There’s so much great stuff and great moments from the con it’s a toss-up of where to start.  So I’ll start with all the friends I got to re-connect with, and I mean really re-connect with rather than just see for a brief moment in passing.  Add to that several pawfuls of new faces I met and conversed with coupled with running into some folks from last year’s con.  There was nary a dull moment, and being with everyone was just the delight of the con.  I walked in the parade using surgical scrubs and the straight sword as my ‘in theme’ elements  (about 8 minutes in here in this vid).    Wasn’t able to hit up any improv this year, alas.  Went to Frolic on Saturday and danced and danced and danced some more.  And my fursuit made it through another year, if perhaps just barely.

Once again I ran four panels this year, including the two tai chi classes, Northern Shaolin class and the return of the Stage Fighting Panel with Rev/Sanskritch.  And once again I was continually blown away with everyone coming, trying things out, sharing their knowledge, playing and participating.  I got to hold the Tai Chi (again on the ‘official’ track this year) classes in the large central hall in the convention centre and it was a joy to see fursuits and people many rows deep all moving in unison as we played follow-along, explored Too Lazy to Tie Coat, tested some other concepts, and repeated the form several times.  Soooo much fun.  On Saturday one person came up to me and shared that after doing the class last year she went to her father, who had practiced Tai Chi for many years, and asked him if he would teach her.  They are now practicing two times per week, and she thanked me for kindling that passion for her and her dad.  It was all I could do not to break down in tears, it was such a fulfilment of why I love sharing the art both here and elsewhere.

At the start of the stage fighting class this little girl, maybe around 5, came up to first me, then to Sanskritch and handed us a photo she had taken during our class last year.  She then hugged Sanskritch’s leg.  It was so cute!

This year I re-jiggered what I would say in the stage fighting class and purposefully made sure I shut up at the half way point to let there be a practical component to the class.  I split everyone up (maybe about 30 people again) into groups of 3 or 4 and gave them all a chunk of time to come up with a short fighting sequence while Sanskritch and I walked around and helped people out.  It.  Was.  Amazing.  The air of excitement and fun in the room was electrifying.  Everyone got right into it with full vigour.  We had each group present their little sketch one by one, then taking comments from everyone about what worked, and what didn’t work.  It was a great learning experience for us all and built up great camaraderie.  Sanskritch had me invite every person in the room to consider jumping in with a skit for next year’s FC: Unleashed.  There was so much talent and excitement in the room it made so much sense, and it would be great to see more acts…

Of course, he and I were back ourselves that year.  Back in the variety show, that is.  YES!  Rev and I made good on our promise to Sprout and worked on an epic sketch for this year’s FC:Unleashed and this year’s theme.  Enter:  Chekhov’s Veterinary Hospital.  We went BIG this year, with 6 weapons, hand sets, humour, dubbing, pre-recorded sound effects and music, puns and more.  And boy did I ever have fun with it;  I loved making it, I loved performing it and I loved being backstage with everyone and cheering each other’s sets and each other.  Just getting to play!

As for our skit, how did it go?  Exhibit A:  here’s a video!

Exhibit B:  here’s an image:

Wow.  Colour me stunned.  Both the Judges first place as well as Audience Choice.  Exciting and humbling at the same time.  Thank you all!  It was a delicious capstone to an awesome weekend.  I almost stayed late into the night on Sunday, and would have loved to, if tiredness and needing to be functional at work on Monday wasn’t a necessity.

And so FC 2012 drew to a close for me.  As I said, I think this my fursuit is on its last legs, despite having held together well enough for this year (plus, while it looks great head on there’s just something off about it when viewed from the side).  Don’t know what I’m going to do, as I think $ will be tight in 2012 so I will see how/what I can do in order to get a new costume.  I’m already planning for new skits next year, updates to my stage fighting panel, and maybe even a fifth new panel.  It will be great.  Thank you to everyone who came by to one of my panels, thanks for all the kind words, the great interaction, and a big thank you to the staff who put this together for us and made it all happen/work.  I’ll see you all again next year.

In 2002 I was again fortunate to accompany Sifu on one of his study tours to China, for training shaolin at Songshan, and then wudang fist at Wudangshan.  It was a trip packed with training upon training, along with visiting some of the most beautiful spots in China.  When the chance presented itself to return in 2005, I leapt at the opportunity once again, and it was equally amazing, more amazing locales and great training including learning some Bagua.

Now, ten years later after my first trip, Sifu Lam is again offering up a study tour, and I AM SO GOING AGAIN.  Training at the Shaolin Temple, training at mount Wudang, and this year an additional foray to visit the terracotta warriors at Xian – this trip promises to be epic.  Equally epic is the fun and camaraderie of a group of martial arts enthusiasts heading off for training in the most clichéd yet amazing places in the world.  I am so looking forward to this.

