neurotically eccentric

Yesterday I headed into Toronto for my usual Wednesday hangouts in the city. I’ve been spotty about being in town, so I made lots of plans to compensate. However, on my GO Train downtown, I had the random idea to do something drastic with my hair.

I love my natural hair colour. A lot. And I loved the length of my hair. Also a lot. Over the weekend at TCAF Though, I had attempted to straighten my hair and it looked nice until it didn’t. I have super thick hair and while that’s mostly a blessing, sometimes it’s a giant pain in the butt. Thankfully I have some seriously magical hair that almost NEVER needs to be brushed, but either way, taking care of it is a burden since it can take ages to shampoo and condition this businaaaasss.

ANYWAYS, I was on the train and suddenly I was like “I want to cut my hair, dye it blonde and do a purple wash (or tone it as people under the age of 80 say…).” I tweeted this and got a pretty good response to it and started to build myself up to it. I then tweeted my friend, stylist extraordinaire Vanessa, and booked a consultation to tell her what I wanted to do. Most hair stylists don’t believe me when I try to warn them about my hair, but thankfully Vanessa has witnessed this mane of mine and booked a shitload of time to do maaa doooo. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself but yaaaaa know… (this is the blog of lots of “aaaaaaaaaaaa”s).

Vanessa talked me through a bunch of things and made sure that I picked things that wouldn’t make me look “sickly,” something that I’m sure not all stylists would do. I made my appointment and went to hang out with my gal, Dani and her bunny (Vesper BUNNYpenny). I saw The Warriors for the first time ever, in which Dani told me to “Shut up and take the movie seriously!” So that happened. In all fairness, I totally wanted to watch Zoolander, I was in THAT kind of mindframe. She had been WARNED.

We mostly just hysterically laughed our way through the evening. I was legging licked by the bunny. Literally. And we ate lots of Greek food which may or may not have been a bad/good idea.

SO MUCH GARLIC.

We got up in the morning for our respective meetings and such and on our way to breakfast, a man with a tiny dog stopped us and asked if we could watch it while he went pee. So that’s how Dani and I came into owning Victor/Victoria for approximately 2-3 minutes.

Leaving him/her was heart wrenching.

Breakfast involved pancakes, bacon, eggs and the best damn orange juice EVER. From there, I headed to drastically change my look with Vanessa at The Manor Salon & Spa in Toronto’s faaaaabulous village (really, it’s great).

We begin the 3+ hour process of doing my hair. Vanessa does not ease me into things… She is all “Well, we shouldn’t dye the hair that you’re just going to cut,” so I’m all “Just cut it off then!”

And she does. She just lops off a good 4-5 inches of my hair like she’s sheering a goddamn sheep. I don’t really have time to absorb what’s just happened before the lightener begins to be applied into my hair. I had so much hair even after it had been cut off that it STILL took an hour to just apply the colour to my hair. Then we had to let it set for 20-30 minutes. Then wash it out. My hair was the most ridiculous yellow/blonde that you wind up with if you try to dye your hair blonde with crummy box colour. I knew Vanessa wouldn’t leave it like that, but at that moment, I was like “OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE TO MY HAIR?! IMPULSIVE STEPH NEEDS TO DIE!”

Thankfully that didn’t last too long before she started applying an original mix of colours to use to tone my hair. The colour change, even all gunky from the dye immediately changed my mood from “OH MY GOD PANIC!” to “OH MY GOD HURRY THE EFF UP BECAUSE I WANT TO SEE!”

This process didn’t take nearly as long to do and after about a total of 45 minutes for the application, the setting and rinse, my hair was an AMAZING shade of blonde/purple that had envisioned the day before.

Then my gaaal starts working away on the cut and I say “I think this would look great with curls!” so she says “Then let’s curl it!” AND WE DO. Well, she does.

And VOILA, I went into the salon around noon and came out sometime after 3 with an entirely different look that hadn’t even crossed my mind until less than 24 hours prior.

Afterwards, I met up with Liz, one of my lady loves and we wandered around the Eaton Center for a smidge and hung out at Yonge and Dundas Square until a dramatic protest put us off being there. We made our way to the west end of the city to meet Amy for drinks I’m Bloor-West Village (SANGRIA!!!), in which Stephanie is reminded of what happens when she leaves the house: WEIRD SHIT HAPPENS.

Seriously.

We leave Amy’s apartment to walk to our destination and when I’m with Amy and Liz, I am ridiculous. So I’m dancing and laughing and talking to them. I spot a black lady in a wheelchair behind us and tell everyone to move over so she can get by. Only, she doesn’t go past us. She slows down to be at pace with us and starts singing to me “Girl, I’m sexy and I know!” and starts doing little DJish dance moves at me and I am like “WHAT IS HAPPENING?!”

The lady laughs and carries on and I start dancing and being all “YEAAAH!” for reasons.

