Another Funeral

Union Station

At 9am at Union Station we (Michelle and I) met up with with Colin and Angie to get a drive out to Mississauga for Nancy's father's funeral. This is the forth funeral in the last few months. It's starting to get a bit depressing.

I've only met Nancy's Father once. It was during a certain visit to Mississauga during a snow storm while riding a bike. The year was 1990 during the second semester while taking computer science. I arrived at the door, feet soaked, hands frozen, face red as a beet, yet the flowers I had bought his daughter were still intact.

I remember him welcoming me in and escorting me down to the living room next to the fire place. He seemed pretty trusting for a Dad, especially since I was hitting on his daughter. That's the only real memory I have of him and I suppose if you have any memories of a person it's good that they're fond memories.


Angie and Colin announce that they're moving in together.

As far as funerals go the service went fairly smoothly. A lot of sitting down, standing up, seeing your friends cry. Even though most of the service was not in English you kind of got the general idea of what was going on. Did I mention that I hate funerals?

Something else I've noticed during the last few funerals that have taken place, we always end up at a Tim Hortons, either before to kill time or afterwards because we want to talk to the various relatives/friends that we haven't seen in quite a while.

Winter Solstice

Todays outing took us, the girl and I, to Kensington Market where the winter solstice parade and bon fire took place. Yes, there's an actual big fire in a wading pool within city limits. We didn't actually see any of this fire as we arrived when everyone was leaving. We did however bump into a lot of people that I knew (as seen in the various pictures) within a ten minute time frame (on the way to the bon fire).

In the end we stuffed our selves with various Mexican food, the high light being burritos, and washed it down with some spiked apple cider. I had a slight buzz after that for a small while and we made our way to Joel's Christmas party.







At the entrance we saw a woman getting her behind spanked. This really turned the girl off and she wanted to go home. I walked her to the bus, she hugged me, and left. I went back to the party to shoot pictures for Joel.

At the party I bumped in our favourite fashion designer, Andrew Majtenyi. We ended up going to Swatow for some soup.


Lisa (bikini designer) and Andrew (fashion designer)


One of the SunBanque girls poses



Winter Solstice at Swatow

Christmas is a Ball

The Christmas tree made of luminous balls.

Downtown, at Dundas Square, I noticed this new Christmas thing sitting in the public space. Last year the new item was the exploding light balls that floated in the air on wires. The floating light balls are still there this year but seemed less significant.

Ugly Sweater Party

The Fire and Ice backyard of the C-Lounge

In the Christmas tradition of wearing ugly sweaters... wha? Ugly sweaters? Why yes there's actually a party where the person with the ugliest sweater wins. Wins what? I'm not sure as I didn't stick around long enough to find out.

Umbra luggage tags were given to those that came out ugly sweater or not. I was only at the party to witness two "ugly" sweaters. One had reindeer stitched across it and the other was a tad too small for the wearer. The small sweater seemed in pretty good condition and put emphasis on the wearer's shapely body.


A few people warm themselves by the outdoor fire

The C-lounge had a backyard patio that featured "ice" on fire. I'm not really sure what the stuff was. It looked like glass when viewed up close. Along one side of the patio were a row of bed like places to sit or lie down. They were set up under stalls. I suppose these stalls were there in case of rain or snow.

Back inside two women dressed in Santa's Helpers outfits were giving away free bottles of steam whistle beer.


Emmanuel with Santa's helpers.

Hair. We are.

Some headshots taken for the Hutoshi Hair Salon

I spent the day shooting head shots for the Hutoshi hair salon. The hair models were clients or people gotten from an ad on Craig's list. Although they didn't have any modelling experience the shoot was a lot of fun. It's funny the power you have while wielding a camera. Smile, don't smile, look here, look there, move an inch to your left, to your right.

Hutoshi is located at 112 Harbord street just west of Spadina avenue. It's been there since 1976 and is the second business on the street next to the Harbord bakery.

Playboy Winter Wonderland

Hey, It's Jayde.

It's been awhile since my last Juicy Stuff assignment. Partially due to having a cold, partially from working on some motion graphics work and partially that Juicy Stuff is going through a large overhaul in terms of format and content. This is the first outing I've been on since the North Bound Leather fashion show way back at the end of October.

Really has it been that long? I suppose working on the various GAT jobs has kept me going out on a semi-regular basis. Okay, I'm not a total shut in.

The event tonight was organized by the same people that did the last two Playboy events. This time is took place at the Guvernment, a spacious night club located near the waterfront across the street from the Redpath sugar factory.

The theme was winter wonderland. I always wondered how bikinis would fit into all this but they managed to throw a hat or a scarf on the model with said bikini and viola! It's winter wear.


Cowgirl bikini look

The photo area reserved for photographers was located right in front of the stage. The stage was about five feet off the ground. You would think people organizing this would realize that any photos taken from this angle would be looking straight of skirts or gowns. Lucky for them we photographers took to the floor.