My chronicles of the first trips can be found here:  Kannik’s Shaolin.  Information on the 2012 Study tour, along with registration, can be found here:  WLE Study Tour 2012.  I am putting this up here to invite all you with an interest in martial arts to come along if you can.  It’s a great trip, we have lots of fun, and best of all we TRAIN hard and TRAIN some more, I love it.  Even without training it’s a great trip to visit two of the sources of infamous martial arts.  Come along!

As always, long post ahead.

For Further Confusion this year I had no skit, nor even an attempted skit… so instead I chose to delve into the official events track for both my tai chi classes as well as adding a Shaolin Wu Bu Quan seminar as well as a Stage Fighting seminar.  And wow, they were all rocking, with oodles of people coming out for them all.  With the Tai Chi on the official events track they were packed full, which was exhilarating, Evan came out to assist me in the Wu Bu Quan seminar and it was very fun teaching with him, and Rev and I had a lot of fun leading the stage fighting.  Also got to hang out with and meet a gaggle of new people, I missed the skating events  (next year I’m bringing my fursuit on Friday too, darnet!), got to actually be in the audience for the variety show this time, and had a fortuitously found banner to carry in the parade that was perfect for the theme.  All in all I enjoyed myself and it was a fun way to start off the year.

This year saw the continuation of managing my thyroid issue, including the gluten free diet and, after some more tests, an even more restrictive diet due to some cross-reactivities.  The good news was all in all it was a success, and my energy levels improved a lot during the year, allowing me to ramp up my exercise once more.  The unfortunate news was the April humorous kung fu accident that did my ankle in and thereby kaiboshed both climbing and that exercise ramp up.  The ankle finally felt mostly healed by year’s end, and I’ve just started a set of treatments that has the promise of turning off some, most or even all of my reactivities.  Fingers crossed, for it could mean a return to the SUPER EATING in 2012.  Not that it’s likely I’ll ever be able to be a gluten hound ever again, but it will still afford much greater food freedom and tasting delight.

And not that I didn’t eat deliciously in 2011 by any stretch.  MMMM, good food.

I got to attend a fabulous dinner featuring William McDonough and Michael Braungart who spoke and re-created the world for their Cradle to Cradle initiative (which is now fortunately a 3^rd party non-profit independent organization).  It was inspiring and a great chance to meet not only them but others who are interested in that whole world.  Later in the year I delivered to the whole office a presentation I put together on green architecture coming from, as I put it, the primordial, that is, from design and intention from the ground up, rather than relying on materials or systems tacked onto an existing building typology.  This had its roots in some of the Cradle to Cradle precepts, but also from the TED lecture I’ve been slowly writing.  It was a great presentation and I loved being able to create that idea for everyone.  Late in the year I got to start preliminary work on a pair of buildings going for LEED C+S Silver certification.  Unfortunately, that was the extent of it and so my otherwise grand plans to push and transition into being the green architect I want to be went mostly unfulfilled, as did me finishing off that TED lecture.  They both remain on the plate for this coming year!

It was another year full of Kung Fu and Tai Chi and, despite my injury, I gained so many incredible insights this year, and by year’s end they were coming so much in droves I was having difficulty incorporating and exploring them all before forgetting about them.  I love this so much, the never-ending discovery and growth and the new feeling that comes with it.  So excited.  And still so much more to go.  I ended the year with several students for my kung fu class and am enjoying teaching, and I signed up for the upcoming study tour!   I started the year with a little burst of work on the Shaolin books, then let it slide for a bit as I was awaiting comments from others, and then it just slid right off my radar with no completion, le sigh.  It really has been too many years, it’s silly at this point.  I have a plan for how to, no really, complete it this coming year and so by gods I will get it done, and let this fabulous knowledge Sifu has be shared with everyone.  Just reading what is posted on Sifu’s blog is always great, and that needs to be shared far and wide.  Kung Fu and Tai Chi remain a huge part of my life and I can never leave a class unhappy.

Along with the insights in KF/TC, this year was mind-blowing on the personal and transformational front.  It really got going very early on when I watched Brene Brown’s TED lecture on Vulnerability a few times over the course of a couple of weeks and suddenly something went CLUNK one night, leading me to just this whole new magical space beyond where I’d been before of greater freedom, relatedness and self-expression.  A week later I was so in the dumps it was hilarious.  She in her lecture describes her own journey as “a year-long slugfest,” and it occurred for me as such as well, pushing forward, being pushed back, forward, back, all the while tacking steadily towards more and more amazingness, ease, love and all that vulnerability can make available.  And I’m excited as I still have several months to go before the year-long is over with.  Like kung fu there is always more to open here, and it just keeps making life more and more delicious, to feel freely, to experience things as richly as they can be experienced, and to live with gusto, every moment.

