S.C.E.N.E. MUSIC FESTIVAL '08


  I once read someone describe being in a mosh pit as how they imagined it felt like to be born. To me it was particularly poignant as I came across it early in my involvement with the local St. Catherine’s music scene – an instep to a new beginning of my own that would significantly impact thus far the next five and a half years of my life. Yesterday was SCENE Music Festival - the musical equivalent of Christmas for all the good girls and boys of the Niagara Region that have even the slightest investment in the area’s independent musicians. Being there, I can’t help but extend this natal metaphor to describe my current involvement. It’s really weird to not recognize most of the people there any more. Or to stand on the periphery of a crowded venue watching the young blood form the vital core, sweating and shoving, as the elders (with the exception of the anomalous die-hard) move past the basal layer of the pit and either into some auxiliary facilitating function, or sloughed off into the ether like a dermal layer of skin.
Having said that, I think I speak for the entire Pause Designs crew when I say that we had a pretty fantastic time yesterday. Many many thanks to anyone and everyone that stopped bye our booth. Just to allay any residual fears, the cookies were not actually poisoned. Very special thanks to Gord from Golden Horseshoe, who kept us well entertained throughout the day, Lee from We Go To Shows for collaborating with us on the flyers and the three girls who invaded the entire place with our stickers of their own accord. If at any point you were slapped with our logo or otherwise accosted by a girl in a yellow bandanna, then you know what I’m talking about. Of course we always appreciate when the Raging Lilies grace us with their presence and Shannon did an outstanding job of distributing our tasty marketing ploys. Again, anyone who picked up some of our merchandise or took the time to check out what we were selling, we appreciate and thank each and every one of you.
The high point of the evening for me was talking with Liam from Cancer Bats (which happened to be one of only two shows that I managed to slip away from the booth for). Apparently, he heard that someone was selling bootleg Cancer Bats shirts and he was trying to figure out who it was. (Ps. If someone was in fact selling fake shirts for any band, that is totally fucked up and I hope you get hit by a train). For anyone who is curious, Liam seems to be a very nice guy and even walked away with a little Pause merch.

Thanks to everyone who made SCENE a great success yet again and we hope to see you all there again next year!

-Ken  ¶ 9:11 PM

  THANKS TO EVERYONE AT S.C.E.N.E.!


 Holy shit was S.C.E.N.E. amazing this year! So many rad stories to tell you about. (Including pretending to be homeless with Liam of the Cancer Bats, as pictured above.) But I'm out of fuel, and am in need of some well earned sleep. So go get yourself some sleep too, and I'll post a huge blog alllllll about it tomorrow!

-Eric Pause  ¶ 9:29 PM

 
You may not know it (yet) but some of you are part of a prestigious organization. An organization celebrating  its two year anniversary tomorrow Friday, June 27th @ The Reverb with...Means, Liferuiner, Endwell, Oceans and more.

Congrats to our pals WGTS!



SEE YALL THERE!

- Andrew

PS. Catherine De Fazio... we haven't forgotten.  ¶ 7:07 PM

  INTRODUCING, MEL GIBSON


Okay so we kind of dropped a bomb on you on that last post without warning. We've been hearing a lot of "WHO THE HELL IS MEL AND WHY IS SHE POSTING ON PAUSEDESIGNS.COM?! I'M GOING TO KILL MYSELF!" Well, before you start throwing full wine bottles at your computer screen, or something worse, allow me to explain. I met Mel many years ago when she gave me a lift to a Rosesdead show in some far off city. From the second I got in the car to the second I was safely dropped off at home I was in stitches. It was like God himself was channeling his best jokes and pop culture references through her the entire time. (Did I mention she was also glowing?) I got home only to find that my abs were bleeding, my throat was ruptured, and I was completely dehydrated from all the tears I had shed due to the strain of laughing for so long. After a long a painful recovery in the hospital, I rushed to tell Andrew and Ken of the godlike experience I had with this "Mel". Needless to say, they did not believe me. And I cannot say I blame them, I started to doubt it myself. That's when things started to go downhill for me. No one was funny to me anymore. I had had a taste of how funny a person COULD be, and everyone else wasn't trying. Frantically I started filling my brain with things that once cracked me up. Homeless people, that TV show "Intervention", pushing around the local forth graders... Nothing worked. Months and months passed without so much as a smile. Just when I thought things couldn't get any more grim, Ken came up with the idea that may of very well saved my sense of humor: "If she's so great why don't we ask her to model our new Inner Beauty tees?" Brilliant! I thought. And rushed over to myspace. Sho nuff, Mel was in fact a real person.  And she was also in fact down for doing some pics. But the days leading up to the photo shoot felt like years, and I made myself sick worrying about it. What if she wasn't on this time? What if she wasn't on ever again?! By the time the photo shoot did come around, I was a train wreck. The combination of fear between me never being able to laugh again, and Ken and Andrew breaking my thumbs for overhyping her was taking it's toll on me. But it seems my worries were all for nothing. Mel came busting into our lives like a whitty bat out of hell. BAM! something about the fresh price of bel air here! BOOM! Dancing without music untill we all feel awkward in our own home there! POW! Does she have a real southern accent?! We don't know! By the time the shoot was over and she had left, Ken and Andrew were crying at my feet begging for my forgiveness for ever doubting me. (My Boo Box was getting repainted, so I forgave them instead.) Needless to say all three of us broke up with our girlfriends (They weren't good enough anymore compared to Mel.), and have continued to pester Mel to do more photo shoots and hang out with us constantly. And let me tell you, that pestering has paid off. Mel is now Pause's first official blog writer extraordinaire. So check back often my friend, because it's going to be nothing but good times on here from now on. 

