Reader Meet Author

(Warning: this is a very long post.)

When I was fifteen, I went on a school trip to Ottawa. While wandering around the city, I picked up Douglas Coupland's "Life After God" at a used bookstore. I started reading it immediately. I loved it. I couldn't put it down. I got all paranoid about the Bomb. Every passing airplane was a potential threat to humanity.

(I was admiring tulips in our nation's capital when it happened.)

That very night, I got drunk for the first time in my adolescence* on citrus vodka that my friend Gloria had smuggled into the hotel.

This anecdote isn't particularly relevant, except to illustrate how long I've been a fan of Douglas Coupland's writing.

Last night (with many thanks to Danny), I shook hands with my long-time literary hero at his art opening at the Monte Clark Gallery. I probably said some very stupid and ordinary things.

...but to you I was faceless, I was fawning, I was boring.

I also took a couple of furtive photos. Sneaky!


Is the balding dude in the shorts one of the hipster's dads? No! That is The Dougler.


My photograph of this pretty floral spaceman didn't turn out, so I am borrowing one from PhotoJunkie.


Bird's-eye-view of ginormous melted-together plastic soldiers.


An extremely large and impressive wall installation that apparently features mashed-up lyrics to "The Queen Is Dead". (The one that Doug was standing in front of in the first photo is based on the words in "Fight Club".)

Lee bought one of his installations (a hornet's nest made up of mouth chewed pages from Generation X - in Doug's own words, "It's pretty fucked up, eh?"), so he and Coupland were fast friends and talked about stocks and investments and Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.

I am kicking myself for leaving Jean's birthday as soon as I did, because Danny called shortly thereafter to invite people out for drinks with the artist himself. A very drunk Lindsay chatted with Coupland about the way one of her teachers smelled. She also taught him how to turn his legs "inside out". At least, this is what I have gathered from the email she sent at 3AM this morning. (Oh, Lindsay Whit. I love you dearly.)

Douglas Coupland? Waaay cooler/nicer than Margaret Atwood!

On a related note, this is my best celebrity week to date! Check it:

• Shook hands/chatted with Douglas Coupland
• Tripped over someone's shoe and accidentally kneed Jeanne Beker
  
• Hayden sighting at Soundscapes
• Atom Egoyan sighting at same
• Shared a pitcher of beer and some laughs with Cuff The Duke
• Got hugs and a couple of pecks from a rather dashing Hollywood screenwriter, even though I interrupted a conversation he was having to say hello
  

Thankfully, Elan is very forgiving and wrote me the following email:

"Remember that time I was talking to one of my literary idols and was charming the pants off him and he and I were well on the way to being best friends forever when you came up and interrupted us? And he stood there awkwardly for a minute and then melted off into the crowd? And that was the end of our delightful chat and we did not, in fact, become best friends and go rollerblading around the seawall and tasting each other's ice cream cones and laughing and laughing and laughing and other stuff that sounds a bit gay but is really just good clean fun of an only vaguely homoerotic bent? Remember that?"

Oops.

(Now playing: "Girlfriend in a Coma", The Smiths)

*the very first time I got drunk was an unfortunate incident in my childhood