Festivus TILTS 6-10

#6 - wrapping gifts like grand pianos.

#7 - Festivus gifts from my best friend (ESPECIALLY COFFEE TABLE SIZED MOLESKINES)

meet "The King". We will get along just fine.

8 to 10 - MY BEST FRIEND SAIMA.

♥

♥

♥

♥

love you love you love you

missed you missed you missed you

great breakfast with work friends followed by a great day with the biffle. from champlain to iga to the comforts of my living room floor (no. not that way, freaks.)

we talked the talk and strolled the walk we've come to know so well. i miss her dearly. it was great to get back to the laughs and pretend to have win butler laughing about a neon bible cover idea and regine and her squeaky voice.

there aren't many like this pair. they refer to us as platinum. kiiiiind of a big deal.

she's THAT TREE.

this is my real gift: bonds & moments like these.

the whole,

mtb.

my kryptonite & TILTS #1-5

SO.

before i get into somethings that are really awesome that i've been wanting to give some airtime, i'm going to need to face a painful fact:
i am sick.

not in the mentally psychotic, grab-a-kitchen-knife kind of way (though it depends on who you talk to). i mean it in the very plain-jane, i have an elevated temperature, the sniffles, scratchy throat, blablabla, flemflemflem.

but here's where things are different.

MTB DOESN'T DO COMMON COLD.

that's right. i changed fonts.

that's the point i'm at, people. with this stupid "COMMONER'S DISEASE OF LIFE".

i have been known to go through quite a large sum of physical and psychological pain without complaint. i once ran upstream against the current hitting every rock on the way back. for fun. (true story)

case and point: pain is decoration. and i'm pure, baby.

however, there is ONE THING THAT I CANNOT TOLERATE.

and that is the common cold.

or as i call it in my nightmares: the commonite.

maybe it's my constant fear that i will be reduced to average joe or the fact that i remain paralyzed forced to eat bland food on bed rest and when this happened while i was in elementary school i would be forced to watch soap operas.

BUT I CAN'T STAND IT.

so, unfortunately for me, for the record&heartbreaking 2nd time in under a month, i have caught commonite.

and srsly, it almost killed me.

on monday i had a dream about multi-layered casts and couldn't tell the difference between a shiver and sweat.

(Though we all know that Shiver is an amazing Coldplay song)

all in all to say, i looked/felt/hated being sick like this:

notice the blood coming from my eyes and ears?

no. not the aftermath of the alexisonfire concert.

just my soul. dying. NO BIGGIE.

So dear person who i can pay to live my common cold for me, (this is the same guy who is willing to pay my bills on time & suffer through my muscles falling asleep and waking up)

if you could PLEASE punch back in for your shift, that would be great!

i think i've made my point.

now.

THINGS I LOVE THAT SHOULD

(be brought to your attention, to light, acknowledged, listened to, loved.)

a.k.a: MTB'S TILTS.

#1 This song.

#2 This video, this series of videos, this idea, the series of ideas that will come from it. ONE IDEA THAT WILL TAKE PLACE IN FEBRUARY AND I AM SO SO SO EXCITED.
#3 THE WORLD'S SMALLEST POST SERVICE.

look how adorable!

#4 - MAKING HAPPY HALLWAYS & INSTALLATIONS THAT INVOLVE 500+ BALLOONS BEING INFLATED.

i literally mean a dream come true.

(this is only part one, of course.)

#5 - THIS GIRL.

but you knew that already.

now to sleep off some of this common cold so i can actually get some things done in the coming days.

the commonly crippled,

mtb.

alexisonfire turned me into a bruise.

and i would do it again in a heartbeat.

for those who remember my invisible ink.

i am more whole than i've been in a long time. and now i think you're just there for praise. but how do i know anymore? who's there and who's not?

there's nothing after that but you

Stars played their farewell show last night.

or what i force everyone to call the "hiatus" show. because i cannot bare the thought of never seeing them live again.

they played the metropolis venue with opening band & dear friends young galaxy.
young galaxy is something worth looking into, by the way.
they had this sense of playfulness and the guitarist reminded me far too much of torq from stars; almost knocking down all of the equipment and throwing his fender into the audience (i caught an arcade fire tambourine. it's only fair a catch i guitar, too.).
at the end of the set, he walked off to find a simpsons itchy stuffed animal and place it on stage as an entertainment sacrifice.
did i mention i love concerts?
the preggers leading lady (taking after of amy of stars, naturally.) being the perfect combination of class and spunk.

once the band fluttered off, time for stars.
the cold kept many away until the exploded on stage as they always do.

a bit of back up history and knowledge for the uneducated:

MY BIO: Stars started it all for me. I remember being in my first year of highschool, being really awkward and uncomfortable with what I was and flickering between Ytv and Fox44 because I didn't know which one I was more entitled to watch. From the corner of the hall, my older teenaged sister was typing essays about topics I knew nothing about and playing these jams to help her through it. As the months passed, I learned these songs by heart. Because they captivated my heart. Eventually, did some digging and found out about Stars and fell in love. I then discovered Arts & Crafts (Stars's original label) and this snowballed into discovering other bands of the indie community such as Death Cab For Cutie which created the music-soaked soul I am today.

