Bitchin' Beats

Up at the crack of dawn (seven am) to go and get my post NYPD ass to the harbour air terminal…usual suspects of yuppie businessmen and other assorted goodies (aka me) crammed into a float plane with a beautiful view but no leg room…Thank god for Jamie and the free passes to fly otherwise I would have been pulling an all nighter topped off with public transit, bc ferries, public transit, then Vancouver airport…aka fml in travel format.

I used my own homeopathic hangover remedy, bacon, to cure my headache then headed into the security line up. Whitehorse is a small city….I am not a drug smuggler..yet here I was asked to take off my shoes and pad around the floor of the security area trying to gather up my three containers of stuff while I waited for the dreaded gladiator sandles to make their way through the xray…I think the shoe bomber had it going on with reeboks, cause there is not too much you can fit into a pair of glads…just sayin…

Touched down to the plus 20 degree weather fully unprepared in a leather jacket, long sleeve shirt and jeans…I just don’t trust the weathermen, they’ve let me down more often than santa, so I tend to be the person either sweating their bag off, or freezing their tits off (yeah, that’s right… bag and tits, weirdo). Anyways, after retrieving my carry-on from the clusterfuck they call the baggage carousel, the lovely and talented Lauren and I headed into town. We grabbed a well deserved coffee and walked in the sun over to

the CBC north building….This city reminds of a well hidden artists retreat, and more than likely comes completely to life as soon as the sun hits it….kind of like Victoria but with more art and less bitching.

The CBC was great, the same guy (Dave) did a quick interview with me about the club night tonight (apparently it went well, according to wifey Rosa), then after raiding their supply of cbc pins we came to check into the dreaded hotel. Now, I’m not a picky person, but this hotel is really something special…I suppose we’ve been spoiled with some of the accommodations we’ve been privy to (think separate shower and soaker tub with a brand new flat screen etc etc) but this assortment of furnishings and lino is something to definitely document….let’s start with first impressions…have you ever left your house for a vacation for a few days to a week when it was really hot outside and there was nobody to come over and water your plants so it just gets uber stale and musty smelling in there? The smell is like that, plus dead grandma. The door to the bathroom doesn’t close, one of the windows is painted shut just to taunt you with more scenty goodness…upon closer inspection I think that there may have been a kitchenette in here (due to the random placement of tiling on one of the walls) as well, there is a booth with unfinished wood along the bottom leaving me to believe that it was once part of a local restaurant (update: after doing some quick detective work...read: standing on the stage playing some records...I figured out that the booth is actually from the bar..i could spot that unfinised plywood from a mile away)….on our previous stay here (yes, this is round two for me), we slept sitting up on the couches zipped into our jackets with our shoes on…felt really chipper and not bitchy at all when I woke up at six am the next morning to get to our flight (the only picker upper was phil Collins in the cab, but that’s another story altogether)…anyways, I am really excited for Miche and Justin to arrive so that I can be validated in my observations of our quarters for the next two days. Here's a view from one of our windows.

Lauren was great and dropped me off at a local gym so that I could get in a quick workout and further exhaust myself (im just so full of great ideas, it’s astounding)…The gym is this crazy bunker in the middle of an industrial area, and It has a massive weight room with squash courts in the same sphere, with a cardio and spinning room upstairs as well as a circuit room…pretty tight game…the only issue is this giant handpainted add of some huge hulking bald guy advertising some business in town…a little daunting having someone who probably has the tiniest penis advertising how you can be soooo successful if you use his services ;)

Made it back to the hotel for some rest and relaxation and to blast some texts about the cbc interview…heard back that it’s pretty amazing because I used the word ‘trajectory’ in a sentence while on air (with some minor stuttering), but that’s just how I roll…Tra-jec-tory…sweet…Eating arrangements had been made for us to enjoy a meal gratis at the coasters bistro…delicious as always with some swell jokes from our server (eg: he now enjoys flights without worrying about his ass being too big to fit in the seats because he got divorced from it…ooooh buuuuurn!) anyways, dinner=yum and after I was reheheheheheally exhausted…so again I was screwed because jonas (lovely man indeed) was waiting for me to soundcheck downstairs before the Stirling wonder twins (aka Miche and Justin) arrived to help nurture this wee northern throw down into a "ARE WE GOING TO PARTY OR WHAT??!!" kind of evening.

The club was pretty quiet so I went through the funk rounds courtesy of good groove recordings, DJ Nick Thayer, A. Skillz, FK5, Mat the Alien and all the other dudes who loves them some bassy goodness.

Miche and Chuck rolled in at about eleven and that’s when we three joined forces a la mighty morphin power rangers (with no power or ability to morph) and became……THREE DJ’S IN WHITEHORSE TAKING EVERY REQUEST FOR ANY KIND OF MUSIC EVER MADE EVER!!! Plus Miche and I managed to wrangle ourselves a photo shoot with our skid boyfriend...soooo hot.

Richie Tenenbaum wanted to party too.

