Dean Winchester: So Hot, Even Hell Kicked Him Out

I am going to regret this is in the morning…but I just can’t keep it in any longer!

I have only just recently, in the past few hours, been able to recover fully (and maybe even not that fully) from an encounter I just had at my usually uneventful retail job here in Vancouver. This I being said, I am jumping the gun. I promised a post about “Supernatural” and this just has to be it.

If any of you have read my Peroxide Bunnies in a Van blog, you will remember my mentioning of this show several times throughout. TJ got me hooked on day two of the Van Plan and we watched all four seasons (that were out on DVD) whilest traveling the country. For those of you who have never seen Supernatural, a short synopsis:

Two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester, travel the US in a black, 1967 Chevy Impala with a trunk full of guns and rock salt, hunting demons, making obscure classic rock references and being all-around BAD ASS!

Does it hurt that the actors they cast as Sam and Dean are possibly the most beautiful male specimens on earth? Of course not! But as I’m generally drawn to supernatural television shows (Buffy/Angel/True Blood/Being Human/etc) this show goes so far down my alley it hurts…Jesus that sounded bad. Let’s just say, I was fated to love this show.

That being said, when the drive shaft fell off the van in Indio, California, I pitched in to help pay for the repairs, with TJ promising to pay me back as soon as she was able. Things have gotten a bit more complicated since then for reasons I will not divulge at the moment, but TJ and I decided to keep things both simple and fun, and instead of lump-summing that moolah back to me, she would be the treasurer of my social committee, thus providing us with concrete days I could book off of work and devote to having a rad time with the Teej.

Fun Money Event #1: Supernatural Convention!

We are full on going to nerd it up convention-style tomorrow, after celebrating with Pancakes (something we also did at IHOP after acquiring all 4 seasons from the Best Buy in Casa Grande Arizona) at The Templeton. I have been beside myself for weeks with the knowledge that I would be sharing the same breathing space as Dean Winchester. *Dramatic sigh* that boy makes me want to claw my face off, he’s so beautiful! Look at it!

It’s just ridiculous how hot he is! And this is full on, me going into girl mode, dithering about a mostly inconsequential (but not really, he is very consequential…and pretty, and funny, and probably smart-ish?) actor, but I just can’t help it. I’m totally THAT girl! I get little obsessions (see: Hanson 2008, and Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Friends) and I run with it until I’ve exhausted myself into a whole new obsession.

So tomorrow is the convention…and what happens today? Jensen Ackles comes in my damn store!

I had just been telling Vivi, a lovely co-worker of mine, all about my excitement at the prospect of seeing the brothers Winchester tomorrow, and not fifteen minutes later I feel her iron grip clamping onto my arm.

“Oh my God, what Vivi?!” I say, alarmed at her apparent panic.

“Jensen Ackles is in the store!”

“FUCK OFF!” I say, probably too loudly as we were on the sales floor and I was the supervisor in charge. Whoops!

“He's in aisle 6!”

I dashed unbecomingly over to the end of the aisle to confirm her statement. Would you look at that! Dean Winchester is buying Perrier water. My reaction: immediate retreat

Cowering at the cosmetics counter, “Vivi! What should I DO???”

“I don’t even KNOW!”

(I’d like to say this was less ridiculous than what I am writing…it’s not)

Realizing that I was not going to get any direction from Vivi about what I should do, I pondered for a few seconds what I would ideally like to get out of this situation. At the most: an autograph; the least: tell him how much I love his show. Okay brain, good work!

Not knowing what I was going to say, I thought to myself: ‘You will kick yourself if you don’t at least talk to him’. He was approaching the register, preparing to leave the store and taking my golden opportunity with him.

I took a deep breath and walked over to till #3 just as he and someone who looked so much like him I must assume they were brothers (just not Winchester brothers) passed in front of me.

I literally slid beside him and just let the word vomit erupt:

“I’m sorry, but I will kick myself if I don’t tell you that I love your show.”

He smiled and said ‘thank you’. I think an angel may have gotten its wings when he spoke; such is the melodiousness of his voice. His companion looked bemused and I’m 99% positive my fan moment would be subject to some ribbing upon exit of the premises.

I looked up at him hopefully, “Could I possibly have an autograph?”

