Strange Locations for Wedding Photos
January 13th, 2011I was grinding my Kirkland coffee beans this morning, thinking to myself about how much I love Costco. The voice of Pee-Wee Herman pops in mind and says, “Why don’t you marry it?”
And then I wonder if anybody has yet to get married in a Costco.
I went shopping with Julie and her dad at the Bass Pro at Vaughan Mills. He was gearing up to go to the Dominican Republic, where he is building a house on an empty plot of land. We were entering the massive hunting shop when a wedding party came in to do their photos. Julie and I had trouble finding an albatross to disguise our shared amusement. Best of all, the bride really… did not look impressed.
But I suppose, there are many people who would never understand wanting to take wedding photos in a consignment store. Or an ice cream parlour, (myself at first, I’m lactose intolerant!). But there we were.
(Amusingly, my parents are the type who would NOT want their wedding photos taken in… “a BAR.” But the rain cancelled our outdoor photo plan, and we had to go somewhere quick. All in all, the bistro photos turned out pretty sharp.
Buring the lead: Julie and I put together a site to share all of the photos and video and music from the wedding. Down the path, I’ll redesign the website, section off the wedding part, and add other sections to share other exciting news in our lives. (Because all I need is anoter URL to not update. 
) Oh! And the url, if you hadn’t already clicked away is i like you and i love you.
Here is a highlight of pictures from our wedding, including the music that I wrote for Julie to walk down the aisle to.
Posted in Ponderings | Comments (3)
Who Shovelled My Walk?
January 9th, 2011For the past couple of days I have been playing a (non)Alternate Reality Game with my neighbors called, “Who Shovelled My Walk?”
First let me quickly describe the players. (Potential players, I should say, as everyone is playing – even if they don’t know it.)
I’ve been living in this house for a year and a half now, and I can’t say I’m friends with any of my neighbors. I know them, but I rarely even speak with any of them.
The attached house belongs to the Jamaican lady who yells through the walls. We thought she was dead between August and November. The mail piled up. The front lawn grew long weeds. The gas company shut her down. I even spoke with her bank agent who was about to foreclose her mortgage. When I spoke with him, I remembered seeing strange men in the middle of the night, loading large blue barrels out of her house with a dolly to a truck. There was even one blue barrel still sitting on the front porch as evidence. The banker took this as evidence that she had fled the country and jumped out on her mortgage/property. Well, a week or so before Christmas, we heard the yelling through the wall. She was home! Or reborn! Or perhaps even a zombie. Whatever the story, she had returned and could still yell.
Our neighbors on the other side (which we share the alley with) are an Asian family: mother, father and two teenage daughters, with more Asian renters (nephews I presume) living in the basement. We lived here for an entire year without ever speaking. They would pass by, nod and look away with a wordless hello. This summer we did quite a lot of beautification work in our backyard, and I wonder if that’s what won them over. The father introduced himself to me. And since then, it is as though the family has permission to add 4 or 5 words to the hello nod.
Three doors up, there is friendly, old Italian man and his wife. This guy is a true DIYer, and he has a small garage full of only the most essential tools for any task. In the summer, I was taking down the fence around (what used to be) the vegetable garden. I was fighting to cut these steel poles as close to the cement as possible. Frank, always curious what the neighbors are up to, sees me, hollers out, and then says, “I’ll be right there! I have a better tool.” He helped me with many small jobs this summer. I relish having a grandfatherly friend up the street.
Now we get to the game.
Three evenings ago, I was out shovelling snow. It has been a very strange winter in Toronto, with very little accumulation. That was probably only the third time we’ve needed to shovel yet. After shovelling the drive way, I turn to the alleyway I share with the Asian family. How much of a shared alleyway should I shovel? I settle on a solid 4/5 of the path. I think that’s generous without being obsessive. And what the heck, I shovel a little path to their detached garage as well.
Maybe it’s because there has been so little snow this season, but I don’t feel ready to go back inside yet. I wonder if Frank has dug his car out yet. I peak up the road, and sure enough, the snow that has been falling all evening has buried his car. What’s the sense in shovelling around with car and leaving the snow on it? So I brush off his car, dig around it, dig his front walk, and then dig out his sidewalk. (As home owners, isn’t there some bylaw obligation to clear the walk? Not sure. So I shovel.)
What the heck, I shovel the sidewalk in front of the Jamaican lady’s house. And then the Asian family. And then there’s a house between Frank and the Asian family. That’s just mean of me to intentionally avoid shovelling their sidewalk. So I shovel it too. Now I’m ready for a glass of wine by the fire.
Saturday morning: I have to go to work. I hit the snooze and cuddle my wife. I leave myself too little time. I open the door to the outside world, and BAM there is a foot of fresh snow waiting for me. “Uh oh.” Dig, dig, dig. And a 20 minute drive becomes a 40 minute drive. I have to pull over twice to wipe off my rear windshield: the snow was falling that heavily, and I was driving that slowly, thanks to EVERYBODY else on the road. Needless to say, I didn’t shovel anybody’s walk.
I come home Saturday afternoons and crash. (I love my job: it demands and affords afternoon naps.) Still, I’ve got no gumption to shovel.
When I woke up from my nap, someone had shovelled a single shovel width path all the way down the shared alley, to both garages. Cleared out all the snow in front of our exit. And shovelled the sidewalk between Frank and us. (The Jamaican lady didn’t get anything, but let’s face it: She pays for what she gets.)
I thought at first it was the Asian father, but the shovel track ended at the top of his porch. He wasn’t home; it wasn’t him.