Justin timberlake, guns n roses, something faster (current bpm was 127), swing, flamenco….it was a regular musical melting pot up there folks, so after miche and I tried to tame the savage Friday night bar attendees with our kanye remixes and lady gaga, we passed the torch to Chuck who saved the night via hip hop and funky remixes….and some sweet beat juggling. AUDIT FTW!

After we wandered up to our room for some visiting and beers, Miche and I decided to pass our extra special torch onto our compadres…the torch in this case being the introduction to the magic bullet infomercial…Quote from a girl I work with “that thing works like a hot-damn!”..if you know Miche and I, then you know that her, Hrdvsion and myself used to enjoy some quality evenings together which included america’s next top model, followed by the magic bullet commercial…The actors are fantastic

(im quite partial to the old bag who drags her ass into the kitchen halfway through the ‘show’ whilst smoking a cig and complaining..i think/hope that her hair is still in curlers cause that would just be the cherry on that cake), but I do have a slight problem with their counting abilities….their ‘three seconds’ is actually five, and ready in ‘mere seconds’ is more like ‘ a few minutes!’….let’s not forget to mention that it probably takes away any identifiable texture in your food leaving you with something that is of baby food consistency and a really weird color…but hey, im ok with that….the thing makes frozen drinks right in the mug..SOLD!! Right before we fell asleep wrapped in our sheets that miche had brought from home (cotton saranwrap for the untrusting travelers) we had a visit from a rare creature…the Whitehorse flying squirrel…but more on that later…with picture documentation…

Saturday am saw Miche and I trying out this new thing called ‘waking up early and going to the gym while on tour’. It was so damn nice up there for the entire weekend that it seemed like such a shame to waste it, so we were up and out for a walk/run to the gym to get our engines going for the day. Post workout we headed to wal-mart to look into some earbuds for miche, but ended walking in the doors and then wandering around in circles slightly stunned from the fluorescent lighting that I just love so much in that store….we ended up buying one of those massage bugs (if you were a raver, you’ll know what it is) and if you weren’t, well…then this blog is not for you! So beat it!

Early afternoon after we finally located Chuck (he has a tendency to wander and is in need of parental supervision most of the time...)we were picked up by Lauren and then the four of us headed out on the highway to go and see some sights. Lauren had wanted us to see a local lake that apparently was a very brilliant color…but unfortunately due to the season that color is currently white…Yep, still frozen…damnit. So we hopped back in the car and continued onto Carcross.

Now..due to the fact that Miche spent most of her teens in Red Deer (Dead Rear) Alberta, and I was raised in Ladysmith BC, we are both acclimated to skids. Lucky ducky's that we are, Carcross seems to be the sister city to our former homes. We pulled in to this little haven and Lauren took us to a beach on a lake (I guess Carcross Lake with Carcross Beach, but rational thinking was never my forte). There was brand new deck waiting for us, so we had a stretch (in the direction of some heinekens) and sat on the picnic tables soaking up some sunshine. The locals were out that day, and again, lucky for us, they also were the guys who BUILT the deck we were sitting on. So of course, being the amateur photographer that i am (not), it was picture time!

The guys were very hospitable, offering us some assitance with our photo taking, some cigarettes, some vodka right out of the bottle, and also let us know about the game that they had played earlier in the day called 'see how long you can lie on the ice'. After a beer, we figured we had the cojones for that quest, so Miche and Justin jumped in the snow that was still amongst the sand on the beach just to test run that idea. As we can see from Miche's expression, exhibit a, that was not the pinnacle of our intellectual deduction.

And now, some jump shots!

After we'd finished with the touristy rip around the Whitehorse/Carcross area (complete with a stop at worlds smallest desert and a canyon where Celine Dion got the inspiration for the Titanic song....ok, or maybe where Gold Rushers manouvered their huge boats in search of a place to settle) we headed back to the club for night two.

After primping and pumping ourselves up, aka napping and eating, we were ready to go...Justin was great and played a perfect opening set, getting all the kids wearing glow in the dark necklaces and bracelets onto the floor right away. Miche and I held down the social end of the situation, lending a kind ear to a local punk rocker who had found out that his old lady was cheating on him....after requesting some tips on how to pick up girls, Miche and I figured it was time to cut the ole cord and let this baby bird out of the nest....or get away before we became the object of the pick up lines (let's not forget that this was after he had already sang a song and mc'ed a song in my ear).

We opened up our set with a brand new song from local talent L. Grace (Lauren our tour guide/hostess with the mostess) and got her up on stage to sing along with the tune which was really fun...then with Miche's non-stop dancing beside me we gave Whitehorse a typical Bitchin' run for the money. A full 180 from the previous night, we pulled out the new Deekline tracks, some Jack House, some Dada Life....all the goodies that made for one helluva 131 bpm kind of party.

The bar was packed till two and we escorted out the crowd with the new Kings of Leon "use somebody" dub from Deekline...I never knew there was such a thing as a perfect day... HA!

Up in our hotel room we came fully face to face with the Whitehorse flying squirrel...this species is really quite rare because apprently the vivid purple coloring is something only seen in the springtime, and to catch it on film is a nature lovers proudest moment.