Overall I thought this venue was not too bad. High ceilings, decent lighting, a good DJ with a great dance selection, and lots of eye candy for both sexes. Speaking of the ambient music, we were in a club but I actually recognized the music. It was lyrics...words. It's a far cry some the industrial crap they play at some places, where the music is so loud it starts making your head wobble. Most of the music was from the 70s and 80s. Earth, Wind and Fire, Donna Summer, Soft Cell, Flock of Seagulls, Bronski Beat, Petshop Boys, that sort of thing.

This years fashion line featured a lot of bikini type clothing. What made it playboy was the bunny head logo placed somewhere obvious. Otherwise it could have just been another bikini, another well fitting bikini.

The fashion for the guys consisted mainly of T-shirts that said playboy on them. Nothing really spectacular there. The odd toque or sunglasses as accessories but that's about it. The main clothing was really for the women.


Start off the show by waving


Big hair + nightie + boa = sexy


The particles in the foreground is fake snow (shredded plastic)

More magical snow stuff to stick to your lens


Bed head + playboy T-shirt = cool


Somehow I don't think he's taking pictures of her shoes.


At one point the models were giving away free purses.


Eeek! Fake snow being blown into my lens.


This was nice and simple


Another cowgirl bikini theme


hat + scarf + lingere = winter fashion

Store Visits to Kill Time

Roger shows laptop with picture of Roger showing laptop

I found myself wandering around downtown looking for ways to kill some time. I had to shoot Emmanuel giving a speech to graduating students at the Ontario College of Art and Design but that didn't start until 6:30pm. It was one of those inspirational speeches to assure the students that they went to school to get out into the world bright eyed and bushy tailed and that the last four years meant something.


Adeem (the mango kid)

It was 4pm so I started off by dropping by Roger at Monster Records. From there I made my way down to the College and Grace area where I saw Joe at Dragon Lady. Stopped off to talk to him for a bit then made my way to the OCAD building on College just west of University.


Big Joe at Dragon Lady comics

It was kind of odd being in a room with "kids" graduating. All the projects were out on display. I felt like a job recruiter and thought back to the days of being a visual effects supervisor and having to run through newly sent demo reels then emailing, or mailing the sender comments on what made it great or what could be improved.


"Hands up. Who wants to be on Oprah?"

As someone that used to send videotapes in the mail to companies to get hired I was always impressed by the companies that got back to you, Even if it was to politely say "Go away, We're not hiring.". Of course I'm paraphrasing here. There was a job I worked at where the tapes that were sent in were not looked at, erased, and used to put temp work to be delivered to the client. Cheap things like that really pissed me off.

I made it a policy to give comments that were constructive and send the tape back or at the very least have it accessible for pick up should the sender want it back to use some where else. Tapes might not be expensive but when you're not working you may not have that money to blow.

Emmanuel's speech was pretty good. You could see the students laughing and being inspired. Those poor slobs, like lambs to the slaughter. I miss feeling that "you can take on the world" idealism. /you can still take on the world but maybe head on is not always the best route. Sometimes you've got to go sideways.

Cleaning Day

I woke up at 6:00am and started cleaning. It's been a while since I last cleaned the apartment and as it so happens a lot of stuff has accumulated since. Junk mail and bills alone started piling up and adding to piles of clutter. Then there's the camera boxes and photo gear along with the books on photography.

Newspapers and magazines I dragged back from London, pamphlets on clubs from Montreal, newspapers that I started reading on some bus trip, bus schedules, various photo magazines, stuff, junk and more junk. If I didn't know any better I would have thought that the stuff just multiplies by itself.

The fire put under my ass was the thought of someone visiting the apartment one day. Yes, yes the girl. There I said it. Geez. No piece of dust was too small, no furniture too big. The cleaning included vacuuming, doing the laundry, throwing stuff out. Wow, did I throw stuff out.

The making the apartment look nice also involved going out to buy a new pillow. The old pillow I had had the stuffing fall out when I went to change pillow cases. As I don't ever remember buying any pillows in my life time this was a new venture.

The pillow I owned I had for years, to the extent that it was really flat. Two of them together were still flatter than one new one. This made the buying of a new one a bit difficult. I wanted the same flatness and ended up buying the softest pillow available.

For those that don't know pillows generally come in three versions. Soft, Medium, and Firm. When staying a a Holiday Inn in London there were five levels of pillow-dom. Here only three. It's difficult to see the difference when buying them as they're usually in a plastic bag. I spent about 20 minutes squeezing the various pillows. There was one made out of that space age memory foam but it was $80 compared to the average foam pillow costing $11. In the end I went for a average priced $23 pillow. It seemed super soft but when I got home it was too fat. D'oh.

I continued to clean the walls and bathroom and eventually stopped around 8pm. While I was doing all this I had my camera shoot a frame every minute to create a stop motion animation of the cleaning process. One day I'll put it to Benny Hill music.