Burning Man is a place one could say is filled with gusto, and I chose to hit up the playa again this year.  The kwoon grew quite fantastically as a project this year, with a high number of guest instructors as well as participants who joined us in our temple for various martial arts, yoga, meditation, and more.  I can only repeat here what I said last year of the joy of providing something for people and the passion, peace and gratitude it inspired.  The deliveries were lesser this year, and I had forgotten how much fun they were and how much it got people excited and involved even as we ran by.  After the first few minutes of our first run, though, it all came back.  I went to BM again with just the intent of no intent save of being present.  BM can be a transformational event if you let it, and I did, and even had a transformational dream while there that expanded my exploration into the world of Vulnerability.  Everyone in our camp was awesome and I had fun (re)meeting them and hanging out and sharing and helping out in mardi gras and eating lots of gumbo and crawfish and delivering wine and being offered unbelievable aged scotch and all the camaraderie, great people who were generous and loving.

Of course there was the Thunderdome, an almost singular experience in of itself at BM for me, tying together nicely the ontological and martial threads into a ten minute festival of being amazingly present, moving newly and freely the body, engaged in sparring openly, and throwing in some show biz as I do.  It definitely left an impression.

I got many wonderful opportunities this year to be social, meeting new people, visiting/visits, and catching up with friends – a year of people.  I got a great visit from an old High School friend, was introduced to and discovered lots of new faces, spent great times with friends, freely shared stories and experiences, lunches, dinners, teas, walks, movies, museums and more, and I had the amazing experience of, after a lifetime of nary ever meeting even one single other Oliver (other than my cousin), having a year where I meet or nearly meet some nearly twelve Olivers.  Including the one on the train we were both taking to SF after leaving Stanford where he works in a lab I designed.  Too darned funny.  Laugher.  Conversations.  Support.  Discovery.  Sharing.  Amusement.   I loved and “lost”.

Some other highlights of the year… My Bloodstone Campaign continued this year, albeit with some big breaks in playing and the difficulty of keeping the world alive in your head.  And we worked on that indeed and we have gotten very near the end of this chapter in the campaign.  I didn’t get my next D&D supplement quite completed nor published, and thanks to work during the holiday break it is close!   Saw Eddie Izzard and laughed and laughed and laughed.  Saw the new Cirque show.  Watched the entire Trois Couleurs film trilogy and had amazing hour long explorative conversations after each one.   Saw the movies in theatre that needed seeing.  Visited the De Young, Chabot and Royal Ontario Museums.  Got some good work done on the house and the yards.  Finally finished my planter beds, hooray!  Vegetables of home grown awesomeness here we come!  Edited and published another amazing year of Aurora magazine.   I bought a lightsabre!  And became giddy and excited and have dueled!   Helped a friend design a house addition, then assisted them in drawing and getting it all through the permit process such that it’s nearly all done.  Went to the Digital Moose Lounge Canada Day Picnic.  Danced with abandon.  Discovered and was introduced to some great new music.  Rode the roller coaster of life.

And now the big 12 is upon us.  May it be a grand year for us all, and may we live it fully, every single day.

Next to my name it was listed:  “Gentle, loving, goofy, dilligent.”

I can live into that!

So it was with great interest when I heard Tintin had been optioned for movies by Jackson and Spielberg.  And also some trepidation.  The trailers didn’t look too bad though, if a bit uncertain in the rendering style.  Sunday was the day to go see it.  So how did it turn out?

The good news is I don’t need to go down to LA to punch Spielberg in the face.

All in all, it was a pretty fine movie.  It is a conglomeration of 2 stories/3 books, mainly Le Secret de la Licorne and Le Tresor de Rackam le Rouge (which were really one story split over two books) plus a small chunk from Le Crabe aux Pinces d’Or.  (Interesting that Tintin didn’t meet Capitaine Haddock until the 8^th book.)  Like the books the adventure begins almost immediately and takes the cast all over and into various scrapes, conflicts, perils, triumphs and humour – so in this way the film is true to the source material.  I came to the film with, obviously, a great affinity and knowledge for the characters so that it began with so little preamble didn’t bother me much although for those without the background in the series it may be a bit tougher to understand what’s going on or to make a connection to the characters.

As for the animation, I have to say, well done Weta Digital on your first foray into a fully rendered film.  There are some scenes where I actually wondered if they were mixing live action with rendering, they looked that good, and thanks to mocap and a few other things the film rarely descended into the uncanny valley and avoided horrible zombie looking scenes or people.  The timeslot in which I wanted to see the film only had it playing in 3D so I saw it then, and found myself enjoying the 3D (which is true 3d, being rendered in true 3D, not post-processed 3d as most live action movies are).  Overall, there waere some great camera angles afforded by being a rendered film, and some 3D effects, such as dust hanging in the air, that were kinda cool.  The 3D was not overused, so it was just kind of part of it all, which was nice.

