Lake Simcoe Kite Day

Wimpy's Diner known for their burgers

I ended up tagging along with Marc, who these days seems constantly looking for something interesting to do. He had been invited up to Lake Simcoe to the first annual kite festival. I've never been to a kite festival so "why not?".

Using the internet travel instructions we stopped off at a small local strip mall to eat lunch at a Wimpy's. I had picked the place as I was starving and wanted to try the burger, which from what I had heard through the grapevine were supposed to be huge.

Inside the place was decorated with 50s memorabilia, actually now that I think about it there were posters from 80s movies and album (yes vinyl) covers also from the 80s. It was actually a hodgepodge of imagery for the last few decades. They even had Star Trek posters and an old laser show featuring LED Zeppelin at the planetarium posterin the washroom.


A mini juke box!

Next to our table there were these old mini juke boxes. They still worked, charging a quarter a song. The food was mediocre. Marc's toast had what looked like mold growing on it. My burger tasted alright. If the bun had mold on it I wouldn't have noticed as I inhaled the burger in record time. I seemed to feel alright later, but then again I have the stomach of a hyena.


A close up of the flip song selection menu


The Wimpy's burger with turkey bacon

We got to the lake to see a row of cars and trucks parked on it. The lake was frozen. I found walking on the lake a little unsettling as I remembered a newspaper article about two guys ice fishing in a fishing hut sinking. The article was a few months, maybe only weeks ago.


Standing on the frozen lake

There's also all the stories you hear about people on skidoos going through the ice and drowning. The morbid thoughts of "The ice is going to break" went away after about five minutes of walking around. It was freezing. I had gloves on and while working my camera I felt my fingers were becoming frozen.


Surfing the frozen lake

Most of the kite flying people were in harnesses that pulled them and their snowboard along the frozen lake. There was the odd guy wind sailing but we didn't see anyone flying kites using conventional methods (ie. the odd delta kite, box kite, or even stunt kite where someone just stands there looking up into the sky). We ended up leaving after about half an hour. The festival was only on until 4pm officially anyway. Did I say it was cold?

It's supposed to be a pig

Looking through a chain link fence at the train yard

The crazy dump of snow that occurred yesterday started melting away today but there was still a lot of ice and slush on the streets. I had decided to wear my snow boots to travel off to the house that I was going to drop off the photos for the Dog show. With the boots on it took me a lot longer to walk over than I anticipated and trudging uphill became more of a cardio exercise than a short walk. Plus there was the ice. Did I ever write that I'm not fond of walking on icy sidewalks?

With the flipping over like someone riding a banana peel and landing on your butt burnt into my mind I walked around like an old lady, crouched forward so if I did fall it would be face first and I could land on my hands. Do short people have an easier time walking around since their center of gravity is closer to the ground?

After dropping off the photos I went back home and was inspired by the snow man, bear, pig, I saw the other day. I decided to try some sculpting of my own. There was a giant lump of snow in my backyard that kind of resembled a pig and since it was the year of the pig I decided to try to make it look more like a pig or some kind of wild boar.


If you look closely you'll see a pig... or maybe a warthog.

After about an hour of shovelling more snow onto the lump and patting down the snow with my bare hands, the snow was very wet and I didn't want to get my gloves soggy, my hands became very cold. Yes, handling snow does that. It got to a point where I couldn't feel them anymore so I stopped, satisfied that the pig wouldn't look much better, and to go inside to get warm again.

And I thought we had enough snow already...

The Snowman gets a pet bear and... pig.?

While walking the neighborhood I found myself caught in a blizzard of snow or at least the start of one. I managed to get back to my toasty hovel in the nick of time, before it really started coming down.

To those of you in London who thought it was cold while I was visiting, You guys should visit here around this time. You'll feel London to be a lot warmer when you go back.


D'oh! It's Snow!

Doggie Style

Mental note: When shooting a dog fashion show do not sit at the end of the runway. The dogs will come right up and try to lick you.

Today's photo assignment was to shoot a dog fashion show. As I've never shot a dog fashion show before I wondered what that would entail. Chaos! But very funny chaos. Since this fashion show took place in a restaurant, there were a lot of people drinking. The runway was at about at waist level. This meant that the runway became a very convenient place to put your drink if you didn't want to hold it.


