Camp Combo

Fred Spek wails on his sax.

Mitizi's Sister, a restaurant located just west of Lansdowne on Queen street west, hosted the performance of Camp Combo. Fred Spek, the saxophone and lead vocals of the group had asked if I could take some pictures a while back. Twist that rubber arm. I lugged minimal flash equipment across town with all my lenses. I think I've mastered the technique of carrying all the stuff as it doesn't make my back feel like I was in a car wreck by the time I get home. I still have to get home but right now my back feels fine.


Dance till you drop


Camp Combo, left to right: Nichol S. Roberton (banjo/guitar), Mike Rosenthal (drums), Fred Spek (sax and vocals), Michael Kaler (bass)


Beverly Taft shows off her funky hat

I arrived at the restaurant at 9:00pm which gave me time to set up and defrost. It's starting to get cold here in Toronto (after a record number of days being over 7 degrees and no snow for the Christmas holidays). After eating, shooting, burning the pictures, giving them to Fred and bumping into Kim I managed to slink out of the restaurant at around 3:00am.


Kim after last call

The wait for the streetcar was about half an hour. There were about 5 cabs that stopped in front of me to see if I wanted a ride. As temping as it was the cost would be around $30. It's freezing out. Warm instant cab ride that'll suck the money out of my wallet or wait for the cheap streetcar in the cold. I choose the cheapo route figuring I'd spend the money on a DVD or some cool camera gear (like maybe a set of transceivers - Note: Christmas/Birthday hint).

As I write this entry I'm actually sitting in the back of the streetcar. It's kind of cosy as there's hardly anyone else riding the streetcar at this time. So I've got the laptop playing Queen (the Flash Gordon theme) and the Spoons (A Canadian band from the 80s who had the hits "Nova Heart", "Aria and Symphonies", "Romantic Traffic", "Tell no lies", "Old Emotions", to name a few) in the background while I word pro away. I feel like I'm in a little bubble back here.

We've hit Yonge street a bunch of really tired looking people have gotten on the vehicle. Turning down volume to avoid attracting any undesirables or worse un-Spoon fans. It's late and I realize I'm just making up terminology now. According to the little clock in the windows corner it's now 3:42am. Ugh. I've got an appointment tomorrow at 10:30am. Meaning I have to wake up in 4 hours 18 minutes. I figure it'll take another 30 minutes to get home.


The ride home

It's now 4:25am. My hands have warmed up from being exposed to the brutal cold while carrying my camera luggage from Queen street. It's about a ten minute walk home. On the way I passed a girl asking for money. I didn't have any change and ended up giving her five bucks to get a coffee at the coffee store across the street. She had a story that she was stuck outside because she locked herself out and was waiting for her roommate to return home. After thanking me for the money she ran across to the local CoffeeTime.

Going to sleep now.

Christmas Gift Drop Off

Emmanuel's Christmas present

I had made this gift for Emmanuel a while ago. It was an image that inspired competition and originally Emmanuel wanted to put a caption under it. Kind of like those inspirational photos of Trees or Mountains with some blurb about achieving new heights or defining what "success" or "Teamwork" is.

It's one of my favourite nature photos that I've shot to date. My neck still hurts from thinking of the time I spent on my stomach waiting for those birds with my chin on the ground and my eyeball looking through the lens.

Quest for Burgers

The South Street Burger Company drink cup

In our outing to pick up some blank discs and an ethernet cable for Kyoko's new laptop, Chris, Kyoko, and I tried this newish burger place near the Best Buy located on Eglinton and Laird. The South Street Burger Company, located directly across from Best Buy, boosted hamburgers made well.

They were made well, but in this blogger's opinion weren't great. That title is still held by Lick's. Still as far as a burger joint goes it wasn't bad. Actually now that I think of it I think I prefer Wendy's.

Cupcake Cooks

Some tiger made of lights near Christie station

Hurray for Cupcake and her family not eating chicken on Christmas day. Because of this I was invited for a post Christmas meal today. For is always great the the Cupcake household but the dessert is usually the best part.

