Adventure #6474 in a series

I was working tonight at Old Navy and they had placed me in the fitting room section of the store. While I was there, I recognized a customer. Turns out she had attended the Emanuelle Shreikee, shabbat dinner way back in March and had sat with her boyfirend (I'm guessing that's who he was) at the same table as my friends and I. After her and her friend had tried on some clothes and decided to leave, she comes up to me and told me her birthday is saturday night and INVITED me to attend her party. The weird thing is it wasn't an invite to soem house party or a bar it was an invite to a dinner at a restaurant. I don't know a thing about this person except that she is Jewish and he name is Maanyan.

IU'm not sure if I'll go or not. My friends thought she was kind of crazy when we met her at the shabbat dinner, but I'm alway sdown for randomness. I mean, thats how I ended up in Australia. Had I not randomnly bumped into those Irish chicks I never would have looked into SWAP.

I guess it all depends on how I feel on saturday since tomorrow night I'm going to ALL YOU CAN PLAY LASER TAG at Lazer Quest!. It's from Midnight to 6am and I'm heading there with my good buddy Norm and even my friend/boss Mike from Old Navy might show up with some of his friends. As long as there aren't too many people there that we have to wait a lot to play, it's going to ROCK! if I'm not too tired, then I'll hit up that dinner party. Should I go?

Going aways are sad...

Last night I attended a pot luck that was held in honor of the 5 McGill Improv members that are all moving away this summer. Not only are we losing 5 members, but between them and the others who are all busy, and the fact that we don't have that many new members, the team is pretty much falling apart.

None the less. My time with this group as a whole has been fantastic and last night was loads of fun. The unplanned theme was pizza since Andrew made pizzas, Nikki bought a pizza and I brought frozen pizza pockets. Mariana made some really cool vegy foods and apperently King Kevin Casey made an amazing keish. I don't like keish so I"ll just have to take everyone elses word.

After dinner the gifts were passed out to the Leavers, Mariana, Ilya, Gil, Andrew and Ken. Bryan had handed them all copies of their list of shows they perfomed in over the years. I had slaved over 8 hours making a photocollage on my computer which everyone loved and the non-leaves even want me to make a copy for them. Finally Adrienne handing out specially made t-shits to the 5 people going away. They all loved them.

It's sad they 5 more of my friends are leaving Montreal but at least most of them are stil here for a couple of more months.

For pictures of the night, click HERE!

Fun Times in T DOT O DOT

It's been a few days since I've been back but I've been busy (a.k.a lazy).

Friday marked the last day of classes for my first semester of Graphic Design school. WOOHOO! I think I kicked ass in everything and I'm really enjoying it. I had only one class on friday and it ended early. When we were done the prof asked us "So, you're done you're all of your courses. What are you going to do now on your week off?". No one answered, so I yelled out "Lets go DRINKING!" My McGill roots showing wildly. Long story short, I ended up at Mad Hatters with the cool kids in my class.

After a few beers I met up briefly with the awesomely cool Mariana (Gentlemen she's single...), caught up with what was going on until my phone rang. It wa smy mom telling me to hurry to the train station because there was some sort of protest happening in Belleville that could affect the trains. SO I sai dmy good byes and ran over to the train station to find otu my mom was completely right and the train line to Toronto had been blocked by the Native Indians in Ontario as a protest against something. So I had to take a bus to Toronto instead of a train.

I ended up sitting next to some crazy art chick in her 30's. I was just reading amagazine until I notced her reading over my shoulder, which prompted us to talk. As much as it was interesting to talk to her (she even showed me some of her cool art stuff on her mac laptop and even let me show her MY art stuff from my USB), she just souldn't stop talking. I couldn't even take a nap. Even with my eyes closed it took a while to get her to stop (I'm I like this???). Anyways, I could have been next to someone way worse, plus she was nice to talk to and she even gave me her e-mail adress, although she mentioned a husband and I didn't see a ring on her finger so I'm kind of afraid to e-mail her...

I got into Toronto at 11pm (2 hours than expected). My brother picked me up and after a quick bite out I was in his apartment with his ever so lovely wife, Connie and his adorable sone, Charles who is only 14 months old.

The weather was really shitty and all I did when I was there was go shopping and see lots of family , which was both fun and exciting.

Saturday, I went to Centerpoint mall with my bro and then we went to a Procter and Gamble warehouse sale where they had all kinds of things on sale. There was toothpaste, perfume, make up, hair dye, cleaning products and even computer games. I'm not a big computer game kind of guy but my brother convinced me to check out the selstion and I ended up buying XIII for 10$. I've been playing it a bit since I've been back and the fact the it even works on my computer makes it a fucking cool game. Besides that fact, it IS a fucking cool game. It's a Doom, first shooter type game in comic bok style with a Bourne Identity style storyline and the best thing about it... wait for it... is that one of the characters is voiced by ADAM WEST.

