Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Laneway Party
Today was the day of the big laneway party. Some people have been making preparations for months on this, and it the social event that seems to really launch summer for us who share the laneway between Brookmount and Rainsford in The Beach.

I got up early and started shucking the crate of corn that Erika had picked up the previous day from the St. Lawrence Market.

Things really got started at about 10am with the chuckwagon parade. For some reason Vanessa got stage-fright, so she needed some extra encouragement to go out in the laneway wearing her pink cowgirl outfit, which she looked great in. Finally we managed to convince her and Annie to get into the covered wagon Erika had worked on decorating over the previous week. We got in the line and we had a little parade down the laneway, down to Queen St. and back up through the other side of the laneway. A lot of people waved at the kids and got some cheery honks from passing cars, while some just goggled wondering what the heck was going on, obviously not having expected to see an event more typical of a small-town community than Toronto.

Various kids games commenced immediately afterwards, including cow-patty tossing (which used a puck, and afterwards kids were given cowpatties made of chocolate and coconut), digging for gold(-colored candies), and of course Erika's scary-feely session, where blind-folded kids touched worms (wet spaghetti), cat's brains (wet foam balls with their covers removed), and the man-eating vulture (a borrowed feather-boa with me handling a pair of hot-dog tongs "biting" some of the kids as they reached in. ;-) At around 2pm there was a magician show provided by one of the older local kids. A fun show, the magician using a kind of goofy type of presentation which went over well with most kids. There's always exceptions of course: Maxime kept saying that things were hidden in his sleeves, which drew some laughs from the parents watching, as it was obvious that at least some of the things could not possibly have been up his sleeve. Things finished up at about mid-afternoon with water-balloon tossing, with some people looking to get a refreshing splash as brief relief from the hot day's sun.

With some help from Jerome we managed to haul my cowboy-themed pinball game out of the basement. I had thought about bringing my arcade game out as well, but I figured that one heavy game was enough to haul out of the basement, and besides, I didn't feel the unit was up to the heavy pounding it would be bound to get over the course of the day. I waited until the "free play" time in the afternoon to take it out into the laneway, at which point it received a steady stream of customers. Most of them were kids, but there were more than a few adults who also got in line to play a few games. By the end of the evening the machine had taken a real hammering – judging from the masses of free credits I put into the machine, it played at least 300+ free 5-ball games over the rest of the party. As a result, a couple of the ancient rubber bands on the machine frayed and one finally broke, effectively ending play for the night. Otherwise I have to say the machine held up very well. I also suspect from the interest that one or two other fathers in the neighbourhood may have to get one for themselves as a result – there were a several parents who took a real trip down memory road with that machine, usually surrounded by an ever-present gaggle of kids. Best score of the night went to Dustin who got 418,480 points, which somebody ended up writing in blue chalk on the laneway surface beside the machine (that's about ½ of my best-ever score, which was somewhere over the million point mark).

At around 5pm the food was hauled out, and everybody gathered around to enjoy a potluck meal. Kudos to Jay and Sheri who managed to get a side of beef which went on an outdoor cooker (the latter apparently supplied by Meat on the Beach), and two large kegs of beer, apparently done as some sort of promotion deal. Nice. ;-) The main MC of the evening was Wendy, who with her red cowboy hat announced pretty much all of the main events happening over the course of the day. They got together at once point and handed out the various "awards" given to all of the kids who participated in that day's games. Afterwards, everybody chowed down happily on the plentiful grub provided, and thus began the adult part of the party.

Two guys came up and played tunes on acoustic guitar for a while, followed by a larger band that got the place rockin'. In between there was a one-song set by one of the little local girls, who had an incredible singing voice, almost operatic in style, but singing something that sounded like it might be a highland song (nobody could quite make out the words). The impressive thing was how serious she looked while doing this, and I think everybody was surprised at her impressive vocal range. I think many people couldn't believe such a small girl had such a "large" voice.

The bands were actually supposed to appear later in the evening, but they were double-booked and so came earlier. Thanks to Jay's impressive professional DJ country library (apparently his old radio station is still playing tunes solely derived solely from his collection until they get a replacement) the music continued, though I found myself getting more and more irked by the wishy-washy dreck that passes for country these days. It also seemed to suck any further life out of the party as well, and so it was turned off at around 11pm. By this time I had long before put both of our girls to bed, and was thinking of turning in myself. There were some fireworks a bit earlier at about 10pm, which coke up poor Annie, who was really scared by all of the noise until I took her over to Vanessa's bedroom window where we call all watch the show. Thankfully both girls settled down peacefully after that, and I turned in soon after. Erika stayed up a bit longer, but it had been a long, tiring and ultimately enjoyable day for all of us, and she soon joined me.

Postscript: The next day during clean-up, there was a lot of talk about what to do with next year's laneway party. There were a number of interlopers who made their way into the adult section of the party, drinking and eating freely -- and some didn't even have the decency to buy some raffle tickets which is about the only way we defray any of the costs. So next year we may well just open things up to the whole Triangle neighbourhood and make it a ticketed event. This would be good because we know several neighbours from other parts of the Triangle who would have loved to have (officially) been a part of all of this.

Harry Potter #5
Oh yeah, we got the new Harry Potter book today. ;-) I had pre-ordered it some time ago from Indigo, and good to their word, we received a copy in the mail (Saturday delivery!) while we were preparing things for the laneway party.

Just prior to bed, while the party was still going on outside, I managed to polish off the first chapter. Looks like fun. I also noticed while scanning some pertinent audio book newsconferences on Usenet that versions of the audio book were already being posted. ;-)