Finding my journal slow to load lately? I just figured out why. I was looking at the site rankings for deviantART at www.alexa.com and found that dA is ranked 455 in the world Pretty cool! Well, I checked out my own site just for the sake of interest. I see that I’m ranked 455,535 in the world. I kinda laughed because that doesn’t seem high in comparison. But then it kicked in that it is within the top 500,000 sites in the world. That’s actually a lot of pageviews for my crappy Celeron 333MHz server with 256MB of RAM and 20GB hard drive. In addition to www.kevinthom.com, the server also hosts this journal, my portfolio site, www.tma.ca, www.thebelowjobs.com, www.elusivebutterfly.ca, www.thesteelheader.com, and www.justpixels.ca. It’s also hosting email for those domains, spam filtering, plus mySQL, DNS, and SSH. Yeah. I need a new server. I’m investigating what it will take to move all of this stuff to the new server. I’m paranoid about the whole thing just dying one day. I’d be so screwed

Wow it’s taken me a long time to get around to writing this, but here is the rest of the trip to L.A. in capsule form. The second day, we were at the Summit by about 11am. I saw Chris Weeks talk about lighting on a budget. I don’t agree with all the things he said, but it was interesting to see his perspective. He doesn’t like strobe lighting because he thinks it makes the models uncomfortable. He prefers natural light and continuous light. My opinion is that it’s the photographer’s job to make the model comfortable, not the light’s job. Besides, if anything makes anyone uncomfortable, it’s 3000W of continuous light pounding down on someone in an enclosed space. A model would feel about as comfortable as a Big Mac under the heat lamps at McDonald’s. Different strokes for different folks, huh?

After that seminar, I had lunch at Baja Fresh, which is a really nice chain of Mexican food restaurants. Their specialty is fresh food, with no preservatives. It’s all prepared on site from fresh ingredients. I had a couple of soft tacos with Mahi Mahi fish in them, and a serving of nacho chips buried in guacamole and fresh salsa from the salsa bar. Yum.

In the afternoon, we watched Pachunka do a play about dA using cardboard cutouts and a Star Wars theme. What a strange and amusing man.

The rest of the day was spent mainly just loafing around and talking to people. That’s probably the best thing about the Summit… meeting and getting to know people from the site.

After the Summit closed, I helped to tear down the 4×6 booth, and load some of dA’s stuff into moving vans. We sat around for a long time because no one knew what to do next. Eventually we decided to get something to eat. We drove through Los Angeles for a while until we got to Spot’s house where we parked and walked to a sidewalk cafe/bakery. They had amazing salads and sandwiches. I have to learn that what looks like enough food for me on a Canadian menu is actually about twice what I can eat on an American menu. Those Americans love to eat! I had a huge pulled pork sandwich in some kind of thick flatbread, and a enormous fresh greens salad. We then went to Spot’s to hang out. It was me, Jeremy, Josh, Spot, Danie, Shae, Brian, Zeruch, and Attila. Danie and I drove back to my uncle’s place afterwards, and I felt the place looked extremely familiar. I had a feeling we were close to Samy’s Camera store, but I wasn’t sure.

The next day, my uncle explained to us how to get to Samy’s. Sure enough, it was right there on North Fairfax where we were last night. I think I have camera store radar. We drove out there. The store was amazing, although they no longer sell Sigma lenses. Boo! I managed to get away without buying anything. We had lunch at the Farmer’s Market. We drove around the parking lot for 40 minutes looking for a spot. It wasn’t too bad, but it was another lesson in the rudeness of L.A. drivers. At one point about half an hour into the search, someone actually zoomed around us in the parking lot and stole the parking space that we would have gotten. When Los Angeleans are in their cars, it seems like they turn into utter bastards. Interesting phenomenon. Lunch was great though. There are so many interesting food stalls in that market. I eventually decided on Cajun food. I had a big bowl of jumbalaya which came with a salad and some cornbread.

After that we took a drive out to Santa Monica beach with the cameras to take some photos. I had my uncle’s 1Ds. What a sweet machine that is. When I saw the view through the viewfinder with the 12mm lens I almost died. I want it! Anyway, I took a few shots. The metering, color and focus are all better than the 10D. I wonder how long I’ll be able to hold out without it.

Dinner was at my uncle’s. He made BBQ lamb chops, steak and veggies. It was relaxing to sit on the patio and eat as the sun went down. I stayed up to talk to him and his friend Matthew Hong for a while, then went to bed.

