Keep the silly pictures comin'

O Holy Night

That's yours truly, starring in 2nd Floor Holy Cross Wing's Christmas Nativity Scene, 1997. As Mother Mary. Did you ever see such a head of hair? On the nativity chesterfield with me are Baby Jesus, played by Murray Lindsay, and Father Joseph, played by Adam Neal. Note the details: Baby Jesus is born with a wrist watch. Father Joseph is wearing a very modern pair of sandals, bathrobe, and towel. I think I'm wearing a bed sheet. The Christmas tree: stolen from a local lot by a couple of my wingmates...who got caught. Maybe that tree was one we actually bought after returning the stolen one, I forget.

The reason for our get up was the annual Christmas wing decorating competition between the various residence wings at St. Thomas. A keg party was up for grabs, and as usual the boys of 2nd HC took things a step further---we didn't just decorate, we animated. When the judges came to our wing, they were taken on a tour by our MC, Esty, who was decked out in his finest Christmas duds. The tour culminated in this splendorous nativity scene. Not pictured are the many bathrobe-clad wisemen and barn animals. Yes, we really did have one guy crawling around pretending to be a sheep. We served eggnog to the judges and hummed Silent Night. Did we win the keg party? HECK YES! Crappy thing is, I was not yet 19 at the time, and had to miss out on the boozing. That's the last time I get dressed up like a woman for the sake of alcohol. Oh, I've said that a few times over the years...er...umm...

A note on my co-stars: Adam Neal (Father Joseph) is now a feared litigator and all around bad-ass law-talkin' guy with a Fredericton law firm. He and I remain good friends. Murray Lindsay (The Lord Our Saviour, Baby Jesu) studied journalism and I'm sure is off spinning his whacky brand of news and sports somewhere on this planet. Murray was one of those characters you meet in university and never quite understand. I can't really put his personality into words, but to give you a sense...when the weather got warmer that year, Murray and his friend Nick put up posters for a wrestling match to take place in the campus courtyard on a certain Sunday. People didn't know what to think, but when they showed up at the appointed time and place, they were treated to a display of foolishness like no other. Murray and Nick went all out in a fake, over-dramatized, WWF-style match full of mock blows, torturous holds, not-quite-3-count pins, amazing shifts in momentum after sound beatings, and all the great set pieces to be found in the exalted theatre of manly battle. Murray, as the photo shows, was a scrawny runt of a guy, and Nick, well, was what you might call "huggable". And both were clumsy as new-born colts fed an in utero diet of screech. For me, the highlights of the match were the prop use. Nick totally nailed Murray in the face with a cafeteria tray. Where actual materials could not be obtained, the wonders of the imagination filled in: the two of them must have agreed on the approximate confines of the "ring" (the courtyard is a wide open grassy space with some trees), and they would regularly take runs across the grass and rebound back off ropes that were invisible to the crowd, but very, very real to Murray and Nick, I'm sure.

Who ya gonna call?!

More costumed nonsense, only by this point I was in grad school. For Hallowe'en in 2001 this quartet of twits got together to take the Social Club by storm in their ghost-bustin' best. From left to right, that's Chris Keirstead in the role of fearful but good-hearted Ray Stanz, Jared Cheverie in the role of ladies' man, joker-hero Peter Venkman, me as hard-workin' black man Winston Zedmore, and Adam Neal in the role of science guy Egon Spengler. Aside from being a good, drunken time, Hallowe'en at The Club also offered up a cash prize for the best-costumed, which we won, of course. How could they deny us? We scoured the city for cover-alls of that specific shade of grey, used iron-on transfers for the logos and spent hours painting them, and rounded out the outfits with canvas belts, chemical-resistant gloves, and little gadgety doo-dads from the dollar store (yes, those are bicycle reflectors). We did not have the backpacks and guns (what were they called? Ectoplasm-somethings?), but we covered every toy store in town before agreeing that they were just too antique to be found. You'll note that we are all bespectacled...in shop glasses. I'm not sure why. Only Egon is supposed to wear glasses. I think after posing for photos we were gonna go build a hutch or something.

Where are they now? Chris Keirstead (Ray Stanz) is now himself a feared litigator at a big law firm in Moncton. Chris is a pretty straight-laced guy, and I think this was one of the wilder things he did in university. You know all about Adam and me, which leaves Jared...basically, Jared Cheverie is an 8 year-old in a 29 year-old's body. If there was something silly or fun to do, Jared would do it. Jared was the driving force behind bringing the Ghostbusters together for this occasion---it was in his car that we drove here there and everywhere looking for the all the important components. He was the one who talked to Bud at Bud's Army Surplus on the north side (read "sketchy, very sketchy, run and hide") part of town. I think Jared might even have gotten an invitation to go out "huntin' and muddin'" with Bud. Yikes. Jared was also implicated in the Christmas tree story from above, and countless other residence-related shenanigans. Jared and I used to build little figurines out of celery, cherry tomatoes and toothpicks and leave them in the fake plants between the tables at the Diplomat restaurant. What does he do now? He's a teacher. Would you let this guy teach your children?

He's also getting married this summer, to Nathalie, a gal who loves his shenanigans like no one else. Congrats, Jared.