I was used as the guinea pig to sit on various chairs to see if they'd break. What's up with that? Read here if you're really interested. William had screwed in the legs to the chair's support beams. With luck my shifting weight wouldn't break them. Thank God, they held. Maybe for next Christmas I could get them a few cement blocks with a rubber bottoms to be used as chairs
year. With my luck the floor would probably give.


Little Miss Ham


Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy


Cupcake rules!


The evil Fin attacks with a plastic dish

I ended up staying until 1:20am. As with most visits we seem to talk a lot, catching up and sharing the horror stories such that my life is filled with. I managed to get to the subway only seconds before the 1:40am train, the last train of the night, pulled in.


Listening to MP3s on the last train

Fun with Leanna

Leanna Spina with lighter hair

It occurred to me that I hadn't spent much time with my make up artist in a while. We had been meaning to get together over the Christmas holidays but that never happened. Today I finally gave her a call and we ended up meeting up.


"Look out!"

After a nice piece of home made meatloaf we ended up going to the Italian Design exhibit at the ROM. Originally I had made plans to see it with the girl but now that things were messed up I opted to go see it anyway. We bumped into Neil on the subway. I snuck up to him to take the picture below. He was on his way to some store to buy electronic parts for some party.


Neil makes his way to an electronics store


The ROM is packed with last minute viewers

The line was huge. We stood there for about 40 minutes waiting to get in. I kept checking my phone to see if Marc called. We were supposed to meet at 7:30. I figured Marc would have called earlier in the day sometime shortly after calling him in the afternoon. As luck would have it he did call about five minutes after we got in. Thanks to my crappy phone I didn't hear the call. It wasn't until we left that I had realized that Marc had stood in line only to leave the museum at 8pm.


"Got a loaf of bread?"

Origasmi Down Under

I received an email today from Jill (idea person behind the Origasmi film) that the film did well in Sydney. It ranked as one of the top favourites with the people down under. Hey if people in Australia are considered to be living "down under" are we in North America known as the people that live "up over"?

To the dump

Christmas tree leftovers

James called today to ask if I could help move a tub from his backyard to the dump. It was a tub my cousin Dave and I helped him put in his backyard a few months ago. It was made of cast iron. It was heavy. A certain point I thought about "the girl" and her ability for lifting heavy objects. It was something she told me once when I first met her.

It was obvious that I needed an outlet to get my mind onto something else. Staying at home for the past few days was starting to get to me so I volunteered to help move stuff. The tub actually moved pretty easily. There was a glass sliding door and some card board as well. The hardest part was moving the tub from under the backyard stairs where it had been sitting for months seeping into the soil. It wasn't because the tub was heavy and stuck inthe muck. It was that there was no where to stand for leverage.

We ended up using a wooden plank, found in the yard, as a lever. It would not only unjar the tub from the mud but we could use it to slide the tub out over some bricks. I started to think that all those MacGyver TV episodes I'd been watching over the Christmas holidays were starting to pay off.


The tub in the dump

It was the first time I had visited the dump. There was a Christmas tree pile. It seemed like such a waste. The piles of used refrigerators, stoves, and other discarded items were huge. It was hard to believe that all that stuff had accumulated in such a short time. It was today's garbage. You read about trash that gets thrown out and transported but to actually see all the stuff in front of you... well, I'm surprised that we have room on this planet to walk around.


James unloads some cardboard

Trip to the SunBanque

SunBanque Island Tanning

I had to go uptown today to drop off a few photo CDs from the New Year's party. While up there I dropped by the local FutureShop to see if there were any Nintendo Wii units available. For the record I despise FutureShop. It's a computer/electronics store chain that is known for the majority of it's commission driven salespeople to outright lie to you when asking them questions.

I remember trying to get a monitor cable and the sales guy told me they don't make those cables anymore and I should buy a new monitor. After that experience I took it upon myself to educate other customers after they were given some fictional sales pitch by the same sales guy.

Another shopping experience occurred while looking for a printer. Futureshop had one of it's "on sale" printers left. At first I was happy as the price was reasonable and the printer was half decent and not used (so I was told). The sales guy went to the back to get the box. When he came out the box had badly placed duct tape on it, a clue that it was opened. Having been burnt by other computer stores before I asked if I could open the box to see the printer. The sales guy said sure while insisting that there was no need.

