PAUL BOYD

I found out today that an old friend Paul Boyd was the man who was shot and killed by Vancouver Police last week. From eyewitnesses, it seems like the police used excessive and unnecessary force. I'm not going to get into any more details about the tragic event itself but offer these memories of Paul.

Craig McEwen, Andrew Duncan, Melanie Snagg, Paul and I were sitting on Andrew and Mel's penthouse patio having drinks one summer evening. Whenever Paul laughed (and he LAUGHED!) he would stomp his HUGE foot on the patio so hard that the neighbour below got pissed off. Whenever we heard the "thump-thump" from below we laughed because Paul said that he was probably whapping the ceiling with his huge mutated thumb.

Whenever Craig and/or made him laugh he would push us with such force that we'd get whiplash. We nick-named him "Testos: The God of Male Bonding."

He told me all about his new "sick & twisted" animated movie he was making called "Chili Con Carnage" which was about a couple of kids who run amok in a convenient store. He was pretty thrilled with it and laughed at the various things that the kids did. I never did see any of it though.

I remember when I met Paul I found out he did the album artwork for Tankhog's album "House of Beauty." He said he wasn't really happy with it but he laughed at it and how crude and "disgusting" it was.


Craig McEwen and I had a small video production company called Weinerboy. Geoff Coates had drawn the "official" mascots for our company but Paul offered us his take on it and we laughed so hard when he gave it to us. Click on it to see it much larger. The detailing and line-technique is stunning. The attention to detail; unnerving. This picture still makes me laugh my tits off. Craig and I had HUGE plans for animating this guy and tried to figure out what his back-story was. Grandpa Weinerboy, the crusty old sea-dog.

Paul and I worked together as swampers for a crappy, shitty moving company called Mini Move. Before the company had real moving trucks, it used old Canada Post mail trucks. Paul and I drove one of these mail trucks around to various moving jobs. Whenever he laughed he'd pound on the dashboard or (if he was driving) the steering wheel. I remember fearing for my life everytime he drove so I decided I wouldn't make him laugh while he was driving. I remember looking at a girl while I was driving and then hearing Paul yell "Stop!" and I looked quickly to see that traffic ahead of me had stopped. I slammed on the brakes and lightly rear-ended the car in front of us. Paul was laughing at me because the owner hated me enough to begin with and now I had increased his insurance payments. Paul laughed because he knew I was going to be fired. I didn't get fired. When we went to go get our pay from the meat-head boss I said "Hey, thanks for the loot. I quit." Paul laughed.

Paul was a good-natured and a "gentle-giant" (unless you made him laugh then he would push you away with the force of 56 men--it was easy to make Paul laugh too). He was a great guy and it makes me mad that I'll never get to bump into him again or hear that infectious laugh.