Busy Bee

Jessica Gorlicky, jewelery designer, painter, artist

Today really started at 10pm last night at which point I got a call from the girl. As conversations go, one thing led to another and after a bit of time I noticed I was stretching my back. Glancing over at the microwave clock and I noticed that, Holy gads! It was 4:00am. By 4:30 we said out good-byes and hung up the phone. I was up for another hour and a half watching TV before drifting off to sleep.

Four hours later I woke up with both feet running, so to speak. I had a bunch of things on my list to do today which I thought about while napping. Photo CDs to burn, deliver and a job interview for a hair salon photo shoot. I was referred to the hair salon owners by the same reporter that interviewed me for the Liberty Gleener. The article in the Gleener occurred while shooting Andrew's Jumpsuits for the Design Exchange contest.

The interview by the owner of the hair salon went well and I've been commissioned to shoot a bunch of hair styles this coming Sunday. Once the interview was over I hopped onto the subway and made my way up north to Finch and Yonge. It was there that I dropped off a bunch of photos I had shot of So(da)liscious during fashion week. Jewelry designer, Jessica Gorlicky hadn't gotten any photos for fashion week or her work. Through various channels found that I had taken pictures and had asked if she could get a few to help advertise her work.

It was about 4:30pm by this point and I had to meet the girl down at Eglinton and Yonge at the local Indigo bookstore for 6:30pm. I managed to dawdle but still ended up at the bookstore an hour early. Luckily being a bookstore I managed to peruse the magazine section for about half an hour, then made my way up to the Art section, and photography coffee table books.

It was there that I ran into Melissa Potter. She was searching for some Beatles CDs for Christmas presents. Helping her look for Beatles titles in the bargain and talking to her managed to kill some time. My watch beeped indicating it was 6:30. I left Melissa in a line up for purchases and went back downstairs to the magazine section.

It was about 7:15pm by the time the girl showed up. She had left a few messages on my cell phone saying she'd be a bit late. At the time I was engrossed in reading a bunch of hair stylist magazines. Which today I found quite interesting. Technical breakdowns of lighting and posing ran through my head when I noticed the girl out of the corner of my eye.

From the bookstore we ventured across the street to a place called Alleycats. A bar/pub like restaurant where a networking meeting was being held. We were to meet up with Emmanuel. We didn't stay long as it was packed, the ambient noise was too loud to hear anyone say anything, and the place had smalls of frying fish. That and the older high school reunion guys (that looked like they were in their 60s or 70s) were checking out "the girl". There were a few meetings there that night.

Back across the street, to the Indigo side, we ended up finding a quiet Japanese restaurant. It was the exact opposite of where we just were. The booth we were given to sit in was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The girl was already tired from work and I started feeling the effects of not having any sleep and being on the go all day.

Eventually we finished eating and I walked her to the bus stop. Happy, tired, I managed to wave at her as she got on the bus spun around and headed home. The the intersectino I ran into my Dad of all people. Him and my mom were coming out of a movie press screening. It was weird talking to them on the way home.

Once inside my apartment I crashed almost instantly.

Where did my brain go?

The router installation CD

House keys put into the freezer, sunglasses left at a friends place, wristwatch left by the sink, we put things in places they normally wouldn't be left, then a few minutes or seconds later we're combing the house asking ourselves where we put the stuff. Have we lost our minds? Perhaps a temporary bout of senility.

I found myself in this situation today while installing my wireless router. I was missing the installation CD. I had it yesterday while talking to "the girl" and started to install the software onto my computer. The phone conversation lasted a while and I eventually abandoned the installation process to get over to Emmanuel's in time to watch "The Secret".

Today I decided to start the installation process again but couldn't find the CD. The CD taht I thought was still in the computer. My automatic instinct told me to check the fridge. This seems to be the default place I usually look for things and find things. No matter how crazy there's always a good chance I had placed something in the freezer while taking some other thing out. House keys for frozen waffles, sunglasses for an ice cube, a DVD to just peek into the freezer. It's like there's some kind of freezer toll elf that jedi mind tricks me into leaving an item in order to take something out.

I retraced my footsteps. Then it hit me. "No, that would just be too dumb.", I thought to myself. I raced outside to the garbage bag sitting out on the curb waiting to be picked up by the garbage truck. A truck which just happened to be puttering just a block away. Why is it you can never open a plastic bag knot when you're in a hurry without ripping the bag open? I took the entire bag into the back yard and pulled it apart. Sure enough, right on top, the installation CD.

I went inside to place the CD in the computer then revisited the torn open garbage bag by stuffing it into another new bag and taking the whole package to the curb where it made today's pickup. Why did I throw the CD into the garbage? And when did I do it? It wasn't like I was getting subliminal messages from the girl who didn't even know I was installing the software. "Throw out that install CD. You don't need it.". My brain is drawing a blank.

While trying to figure out what happened last night I decided to do a bit of relaxing and walk on down to the beach. It was cold and windy. On the water there was a lone surfer using a kite to pull himself over the waves.