Some dogs had to be carried

Perhaps people forgot that there were dogs involved. One such bulldog tried sampling a glass of wine by putting it's face right into the cup. I was too busy laughing to actually take a picture. My job was to get pictures of the dogs in the various assortment of clothes.

Sitting in the front of the runway probably wasn't the best place to locate myself as dogs are better shot from the side. In the end it didn't really matter where I was as models were overlapping one another and the dogs were pulling them in different directions sniffing other dogs and being very aware of the huge audience.


Some dogs walked on via a leash

We were told that behind the scenes in the dressing rooms the dogs were having cases of stage fright, freely peeing on things and refusing to be brought to the cat walk.


I think this dog loved the attention.


A dog wearing Versace.






Look at all the women that think a dog biting the trainer's foot is cute.




A dress made out of newspaper.

Monster Leak

The Hulk at Monster Records

Today while at Monster Records while blabbing with Roger, the proprietor, we heard a loud splash sound coming from the other end of the room. It turns out because of all the snow we've been having here in Toronto and the snow now melting created a large surplus of water on the roof. That same water had then made it's way into the store collecting into the S.H.E.I.L.D. model ship and plummeting down onto a bunch of records creating the splash sound.

In a totally unrelated topic I picked up the Rockford files season two. Thanks Roger, Thanks a lot. Now I've got that theme song running in my head. "Dee deee de de deee, de de dee de de deee".


Roger checks out the ceiling.

Passport Photo Professional

Sarkis, one of the best portrait photographers ever.

Depending on what country you're going to some won't let you in if the passport is about to expire in six months. Why is there an expiry date on the passport if it's not good for the last six months? That's like putting an expiry date on yogurt and having it go bad ten days before the date.

I didn't find out about this expiry oddity until travelling to London and finding out my passport was going to expire a month later. When I found out it was the week before I was going to leave. Long enough to worry about it but not long enough to apply for a new passport and get one in time to go. The slowness of processing is partially due to the slow turn around time that is normal on getting any government thing done but also because there's a back up of applications for those applying to travel to the United States.

Up until now, travelling to the United States as a Canadian has been relatively easy. Show them your birth certificate and a driver's licence and you're in. You can still do this until the end of 2007 if crossing the border via car or bus. However if you're taking the plane you have to have a valid passport. This doesn't really bug me as you need a passport to go to other countries any way.

To make things easier for us computer folk, the government has put the applications on-line. Yes you can actually download the passport application from the web.

With any passport you need a good photo. There are standards that the government requires. No glare on the image, you can't wear glasses, no smiling. Yes, no smiling, because passport pictures are a serious matter and the guys at the border can't tell if you're a terrorist if you're smiling. Why not make it even easier for them and make one of the requirements of your photo being that you're not fully awake. Usually when I'm flying anywhere the long line ups while waiting for the plane to get my boarding pass and check my luggage leave me with little or no energy. A photo of me being tired would match me perfectly in that instance.

The photo must also be black and white. I'm not sure the reason for this. "We must make your picture look as drab and as boring a possible." floats through my mind. Luckily when taking your photo the official passport photo people know all this and will tell you while you're getting your photo taken.

Hidden away in a deserted mall at 137 Yonge street is a photographer by the name of Sarkis. He's been there, what seems to be, forever. As a kid I seem to remember him being there when I used to spend time walking around with my parents. As a fellow photographer I can now appreciate the work that he puts into photographing his subject. When you get seated he tells you how to smile, tilt your head and even sit to get the best results.

He's not only fast and efficient but also quite friendly. Maybe that comes from taking photos of so many people over the years. I can't give this photographer enough praise. If you have to get a passport picture taken I would highly recommend going to Sarkis. For under $20.00 you'll get your picture in under 15 minutes.


Sarkis is hidden away in this building

Stan Lee

HMV on Queen street west (across from the Silver Snail)

I found out through Leah that Stan Lee was going to visit after making his rounds at the New York comic convention. This was enough to get me out of my cocoon-like apartment bed and out into the cold wintery world known as Toronto.

