I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to do it so badly, but my friends yell at me for even thinking about such a thing. It would break my Granny’s heart, for sure. And I know it’s a knotty thing to do, but it looks like so much fun! Doesn’t anyone understand my dilemma?
Kris, a 29-year-old working at Knotty Boy, does. She felt those same longings I have. Had those same fears of being called names and given weird glances. The difference between her and I? She did it. For nine months, they matured and then out they came. But, alas, they were too much for her. “I’m bad at commitment,” she explained at the beginning of our telephone conversation. “Aren’t we all?” I asked.
And they are a commitment. Dreadlocks take at least a year to mature and they do require a bit of maintenance to keep them tight and pristine. The good thing about Knotty Boy dreads is they already look about three months old right out of the salon, according to Kris who has worked at Knotty Boy Lock Shop and Salon for a little over a year and who has been a stylist for nine years.
Most people think dread-removal is done only with a sharp pair o’ skizzors, but that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, the reason Kris got dreads was to grow her hair out. First, her stylist put in human hair extensions which were then dreaded and crocheted with the rest of her hair. I’m not going to explain what crocheting is because it would require copious amounts of drawings, pie charts, and bar and line graphs, but feel free to check it out online. However, I will mention Kris’s warning that crocheting is not for the faint of heart. “Sometimes crochet hooks have been known to do some damage…I had some band aids in the beginning [of my career],” says Kris.
Let’s touch on some avenues of dreading, shall we? Kris prefers the popular back-combing technique which usually begins by sectioning the hair into uniform squares at the scalp. Then you grab a section and, using a fine-toothed metal comb, begin to brush the hair towards the scalp starting at the base. Then add dread wax as you twist from the base up. Now it’s time to palmroll which is, quite obviously, rolling your dread between your palms in a Speedy Gonzales fashion.
Then there is the wool sweater method where you rub, well, a wool sweater on your head in a circular motion until dreads magically (and painfully) appear. Actually, there is a lot of tearing of knotted hair into sections and more circular rubbing and more tearing, so it’s not as simple as kneading an itchy garment into your head. But it’s close.
Another approach is that which means, “to be remiss in the care or treatment of:” neglect. (Cue climactic music of a Charlie Chaplin film.) All you have to do for this one is, as the Beatles suggest, “Let it be.” OK, so there’s a catch to this one too. You do have to keep your hair clean.
My sojourn in the dreaded realm has just begun, and my reasoning is solely style. But some people do it for spiritual purposes and others as a result of lethargy. All kinds of people get them. “You’d be really surprised who comes in,” says Kris who has a customer who is a surgeon in his 40s and flies to the Knotty Boy Salon in Vancouver all the way from Texas. A nine-year-old girl with cerebral palsy got dreads because she hated her mom brushing her hair. And then you have the people who are overly excited about holidays. “You don’t understand how many requests we get around Halloween for Johnny Depp dreads. It’s definitely the busiest time for us,” says Kris.
The Knotty Boy atmosphere is a place for community, diversity and acceptance. “People have e-mailed saying people have stopped making fun of them at school after getting dreadlocks.” Stories like this “warm my heart,” says Kris. “We take a lot of pride in being personal with our clients.”
From that 41 minute and 1 second conversation we had together, I knew she wasn’t faking. And in her own words I’ll conclude, “I can’t think of anything witty right now and there’s a lady who’s been waiting patiently to buy a jar of tightening gel.”
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April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
He’s the oldest person in the room. “How old are you, David Schriek?” I ask, sitting across the table from him in the Marlie Snider Collegium.
“No comment. Around 30; we’ll leave it at that,” he says. Maybe a touchy topic for someone that age who’s in his third year of university, but with a past like Schriek’s, a university education at first seems almost unnecessary. Dave has already lived a life idolized by many: he played lead guitar in a rock band.
“The only life I’d known was touring,” Schriek, former guitarist of bands Schriek, Salvation and Big Radio, says “Six nights [a week], three months at a time, sometimes without coming home. We would go to Prince George, move on to Alberta, playing all the towns, Edmonton, Calgary, through all the prairies. That was our main touring area.”
Between ’93 and ’98 Dave’s life revolved around partying every night, getting laid by beautiful women. People surrounded him, but he felt alone. “When you’re so saturated with pride, adrenaline, the party scene, you have this surface-level happiness,” Dave says, “but you have no joy.”
God called him before all that, but he ignored Him. “I hadn’t lost my salvation,” he tells me, “I had lost my fellowship.”
Then that life ended. Schriek’s band stopped touring and he had to start all over again. “After we got off the road,” he says, “I was extremely depressed. I was in denial.”
Dave moved back in with his parents and tried to get his life together, but it was hard. “I was too proud to beg,” he tells me, “too proud to get a minimum wage job pumping gas because, hey, I’m Dave Schriek, my songs have been on the radio, I’ve opened for famous bands [like 5440 and Nickelback], I’m a big deal.”
He decided he needed an education, but that on its own was going to be tough. “My high school diploma was so bad, no college would accept me,” he says. “I had to go back and take Algebra, Biology, Chemistry 11.”
Finally, he got accepted into the music program in Selkirk College, in Nelson, B.C. “First year was hell,” he says. “I had to learn how to read music, needed to learn theory. I hadn’t been in school for a long time. My mind was like rubber. I was completely broken, but God had a plan for all that.”
Things did pick up for Dave. By his third year at Selkirk, he had two diplomas, in guitar performance and audio engineering. After Selkirk, he moved to Whitehorse to teach guitar at Unitech Music Academy and play for musician Ted Moore.