There is a fatal flaw to this film, alas, and that is it’s nonstop desire to hit the accelerator and keep it mashed to the floor, all the while trying to throw out things to make it go even faster.  There’s just too much action and intensity that keeps going on for too long, so much so that we become numb and the sequences actually start to lose their impact.  Add to that this penchant of going over the top (including some things that’ll have you go “wait, that’s physically impossible”) and it starts to become a self parody rather than the great adventure flick it could be.  If Spielberg had simply taken out about 20% of what he had in there – not necessary taking out scenes or sequences but through pacing, spacing and what he throws into those scenes – it would have been a more effective film.

Still, if going overboard is the film’s major flaw that’s not too horrible of a flaw.  Capitaine Haddock might have also gotten a bit of a short shrift in his character development, or lack thereof, so that could count as a flaw as well…

Overall I really enjoyed this film.  I found its adventure story one of the best (no surprise, coming from one of the best) I’ve seen for pure adventure (more effective for me than the adventure portion of Up), there are nice touches and homages to the original books, it looks good, it’s treated with respect, and we know a sequel is coming.  I rate this film as Good, albeit with full disclosure of bias.  Go see it, or better yet, grab the books, read ‘em and go see it.  I’ve gotten the books again myself and am now enjoying reading them anew.

It has been a great vacation, one that has sped by quickly, spending time with Dave and Kat, climbing at Coyotes (ah, yes, pinchers and pockets and slopers, oh my!  Sore forearms for days…), seeing James and Kel and great times at home with my parents.

Went to visit the Royal Ontario Museum yesterday, mostly to check out the new addition by Liebeskind but by excellent coincidence they are having an exhibit on the Maya that I also got to check out.  Last time I passed by it was just when the steel was going up for the new addition.  I have seen photos of the completed structure, and I’ve even heard a lecture by Libeskind about it, so I was excited to go and check it out for myself. 

And I say it is a fine addition to the museum.  The intersection, involvement and interplay between the old and the new make for some great spaces and juxtapositions, both inside and out.  The sharp angular forms that Libeskind prefers work very well here, from the enclosure down to the lines of grating that traced around the floor, to the strips of windows.  There are some great moments where the white purity of the ‘crystal’ forms are suddenly interrupted and pierced by a bit of the old brick structure poking through, forming an almost folly within the blank canvas.  Oddly, though, there are no similar intersections or traces of the new inserted within the old building. 

Besides creating a new entry and a grand new atrium, allowing the old entry way and main hall to be reclaimed for exhibitions, the crystalline addition provides new gallery spaces, including an excellent new home for the dinosaurs, where the angled walls and dynamic fenestration are the perfect kinetic backdrop for the reconstructed skeletons who are, by their poses, also caught mid-motion.  Add to it that the room is light and airy and it’s quite a stimulating space.  Perhaps the most exciting spaces overall were the top level galleries, where the ceilings and walls are one in their soaring angled forms.  Without the flat ceilings from every other level these spaces were almost cathedral-like.  Though that was the most exciting, there are also nice moments on the lower floors wherever the exterior faces come to a sharp point.  There, the museum chose to place seating, creating almost cozy yet still alive nooks where diffused light from the fenestration and the planes of the acutely joined walls coalesce to make an almost little space unto itself.  Much more exciting than simply sticking benches in the middle of the exhibition floor.

 The Maya exhibit itself was quite extensive.  Almost too extensive in some ways, for while the narrative being drawn spoke mostly about the classic Maya period (delving into the Post Classic briefly at the end of the exhibit) the artefacts during the exhibit were quite liberally chosen and from the Classic, Post Classic and everything in between, scattered amongst themselves.  Some delineation between the two, or even two narratives (more so that this is the narrative, and these are self-contained explorations of parts of the Maya life) would have been preferred.  That said, what was on display was quite exquisite, and it did a pretty good job giving an overview of the Maya people, their cities and their history.  I even got to see some work discovered by the ROM itself from Altun Ha, the site that was the focus of my Thesis at university (chosen specifically due to the extensive work done by the ROM and my professor at that site), so that was a nice little self-indulgent connection. 

The ROM is definitively a great place worth a visit, for the architecture and their permanent collections alone (including a great section on the Native Americans and the Canadians as well), and the Maya exhibit, if you can make it before it leaves, is just a bonus. 

PotD:  “We must use our history to learn that our lives were delightful and thrived through simplicity, and realize that we can thrive this way again.”

Packing and finishing up today before the flight home tomorrow.  Where has 2011 gone?