Trudging through slippery slush and ice I made my way to the HMV on queen street only to find this little yellow sign in the door...


Stan Lee couldn't make it.

Crud. The first hing that came to mind was that Stan "the man" Lee was snowed in and couldn't make it over from New York. Later on I found out he got sick. So Stan, if you're reading this "Get better soon and thanks for trying to make it out here.".

For those that don't know, Stan Lee is one of the quintessential people in the comic book field. Known for his text layout and unique vocabulary in various Marvel Comics and bigger than life comic book heroes like Spider-man and the Fantastic Four, Stan Lee was a known entity to any kids that were cool when I was growing up.

For me he instilled the sense of right and wrong, that with "great power comes great responsibility", that great comics have great composition and well as great stories and that text placement in your comic book panels is everything.


A photo depicting snow on Queen street today

From the photo above would you go outside? Not me. At least not today. Going out wasn't a lost cause even though the main purpose of going out was to meet Stan Lee. I had to deliver photos to Darryl from the photoshoot. Since his office is located only a block away I went over with my laptop and made a photo CD on the spot.

We ended up going to swatow for dinner. For the first time I can remember in years (about 18 years) we were the only ones in the restaurant. It seems we were the only ones willing to brave the snowy elements for food.


Darryl and I in an unusually empty Swatow.

That new car smell

Early this morning I found myself looking at the ceiling from my bed while trying to go to sleep but not being able to so. For some reason, and I'm not really sure why, I had been thinking about why new cars have that smell, kind of like new shoes. I have no idea how the question was put into my mind. I don't have a car nor do I wish to buy one (at least not for the time being).

With the help of the world wide web and the laptop next to my head I surfed around and found this article on Wikipedia.

To summarize the new car smell is created by various glues and plastics still freshly put together. They emit the order that creates the new car smell. As nice as it smells it's actually quite toxic and harmful to you. The article recommends driving around with the windows open for a few months to let the car air out.

With this knowledge I could finally fall asleep.

Oscar Night

Watching the Oscars at Paula's place.

I managed to get invited to an Oscar party, complete with print outs of the nominees, prizes and brain stumping games. Well actually it was one game that involved everyone getting a post-it on their back with a name on it. The name can be fictional, or real, or even the name of some movie monster (ie. the Kraken, or Mothra, or Christine).

The idea was that you had to guess the name on your back by asking others in the room questions. You could ask as many questions as you wanted and we never really kept score as it was mostly for fun and a good way to meet people that normally you might not have anything in common to talk about. It worked great.

The first post-it I had was the borg queen. Once I narrowed the subject down to a character on Star Trek it was pretty simple. "Did the character appear on the original series?", No, "TNG?", "Yes", "main character?", "No", "Borg?", "yes", "Hugh?", "no", "The Borg Queen", "yes". See how simple it is.

The next name was harder. It was Che Guevara. The third name was "Rocket Robin Hood".


Gord's first mystery name.

Poor Gord had be cursed with the names of Christine and the Kraken, the water monster that appeared in Clash of the Titans. It took him a very long time to get those. "Is the character human?". "No". Where do you go from there? It took him a while to ask the human question.

This year during the checking out the celebs TV segment the broadcaster actually had a freeze frame with a graphics overlay, kind of like those Xs and Os with arrows when you watch a football game play breakdown by the sportcasters. The lines or circles drawn on over the celebs pointed out "engagement" rings, bad pant lines, and other fashion do's and don'ts. It was really bizzare.

Vikings and Maids

Darryl and Barbie, the mad viking maid

At some point I'm sure there are readers out there asking "What the heck?" when looking at the above picture. No there's no new B-movie with Vikings and Maids being made. At least not to my knowledge. If anyone knows of one let me know.

Today a bunch of us got together to shoot various outfits for Darryl's upcoming hard liquor and porn posters. The theme seemed to escape even me and is something that really only Darryl can explain. But hey, shooting giggling girls in the odd costume isn't the worst thing one can do to pass the time.


Leanna and Barbie pose for Darryl's HLAP ads

If it looks like we're having a fun time in these pictures it's because we are!