Like not even two minutes pass before the woman somehow shows up again and starts talking to us. This time, she rolls up behind me and comes back alongside and turns to me and says “Do you have any black in your family?” and I’m like “WUUUUUT?!” because basically I’m as white as they come. I don’t mean that in any weird way, I just mean that I am PASTY as hell, I’m practically SEE THROUGH.

My blatantly shocked face phases her not and she carries on and says “‘Cause that booty, giiiiiiirl!” and then she cackles and drives away.

Sometimes I would really question whether or not I imagine things if not for my friends to be around to witness these things.

I’m pretty sure this woman would’ve just kept on finding us if we hadnt run into our friend Bron at that point. We stop to briefly wheeze out what just happened before carrying on.

Then… Deep fried dill pickles, sangria, boozy fruit, sangria, straw chopsticks and butter chicken pot pie.

On the way back to Amy’s though, as we’re merrily frolicking, a man just kind of pops up into my face and maniacally smiles at me and says “HIIIIIIIIIIII!”

My only reaction to this completely spontaneous moment is to just grin back at him and then laugh at the whole thing. This is my life and sometimes when weird things don’t happen to me, I start to think “Maybe I’m no longer a weird magnet!” and then my life compensates for the loss of crazy.

I made it home in one piece and was kind of dreading what Oma would say knowing that she would either love it or hate it. She wound up loving it, almost freakishly quickly. I recorded her reaction and for the most part it was pretty tame, but she did say one line that cracked me up, so here you go and YOU’RE WELCOME:

I call this voice clip “Blonde’s Have More Fun” in which Oma says just that.

Oh, and for the record, here’s what my hair looked like after Vanessa (the wonderful goddess) was finished with me:

This weekend marked the 10th anniversary of TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Every year, an exclusive number of comic creators and exhibitors gather to showcase their wares to enthusiastic crowds eager to check out what’s available. The show is put on at the Toronto Reference Library, which is easily one of the coolest venues in the city. Multiple floors filled with conference rooms and books at Yonge and Bloor creates the perfect atmosphere to check out new things.

The free admission aspect of the show draws in a massive number of people who are either big fans of the show, the guests, or just want to check out what’s happening. Accessibility is easily one of TCAF’s biggest draws as an attendee. It gives people wanting to try comics the opportunity to explore the sometimes insular world without having to pay a steep fee like at bigger convention. Plus the lack of cosplayers and such (even though it can be a very cool and large part of “bigger” shows), gives an air of normalcy, so attendees won’t feel like they’re not a part of what’s going on. The line-ups were pretty minimal and even when there was a line, it was always a worthwhile wait.

TCAF can still be an overwhelming show though, despite wonderful volunteers and efforts to keep certain areas down to a certain number of people at any given time. The “free” part of the show is great but does tend to draw in a large number of people. That’s definitely not a bad thing, but aisles can get crowded and congested leaving some with a feeling of anxiety. But the free admission allows for veteran and new comic fans alike to spend their hard-earned monies on the creators, which again, is fantastic.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard one bad thing said about TCAF, but love it or hate it, it’s the show that other comic creators and industry professionals attend for fun. Captain Marvel-er Jamie McKelvie was stealthily at the show visiting with friends, attending panels, and enjoying the city. Vertigo assistant editor, Greg Lockard was wandering around and taking in everything that was going on. And lots of other creators showed their support for TCAF by being there.

I heard lots of wonderful news from creators and exhibitors that TCAF set all-new sales records for many of them. Some of the popular items included:

• Kate Leth’s “Girls Don’t Read Comics” totes and buttons were a big favourite among the guests.
• Becky Cloonan‘s new mini comic “Demeter.”
• Pretty well everything from Scott C‘s booth; there was rarely a time when I saw less than 5-6 people present.
• Caricatures from the redheaded cartoonist (and Vine phenomenon), Marlo Meekins.

And more… SO MUCH MORE. I know I’m forgetting a million and one things that I saw this weekend, but there was so much to take in and enjoy that it’s hard to spit it all back up on paper for retelling. Additional things of note that I PERSONALLY enjoyed the crap out of were:

• Meeting Lisa Hanawalt, whose illustrated review of War Horse has made it so that I never have to or want to see the film or play. Her review is all the War Horse I’ll ever need (and is included in her awesome book)!
• Getting to chat with the awesome dudes (Josh O’Neill, Andrew Carl and David Tahn) behind the Dark Horse published anthology, Once Upon A Time Machine - a classic fairytale with a sci-fi twist.
• Picking up V2 of Karl Kerschl‘s incredible web comic The Abominable Charles Christopher. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s all available online to read and V1 & V2 are for sale if you prefer physical copies.
• Discovering a cool comic from Archaia called Spera, which features some of the most beautiful art I have EVER seen in a comic.

It’s a bummer that TCAF is all done for the year, but if you haven’t been to the show before or are on the fence about it, you absolutely have to attend in 2014. It’s such a treat to be at and the guests in attendance are some of the nicest people in the industry.