer Is You

In Hobbitier news, we hereby declare October our official month of promotion. On Oct 1 the feature article that the Ryersonian is publishing about us hits the shelves, so be sure to pick one up before they're all gone! We'll have a transcript up online too before too long. You can also look forward to the launch of our official website, our first promotional videos, and more! Tell all your friends! We've really been picking up some momentum recently and been getting a lot more interest out of all of you than we ever expected, so we're extremely excited to get things rolling!

DV: Looking Back - Interview with Viggo

2008-09-28T23:28:00.008-04:00

Chris has posted about me; not posting. Which is probably the laziest thing to do since the doc he failed to finish over the course of three years. I have been routinely arriving home around 3am because of work, social gatherings and some such. I digress... The Viggo Interview Story:

My beautiful and talented friend Anna gave me a ticket to go see a Gala presentation of "Good" one of Viggo's three films at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Meanwhile my ugly and untallented friend Chris was incapable of getting tickets to the same film. He also failed to charge the camera battery enough to capture my encounter after the film.

I spoke to Viggo on the red carped and asked him if he would be in the next Hobbit movie. He said "maybe the second one" and then I told him "I'll see you there". He looked at me a bit oddly and I told him that I would be going to New Zealand for the filming of the Hobbit. Overwhelmed by the contrasting nature of what I had told him Viggo gracefully walked into the screening of his own film.

You're probably thinking that's the worst story you've ever read. You've probably met the man yourself. But what you haven't done is have Viggo personally speak to your friend (a huge Viggo fan) by way of cellphone and have him thank the your friend for the ticket.

That's what I did. I gave him my cellphone, had him explain who he was and to sign the ticket to a sold-out Gala presentation of Good.

I doubt he will remember me... but at least I have a news article about it.

I did not take this photo and I don't condone the use of red font on images

* Note: The only reason Dan was able to post this disparaging entry was because he had me to remind him what the password that HE had created for this blog was. That's how long he went without bothering to post. - CC

CC: Media Frenzy (If One Interview Counts as a Frenzy)

2008-09-28T00:17:00.002-04:00

Chris here again. That's right, Dan still hasn't taken the time to get up off his lazy ass (or perhaps sit down on his lazy ass more accurately) and get around to doing another entry. If I hadn't been holding out hope for Dan Vosharticular activity I surely would have done this next post sooner, but I'm afraid I must appologize to our loyal readers (please exist) for the long break.
Since getting this blog up we've really been gearing up the campaign and been starting to try to get some attention for ourselves. My web designer of a father came up for a couple days to work on our soon to be published website *plug* pay John Ciosk money to design stuff for you *plug*, which I will link you all to as soon as it hits the internets. We've all been shameless plugging this blog to everyone we meet too in hopes of getting a few more people interested, and hopefully some of you are reading this right now! Tell all of your friends!!!!
Even more excitingly this Wednesday we did our first official interview with the wildly talented (I hope) Clare Hill of the Ryersonian. She may not know it, but we're offically great friends now by virtue of her having done extended edition LOTR marathons not to mention actually catching all of my references! We somehow managed to waste two and a half hours of her time between me and Dan bickering about each other (everything that went wrong with the Viggo interview was his fault), my tediously incessant idealistic rants, and even a small stretch where we actually answered her questions. All things said, it was a pretty excellent interview and sometime next week we should have an article to share with all of you.
We're also heading out to do a photoshoot with the folks at the Ryersonian tomorrow afternoon. The last thing that I heard was that they were out shopping for cloaks for us to wear, so I'm very excited to say the least. I've never known a school paper to spend this much time and effort on an article, let alone to be half this enthusiastic, so my deepest adiration goes out to all the wonderful folks in the Ryersonian Arts Department!
That's about it for today, but in the meantime have fun, and keep an eye out for our Ryersonian article (tentatively coming out Oct 1) as well as our website.

CC: Looking back - Endorsement by the Creator of the TV Show 'Extras'

2008-09-22T23:21:00.008-04:00

Hello everyone! Since this blog got started so late into our preparation for our elven adventures, we figured we'd fill you in on some of the exciting stuff that's been going on before you even knew we existed.
Two weeks ago at TIFF, me and Vosh set out to accomplish a task that no one expected we could pull off, but we thought would be an amazing way to get started: we wanted to get an official blessing for our endeavour by Ricky Gervais (creator of The Office, but more importantly the TV show Extras) while he was in town promoting his new movie Ghost Town at the Toronto International Film Festival. Thinking of the best way to get his attention, I decided we should design shirts of Karl Pilkington (his whinging bald-headed manc twat of a friend from his bestselling podcast), and after a day of meetings, drawings, and photoshop work we had created some pretty excellent shirts, if I say so myself.