He got this look on his face, like he was slightly embarrassed, supremely flattered, and entirely humouring me, which I couldn’t even contemplate until later because all of those expressions were accompanied by a grin.

I am going to interject this with a relevant tidbit of information: Jensen Ackles is from Texas; Texas’ biggest export? DIMPLES! I shit you not, I have never seen so many heart-shatteringly wonderful dimples as I did when we were in Texas.

Being Texan, the object of my affection has dimples; however, unlike his fellow Texans, Jensen’s dimples look like GOD inserted those fuckers with a smudge of his thumb. This is the only conclusion I can come to, because there is no earthly reason why that man’s smile radiated such an ethereal glow. RIDICULOUS!

Momentarily stunned, and quickly losing my ability to for coherent thoughts, let alone comprehensible sentences, I turned to Jason, the cashier behind me, interrupting his transaction, and said:

“I need paper and a pen, immediately!”

As Jason was following my barked orders, I could hear my manager talking to Jensen:
 

“Do you get that a lot” Mike asked.

“No, not really.”

“It must be really flattering then,” Mike continues.

“Yeah, totally!”

At this point I turned back to the receptor of God’s smudged in Dimples and handed him the pad of customer return forms that would become my autograph. He asked me my name, and after telling him I mentioned that I would be attending the convention tomorrow.

“Oh really?” he said handing me my autograph, “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

The dimples shone upon me like a double rainbow of full on ‘Oh my God’, and then, dear sweet Jesus, he put his hand on my shoulder. I am never washing my work shirt again. 

UPDATE:

I went to the convention. I brought back this: 

The Supamug

And saw this again:

Totally stole this. But it's from the Con!

We're like friends now.

Goodbye Ottawa, Hello Vancouver!

So…I’ve been back from the Van Plan for a few months now and have embarked on a whole new plan…oddly enough, also involving a “Van”.

My old roomie MV and I decided to move to VANcouver together as a sort of fresh start after university. Both of us had a gap year where nothing really changed, or at least nothing really started with our lives, the way it was supposed to after graduation, and moving to Van just seemed like the right thing to do.

I remember my father suggesting that I move to Vancouver several years ago, oddly enough when I was in another situation that involved contemplating my future. At that point in my life, before I ever went traveling, before I went to university, and I was just a menial working slob in Edmonton Alberta, the thought of moving to a metropolis the size of Vancouver was possibly the most daunting thing I’d ever heard of. Why not suggest Hong Kong, Dad? Or how about New York City?

I told him as much, and his response was:

“Hun, everyone moves to Vancouver at some point.”

Somewhere deep in the Kootenays my Dad has begun a strange victory dance involving paint brushes, bass guitars, fishing lures, and every odd hat in his possession, which are many. I am here in Vancouver, eating my words.

We moved into our quaint little apartment on May 1st, full of optimism and determination. We are University Grads! We are educated! HIRE US! The month of May was a cruel mistress.  

June brought me two employment opportunities, both of which pay me more than I have ever been paid before, but still not quite enough to live the life of luxury (or at least relative comfort) that I had imagined when we first moved in. “I gots the smarts people, bring me the monay!” I get by, but my mother has been a constant and superior helper in the wallet department (You are the best mother in the world!), and I really have to start using that whole “budgeting” thing I keep hearing about.

  
I like my jobs. One, unfortunately for my heated resolve to never work retail again, is a retail job, but the people I work with are probably my favourite thing about this city so far. I have never met a more colourful cast of people, condensed into one small space like a sardine tin full of awesome. They make the monotony of the process practically painless and on more than one occasion, outright hilarious.

Job number two is an administrative position, which is more in line with what I was hoping to achieve in my employment when I moved here, but unfortunately only gives me six hours a week. Hence the retail job (the cool beans I work with are just a bonus).

I feel I need to dedicate an entire post to the awesomeness that IS my new favourite pub. Keep your eyes peeled for a rundown of what happens during a night at The Ouisi with my bitches from work. Hell. Yes.

So that’s Vancouver so far, in a nutshell anyway. I have a/some job/s, I have an apartment, I have most of my belongings (and am praying that the stars will align so my victory dancing father will bring me the rest) and I have some new friends. Both my sisters live in town, though I don’t get to see them as often as I’d like, I love that I’m not hours, or provinces, or countries away from them anymore. There is this miraculous thing called TRANSIT here that, unlike almost every other city I’ve lived in, is actually convenient. Huh, who knew?

