Long Overdue For a New Post

I got to see the new Borat movie on a free sneak preview on Thursday, thanks to Jorge and Susan for hooking me up. I can't remember laughing so hard at the movies, maybe Dumb & Dumber. Sacha Baron Cohen is such a brilliant comedian. I wasn't crazy about the Borat character the first time I saw Borat on Da Ali G show, but the character grew on me. A lot like the Ali G character. At first I thought it was stupid that he plays a person who is so thick. Then I thought about it as a social commentary. If you think about it, Borat goes around the U.S and basically picks on right wing agendas, and really questions the people he interviews, and gets to the point without taking baby steps as we often see with TV interviews, and the best part is the answers are so blunt and are the answers you actually want to hear and that nobody wants it to be true. If you get the chance go see it.

Thursday was also my good friend Gord's birthday, he turned 29, is married and doesn't have a Drivers License. Since I went out to see Borat I didn't go out with him, even though I tried to get him a ticket. Just wasn't in the cards. So we went out on Friday night. He has a friend Graham, from Kingston who djs at small bar in Kensington Market called Embassy. What I like about the music that Graham plays is the fact that I don't know any of it. It's all rare, old 6ts Garage, Northern Soul, British Envasion stuff. Just what I like. It was raining like mad that night. So soaked we entered the bar, ordered up a couple of Wellingtons and met up with our good friend Tiffany, met a few of the other regulars, and Graham at the wheels of steel (alright, he was using CDs, but I've seen his vinyl collection and it's pretty impressive). Gord and Tiffany introduced me to this Vodka that's made with grass that Buffalos piss on. It was tasty, but the smell reminded me of entering a pet shop. Take it as you will.


On Saturday, Gord and I had to go to Buffalo to pick up his wife Serena from the airport, long story on why she was away, which I won't get into. I had to borrow a car to do the trip, since my car doesn't take well with passengers. So borrowed my mums car and proceded, but before we left, we went to get fuel, for us and the car. So a quick stop at local Starbucks, and while waiting in line, my friend Matthew (see previous party post) shows up from nowhere. It's odd to run into him here, since he lives in Guelph. He was having dinner with Delia at Licks. So a five minute stop turned to a 20 minute stop. So coffee, gas. Let's go. We get stuck in the construction traffic on the 401, turning our hour and half journey to almost 3 hours.

A little background Gord is not allowed into the US for immigration reasons. So I figured I would just drop him in Niagara Falls or something, and get him on the way back, but he insisted on coming across the border, I was a bit hesistant about it since I didn't want get stuck at the border. But after a few minutes talking to the border agent, we were off to the airport, of course we got a little lost, and were now 2 hours late for picking up Serena. We get to the airport looking for her, nowhere to be found. The buffalo airport is not huge by any means, you can walk from one end to the other in about a minute, same goes with the upstairs. Serena gave us the wrong flight number, so we couldn't find it on the board, but then Gord went to ask the airline about the flight, turns out, it's been delayed a few hours, so she hadn't even been there yet. So it worked out. Coming back is so much easier these days, got to the border:
Guard asks "citizenship?",
me: "Two Canadians and 1 American!"
Guard: Anything to Declare?
Serena: bottle of Wine, and a carton of cigarettes
Guard: length of stay?
Serena: 2 weeks
Guard: okay, you can go

Didn't even ask for passports, wish it was that easy going into the US.

I hadn't really eaten that day, and my plan was to stop at the Fallsview Casino on the way back to get some food. Serena informed us that she had never been to the falls. So a quick show of the falls and back to casino. Got some players card, get the buffet discount, and we ate for 2 hours, and took advantage of the free parking. I love the Casino, if I only gambled.

I'm Free

I just got back from court. Last year I got pulled over for running a red light, which is absurd since I was making a left turn, and that light was only green for like 20 seconds, and I would have to wait another 5 minutes for the light to change, so first it cross, fine, I won't run that, then next. This is the part where it gets stupid, the opposite direction gets to go, it would be fine if it was an advance green, but it's not, it turns red and then finally the direction I'm travelling in gets to go. Why they don't have normal lights at this intersection is a mystery. Anyways, cop didn't show up, so I didn't have to make "Violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights" under section 11b, the right to speedy trial, claim since the notice to appear in court took 9 months to come, and it was shy of six weeks of a year for my trial. So I guess I got lucky on that one.
I think traffic tickets, unless it's serious, is a scam. Yeah some people need to pulled over more often like taxi drivers. But those of us who normally obey the rules, I know I streched it, but c'mon.

On a completely different note. I was reminded of my new favorite catch phrase in photography on a podcast I was listening too. Chimping

Do you Chimp?

