Cabazon Dinosaurs

My fascination with these landmarks along the interstate in southern California should come as no surprise.  I've written about my first visit there, I posted about eating at the Wheel Inn next door, and I shared a few pictures from inside the T-Rex.  Still, after all of that, I realized I still had a few images from around the dinosaur garden that I had never posted anywhere before.  These are the remainder of my snapshots from visiting the Cabazon Dinosaurs in 2009 and 2010. 

The video I shot and edited as part of my Indio Outio project (also posted below) ended up on the Cabazon Dinosaurs official facebook page back in April.  It's always a pleasant surprise to find my photos or videos shared by people who are closest to the subject matter.  I guess it's the best part of crazy attractions like this, they're quick to get attention and easy to build memories around.  We can all look at the same pictures and take away something from our own visits.

Humblfax's Facts (2000)

This may in fact go down in history as one of the best and worst short films that I have ever or will ever make. It was so intentionally ridiculous that you'd think we were spoofing something. It was a made for YouTube video before YouTube was even a thing. Without social networks and before blogging became widespread, the project that became Humblfax's Facts was little more than an excuse to entertain ourselves - and probably no one more than me.

I can't think of another project I've ever created that was based more on inside jokes for such a small audience. The truth is that at 16 years old, this small summer film was as much about playing with the new Sony D8 that I'd bought myself as it was about entertaining my friends. Funny how in retrospect it's random things like this that seem to stick.  

The making of the project only lasted a couple of weeks between our jobs and varying schedules, and in the end, it was never really finished. I'd amassed just under an hour of footage of various scenes, sketches, and outtakes, and then left it. As was often the case back then, I was after more experiences than results. I remember we finished shooting a day before I left for vacation with my family to Ontario and then I had a new project to occupy me. 

It was later that fall that the project came to light again. It still wasn't edited, but I remember everyone being interested to see how some of the footage turned out. I still remember that evening because of how hard we laughed. The raw footage and bizarre situations just seemed to emphasize some of the quirks in our small group, and after that it was clear that the project would never be better than it was as a collection of random scenes. The movie wasn't just a hilarious recap of a few weeks of our summer, it ended up being some of the only home video footage that I bothered to shoot of us together in high school.  

All of these memories are awesome to rediscover, but the project was a bit of a gem in itself. The premise was like a Forrest Gump style version of Medicine Hat history starring a character named Erma Humblfax, played by my friend Kim. The movie followed Erma's life as she haphazardly influenced some of the local culture and landmarks, often without much regard for any of the actual history, but so was born Humblfax's Facts.

Here's how the story went:

The movie opened with Erma being born in a ditch, her mother dying shortly afterwards, followed by a sixteen year flash forward to her running through the open prairie (Monty Python and the Holy Grail style) in search of water. She finds a creek, drinks the water, gets sick, and ends up at a farmer's place where she seduces him. Erma then mistakes the farmer's mother for his lover and robs him.

With some money she ends up in Medicine Hat and starts stripping downtown (as you do). There she meets a rival stripper who after a dance battle gives her a tacky clay bowl because "it's savagely ugly and it reminded me of you". On her way home, Erma slips along the river, and with a pile of singles and the clay bowl she pieces together the advantages of getting into the local clay industry. She gets that going with the help of a local businessman, and after striking it rich she moves to England and befriends a socialite.

Then WW2 starts and they're both injured in a London bombing so they both go back to Medicine Hat where Erma starts working in a factory for the war effort. After the war ends she helps foil a plot to murder the mayor at the Courthouse, but it turns out he was just being pursued because he had lost some important papers. 

Erma is then kicked in the head by a child on a swing and falls into a decades long coma. When she wakes up in the 1990s she's made so much money off of her investments that she's instrumental in constructing the Saamis Teepee. Oh, and while all of this is going on, Erma is periodically visited by the ghost of her dead mother who offers her advice in rhyming rap songs.    
In short, local history just had its mind blown.

Choice one-liners from the short included:

• "Water! Water! Life giving wetness!"
• "Put me back in the wheelbarrow you bloody fool".
• "If you've got it, flaunt it".
• "It's savagely ugly and it reminded me of you".
• "Damn you, Hitler! Damn you!"
• "You bastard, I hate you, I'm taking all your silver!"
• "He kicked me in the head!"
• "In my town? I don't think so!" 

Deliberate setups aside, it's easy to see now that the best part of the project has become the stories that it triggers for me. There's not much sense in sharing all of the footage, because like I said, it's funnier for what it became and the memories that we made around it. I figured a montage of random clips couldn't hurt though. I'm guessing some of my friends might be embarrassed, but come on, you had to know this was my secret plan from the start - over a decade in the making.



Thank you to Kim Hopkins (McKenzie), Jennifer Heninger, Sarah Irwin (Sterie), Mike Niebergall, Kim Frey (Unrau), Mathew McKenzie, and Carla Hopkins (Heiland) for your help that summer. This project was nothing if not a reason to laugh. Thanks for that!

Assiniboia Inn (Sin Bin) in Medicine Hat, Alberta

Located downtown, the Assiniboia Inn / Hotel and the giant vintage neon sign that hangs off the side of the building are relics of a bygone era. The Inn has closed, the bar is 'sometimes' open, but the best years of this building seem to be in the past. For years the 'Sin Bin' has been regarded as a dive, popular mostly to a few regulars and soldiers in town from the base. 

In documenting local landmarks, it's tough not to note the size of the Assiniboia building in contrast to other buildings downtown. Its prominence along South Railway Street hints at the significance of the history surrounding it. In fact, this building was constructed in the early 1900s as the Hooper-Huckvale Block and would've been a major commercial centre at the time.

Originally the building featured store front windows all along its base, and housed offices for various professionals on the floors above. It wasn't until the early 1950s that the building was renovated and expanded to become the Assiniboia Hotel.  

As the focus shifted away from downtown in the 1980s, things began to decline for the Assiniboia. Today the building is looking pretty rough around the edges. It would be exciting, however currently unlikely, to see this building refurbished as office space or apartments. It would take a lot of money and creative vision to bring this place back to what it once was. 

Hooper Huckvale Block ca. 1913

Building before renovation and expansion as a hotel ca. 1950

Striking workers out front of Assiniboia Hotel ca. 1954

Assiniboia Hotel ca. 1950s

Assiniboia Hotel following 1950s renovation.

Hooper Huckvale Block in the early 1900s.