Three days. Three favourite things.
FRIDAY
Friday was the birthday of one of our favourite Vancouver people which meant hanging out at their house and playing Blood on the Clocktower, a social deduction game about a village trying to uncover the murderous demon living in their midst.
I was the undertaker (the job, not the wrestler), and my strategy was basically to be as open and helpful as possible. Unfortunately, I was too helpful and the demon murdered me to protect himself. The good guys lost. We didn’t even come close to accusing the looking-back-on-it-suspiciously-ineffective monk that turned out to be the demon. Good fun, though. Next time will be different.
SATURDAY
Our local Cineplex has been running a whole host of classic movies. Last week we saw Alien and A Clockwork Orange, this week it was the turn of one of my favourite movies, Mad Max. It’s not quite in my Letterboxd Top 4, but it’s still a great movie, and I’d never seen it “on the big screen” so, I had a great time. I was hoping they’d also show the other films before the new Furiosa movie comes out, but it looks like Cineplex missed that particular opportunity.
SUNDAY
The Verboden Darkwave Festival was this weekend, and although I’m not really a festival type of person, one of my favourite bands, The Mission UK, were playing Vancouver for only the second time in their 39 year career, so the tickets were an instabuy.
In an effort to protect our hearing, we elected to skip the first few bands (and the first three days), but we did see Urban Heat and Ultra Sunn. Ultra Sunn were more popular with the crowd than us (they aren’t really our sort of music), but Urban Heat were more our bag as the kids say, and are very good.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen The Mission live, but it’s been a long time since we last saw them. They only played for an hour and the mix wasn’t always the best, but they rattled through their biggest hits, and still sound great even after all these years. Which can’t always be said for some <cough>older<cough> bands.
It’s was great to see a real goth crowd as well. It’s been a long time since I got to hang out with members of “my tribe”. Although, apparently, they’re too scary for Uber drivers because we had two of them ghost us trying to get home. Thankfully, a regular Yellow Cab came to our rescue and whisked us away.
So, three days, three favourite things. A weekend well spent.
Oh, and we also saw the Northern Lights on Friday night.
[Three Favourites by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 13th May 2024]