Cat Attack

Post cat attack...

I ventured outside after hearing what sounded like Pumpkin meowing. As I popped my head out the door I saw them. There they were, the three neighbourhood cats in a Mexican stand off once again. As soon as Pumpkin saw me he walked toward me. I walked past Pumpkin and went to pet the other cat Simon who seemed less skittish today.

That was a mistake. I found out as Simon's cat like reflexes, I suppose because she's a cat I can omit the cat reference to the reflexes, made her jump and attack my arm. For a brief moment the cat was hanging off my arm like it was a tree branch. She bit me once then just as quickly as she attacked she let go leaving me with seven deep puncture wounds and a small scratch or two on my elbow.

Stupid cat.

ps. I never thought this would be my 1000th blog entry but there you have it.

Still waiting...

Natasha and Gudrun being their usual goofy selves

Had lunch with Natasha and Gudrun today. While in the neighbourhood I also checked out Lacie for a replacement power supply. Turns out they don't really cater to off the street sales. They were very helpful none the less directing me to the web site for spare parts.

Other than that I've been waiting on people to get back to me regarding the Roller Derby Nationals in Portland, Oregon. Specifically trying to get a media pass to shoot it. The Nationals are less than a week away, starting this friday. Fingers crossed.


Reflection of the CN Tower

Balloons to the Extreme

Balloon Alien complete with double fisted laser guns.

While working a book launch event for Burman books I was lucky enough to witness balloon artist Mark Verge create an assortment of balloon art (animals and other things). To say he does balloon animals would be like saying "Canadian tires just sells tires". Forget the poodle balloon animal we're talking incredible stuff. See the photo above with Christine and the balloon alien. That's one of his simpler creations.

Go to his web site and be amazed.

see Jungle Jack World.

Fashion Cares

"Rear Window" fashion

Fashion Cares or Fashion sCares, as there was a Halloween theme, is an event held in Toronto to help generate money to find a cure for AIDS. It's an event filled with good looking people (of both sexes) dressed to the hilt in evening wear and Halloween themed costumes. An amazing experience that included a giant color changing LED chandelier, a silent auction, roast beef sandwiches (if you you media), fresh horseradish, and an evening show.


Katy Perry sings "I kissed a girl"

I was there to shoot the evening show. As this was my first Fashion Cares event I really wasn't sure what to expect. I had heard from other photographer friends that the event had taken a nose dive since the 20th anniversary show featuring Pamela Anderson. Shows 21 and 22 were horrific. My expectations were understandably low.

The show started off with a costume contest, then hit high gear with a bunch of outfits shown with an Alfred Hitchcock theme, Katy Perry took the stage to sing "I kissed a girl", more Hitchcock fashion, Kreesha Turner singing the song from Entourage, then if the show couldn't get any better there was the grand finale with none other than Dame Shirley Bassey. She made her stage entrance singing Goldfinger.


Shirley Bassey sings "Diamonds are Forever"

She has an incredible voice that filled the room. The live band added to the bigger than life soundtrack. I was in awe, the singing of the other Bond movies "Moonraker" and "Diamonds are Forever" made the movie geek in me happy. She ended her stage performance singing "Big Spender" to a standing ovation.

One for you, Two for me

Bill and Ron creepify their front yard

For this years Halloween I volunteered to help out in the distribution of candy to the neighbourhood kids. I thought I'd be hard nosed with the attitude "No costume, No candy!" but in the end most of the kids were dressed up as something so I really didn't have to come down on some poor teary eyed kid. Plus what if the child came from a poor family that couldn't afford a costume? Yeah, that would go over well.... plus they'd know where I live.


Jack and Sponge Bob as carved pumpkins


Heather, the next door neighbour, gives kids treats

I made sure the store bought candy was stuff I would eat. In fact there were times I thought I'd just turn off the lights, lock the doors and hide behind the couch eating my stash of gummi berries, tootsie rolls, and aero bars. "Get your own jobs and candy you costumed free loaders!" but then I'd remember the times as a kid I'd get those hard orange and black wrapped candies that everyone wanted to trade you for so they could get anything else. Those things sucked.

You didn't have a lot of options as a kid. The bags of candies we'd score and sift through was a big deal for my cousin Bryce and I. Trading the stuff we didn't want for stuff we did want. It was like a commerce of candy that would last for a month or so with the other school kids. I even remember trading a bunch of rockets (those small colored tablets of sugar) for a comic book. Poor sucker. I'm sure karma has come back to bite me in the ass since then.