Even beyond the basics, I love it here. The people are (mostly) friendly, my hippy quota has been met in spades, my favourite television show is filmed here (the hunt for Jared and Jensen shall also be outlined in a future post), and there are mountains! I honestly could not ask for more.

Well…maybe more money, but that’s really just besides the point…

Note to Self: Lay off the Hallucinogens Before Bed...

I have always had dreams so strange they border on hallucigenic. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a dream that, upon awakening, I don’t think: you got problems. BIG, cracked out, seek help, kind of problems. If I do have normal dreams, they must be so unbelievably boring that my awake-brain just discards them on principle. 

To illustrate the Lewis Carol-like ridiculousness of my REM cycles, (and also to introduce the point of this post) I will share a few of my more ridiculous dreams…

The first dream I remember was from when I was very young, perhaps four or five? A giant, floating, purple head (clearly evil from this description) stole all the clothes and all the parents in the world. My job: to find them and restore order. This involved me making a loin cloth out of a tea towel and duct tape (necessary at this time, as nakedness in the face of danger is threat number one,) and searching out the evil leader of the floating heads in an attempt to reclaim the grown-ups. No conclusion to this dream, but really, does it need it?

As previously mentioned in detail I heart the band Hanson, (see Hanson 2008 post), and at the level that I love Hanson, I’m surprised I don’t have near-constant waking dreams about them. As it is, I believe I’m only at a total of seven Hanson dreams spanning from 1997 until now, most of which are spectacular in both the crazy and the teen-girl kind of way. One of these dreams in particular, really stands out. I had this dream in the midst of all my teeny bopper craziness in 1997, a time when my other crazy Hanson friend and I lived and breathed Hanson.

Taylor Hanson and I are on a date at the Royal Theatre in Trail BC, front row balcony (prime seats in this theater folks) his arm is around me and there is no one else there. Dream-Me, being far cooler than real-life-me, is very non-chalant about the whole situation…until suddenly Ryan, my high school band friend comes up behind us, interrupting my glorious date with Taylor, and tries to sit between us. Let it be known that the Trail movie theatre has since been “re-modeled” (quotation marks indicate the caliber of this reno), but at the time of my dream had seats from the ‘50s that had giant gaping holes punched through the red vinyl cover, padding, and springs; imagine a ragged, red pleather, padded, toilet seat. Some of the chairs had busted off their mountings altogether and were stacked at the very back of the balcony section. As I am reaching the end of my rope with Ryan and his interrupting of my date I jump up, grab one of the aforementioned busted chairs and start maniacally beating the piss out of this poor geeky band friend…I have no idea what happened after that because I woke up.

I had a dream once that Fred Savage and I went on a covert mission to Kellerman’s (the resort from Dirty Dancing) in the off season because some unknown nefarious activity was going on there…I guess we were secret agents? Commandos? In any case, the Kellerman’s high tech security outfit started chasing us, and to escape, Fred Savage and I decided to climb a tree. It’s the off season so it’s fucking winter. Have you ever tried to climb a tree in the wintertime? It sucks! The branches and pretty much everything is saturated with water, so the bark comes off in your hands and turns into brown poop-like mush. Anyway, Fred and I fall out of the tree and are taken prisoner. I woke up before they put Baby in the corner.

My best friend Mallory, often has dreams about bathrooms in disrepair: the stalls only cover from the ceiling to four feet off the ground, the commode is inappropriately placed in the middle of the living room, it’s overflowing with endless amounts of green jello, anything is possible in the broken toilet dream. Apparently this type of dream is significant in the dream deciphering world and it means that one might be dealing with all sorts of emotions that one might be having trouble “releasing”. I’ve never successfully deciphered one of my crack dreams; there’s just too much going on, I don’t think I can ever find one theme prevalent enough to look up in Dream Directory. Also, it’s just more fun assuming my subconscious is psychotic.

In any case, after this long and hopefully amusing introduction, I started writing about dreams because I’ve been having a lot about the Van Plan recently. Normally I have dreams about everything else BUT what I’m excited about in life. NOT SO with the Van Plan apparently!