Saturday night, we went out for dinner with my cousin Lori and her daughter Corina. I had an amazing plate of linguini in brandy rose sauce with red snapper. HMM HMMM!

After dinner, Mark and I went to watch The Sentinal which was a fun movie to watch but nothing great. It was kind of week in plot especialy near the end. There was a bit of a "He's really a bad guy" kind of story line going on at the end but I figured out who it could be well at the beginning of the movie. Definitely a rental.

Sunday morning I had breakfast with my aunt and uncle who live out there and then went back to my brothers apartment where we grabbed Connie and Charles and headed over to Chapters. That kid LOVES looking at books. He can't read or even understand what abook is yet but he just has a fascination looking at so many books! It was like he found a giant cave loaded with treasure.

The afternoon was spent in a few malls and the evening was spent having dinner with my other cousin Lori from my dad's side of the family. She's getting married in October so it was fun to tlak to her for a while, especially since I hadn't seen her since before I moved to Australia.

Monday morning I actually took the metro to the train station. Tha was funtastic.
Five hours later I was home safe and sound and played XIII for a few hours!

Overall a good weekend indeed.

Franztastic and Deathalicious!

Last night I went to see Death Cab For Cutie and Franz Ferdinand in concert. The show was F(*KING AWESOME!

The night started with me meeting up with my good friend Norm and his friend Ameen (If you ever read this, sorry for the spelling!) at McGill. Marina was supposed to meet us there as well but she kept calling me and telling me she STILL hasn't left her house, so we arranged to meet at the venue, the CEPSUM (U de M auditorium) instead. Norm drives Ameen and I to the school and we find parking. We then walk to the nearest map and realize we are at the wrong end of the street and agreed it was too far to walk. So, back in the car we went and drove down the street only to find no place to park, turning around and parking back in the EXACT same spot as before, and then walking to the entrance. Shortly after, Mariana finally met us and confessed that she was late because she couldn't decide what to wear for the plans she had after the show (you're SUCH a terrible friend Mariana, haha). Then my buddies Mike, Alex and Jason showed up and the circle was complete...

...Only to be broken up once we got inside because and co wanted to relax and sit down in the bleacher seats (the venue was a skating rink) while the rest of us wanted to stand amongst the rest of the crowd.

The standing area filled up pretty fast and by far my favorite moment of the night was when Norm screamed out all of a sudden "FUCK YOU PSYCHO BITCH!!!". Norm had just broken up with his girlfriend. I think everyone in the whole place stopped talking when they heard that. That then became our call if we got lost in the show.

Eventually the lights turned off and the opening band, The Cribs came on stage. I had never heard of them but after a quick intro of something like "Yo we're The Cribs from England" (the acoustics for vocals were not very good for a rock concert...) they just started to rock HARD. Being just a trio, the guitarist and bassist started belting out lyrics in harmony and thrashing while the drummer went nuts and at one point even stood on his drums while continuing to drum. It was a GREAT start and really enjoyed their opening song until I found out that ALL their songs sounded the same and they did the same schenanigans during each song.

After their set, I was dying to go the bathroom and to hydrate myself so I took a chance and squeezed through the crowd towards the washroom. On the way there, there was a line of people moving in one direction and found it odd that there was a girl with crutches and two people behind her was a guy with crutches. What are the odds of that? Then it turned out the guy was Dave Kolin whom I studied chemistry with! Turns out he broke his leg skiing. OUCH!

Up the stairs, there's a huge line to the toilets and there was a guard letting women into the men's room which was now a "Unisex Bathroom". Inside, there is this long line of men and women bending around a wall. I peer around the wall and see there are no guys at the urinals. "Screw this" I thought to myself and used one of the urinals while hot chicks kept passing me to use the stalls.

Back on the floor, I searched and located my friends (thank God Mariana is tall!). I walked along the outskirts of the crowd until I was lined up with my friends and attempted to push my way through. A giant challenge it was indeed because some people thought I was being such a jerk trying to push my way through that they were being JERKS SQUARED! Some just REFUSED to budge even an inch. I was about 5 people behind my friends when every single person around me joined together and said to each other "We shall not let Joshua Bateman pass through!". I started to scream out Mariana's name and she just couldn't hear me. My phone started to ring. I pick it up and it's Mike, watching me from the bleachers and he says "looks like you're having some trouble, eh? Hahaha". Feeling totally discouraged, my hopes came up when finally Mariana happened to turn around and with her armed stretch out, brought me in to the sacred land known as my circle of friends.

