Laura took Dad and I to see Cirque du Soleil at Copps Colesium last night. It was a spontaneous thing, which made it even more fun. I’d never been to see Cirque du Soleil before, and I was impressed. The music, costumes, sets, lighting, performances were all intricately designed and interwoven with each other, creating what I can only describe as multi-layered audio/visual poetry. They alternated different moods, always keeping your brain and emotions in a whirl, from funny to spooky to awe-inspiring, and then back to funny again. I was impressed by the acrobats who caught and held each other only using their ankles. It boggled my mind and had my heart racing, as half the time, I expected one of them to miss and go sailing into the air and crashing into the crowd far below. I think most of the audience felt the same way. It was very tense in the colesium at that point. There was also a very funny clown who mimed and created sound effects with his mouth and a microphone. He coaxed an audience member on stage with him, and had the guy performing like a pro in no time. It was inspiring to see that kind of audience participation, and gives me ideas for things to do in improv shows with audience memers. Anyway, Cirque was blast: a solid two and a half hours of magic.

I had a couple of interesting photo shoots today. I was shooting two restaurants for a local magazine. The first place was a Vietnamese restaurant that opens tomorrow. The second was a Japanese/Korean place. I really enjoyed working with the restaurateurs. Not only did they each insist that I stay and eat some delicious food, I got to sit with them and chat with them about the restaurant business, and food in general. I feel like a made a few new friends today, and I’m looking forward to going back to these places as a customer.

I’m astounded. I took my new Canon 24-70mm f2.8L out into the country to snap a few test shots. I absolutely love it. Most noticible is the color transmission of this lens. I guess the only other lens that I have that reproduces color this way is my other L lens. I feel vindicated about the purchase now.

I got the new lens. I ordered it from a local store here in Hamilton, and they gave me a great deal on it. Just in time too. I’ve got a shoot tonight in which this new lens will come in handy. I’m looking forward to trying it out!

I seem to leave big gaps between blog entries, especially when lots of stuff is happening. And lots of stuff seems to have happened since my last entry, which makes it even more difficult to write a quality entry. I’m sure I won’t be giving any of the things that happened adequate quality coverage.

Anyway, when I got back from New York, I had two days to get myself together for a trip to Toronto. I was renting my place to a TV production company to film a few scenes for an upcoming late-night sci-fi program that will air on HBO and The Movie Network. Fortunately, the place wasn’t too messy, so I got it cleaned up and prepared for strangers to be here. I didn’t want to be here at all while the filming was happening. I’d probably have a heart attack seeing how 40 strangers hauling heavy gear treat my stuff and my home. So, I just make sure that all delicate things were put away, and that things were generally clean and tidy.

I headed out to Toronto on Wednesday afternoon. I checked into the Travelodge at King and Bathurst, which would be my base of operations for the next few days. This place defines clean and sensible business accommodations. There’s nothing fancy about it, but it’s a good place to sleep at night, and you can’t beat the location. The room had a small fridge so I could buy some food for breakfast and snacks. It also had decent free wireless Internet so I could stay in touch.

That night, I got to see and perform in Project Project, which was a lot of fun. It happens every Wednesday at the Comedy Bar, and is a great place to experience some experimental improv forms. That night, they had two guest beat poets who read some highly entertaining poems, which were then used to inform a montage of scenes. It was kind of like a poetic Armando.

Thursday night, I was at the Comedy Bar again for the Toronto Improv Festival. I was shooting photos of the acts. Before the show, the stormy and unsettled weather had turned the sky a sort of surreal orange and pink.

I also performed a set with James as Raging 180. We did a grounded monoscene set in our loose form, which involves a rant a la Bassprov. Our characters were roommates, and we just showed a slice of their lives. We haven’t performed together in ages, but I still felt comfortable on stage with James. I would have liked our rant segment to be more intense, but it was still enjoyable to do, and I think interesting to watch.

Friday I did a lot of shopping. I bought shirts, jeans, a jacket and socks. Sometimes I find it hard to buy clothes, and sometimes I find it too easy. Since I was kind of on holiday still, I was in “easy” mode.

That night, I was at the Bad Dog, shooting and performing with Big in Japan. There was a good crowd there, and we put up a decent set too, based on the suggestion “Righteous.”

I checked out of the Travelodge on Saturday, and went home to Hamilton. I had to see what was up with my place after the TV people left. Actually, it wasn’t terrible. It was a bit dirty, and they had left all my lights on and air conditioner cranked, but overall, it wasn’t a disaster. I discovered later that all my food in my fridge had gone bad because they’d unplugged the fridge to record dialogue scenes, and had forgotten to plug it in again. No big deal. They’re reimbursing me for the cleaning, the food in the fridge, and the dents and scratches on the walls. I talked to my neighbours, and apparently this was quite a big deal. They had blocked off serveral blocks around my place, and there were dozens of trailers, equipment vans and generators filling the streets. There were about 40 people tromping in and out of here at all hours. I’m hoping my neighbours weren’t too put off by all the commotion. I’m looking forward to seeing how this all turns out.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been booking a lot of shoots. It’s mostly headshots, but some model portfolio and glamour stuff too. I’ve got two shoots next week at restaurants in Burlington for that magazine I mentioned earlier.

