Item Number 14: Jenny Award

Time in possession: I can actually date this one pretty accurately: One and a half years and a couple of weeks.

Description: Plush donkey, floral patterns with a blue ribbon on gold painted block of wood. Slightly peeling paper label proclaiming "JENNY 05". Its eyes speak of an untold sadness that would utterly destroy a lesser award.

Cost: Won, so free. Let's call it 2.50$ for it's various parts.

Story: Winnipeg, my hometown, is the proud staging grounds for one of the largest (the second largest, and it's a close race) fringe festivals in North America: The Winnipeg Fringe Festival. Being an actor, it stands to reason that I should throw myself into such a festival with reckless abandon- I have, but for the longest time, I didn't.

I'm making up for lost time: I did 2 shows in '05, 3 in '06 and am currently lined up to do another 2 this upcoming year. But I'm getting ahead of myself: Despite my aspirations towards acting and the festival in general, for years I would fail over and over again to participate. It wasn't until my friend Seb approached me with the first couple of scenes on a play he was working on that I finally got into a project that would go the distance from planning to performance.

Part of the secret was that I was determined to make it happen and having somebody (Seb) to let down drove me onward. Also, I had been told repeatedly by my Prof that year to take part, and so I was set on getting the show done. As time went on I assumed many of the responsibilities for it: Along with co-writing and doing much of the directing, I produced the show, did the publicity and otherwise whored myself out to ensure that my creation was going to be as much a success as possible.

In the end, things worked out pretty well. Seb's couple of scenes became Coffee, a romantic comedy starring the both of us and a handful of awesome friends. While the show was met with mostly tepid reviews, our audiences were very appreciative and plentiful enough to pay everyone off quite decently for their hard work. Even better, during the final night of the festival we were awarded this, one of the annual Jenny Awards.

I'll back it up again: The Jenny is an independent paper that is produced during the festival, which reviews show and posts audience reviews of shows, to essentially serve as a forum for festival goers to share their opinions on the various shows and the event at large. On the last night of the festival, as a sort of closing party, the people in charge of the Jenny take over the Kings' Head Pub (a popular drinking hole right in the middle of the proceedings) and hand out awards while everyone gets shit faced and enjoys the last moments of the festival together. The shows are grouped haphazardly together, usually according to their title (Shows about Jesus! Shows starting with N! Shows that remind me of my horrible childhood!) and the winner is chosen by whichever show gets the most noise upon it's mention. So, essentially it's a drunken popularity contest. But whatever.

ANYWAY, to make a ridiculously long story short(er), we managed to win the "Food" catagory, thanks in large to the help of the cast of my other show that year, the huge-casted Illuminati: The Musical! Seb and I agreed to share the award, although it has been sitting in my room ever since. That's a problem with this project- What if Seb sees this entry and wants it back? He'll have to kung fu fight me for it.

Item Number 1: Bagpipe Trophy

Time in possession: It's dated 1994, which would make it 12 years now.

Cost: Free, as I won it in a competition. Let's say 2$

Description: A small trophy, gold coloured plastic music note and staff on top of a faux-marble base. Engraved metal plaque announces it as the "Novice Piper Award" for 1994 in the "L.S.B.S.P.B."


Story: This trophy was the first thing I picked up in my room. It has been sitting on my desk for years now and it is truly about as random a thing as I could possibly grab.

I played the bagpipes for 10 years, in a band called the Lord Selkirk Boyscout Pipe band. I have many stories about the band, although I expect them to be uncovered with future items. In this case, the trophy was won when I was 10 or 11 years old in an inter-band competition. I was against probably half a dozen other members of the band, and this would be the first and only trophy I would win in such a competition, as shortly afterwords I would rise to the intermediate level which I would eventually rise towards the top of, but never exceed. Frankly, I never had much heart in the pipes, but this trophy proves that I had enough skill to be of some, if minor, note.

That being said, I'm fairly certain that all the kids I was up against that year would go on to surpass me later on, until I was one of the few stragglers who would remain in the intermediate level (and therefore out of the competition band) for the remainder of my time with the group. But again, these are all stories for another day.

A little bit about the inter-band competitions- Band rehearsals would take place in a church basement, deep in the heart of St. James. Every Saturday morning I would wake up early to be dragged out to practice, a trek that took a good half hour at the shortest. The yearly inter band competitions were a nice change of pace: Instead of typical 3 hours of rehearsal (9-12: Yeah, I loved it) we would all hang around and one by one play a piece for a guest adjudicator. Usually it wouldn't take too long and after the winners were announced we could leave. The point behind this all was to both encourage friendly competition in the band and to prepare everyone for the upcoming competitions held around the city and province.

I actually got this trophy at the yearly band ceilidh, a social held every year to raise some money and give the band another chance to both perform and socialize. My name is on a plaque now, which was briefly in my possession, until I had to return it for the next year's competition. I don't know what I did with the plaque, but the trophy was put on my dresser, where it would remain until I moved it to make room for a TV, at which point it has lived on my writing desk, gathering dust and taking up space. Trophies like this are kind of weird- It has little sentimental value, but I don't want to just throw it away. That being said, there's not really much I can do with it. I suppose it will return to my desk, until I've worked up enough callousness to discard it for good.