And then Death Cab For Cutie marched on stage. The stage had two 7 feet tall white square houses with windows and a back drop of white trees. Their set was amazing. I thought it would be really melow judging from their music but they really rocked on stage. All the musicians were really into it. The coolest thing was during the set, they started to swap instruments or play two at once. For the final song, the groupies set up a miniature drum set and the singer jumped to it and started to do a drum solo with the drummer! For the finale, the bassist climbed to the top of an amp and simultaneously jumped off and hit a note on his bass as the singer smashed his guitar on the stage! Totally not something I expected from that group!

The lights were back on and it was the last intermission before the big guns. This time Mariana chanced it and took a trip to the bathroom. Meanwhile the floor was starting to really get cramped and I literally couldn't even turn around anymore. The show was going to start any minute and Mariana came into view but couldn't get past the wall of jerks. I then put myself on a possible suicide mission, said my goodbyes to Norm and Ameen and jumped back into the crowd to reach Mariana. Seconds later the lights turned off and the band had reached the stage. Without a thought, people started to rush the stage and Mariana and I followed. The band started rocking out immediately and the crowd went wild! While during the first two groups everyone kind of stood in place bobbing their heads, now everyone was just dancing, jumping and plain out going crazy. I immediately got into this trance and totally let myself go to the music. I just let the crowd direct me where to go. I ended up bumping into Ameen followed by Norm and next thins I know it, I'm at the FRONT of the stage! I remained there the rest of the show, listening to amazing Franz Ferdinand tunes like "Take Me Out, Do You Want To, and Matinee". They were BANG ON the whole time.

For their encore, they played the song Michael which Norm was really hoping they would. While jumping up and down with Norm, all of a sudden an arm wrapped around my shoulders and some guy starts to sing with me. It ended up being Surjit! A really cool guy I met at McGill through all my FROSH involvement. What a crazy way to catch up with a long time friend!

For the final song, there ended up being 3 people playing the drums while the other musicians just went nuts and with a heartbeat it was all over.

We then made our way to the T-shirt stand where I bought a wicked Death Cab for Cutie shirt for only 25$, although Norm was screaming at me from across the way to buy a girl shirt.

Exhausted, we said our goodbyes, made to Norms car, went for a bite to eat and Norm drove me home.

In conclusion, I had an AWESOME night seeing an AWESOME set of bands with AWESOME friends! That was definitely one of the best shows I had ever been too.

Passover That Beer Mate

This post is for Jess. Rather then just a small reply I decided to write a post since I have some time to kill until my father comes home.

So what is Passover? It's a Jewish holiday that happens aroudndthe time of Easter every year. It spans over 8 days and the date always changed per year because the Jewish calendar follows the Lunar cycle. It is basically a holiday to remember the events that happened in the past around this time thousands of years ago. We spend the first two nights celebrating by having the family gather around the table and we read from a book called the Hagada which is full of stories and information to remember the stories of the past. The story best represented in the movie the Ten Commandments, starring Charleton Heston, is about an astronaut that crash lands on a planet filled with talking Apes and... No wait that's Planet of The Apes. The Ten Commandments is the sory of Moses the then leader of the Jewish People.

As for how the Jews ended up in Egypt, going further back in the bible, Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, had 12 sons. One of them was his favorite, Joseph, and the others resented him for it. Long story short, they faked his death and sold him off as slave and he ended up in Egypt. After helping the Pharoh of Egypt decipher some crazy dreams he had, Joseph eventually went up the ranks in Egypt. Many years later, Jacob and his sons came to Egypt for the harvest and Joseph came forward revealing he was in fact alive and well. Eventually Jacob and his extended family move to Egypt and all is well.

I think years pass by and Egypt is full of Jews. The nice Pharoh who let them into the country dies and an Evil Pharoh takes over. He makes all the Jews slaves and they have to build pyramids and cities for him. He also puts out a law to kill all the new born children. One woman takes her son and puts him in a basket and then throws it in the river so he can escape death. As the baby boy is floating along, the Evil Pahroh's sister, notices the basket, finds the boy and claims him her son. The boy is raised as royalty in the Pharoh's household and it looked upon well by the Pharoh which makes his own son, Ramses uber jealous.

Somewhere along the line, Moses discovers he's really Jewish and leaves the Pharoh's estate and journeys on his own. He eventually comes across a burning bush and is spoken to by God. I can't remember what happens next but he eventually becomes a messenger of God and in his name goes to Ramses, the new Evil Pharoh since his father dies of old age or something, and asks to let the Jews out of Egypt. Ramses says no and Moses, with God's help does some fancy tricks like turn his staff into a stick. Then he says something about "if you don't do what go says, you guys will be in trouble" and Ramses says something like "Yeah right!"

After this results the ten plagues where all kinds of crazy things happen in Egypt. I can't remember them all but remember some being water turned to blood, locusts, darkness and all the cattle died. The last plaque was the death of all the first born children. Now the holiday gets it's name from the fact that the angel that was to pass over and kill the first born children was told to "pass over" all the houses that had lambs blood smeared on their door frames, to signify they were Jewish homes.