Studio-wise, I made a couple of purchases. My background support system finally arrived. I’d ordered it in June, but it was out of stock, and took forever to get here. Manyk was kind enough to lend me a hand in helping me pick up the rolls of black and white paper, and getting the thing securely installed on the wall.

It’s supposed to hold three rolls, but one of the pieces is broken and needs to be replaced. They’re sending me a new part by UPS. It’s not a big deal right now, since I only have two rolls of paper anyway. I’ll use the third roller set to hold a bar from which I can hang fabric or other backdrops with clamps. I’m loving this new background system. Because the rolls are continuous paper, I can curve them out onto the floor and have nice seamless backgrounds. It makes it so much easier to do full-body photos than before. Here are some of my photos from yesterday that I took with the new background. Oh, and there are a couple I included just because I like them.

I always seem to have a good time in NYC. The drive down was grueling. It took about 11 hours to get there in our rented Grand Prix, including a couple of hours waiting at the border, and a couple of hours for lunch, dinner and bathroom breaks. The border delay was the worst. Note to self: avoid Queenston Lewiston as a border crossing. Because of construction, every car entered on the far left lane that branched out to about six lanes eventually, but there was no way to know that until you were stuck in that far left lane going nowhere. It took us well over an hour to get through the border.

I think we had to stop about three times to pay tolls within about 20 minutes of the city. I found the placement of this sign just at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel toll gate somewhat ironic. If it was intentional, it’s brilliant.

Arriving in the city brings back memories from previous trips. The sights, sounds, and smells of the place aren’t always pretty, but they’re certainly unique.

At about 11, we checked into the Holiday Inn Express, between 7th and 8th Ave. on West 29th. It’s not a bad place. Pretty generic, with small rooms, small beds, and tiny pillows, but basically clean and a safe home base. A nice touch are the free apples and oranges available at the front desk at all hours. A few of us walked a few blocks to the UCB Theatre after checking in to pick up our performer passes and see some improv.

The next day I took a walk around the city. I was hunting for a place to buy the Canon 24-70mm f2.8L lens. B&H, where I normally buy equipment, is closed on Saturdays, so I couldn’t get it there. No one else seemed to be able to come even close to B&H’s price, so I decided to pick it up on Sunday morning instead, before we left for home. Later in the day I met up with Diny, and then with the rest of BiJ for lunch and warmup. We went on at 2:30pm. It’s always fun to perform at DCM, because you can bet that most of the people in the audience are hardcore improv fans, and they’re going to give you an honest reaction to your set. I think our set was decent. Our suggestion was “creme brulee” and we spun out a montage of scenes from that. We’d decided ahead of time to skip the opening and launch right into it. We’d also decided not to try to get too distracted by form and just have fun. I think the set was was balanced and connected, and we got some good laughs out of it.

After the set, I watched some of the other improv groups perform. Standouts included Them Do This and Rare Bird Show. Both of these teams were inspiring for their smart and funny play.

That night, I had dinner with Nick and some of the other folks I originally met at DSI in North Carolina a couple of years ago. A number of them, including Nick, have moved to NYC to pursue their artistic dreams and careers. That’s pretty cool. It’s certainly not an easy move, but when you’ve gotta do it, you’ve gotta do it. I admire that.

After dinner, I checked out a few more shows. The theatre, by this point, was packed to the point that you couldn’t move, and had a relative humidity of about 98%. Knowing that that humidity was 100% human sweat made it doubly uncomfortable. I made my way back to the hotel and crashed for the night, or at least until my BiJ mates came back at 4am. We stayed up until 7am reliving the day’s events, until we realized how depressing it was that the sun was already coming up and that we had a 10 hour drive ahead of us within a couple of hours.

I slept for a couple more hours and then headed out at 9 to visit B&H again. It so happens that this Sunday is the only Sunday all year that they’re closed. It’s a Jewish holiday. I could have gone to another store to get it, but I decided that fate was trying to tell me something about buying this lens. It was not meant to happen right now. I decided to try to find it in Canada instead.

I strolled back to the hotel, soaking in the morning ambiance of the city. It’ll probably be another year before I make it back again, and I wanted to enjoy it: the smells that wrinkle your nose, the sounds that deaden your ears, and the sights that boggle your mind. It fascinates me that within a couple of months of living in NYC, these things would seem normal, and suddenly anything less would seem bland and unexceptional. That is, unless you’re exceptional and can recognize that each moment is also exceptional, no matter where you are. I’m not sure what my point is.

The drive back was pretty easy, despite Mother Nature hammering us with alternating rain and hail storms. I think we got back in less than nine hours. Sweet.