Great fun last Saturday night. It was Anne-Marie’s 25th birthday, so a bunch of us West Endians surprised her with a shindig at the JR. The real fun came later on in the evening, after the party trays had been demolished, and a few rums in the system.
The network UPN has been filming a pilot for a TV show over the last week, much of it in and around West End. That evening, they had a huge motorbarge in the harbour with all these wild lights, cranes, and cameras. i was all for guzzling tequila and swimming naked through the scene, but that sort of action requires a true mob mentality, and there was only Peter, Anne-Marie, and myself up for it. Three does not a mob make. Just as well, for even the “guzzling tequila” part would have been ill-advised.
Still, there was much great fun. Peter and i had a great percussion session, playing side-by-side behind the bar on the JR’s triple steel bar sinks, with our hands, ice picks, bottles, whatever. Peter sang a little too, scatting and babbling in his thick accent. Peter, by the way, is one of my favourite characters around West End. He’s a real force of nature; 6’6″, 60 yrs old, bald, with a scant tonsure and a massive grey beard that covers his chest. He’e Swedish, and with his cunning sense of oddball humour and only 80% command of the english language, can be a real laugh. Too boot, he’s a marvelous musician.
It was a really great jam, and we plan to do it again sometime. Maybe on something less damaging; my hands were bleeding and bruised afterwards! Scott took a few pictures, which i hope to have posted soon.