The first I actually just had last night and chronologically comes after the one I will henceforth entitle “The Sperm Whale Dream”, but is worth noting for it’s ridiculousness all the same.

TJ and I are having coffee with Robert Pattinson. We tell him about the Van Plan. We invite him on the Van Plan. He comes on the Van Plan. All is good and right in the world. The end. So much shit-eating-grin stupid, I can’t even say anything.

So! *enter the dancing clown* my latest (not including the vampire tag-along dream mentioned above) Van Plan dream has TJ and I in some imaginary city that could be in either the United States or Canada…or both! It has aspects of Vancouver, but also parts of it are comprised of choice locations from my home town, namely one particular block on the main street. This block has a multitude of random boring shops: a dentist’s office, an expensive local art & crafts gift shop, a consignment clothing store, a convenience store, a creepy empty lot…and what used to be Video 9 (it is now a snowboarding outfitters store). Video 9 was the only movie store in my hometown when I was growing up and was owned by this Iranian man my father, for some reason, used to call “Hulanuts”. 

In this marvelous dream, TJ and I are walking along this block, exciting yes? (I recall this namely because somehow the gift shop has become a new age store with red beads in the window and all the other stores that are actually on this block in reality are now gone leaving only New Age Hippy Town and Video 9 sitting next to each other.) TJ and I duck into the movie store under the pretense of looking at VHS tapes. Why else would one go into a video store?

Apparently for CRIME! Whilst browsing the titles, suddenly the man behind the counter (who is Cuban for some reason) pulls out a very large and dangerous looking gun and starts yelling at us! I’ve got a copy of Super Mario Bros The Movie (which I just recently watched) in my hands and, with the ninja moves I am sure to possess in real life should a gun ever be pulled on me, I expertly chuck the tape at Cuban Man’s forehead and knock him down!

Victory is short lived however, as this man apparently does not work alone. It’s a Cuban Crime Ring!!! I have no idea what a crime ring actually is, but it was very apparent in the split second after I unleashed the fury of the Mario Bros, that more inexplicably furious Cubans were coming and that these men were part of a “crime ring”. Bullets start flying, bursting through an old school television with bad reception that was playing The Cosby Show, and the Ninja Moves are back in action.

Scrambling to get out of the line of fire of the new Cubans with machine guns, TJ and I duck out the side door that has magically appeared into a hallway that is illuminated with weird Matrix-style green light. We attempt to escape into the New Age Hippy Shop, while bullets are chasing us and taking chunks out of the wall above our heads. Success! A brief whiff of patchouli oils and beeswax candles as we dash through the shop and we are out onto the street.

At this point, we are now clearly in Vancouver, on the Sea Wall to be exact. However the problems begin to arise when suddenly we are in the ocean. We did not fall in the ocean…we are just suddenly there.

For some reason there is a wall of ice keeping us from getting out of the water, and though we are not cold in this apparently glacial ocean, there doesn’t seem to be a huge rush to get out. I briefly recall there being some sort of grasslands on the other side of our frozen wall. The significance of this is lost on me…

While chillin’ in the ocean, presumably to hide from the Cuban Crime Ring we’ve just busted wide open, something bumps my leg. I have a fear of things under the water that stems from watching the movie “Jaws” when I was far too young to appreciate its cheesiness, so this bump should be freaking me right out. Dream-me, however, kept her cool and merely looked intrigued. Even more so when the bump…turned out to be from a fucking Sperm Whale! Two gigantic water beasts are keen to play with Ol’ TJ and I, and for some reason, we feel that these nice friendly whales are the perfect getaway vehicle.

Yes…we escaped the Cuban Crime Ring that ran itself out of my childhood Video store…on Sperm Whales.

I pointed out that my brain chose Sperm Whales, as opposed to Orca’s, or Beluga’s or…any other kind of whale, which must be some sort of metaphor…

I can’t wait for the Van Plan to begin. Bring on the Cubans!

Have Love Will Travel

There is a strange thing that happens to me when I travel anywhere that is even remotely different from my home. On the larger excursions, say to another country, I imagine the experience will be so earth shatteringly different from what I know that I will have this epiphanic reflection on my whole existence and emerge from my travels a changed individual. Of course, when I actually arrive there and experience them, I wait for the epiphany...and it never comes. I get moments where I sit back and think "wow, this is really cool", but time continues to pass at a normal rate, people carry on with their business, all is normal. 