As for those orange and black wrapped candies, I'm not sure what they were made of or how old they were. I knew that if you threw them at someone it would hurt and biting into them was out of the question. I seem to recall geting my teeth stuck in them thinking that I might loose some teeth just by opening my jaw. Giving that candy to old people with dentures might be funny. "Let's see your denture adhesive work now!" Evil, but funny and again there's the karma thing coming back to kick you in the ass.

Kind of like the Christmas fruit cake that makes it's yearly return, these nasty hard candies were probably made in the sixties and recycled every year since then by a bunch of candy bastards that hated kids. I was not going to be clumped into that category. So no hard orange and black candies for the kids on my street.


Bill and Ron's Jack O Lantern

I never actually found those things this year. Perhaps the company that made them (I think it was Allan's) got wind of them being used as projectiles rather than food and stopped making them for Halloween safety. Whatever the case may be kids today can rest safely knowing that these candies aren't on the streets.


Hilary as Bacon


The backyard Halloween party

Massey Hall

The Massey Hall entrance on Shuter and Victoria.

I took my cousin to see a Just for Laughs show today at Massey Hall. I scored the tickets from GAT. Thanks to Ingrid Hamilton we got to see the comics Finesse Mitchell, Hal Cruttenden, Pete Zeslacher, David O'Doherty, and Danny Bohy. To start off there was a guy that did sound effects much like Police Academy's Michael Winslow. Unfortunately I don't remember his name something like "Candy Pop".

While photographs were allowed as long as you didn't use a flash I was later told I could not shoot anything on stage because I had a professional camera. Boo.

Plugged Up

The Piggy Bank

In order to go to RollerCon 08 I emptied three ice cream tubs of change and the piggy bank, finding just over $1200.00. ($38.00 in pennies!) Since then the piggy bank has had a hole in it where change kept falling out. Until today that is...


Piggy back plugged up.

Coal City

Cheese Grater and Maya Ruins in front of Skateaway

We arrived at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA today at about 4:00pm. It was a 6.5 hour drive from Hamilton. I was pooped. Probably due to the late night partying until 3am with the Kitchener, London, Montreal girls the night before. Well if this is the last weekend of derby for the season sleep becomes less of a priority, until that is, you're driving a car. About 5 hours in I started getting sleepy and had Cheese take over the steering while I slept in the passenger seat.

The Coal City venue was great. It was an actual roller skating rink, with 70s furniture, and decor, even shag carpeting along the skate walls. Unfortunately the lighting was pretty dim. The venue was probably made with romantic or dance skating in mind not some fast action sport with photographers like me trying to get photographs.


Vicadoom tries out the SkateAway floor

Not wanting to use a flash I shot my photos using the settings of ISO 6400, f2.8, 1/125. Even with the high ISO I was still shooting at about hald the shutter speed I'm used to. There were pockets of darkness located around the rink that didn't help. Despite the lack of light I managed to snag a few good photos of action that took place right under a florescent set of lights.


The HCRG travel team


Cheese made Canadian flag

The highlight of the trip was driving to the after party. Upon pulling up to the entrance and wondering if it was indeed the right place, a guy flew out of the door head first landing into a lump on the ground. Another guy came out shouting to someone still inside trying to pick a fight followed by a derby girl trying to diffuse the situation.

Meanwhile the guys in the car jumped out to see if the lump guy was alright. He wasn't moving and there was blood flowing out of him. While someone in the crowd called 911 I drove away to pick up the second wave of people, who also happened to be the paramedics. By the time we returned the bar was surrounded by fire trucks, police cars and an ambulance. The guy trying to pick a fight was gone and the blood on the ground had been washed away with water.


"That doesn't look good."

Despite the crazy drama we drove into, the skaters that were inside at the bar were all very nice people. A bunch of them that I talked to didn't even know what had transpired outside... until I showed them photos.


The quotes make the sign less demanding.

No Photos!

The Cumberland station platform on the blue line

I woke up early due to my leg having some kind of spasm. I think I need to intake more potassium (I ate a banana today). It was around 8am and everyone in the room was still sleeping. Not being able to go back to sleep I woke up and walked over to the L train and went downtown.

I hopped off the train at a stop in the loop (the Chicago downtown core) called Monroe and when I got outside on street level found I was surrounded by buildings. The blue line train is underground but there are other lines that go above ground.


The shadows are falling westward...