The Weekend

Pretty fun this past weekend. My friend Matthew which I had known since before High school has been having an annual party these past 3 or 4 years. He and his wife Delia usually has a Martini party in the summer, but for some reason he had it in the fall this year. These parties are great, the first one we went to, me and the boys got our suits on and drove out to Guelph for their martini party, and Matt always starts off the night by wearing his wedding tux, which is pretty funny since the only times he ever wore it other than his wedding has been these martini party.
This year since Gord couldn't get himself into the US, and Andrea had made other plans, So Gord and I went out there, we didn't wear suits, but we did bring something else. As soon as we got there, we got ourselves into a Dry Martini (sorry, I had to do that), reintroduce ourselves to the people we hadn't seen since the last party, and got it on in the foosball tournament, Gord and I were undefeated all night as doubles, but got my ass wooped by Catherine the foosball shark twice in singles play. Watched a bit of the hockey game which totally kicked ass, and when the game was over, it was time for Dance Dance Revolution. Nobody there besides myself had played before, but once the guests started to loosen up and realized how much fun it actually was, looking like a tool was out of their minds, and we had great time dancing up a storm. There was also the most difficult game of Charades ever, two of the ones I got was "The Pop on Acid" & "A Monkey in Drag", yeah you try that one.
Overall it was great party, just wished some people didn't crash so early ruining our DDR tournament. The next morning, I helped clean up a bit since I was the first one up and didn't leave. The remaining stragglers, 12 in total including our host/ess, did our tradional morning after the storm breakfast. I was a bit dissapointed since I only ordered eggs and saugages while everybody else got something fancy.
Gord and I also had enough time to check out the local Winners, we give it a 4 out of 5, nice stuff, but didn't buy anything.

After getting back to the T-dot, I had a curling game, our team Rockin The House had our first game of the season. I won't get into it, but we won 8-3. So not a bad way to start off the season. Last season we won our tournament, not bad for a bunch of rookies who never played before.

As promised, a few pics from the weekend.

This one is about me I guess

So how about some info about me?

I'm gonna try to blog daily for the first little while to just get into the habit of blogging, Hopefully I can write something interesting everyday. I've way to many blogs with just one entry, and I don't want to be one of those who makes and entry and forget that they have a blog. So here goes...

I listen to indie rock, this past Canadian long Thanksgiving weekend, I attend two concerts. I saw Jenny Lewis and Watson Twins on Saturday night (more on that in just a second) and Sloan with Walter Ostanek (the king of Polka) at Rocktoberfest in Kitchener, one of the festivities going on this week for Octoberfest.

Jenny Lewis, for those of you who don't know is the lead singer for the band Rilo Kiley, and also does back up vocals for The Postal Service. She was also a child actress, and I've had a crush on her since my prepubescent teen years from watching The Wizard. Any ways, I've met her four times now. First at a Rilo Kiley show from a few years back at Lee's Palace, there was hardly anybody there, so I bought a cd off her and had her sign it, talked for a bit, then two other times at CFNY a local crappy "new rock" station that doesn't even really play their music. The second time at the radio station, I think she remembered me, since she said "hi" to me first in a different way then how she was talking to the other fans. Then this past Saturday, after the show.
The show was a St. Paul's church, thought it was weird that the concert was in a church, but what a surprise, it was really nice and intimate, and a good view of the show from almost everywhere. After the show, my friend Jorge and I went to get sushi for dinner, afterward walking back to the subway, we saw her and her band packing up the bus. I asked for an autograph, but neither her or I had a pen so we were out of luck. Then I thought how about a picture? But by then a group of teenage girls who were watching and trying to get the nerves to talk to her, unlike me who walks up and just starting talking to her, started to talk to her. They pulled out a huge Polaroid camera and she declined to have her picture taken with them, so overhearing that we just left. I did take pictures of the concert, but out of respect for her privacy I won't post any up.

Another thing that I do is, I bootleg concerts. I don't sell them or trade them, so don't even ask. I keep these for my own personal records. I don't let them out because I respect the artists wishes of having something they have not approved out. If they have an open tapping policy, then I'll freely give it away to other fans.

I also ride a 1978 Vespa scooter. This is my second scooter. The first one got boring since it was so slow, so now I have a faster and bigger one. I had always wanted one since I was 16, in 2000, I had some money put away and I finally got one. If you want something that's cheap on gas and doens't need much maintenance look elsewhere, vintage scooters aren't for people who are not handy. Try a new scooter if you want something that's virtually maintainence free and good on gas.

I have other interest as well. But I won't digress into that.

I'm starting a new venture right now, which is also the reason why I started this blog. Sort of like a personal online thing to keep a records of my thoughts about this venture. Well the business idea (drum roll please) Wedding Photojournalist. I know, the market is flooded with pros and amateurs. Well I'm different. I'm emphasizing my skills that I learn as a graphic designer. So Photography + Graphic Design = one really nice wedding album. After years of doing commercial photography, and try to make it as an art director, I found a way to use both my skills into one really great outlet of shooting and designing fabulous wedding albums for couples. So no, I won't just put your pictures in a album or give a cd and call it day. I want to make something that clients will go crazy for, for the rest of their lives.

I promise to post some pictures up eventually

My first blog entry

So I finally decided to join the bandwagon on blogging. It's not the first time that I've had a little corner on the web, way back in the day of the mid 90's I remember setting up a little website that nobody visited, it was sort of like blogging, but I never updated it, and now it's probably in some kind of electron waste bin.

So welcome to my little corner on the web, enjoy your stay, feel free to pet the dog Seymour, don't worry he's friendly, just let me know if you want some coffee or tea.