The two major travel excursions I have been on were, to say the least, beyond cool. A teacher at the university from which I just recently graduated runs two field studies and I eagerly jumped on the train for both of them. 

In a nutshell, the first field study was in Eastern Europe studying the Roma, seeing the after effects of de-communization and re-industrialization of the region, and the cultural tensions in the Balkans. In 30 days we traveled from Prague Czech Republic, through Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Poland, and had an all around amazing time. My friend DQ and I traveled around Western Europe for sixteen days after the field study was over, doing the hot spots in Italy, France and taking off home from London.

The second was in the Philippines where we researched the native inhabitants of the Western Visayan Islands, a people called the Ati. Like the Europe field study, my travel mates and I made the most of our already being in Southeast Asia and spent a week before the field study in Cambodia, and three weeks afterward in Thailand. 

I can't think of more authentic and amazing experiences than these two trips I went on. I mean Christ, we were wined and dined by gypsies in Slovakia, received a stern warning about all the land mines in Bosnia, trekked through the jungle at night looking for natives in the Philippines and so much more. Who does that? Like really?! ...then why am I still looking for the epiphany? How could something get more authentic than the things I've already done?

I think when you imagine something in your head it sort of plays like a movie, and when you see it in real life, it's like finding the Wizard behind the curtain. All the glitz and magic of your imagination is gone and all that's left is the props. Pretty amazing props, but physical artifacts and places none the less, which are no different than the ones you might see in your everyday life, only older or rarer. It doesn't help that most places of note in the world nowadays are so infiltrated with tourists (like myself) that you don't feel like you're getting an authentic experience most of the time. Ambiance: ruined. 

Another contributing factor to my reclusive revelation is the fact that when traveling, you become a slave to creature comforts. You could spend that extra half an hour searching for that restaurant the travel book suggested...or you could just pop into that homogenized McDonalds across the street and sell your soul for a burger and fries. You could go the extra mile and walk up that mountain to see the view...or you could stay at your hostel and watch foreign television all day. 

While the days when the creature comforts take over your agenda are not all encompassing, it feels like such a cop out when you indulge in the familiar. When are you ever going to be doing this amazing thing ever again in your life? Why are you eating fast food you can get at home any day of the week? The fact is, at least for me anyway, these indulgences in comfort are necessary for a person to keep their mental faculties at an optimal level of openness for when one does go out and partake in an "experience". I'd rather be sated and in a good mood when I'm taking in the sights, than be so all consumed with discomfort and irritability, that the full measure of the coolness factor is completely wasted. 

There is a distinct possibility that I wouldn't be able to handle an authentic foreign experience without running for the hills. I haven't experienced the sense of pure untainted wonderment I keep imagining when I truly experience something outside the box and I'm pretty sure this is because of fear; fear of being embarrassed, or uncomfortable, or open to risks.

Maybe in another time my experiences would have been more real to me, that the essence of what I was seeing wouldn't have been corrupted by modernity and capitalistic tourism, or if it was I would still be able to immerse myself in the significance of the experience...because things were simple way back when, right?

While I absolutely appreciate that I am one lucky asshole to have even had the opportunity to go on these amazing excursions, I keep waiting for the epiphany. And while it remains illusive, I keep searching for more and more authentic travel experiences. 

The next of these will be starting in January 2010. My friend TJ has a plan...it's a Van Plan, capital V capital P. She is the proud owner of the coolest of cool retro camper vans on earth and will be living in it for the next two years or so traveling around North America: the Van Plan. I will be joining her in January 2010 for as long as I can afford it and our vague plan consists of me meeting TJ in San Fran and heading for New Orleans. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana.

I never thought I'd be even remotely interested in traveling in the United States, especially after all the security hooplah that has been enforced excessively since 9/11 (sorry peeps, but it's true, loosen your grip a bit eh?), yet I find myself giddy at the prospect of going to Texas. The land of the ten-gallon hat, and so many guns I can't even think about it. Excitement! WTF!! 

Maybe this will be my authentic experience. I think it helps that TJ is an authentic experience in her own right so it can really only go up as soon as we're united in Van Plan-ness. I am prepared for awesome.