-Eric Pause  ¶ 12:56 PM

  AND SO IT CAME TO PASS, PAUSE DESIGNS HATH BESTOW'D UPON'ST US THIS SITE OF WEB...

Aiight, so we all know that the only thing Holy about Pause Designs is Ken’s undergarments. All not-really-joking aside, in the wake of this bountiful new Shoppe, I thought it appropriate to christen PauseDesigns.com with a prayer. Let us pray:

Our father, who art in the Niagara region, Pause Designs be thy name;
Thy website come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in your glorious online store.
Give us this day our daily blog, and forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who don’t rock a mad Speechbubble tee,
And lead us not into shitty clothing, but deliver us from Hollister,
Aw-yeah.

This prayer is by no means a rip-off of the bible, nor is it a rip-off of the prayer in Cool Runnings (One dream. Four Jamaicans. 20 below zero.), though I'm certain that we all agree that Cool Runnings is the only movie that should ever be used as a model for how to approach the most important situations in our lives.

  ¶ 4:14 PM

  BE MY RAWR


Today two of our favourite people, Matt and Leslie Sorge. Had us over for a mix of BBQ, skateboarding, cake, artwork, business plans, high fives, and trampolines. I won't get into the details (They get a little blue ;)) but here's a preview of a possible tee collaboration by Pause artist Ken Dubois and 6 year old pro skater Tristan Sorge. It is my favourite piece of art ever.

EVER.

-Eric Pause  ¶ 9:07 PM

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ONE HELL OF A MAN.


 Today is Jamie King's Birthday. One of our favourite people in the world. Please leave him racy birthday facebook messages here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=474508&id=572575230

-Eric Pause  ¶ 8:58 PM

 

Ahhh, the return of summer. It's good to have you back. If you're like us at Pause and you have to deal with unreal amounts of snow, polar bear attacks, igloo maintenance, and worst of all cold soaking wet Chuck Taylors 6 months out of the year, then you know that when the warm weather finally does roll around, you're going to savour every moment of it.

My favourite things about summer revolve around 4 things: BBQ parties, pretty girls coming out of hibernation, the amount of t-shirts I can wear outside everyday, and the S.C.E.N.E. music festival. Now, if you don't know what S.C.E.N.E. music festival is, allow me to give you a quick breakdown, because believe me, your friends are making fun of you behind your back for not knowing. (But I've got your back.) S.C.E.N.E. music festival takes place in downtown St.Catharines Ontario every year for one day. It consists of 151 bands from every genre of music, on 15 stages, with a ton of awesome vendors, chock full of my other 3 favourite things about summer. (I wouldn't make this up.) Some of the acts this year include: Silverstein, Ill Scarlet, Cancer Bats, The Black Lungs, Elements, Sydney, Hostage Life, Cursed, etc. And if that wasn't enough, Pause will be there all day long selling tees (Including 2 new limited edition of 25 tees not available online or in stores!) and original artwork. As well as giving away massive amounts of free buttons, cookies, stickers, kisses, and high fives.

See you there!

-Eric Pause  ¶ 4:41 PM

    ¶ 5:36 PM

 
  ¶ 5:34 PM

 

As he deftly crafts our new website, I wish to take occasion to recount the first time I met one of Pause Designs' very favourite people, Matt Sorge. It was the precarious moment in history when the land formerly (and currently) dubbed the Congo, would temporarily be known as Zaire. I, a hapless traveler and a stranger to the jungle found myself, along with four hundred despairing others, the captive of a particularly violent faction of marauders lead by a bloodthirsty warlord who had been driven to madness by power and syphilis. As I was only able to conjure visages of my own gruesome death, I knew at once that Matt's appearance in the fog could not have been manufactured by my own worsening malaria. Needless to say, he promptly dispatched the warlord, placed his head on a pike to ward off would-be predecessors, and sent us all home with his compliments.

I would later come to learn that this was only one of many heroic feats Matt would perform both before and since. To date, he has rescued 73 orphans from burning buildings and donated 14 kidneys for life saving transplants. He has been awarded the Nobel peace prize for every category, including the newly created one for "Epic Guitar Solo". (And did we mention the ceasing of hostilities between USA and Cuba conspicuously coincide a time he visited both in succession?)

Obviously, this is a man with much on his plate and we greatly appreciate him taking the time to help our little company.

Thanks for everything Matt!

Sincerely,
-Your BFFs at Pause Designs
  ¶ 9:04 AM