One of our shirt designs

After convincing some charitable first year film girls to buy us discounted $20 student tickets to the premiere (hey, it may sound like we're cheap, but we spent more than $100 printing shirts!) and getting into the theatre, things turned out more difficult than expected. First of all, the bit of red carpet where Ricky was talking to the press was completely blocked off and we had to grab a spot right at the end. Then to make matters worse, Ricky was militantly escorted down the carpet by organizers who didn't want him dawdling and throwing the screening off schedule once the press was done with him.
Knowing we might not have another chance we yelled out his name and luckily he turned around not far past us. The instant he saw our shirts he let out the most gleefully childish squeal of joy I have ever heard (it still reverberates off the walls in my brain today) and stopped in his tracks, to the organizers' disapproval, to stop and stare. After several seconds of soaking in our excellent drawings he happily exclaimed "That's fantastic! Karl Pilkington!" before being escorted along without us being able to come over and without us being able to talk to him.

Ricky sees the shirts we made for the first time...

...and stops to happily stare.

Unfortunately he never stayed to watch the movie and was well gone by the time we left the theatre, denying us of the chance we expected to have to talk to him. Afterwards however, we were talking to David Koep, the movie's director (and the writer of Jurassic Park!), who agreed to deliver the shirts to Ricky along with our letter stating our case. Ricky's been complaining on his blog recently of having to do literally hundreds of interviews a day for the release of Ghost Town, and after TIFF he headed straight off for New York for the American premiere followed by a recent appearance at the Emmies. Hopefully though once his life settles down a bit we may hear back from him yet, or at least better positioned to give it another try later on this year in New York City.
All things said and done though, I made the creator of the greatest and most hilarious show in television history giggle like an idiot. I am at peace with myself. And though we may not have got our extra cred, we were still declared "fantasitc" T shirt designers. If only we could have as much luck at catching Peter Jackson's attention sometime in the near future....
Stay tuned for word on Dan's encounter with none other than Aragorn himself.

CC: The Adventure Begins!

2008-09-21T15:21:00.003-04:00

At last the crew has been assembled, the plans have been planned, the logistics considered, and myself and my new roommate Dan Voshart are ready to plunge ourselves in earnest into the task of transforming ourselves into the perfect elves. When we get to New Zealand Guillermo Del Toro and Peter Jackson aren't going to be saying "Sure, I suppose they could pass for elves", but rather, "I need those two lanky gentlemen to be our elves and won't accept any substitutions. In fact, put them nearer the foreground where they're only kind of out of focus!" We've debated and discussed, I've recently started my regiment for developing an elven physique, and this week we are looking into learning the essential elven skill of horseback riding.

This adventure promises to be even more of a challenge for me as in less than five months I'm planning to go on a nearly year long across Asia, where I'll attempt to master the art of elfhood amongst some of the appropriately most epic environments and ancient cultures on earth. And at the end of it all, I'll have traveled overland all the way to New Zealand where I'll be meeting Dan. From crossing snowy Himilayan mountain passes (surely Everest is our equivalent of Middle Earth's Caradhras which only Legolas could navigate) to getting in touch with the closest I'll come to my elven-like immortal nature through meditation, to visiting remote civilizations and popping by massive Mount Doom sized volcanoes, by the time I reach New Zealand I may arrive a different person. A much more elven person to be presise.

In the meantime, I'll be showering you with updates on our latest progress in the rare bits of free time I'll have between working seven days a week to save money, finishing up An Adventurer is You, my current documentary project, not to mention elvenizing myself and planning out the trip. So keep reading and feel free to watch from the comfort of your computer chair as we struggle to realize our childhood dreams and participate in one of the most exciting movie experiences we can imagine. Or drop us a line and see what you can do to get involved or help!

DV: First Blog Post

2008-09-21T14:59:00.002-04:00

After months of planning and grueling work we have created a blog to keep you up to date about any progress in our Hobbit Doc.

The Hobbit Doc is the quest of two room-mates to become extras in Peter Jackson's new Lord of the Rings film slated for release in 2011. Our quest is to insure beyond any doubt that our faces appear on the silver screen when millions of people watch The Hobbit.

I'll keep the posts frequent and relevant but having said that I have no promises what Chris's bizarre mind will conjure. I'm sure it will deteriorate into annoying posts about Chris proclaiming how great life is. Stick with us as I'm sure there will be some nuggets worth keeping.

-Dan V