After this the Jews with Moses as their leader and Joshua as second as command (yes I'm in the bible, and I knew everyone then as well, from Ezeikiel to Schlomo...) marched out of Egypt with the Egyptians following behind. The story goes that in their exodus from Egypt, because they were in such a rush, the women didn't have enough time to let the bread rise and they ended up with unleavened Bread which is signified by the Mathias we eat now during the holidays.

On the way, they pass Mount Sinai where Moses climbed up and stayed up there I think for 40 days and was given the 10 commandments by God (hence the name of the movie). He finally comes down and finds all the Jews doing totally non-jewish things like worshipping idols and what not. They broke all the rules before they even existed!

I'm not sure what happened next but I think that's what spawned another Jewish Holiday, Yom Kippur (day of Atonement) which is when we fast for 24 hours, but that's a story for another time.

I'm sure half the stuff I said was wrong but I hope that helps answer Jess' question. Anyone, please feel free to correct all my mistakes...

Week-END

This weekend was pretty interesting so I thought I'd rant about it.

Thursday (yes in my world the weekend costitutes anyday of the week that I feel like including) I had lunch with the very lovely Nadine Alby. It was good catching up with her after not seeing her for over a month. We go way back to the ol' chem days.

Friday I had a really fun class. For my final project in Creativity, we have to make a self portrait using any materials we want. My prof convinced me to buy a toy and cover it in playdo to make it resemble me. The toy I'm using as a mold is Jack Skeleton from A Nightmare Before Christmas because he is made long and thin (like me). So I basically spent 4 hours playing with playdo and listening to some tunes on my cd player.

Friday night I joined the very lovely Mariana Vial and among other people made our way to St Thomas High School in Pointe Claire to volunteer for the Montreal edition of the Canadian Improv games. The competition which involves high school teams battle it out on stage, was a lot of fun to watch. The little guys have a lot of positive energy. I also enjoyed seeing the poster I created all over the school and finding out that my name was printed into the panflet at "Josh Posterguy" since the organizer, Dave, had forgotten my name.

Saturday was spent inside school working on a project. I finally escaped from my prison and made way to the surface to meet up with Shing. we ended up in China Town and had some good ol' All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet. the food was mediocre but the company was priceless.

Following dinner, I ended up at a house party celebrating the end of the CIG games. It was a party filled with beer, music and Super Smash Brothers Melee! Very interesting indeed...

Sunday was work day but was fun as always.

I guess what I am really excited for is this weekend. On Wednesday, Passover begins. Thrusday, my brother and his family are coming to stay with us. I have a 3 day weekend since I have no school on friday and no work on sunday all because of Easter. Then saturday night is the Franz Ferdinand/Death Cab for Cutie concert!

School Update

Time is flying. I have 3 more weeks of school until I complete my first semester. Then I have 1 week off to relax before hitting the computers again for 15 more weeks. Over the summer to boot!

I have a bunch of really cool projects I'm working on and can't wait to post them online. In the meantime, I handed in one of my midterm projects recently and finally got around to putting on this site.

For my Basic Design class (intro to Illustrator) we had to do a composition project (which I spoke about in an earlier post a few weeks ago). Basically we had to trace 5 shapes (logos) and make 5 of our own abstract shapes. Once all our shapes were done we had to choose from a book what kind of operations we wanted to use on each shape, thus resulting with a pattern.

































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Knights Of the Oblong

Who would have thought - Two dress up parties in one month...
Tonight I attended a Medieval Times party at my friend Norm's girlfriend Hana'a place. We had to all dress up, were given a story and special powers and had to talk to other characters and, if need be, challenge them. If challenged you would have to play a rock-paper-scissors type game of tiger-hunter-hippy, where the hunter kills the tiger, the hippy beats the hunter and tiger eats the hippy.
There were many different kinds of characters and costumes. Hana was King Arthur and Norm was Morgain, Arthur's sister (wig, breasts and all...). I went as a knight/barbarian. I had a vikingsd helmut, a sword, an axe and an eye patch. My background was that I lived in a small village that specialized in Bonzai plants. I was at war with a dragon named Trogdor. I ended up improvising the rest of the night which led to:
-getting one Knight to talk peace to Trogdor on my behalf
-Selling my bonzai plants to a drawf in return of a spell stone
-Giving my spell stones to Trogdor in return of peace
-Joining King Arthur's knights of the round table
-Unvoluntarily seducing another knight and then conceiving a child
-Asking a lady's hand in love only to be rejected
-Killing myself due to said objection
-Being ressurected as a dragon by Merlin the Magician
-Using my seduction spell to bring back the dead Morgain who then became now my corpse bride
-Having my dead bride be turned into a frog by Merlin the Magician

All in all I had a great time.

Here is a pic of everyone:


For the rest click HERE!