I remember thinking how this must be the only actual band in the world. I would wonder how they weren't bigger, how they seemed still unknown, how they came from the same geographical and spiritual location as lil' ol' me.

As time passed, their songs became more and more relivant to the ways my life had decided to sway. I don't even see them as a band anymore. They are this time capsule of a part of my life with every album that they produce. Set Yourself On Fire being the exception: it's the album of my existence.

So, to put it very lightly, Stars started it all.

WORLD BIO: As explained in many interviews, Stars is taking hiatus due to Amy's pregnancy. Though they say they plan on continuing to record and eventually come back into the game, many are saying that they won't. With songs on their latest album entitled The Last Song Ever Written, one can't help but think they're over.

Now, highlights of the concert (other than the entire thing itself)

Band members: Phenomenal as they always are. Amy looks like she is about to burst but is looking great. Torquin needs to pull up his pants. Evan Cranley seriously has to lose his black touch hairstyle, though. It's a bit much. But I still love you, Cranley.

Set up: The ghosts that were posted everywhere encompassed the whole air from their new album. Loved the massive amount of instruments everywhere and the continuous roses in all of their shows is a detail I can't help but love.

Merch: I don't usually discuss this, BUT THEY HAD SO MUCH. From shirts (8 of them) to pins, vinyls, dvds, PILLOWCASES. If I brought enough cash, I was willing to miss out on rent and a house for a month.

Effects: The lighting and cues is something I always love about their shows. They make those epic instrumental moments as stupendous as I've daydreamed about. An addition of bubble machines and confetti guns this time. Nice touch, Stars.

The Playlist: THEY PLAYED ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. A massive TWENTY FOUR SONGS including the encore.

Songs from every single album, almost as though they were digging up the skeletons they couldn't help but look at again. The songs that meant something more - a badge of honour for putting something great together, memories of how it was at the very beginning. I felt I was being carried along on memory lane. I would ride forever.

THE LIST BASED ON THE PLAYLIST I CAUGHT

He Dreams He's Awake
Elevator Love Letter
The Passenger
How Much More
One Heart
(Medley)
Bitches In Tokyo
Undertow
The Comeback
TAKES OUT THE BENCH
PERFORMS AGELESS BEAUTY & THE WOODS ACOUSTIC
Dead Hearts
Take Me To The Riot
We Don't Want Your Body
Fixed
Set Yourself On Fire
YOUR EX-LOVER IS DEAD
One More Night
Encore
Celebration Guns
I Died So I Could Haunt You
Reunion
Midnight Coward
Soft Revolution
Changes

So as I said, they played everything.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SHOW:

- Making friends with Mel & Lance and discussing Barricades, crazy concerts, the guards, and haircuts.
- Torquin & I shared about 12 moments of eye contact where we would both be pounding our chests and chanting the lyrics to words we knew too well.
- When I was blasting a finger gun at Amy during "We Don't Want Your Body", she blasts the gun back at me, and I proceeded to shout "Amy Doesn't Want My Body!" with an enormous smile of my face.
- Sidebar: Meeting this really cool photographer who recognized me from front row at Osheaga.

Check him out, ladies. I did. That's right.
- The Torquin tackle going on near the end of the show.
- WHEN THEY PULLED OUT THE BENCH TO PLAY ACOUSTIC COVERS, I FELT MY FACE MELTING.
- The fact that we didn't have to earn the encore this time. They walked off stage, we applauded preparing to blow the roof off. But all of a sudden, they played a voice over of a commander in chief discussing the number of people being deployed towards a war we knew nothing about. The whole of metropolis fell silent.
- When Torq showed us in left nipple and pec declaring we were there, that's what he gave to us, and that's what we've given him (the heart, that is. not his left nipple and pec.)

-My absolute favourite moment:

Torq's sweet everythings at the end of Set Yourself On Fire.

He has been known for his fits of rage and passion. Which given everything I can't help but love him for. It's devotion like that which gets the music made. But that night, it was something else entirely. He was broken, saddened, and devistated that the band which he had been actively apart of for a decade, was coming to some form of end, change, transition. So he leaned over to us, and broke down with eyes wide open to the people that brought him here. Repeated how he had been told this would end from the very beginning, that nothing would change, nothing would happen. But everything changed. And he was mourning that in the end, it did have to end. As he sang about how there was nothing after that, chin rattling, he cried.

I have only ever cried once at a concert. After seeing Coldplay perform "Fix You", it seemed like the only thing to do. To thank them for giving me a light I though I lost.

But this was my light dying. Seeing the face to the voice I had come to memorize and be insync with slowly dissolve into the man I would forget. For everything they've sung and strummed and talked me through, for obsessing and worrying about life, love, death, roses, and hearts as much as I do. For everything. They were coming to an end. And so I started crying.

I walked away that night with some merchandise in my purse, a fistful of confetti, a single white rose and a playlist, with none of the usual satisfaction gained from adding mementos to my museum of concert clippings.

I'll miss you, Stars. Your discography will always have a permanent place on my iPod and memory bank.

I hope you come back. I really really do.
I still haven't heard "What I'm Trying To Say" live yet.

But if you don't, that's okay.
You hit the streets with all you had.
Thank you for absolutely everything.

the nostalgic and solemn,
mtb.