The printer was crammed in with the custom foam, foam that was broken into pieces. Whoever put the printer back in the box didn't even care that the printer was put back in the foam properly. It looked like they just shoved it in. Then I noticed the ink cartridge in the printer! Looking very wary I asked the sales guy what was up with that. He told me, without batting an eyelash, that it was standard procedure to put the print cartridge into the printer to test the printer before the customer gets it. The nerve of these guys.

So why go to FutureShop? The low prices attract me. Plus I usually just avoid the sales people and previously opened boxes. If I have questions about the product I'll check on-line. I will never talk to a salesperson unless they're in my way or spewing some crap to other customers.

As for the Nintendo Wii, I've been intrigued by the motion controllers since first reading about them. I missed purchasing the game cube with it's version of MarioKart so, I figure, now would be a good time to jump back on the Nintendo band wagon. As Mario would say "Letsa go!"

I was told that there are no units available for purchase until march, april or may. They weren't very specific. How can they say they sell a product when it's not on the shelves until March? It's odd you can buy the controllers, the software, even a stand for the console, just no console.

As a gaming alternative I took a look at the Blizzard game "The World of Warcraft". It's only $25 to buy but to play you also have to buy credits that cost about $20 a month. I opted not to buy that game as I didn't want my life to be taken over by staying at home in front of a computer. Not that that would really change much.

New Year's Day

Cheap Dim Sum is yum yum.

Woke up today exhausted, thinking about the girl. Had dreamt that I was emailed a letter with a URL to a self help e-book title and a small explanation of why we're not together. I can't remember the specifics, I just remembered that it depressed the crap out of me. Luckily I was transported out of the web surfing nightmare by my phone ringing and waking me up.

The helium balloon I managed to appropriate yesterday, or earlier this morning, had started to shrink, floating down toward the ground and was hovering at about eye level. It startled me. For some reason I thought it was the head of a person trying to wake me up. Did something happen at the new years party? Did I bring someone home? Did someone break in to my apartment? Was I even at home? Is it safe? Is... it... safe? Scenes from the Marathon man came to mind. Despite having a foggy brain a whole load of scenarios ran through my head in the minutes that it took to wake up. No animal's head on the bed. That was good. I obviously didn't get enough sleep.

Highlights today consisted of meeting up for dim sum with Marc (that was the person who called), bumping into my cousin Darcy who I haven't seen in years, and picking up my new TTC Metropass. Other than that New Year's day was pretty average and low key.

New Year's Eve

A bunch of bubbly for New Year's Eve.

To help take my mind off dating, at least I thought it would, I worked Joel's New Year's Eve party taking pictures. The DJ was the same guy that played the boat cruise back in August. I liked his selection as the songs he played actually had lyrics.

The party took place on the second floor of the Intercontinental hotel, on Bloor just west of Avenue road. Along with the coat check there was a large room with round tables, a dance room, a small quiet room in the corner, and a large hall where, for the most part, a lot of people hung out to socialize, meet people, and see who showed up.


There were some familiar faces in the crowd, some of the people I had met at the Balmy Beach Club, but for the most part it was a large unknown crowd. Aside from the happy new year thing, the highlight of the evening, actually there were two, the first while I was walking toward the door to the room with all the tables. I witnessed a guy coming out of the room followed by a fist attached to his head. This caught me off guard as I was stuffing my face with a sandwich at the time. A few minutes later Police had shown up looking for the instigator. The party had taken a surreal feel to it.

The second highlight of the part occurred when a guy asked his girl friend to marry him. She said "yes" by the way. They made a cute couple. It made me depressed. Surrounded by people but alone. Wow, new years sucked at that particular point. I was on automatic, shot the DJ doing the countdown and the party favours exploding in high pitched squeeks, plastic clackers, people hugging and kissing each other as they sang "Auld lang syne". It all seemed like everything was happening in slow motion.

The hotel lights abruptly came on and the cleaning staff marched in to the dance room to clean stuff up. The DJ a bit annoyed played one last song. It was Donna Summer's Last dance. I managed to take a few more shots of dazed party goers being subjected to bright light and dancing anyway. We were herded out by 2:30am where by I managed to snag one of the left over helium filled balloons and made my way home.