He then moved to Kelowna to work in a group home, which he says was the easiest job he has ever done. “Some people think of working with crazy people and think, ‘oh, that’s hard,’ but I loved it, man. I just took guys with schizophrenia out for the day. I’d say, ‘What do you wanna do today?’ And they’d be like, ‘Uh, I want to go to Tim Horton’s and get a doughnut and a cup of coffee.’ And I’d be like, ‘Great, me too!’”
Now he’s back in school, finishing his music degree. And his relationship with God is flourishing. “I became like the prodigal son or David [with Bathsheba]. Once you’re born again you’re born again, but you can lose your fellowship. Remember the Church of Corinth. Actually,” he looks around, “do you have a Bible, I want to read that right now. I love that verse. Here it is: ‘Hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord.” (1Corinthians 5:5).
David Schriek lived the dream, and it didn’t deliver what it had promised. “When I was living on the road I was miserable,” he says. “I was living to please the flesh.” Now, 10 years later, he’s living for someone else. And he’s smiling.
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April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The modern Christian film industry is plagued by such sub par productions as the Left Behind films, Revelation, Judgment and Waterproof. I do not mean to say that every film ever produced under a Christian production company is poorly made, but the vast majority of them have some of the lowest production quality that I have ever seen in films.
So what makes Christian cinema often times the butt of jokes rather than the topic of conversation? The argument that Christian films aren’t as widely funded as mainstream films is a particularly weak argument; this is due to the fact that many excellent films have been made on shoe-string budgets. Take Kevin Smith for example; he was able to craft one of the biggest cult followings in the last decade on a total budget of around two million dollars, namely, the film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). Left Behind (2000), on the other hand, had a budget of $17.4 million dollars, more than enough money to make a film of substance.
Content and plot are two key elements that many Christian films lack due to what seems like a narrow-minded focus on eschatological themes as the only suitable topic for screen adaptation. I pose a question in response to this phenomenon: Why can’t Christian produced films be about Biblical themes and not excessively about Biblical narratives? Many “secular” films exemplify the human condition and carry more Biblical themes than any Christian produced film could ever hope to achieve.
Schindler’s List is one film that always stands out as one of the most poignant and moving films ever produced. The contrast between good and evil shows to a great extent both the beauty in the human race and the astounding evil it is capable of. Another well-produced film is The Passion of the Christ, which is a prime example of how a film based around Christianity can be made and still have an effect on people.
Why are secular films so superior to Christian produced movies? In this writer’s opinion it has to do extensively with enjoying the material. How many screenwriters really enjoy writing a movie about the end times or about a small Christian family living out in the wilderness? Not many. Films that carry weight and mean something are often written by those who truly have a passion for the material. Mel Gibson, in making The Passion of the Christ, was wholeheartedly devoted to the material and wasn’t willing to compromise and tell a watered down version of Jesus’ last days.
Is there hope for Christian produced films? I’d like to think so, however, it is going to take a massive paradigm shift in order for these films to receive more than a passing glance. The Christian film industry needs to recognize that Christians don’t want to see poor reiterations of the same story. Most Christians see “secularized” movies and so they know what a good film looks like. The Christian industry needs to recognize that Christians are intelligent consumers, and expand beyond simple feel-good stories and end-times “thrillers” to tell stories that are actually worth telling, stories that mean something.
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April 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
VICTORIA (CUP) — The end-of-term stress is building, and it’s that time of year again when classes are dragging, immunity is dropping and some athletes are turning to nutritional supplements to keep their performance up.
Many athletes have been carefully supplementing for years and for those who know what they’re doing, it’s not an issue. But what you don’t know about those little pills and powders might scare you.
Lynneth Wolski, a professor with the University of Victoria’s School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education, said that vitamin C pills are one “remedy” that can get you in trouble, and overdosing is easier than you think.
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March 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
So, when the editor approached me to write an article on apathy, I said, “Sure. Why not?” But now that the article is three days late, and it’s time to actually write the thing, I remember exactly “why not”: I don’t wanna. But now it’s crunch time and I have to race to write an article on apathy that I don’t want to write. Talk about irony.
So, what do you guys wanna talk about? How are classes going? Are you seeing anyone?
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March 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Ever thought about getting some ink, a permanent tatty of some sort? Can’t think of something you’d ever want to have on your body forever? Let me propose a new way of thinking about forever.
Positioned diagonally, I have a small grey dragonfly tattooed in the top of my left foot. It mostly just looks cool and aesthetically appealing. There is no symbolism attached to it, nor is there a statement associated with the design. There is no regret either. It is just a tattoo, and it will be on my body forever.
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March 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I was once standing in line at Subway, ordering an “Italian Sub,” and discussing which veggies I’d prefer to have on my toasted sandwich. Then, while looking at the jalapenos, I yawned and stretched both of my arms. The sandwich crafter stared at my arms as they were in the air. I realized that my tattoos were exposed. He asked me, “What are those?” and I stopped and thought about how I would explain why I found these images so important that I would tattoo them on my body.
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March 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The title of Michel Gondry’s latest film certainly evokes nostalgia for all who felt civic pride in returning a VHS cassette rewound.
Be Kind Rewind is the story of one declining video store (Be Kind Rewind) owned by an elderly Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) and run by Mike (Mos Def). Mike’s best friend Jerry (Jack Black) is an eccentric junkyard owner who becomes magnetized after trying to sabotage an electrical plant. When Mr. Fletcher is informed that his store is scheduled to be demolished to make way for a new development, he goes on a fact-finding mission to a local video chain. Mike is left in charge of the store, and after Jerry demagnetizes all the tapes (erasing all their content), they start to make parodies (”sweds”) of the films in the store. The sweds catch on and they attempt to raise enough money save the store.