Monday was our last day in Los Angeles. We went back to North Fairfax to have lunch in Little Ethiopia. I had never had Ethiopian food before, and it was a pleasant surprise. It was all vegetarian, with lots of savoury bean and lentil dishes that you eat with a rolled up pancake-type bread. It was tasty. We spent the rest of the day driving up and down the Pacific Coast Highway. I got some nice photos of parasurfers on the Malibu Beach. We made it all the way up to Oxnard, which is a fairly uninteresting town, but a good turnaround point nonetheless. Then we turned around and came back through Venice Beach. We had dinner at a Thai restaurant. The Thai food is pretty damn good in Los Angeles, probably because there are actual Thai people living there. The only weirdness was the Jalepeno peppers used as condiments. Otherwise it was a great meal of seafood pad thai, Vietnamese fresh rolls and satay tofu.

We drove for a while after dinner, looking for Long Beach. I’m sure we took a wrong turn somewhere along the line, because we never found it. Eventually we gave up and turned around to go back to the airport. We returned the rental car and got dinged with $42 in gas charges. Note to self: don’t take any rental car agency gas offers. They charge for a full tank of gas, even if you’ve already put $20 in before returning the car

The flights back were highly uneventful. The couple sitting behind us from L.A. to Pittsburgh were obnoxious though. Even though the plane left at midnight, the lady was talking very loudly all night. They were also the only ones on the whole plane who felt it necessary to keep their overhead lights on, so it was really bright while I was trying to sleep. We had a brief stopover in Pittsburgh, then hopped a turboprop plane to Buffalo. It’s been a long time since I was on such a small plane. This one was better than the last one I took to Cleveland though. That one was really old and noisy. I think it had been built in the 1950’s or something. This one was almost as quiet as a jet, and got us to Buffalo in only 40 minutes.

So that’s pretty much it. It was a fun trip. I can’t wait to see what happens next year.

Summit Journal

Friday, 11:20AM – somewhere over America
Summit travel plans got off to a bit of a rushed start. We almost missed the plane from Buffalo, due to the airport being further away from Hamilton than I remembered. I’m certain that they moved it when I wasn’t looking. All of this meant that we arrived at the airport about 25 minutes before the flight was supposed to take off.

Anyway, we were too late to check our luggage, which was cool because they gave us little yellow tags to put on the luggage which meant we didn’t have to deal with searching for it in carousels, etc. They just put it in the cargo hold before we got on the plane, and when we got off in Philadelphia for our first stop, they handed the bags back to us. Sweet.

When we boarded the plane to Los Angeles, we were told we could just bring our luggage straight onto the plane and store it in the overhead compartment. I guess it pays to be late sometimes.

Everyone has been amazingly nice to us, from the US border guard who smiled and chatted with us at the Queenston Lewiston Bridge, to the airline check-in lady who happily gave us our yellow luggage tags despite our obvious inability to follow the rules of air travel.

The flight has been relaxing so far. We should be in LA in three hours. I’m glad to have the laptop with me. Being trapped in the plane has given me a chance to do some stuff I’ve been meaning to do for some time. I went through 20 pages of dA interviews about commenting that I did back in March and highlighted the interesting bits. I have a better idea of the article I’ll write now. Maybe this thing will actually get done?

Saturday, 7:42AM – Rowland Heights, California
I’m sitting in an upstairs office at my uncle’s house right now, on a very weak wifi Internet connection. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post this now. It might have to wait until later.

Since I last wrote, lots of stuff has happened. We landed in LAX on time, then found our way to the rental car place on a shuttle bus. It was insane in there. The lineup was practically out the door, and there was a girl making balloon animals to amuse the kids. The line moved pretty fast though because they had about 15 agents booking people into cars. I kinda hoped they’d run out of Hyundai Accents and give us a Alpha Romeo Hesi-style, but we got a Kia Optima instead. It’s a pretty decent-sized sedan, and much better than the Accent that I had been expecting.

Driving to the Summit was an adventure. We didn’t know the address. I guess I should have written that down, eh? But we followed a combination of directions that my uncle and the car rental place had given us and we found it alright. It took a few tries, and about one and a half hours due to the insane amount of Friday afternoon traffic. They aren’t kidding about Los Angeles traffic you know.