For navigation I had a CTA map (Chicago Transit Authority) which I picked up at the beginning of the day. I had bought a map the day before but left it in Becky's truck. Based on getting lost in London (UK) because I had used the tube map I didn't put much into the Chicago transit map being that accurate. So as any geek would do I looked up at the shadows on the buildings, started humming "...the sun is setting in the west...", figured that the sun rises in the east, casting shadows westwards, figured out where I was in relation to the water on the map then walked toward the water. I suppose just asking for directions would have been easier but I had no where that I wanted to be. I just wanted to look around.


The L train

I shot around Chicago all day without incident. A police officer had stopped me while I was shooting pigeons flying by but it wasn't to arrest me it was to find out if I was shooting with a 10.5 mm fish eye lens. He wanted to buy a new camera and he had told me the sad story of how his wife took his Canon and all the accessories when they got divorced. Now he was looking at buying a new Nikon D90 (when it comes out). We talked for a few minutes until a city guy posted a sign changing the parking restrictions for under the train bridge. Tomorrow is the Chicago Marathon so the city streets were starting to get reconfigured.


The silver jellybean

I found the silver jellybean, as I like to call it. It's actually called the Cloud Gate designed by Anish Kapoor. I like "Silver Jellybean" perhaps because it reminds me of food (much like everything). This was one of the things I heard about that's located in Chicago that I really wanted to see. I forgot about it from being overwhelmed with all the other architecture in the city. I actually went to shoot the Jay Pritzker pavilion because you could see it from down the street of the downtown core. It's a flowery organic looking structure by Toronto born Frank Gehry.

While shooting the stage I walked out onto the field. It was in the middle of the field that I noticed the silver jellybean on my left (west of me). It was like someone used computer graphics to place a reflective mercury blob in the city scape.


The jellybean with the Pavillion in the background

For the most part, the day went pretty well photography wise. I walked around for six hours taking photos all over the city. The only weird thing that happened was when I saw something really cool to take a photo of. The sun was coming down at the perfect angle . It was an American flag. It looked amazing with the light passing through it. Everything that was great about the USA flooded through my brain. Abraham Lincoln, the Constitution, Randy's giant donut, JFK, the moon landing, freedom of speech, School House Rocks!, the american national anthem, and even a flying bald eagle. Then as I started to focus my camera on the flag, cutting through the silence and my wonderment at the same time, out of nowhere, a disembodied voice blurted "No Photos!".


The American Flag, the stuff dreams are made of.

I looked around. I was the only person on the street other than a window cleaner above me and a block away at that. "No photos!" went the voice again. This time it seemed angrier. I stopped and listened. "Do not take pictures!". This time rather than the hum of traffic mixed with some garbled voice I clearly heard the voice this time. It was coming from some megaphone speaker fixed to one of the buildings. It had an electronic distortion to it. I looked up trying to find the speaker but couldn't see anything. I decided it was time to go so I pointed my camera down and walked back toward the water.

Some more photos from the Windy City...


The L-Train


A window washer or a guy escaping cubicle world


Stacks of dirty dishes?


Nope... it's twin buildings that look like cobs of corn.


The corkscrew parking garage.

Trip to the Windy City

The Duty Free

Left from Hamilton to go to Chicago around 1:30am. At about 3:30am we were at the Duty Free. Other than stopping for a washroom break has anyone else noticed that the duty free doesn't really sell much? Other than liquor, cigarettes, and giant chocolate bars that is.

I was looking for some kind of travel pillow but the only ones they had were the ones that look like a toilet seat, the puffy Us that go around your neck. You'd think they would cater more toward the weary traveller. Maybe that's what the booze is for (I say this sarcastically).


The Chicago skyline as seen from the truck.

By about 9:40am we could see the Chicago skyline. This would be 8:40am Chicago time as Chicago is an hour behind Toronto. The photo above was taken by Becky as I was doing the second half of the driving.

I've noticed that, and I'm generalizing here, that driving on the highway near Chicago is very start stop as some drivers do not seem to be able to commit to changing lanes. This results in a lot of car honking and erratic car movement. The honking of the cars started to get annoying. So much so that Ivy, in the back seat, started yelling back at the honkers.


Breakfast at the Burgundy

We arrived at the place we were to stay at but were locked out. The spare key that we were supposed to get was being used by someone else. So instead of crashing, as it had been a long drive, we went for "breakfast" and did some sightseeing by driving around. It should be noted that parking downtown in Chicago is pretty expensive even compared to crazy Toronto downtown parking prices.



The drive along the water front.


I love this sign, but not in a weird way.