I’m not positive, but I can only guess that Frank came over and shovelled a tonne of snow on my property. I was positively floored.
There was still quite a lot of shovelling to do. We got a HUGE dump of snow yesterday. Julie wanted to help, but we only own one shovel.
“I know!” The Jamaican lady has a derelict shovel on her derelict porch! I didn’t knock, I doubt she’s there, (I couldn’t hear any yelling). So I assumed an agreement with her ghost: I use her shovel, I shovel her sidewalk and path, and in exchange, I get to dump my driveways worth of snow on her derelict front yard. Awesome!
And I shovelled ALL of the alleyway. As far as the game goes, I stole the credit. The Asian father will have no way of even knowing someone else came and shovelled him a trail. Mwa ha ha.
Long story long, despite the fact that I barely know these characters who share my street. I genuinely enjoyed playing, “Who Shovelled My Walk?”
I got a little buzz from trespassing to pull a random act of kindness.
And besides that, I just wanted to practice my semi-colon usage, and hit the “Post” button.
Happy New Year!
Posted in Unbelievable Until It Happened | Comments (1)
Quiet on the Radio – The Rushton, Dec 2010
December 22nd, 2010We went out for dinner with Team SnB the other night. It was a great chance to meet some of the other members of their staff, namely their web designer, Adam Jenkins, and the producer of their next album, Chris Graham. (I was there because I help out with music from time to time) And Julie has been busy the past couple months inventing merch for them.
1. We ate at the Rushton. Which was awesome. And a 10 minute walk from my home. Steak Frites with sweet potato fries. Captial yes.
2. Conversation was awesome. And I thought it would be fun to link out to many of the things that came up in conversation. Some of these came from me, but some of them are things I hadn’t heard about.
And so, I bring you a link dump from our dinner conversation. (They seated our table in the corner, but I still swear half the restaurant was jealous they weren’t having as much fun as us. The other half….)
Footnotes from Dinner
Bedroom Intruder, Live on BET Awards
The follow up to the story is that all of the success of the song on iTunes has created such funds that Antoine’s mom has been able to buy a house in a nicer neighborhood. (Here’s a version of the brothers performing the song live without Antoine or Autotune
The Gregory Brothers
These are the guys behind “Autotune the News”, Bedroom Intruder, the Double Rainbow Song, among others. Three brothers and a girl, (who is married to a brother) create these songs and videos in a tiny NYC apartment.
Here is their newest video Backin’ Up, (actually a remake of an older tune of theirs). And again, it sounds like proceeds are going to the woman who’s voice they are puppeteering.
Binaural Beats
There are people who believe that you can tweak the frequency of your brain waves to heal various physical ailments.
If you know your way around a DAW, it wouldn’t be that hard to just set up a sine wave generator in each ear and detune one of them by a fraction of a Hz. [Hert?] Only really works with headphones. I played around with it a bit, lay down with my cushey Beyers on. Trippy for real.
And people sell CDs of this kind of bi-mono sine wave for a LOT OF MONEY.
Gravy.
Atomic Tom on the NYC Subway
I was the one who hadn’t seen/heard this video. I think the drummer used to roll with Chris.
Highlight, the guy over his shoulder at 2:31. (And I cringe to point out that the singer sounded MUCH better when he didn’t belt into the iphone, and just let whatever ambient mic going pick up all of their vocals ensemble. Oh frontmen.)
Toronto Booker fight
Dan Burke, a Toronto booker takes a guitar smash to the face at the Silver Dollar. I couldn’t find the video of this one, but hopefully someone can send it to me. Thanks, Chris!
Wow. Um. Graphicly violent guitar playing involved. At your risk.
“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”
We were talking about musicians hiring and firing managers.
Trent Reznor sobers up to find out that his manager has been taking his money. Oops! What follows is a complete turn about, Trent goes clean, gets buff, and starts churning out new music and new ways of engaging his fanbase: free remix website, an elaborate Alternate Reality Game to initiate album promotions, pay-what-you-want and free album downloads, an insane multimedia tour with a crowdsourced DVD – it goes on.
Purple Nurplers Beware
And the Results…
Posted in Quiet on the Radio | Comments (0)
Lest We Forget
November 11th, 2010Pete Seeger – Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one.Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone to husbands every one.Where have all the young men gone?
They’re all in uniform.Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one.Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers every one.When will we ever learn?
I only recently discovered this beautiful song. I’ll be singing it in my classes today.
There is so much I am grateful for. Je me souviens.
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Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good
November 10th, 2010A long time ago, (1999, I think) before auto-tune, before the proliferation of multi-track digital audio workstations… I was the lead singer in a band called Digital Golub. My highschool had a 16 track reel to reel recording studio. And after a session of recording our own songs, we captured a single, live-off-the-floor take of Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr Huey Lewis.
This is raw. A drum stick is droppped. “Yeah Yeah Yeah”s strewn all over the place. But I think it nicely captures the energy of the moment. This is what it was like to be young and singing about busting ghosts. And I will never understand how Dave did what he did on the guitar.
If you are Ray Parker Jr, or Huey Lewis, or the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man – and this violates your sensibilities: I’ll take it down.
Happy belated Halloween.
Engineering and Bass (simultaneously!) – Dan Taylor
Lead Guitar – Dave Pomeroy
Rhythm Guitar and Vocals – Matt Charters
Drums – Grant MacDonald
Lead Vocals – Yours truly
Posted in Sounds | Comments (3)