The Palladium is kind of a neat place. It’s all done in art deco style, and I mean original art deco from the 1930’s. It’s pretty retro, to say the least. Parts of it smell rather moldy, but that’s no big deal. The summit looks good. There are booths and sponsors everywhere. There’s free Red Bull for anyone who can stomach it. I had a can and it messed me up real good. I felt all anxious and hyper for about 2 hours. Remind me not to drink that stuff anymore. I met lots of cool deviants so far, which is kinda the point I guess.

After the summit closed for the day, we headed on the road to Uncle Wayne’s. Traffic wasn’t bad, but we took the wrong freeway ramp and ended up on some freeway to San Bernadino. After an hour of driving that way and not seeing anything familiar, I called Wayne to find out where we went wrong. He got us sorted out again, and we headed back the way we came. At one point, the traffic stopped entirely in both directions, and we could see emergency vehicles up ahead. Soon, a huge helicopter showed up and landed on the freeway to evacuate accident victims. It was pretty cool, but scary. I hope those people are ok. I guess regular ambulances would just get stuck in traffic here. It’s great they have helicopters for this kind of thing.

We finally made it to Rowland Heights and had a vegetarian Chinese dinner with Wayne. It was very good. After dinner, crashing was in order. I felt like I had been up for about two days in a row, so I hit the pillow and fell asleep instantly.

Today we’ll be heading to the summit again, and then to some party afterwards. I’ll keep you posted.

Well I think I’m finally over the shock that arrived in my inbox yesterday morning. It was a message from Hugh, owner of the Staircase Theatre, saying that they were going to cease operations on July 2. The Staircase has been a place of warmth and friendship and personal growth for me since the first time I stepped through its doors in November, 2002. From that point onwards, The Staircase and its friends changed my life. The announcement of its closure was crushing.

The Staircase was a sort of incubator for me. A cocoon even. I met improv there, and through improv I underwent a metamorphosis. Improv taught me to accept. Friends, family and life are constantly offering gifts, even if it doesn’t always seem that way. Accepting the gifts that have been handed to me has smoothed my path considerably. Improv taught me to offer too–to enrich the “scene” around me through real and positive actions. It also taught me that by taking care of myself, I would be in a stronger position to offer others my hand. It taught me to hear the truth and follow it. For introducing me to the art that taught me the true practicality of these concepts, I thank the Staircase.

I understand Hugh’s reasons for closing the doors. He’s got a young family and a demanding career as a doctor in another city. The theatre is a magical place, but its demands on his time, energy and finances must have been draining. I’m amazed he was able to hold on this long. I closed The Mouse Academy’s offices for far lesser reasons, and now I’m reaping the benefits of freedom and flexibility. It was my improv experiences at the Staircase that gave me the courage and confidence to take that leap. I hope Hugh’s life is as significantly improved as a result of his decision as mine was when I closed the office.

I found that in recent months I was spending less and less time at The Staircase. There is the obvious reason that the Theatresports run had been cancelled, but there were still regular workshops that I could have attended or taught. I’m not sure why I lost that drive to be there. It’s possible this particular phase of my metamorphosis is over, and I was ready to shed that cocoon.

There’s a new cocoon being built now. Hugh’s wife Kathy purchased the abandoned convenience store beside the Staircase and are renovating it into “The Variety Room,” to be used for improv workshops on Thursday nights. Who knows what new changes are in store for us there, but whatever they are, I accept.

It was good, actually. There was plenty of sword-clashing, blood-lusting action, strong acting, and a good pace. Orlando Bloom’s character was sickeningly virtuous, but I suppose that was the whole point. The film struck me as being a bit obvious in its modern liberal attitudes and political correctness. I mean, literally half of the Christian crusaders were downright friendly with everyone, striking a “Why-Can’t-We-All-Just-Get-Along” stance when it came to living with the Jews and the Muslims. It was the other half of them that were the real troublemakers. Strangely enough, this other half was made up of the Knights Templar, whom I had been led to believe by Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code were actually secretly working against the Catholic church. Equally surprising was the number of characters who resembled Klingons from Star Trek.

Anyway, one thing that stood out to me was Bloom’s oath to tell the truth, even if it should lead to your death. Dramatic but effective. I guess putting that one to the test would really show who’s got courage and who doesn’t. Another message was to always strive to make your world a better place. Who can argue with that one? :nod: