Oops... I mean... SUPRISE!

So the otherday I was writing how I ALMOST spoiled my friends suprise birthday party by accidently mentioning some hints to her. Well it turns out that Yusin DOES read my blog and the party is cancelled. On the otherhand, instead of being disappointed with me she is quite excited and cheerful since it turns out every year someone she knows throws her a surprise party and let me tell you, this screw up was not expected at all.

Now, instead of meeting at her place for a suprise dinner, several classmates and I are gathering for dinner tomorrow night at Angelina and Guidos right accross the street from my school which gives me a chance to work hard tomorrow and then make a stroll over to the restaurant.

Speaking of school, I'm really feeling the fists of the homework really tightening around my neck and the more I try to rush through things the more i feel that I'm falling behind, so I"m quite happy to be celebrating mine and the other's birthdays to keep my sanity, haha.

Only two weeks left!!

Smooth...

My classmate, Yusin, is turning 25 on thursday. Amelie, another classmate, contacted me through MSN several times telling me about a get together at Yusin's for her birthday. In her messages she mention Yusin's dad a few times. In my head I kept thinking "why is Amelie inviting me and not Yusin, to her own party" and "what does her dad have to do with anything?" until today when I saw Yusin in class and said "So I heard about our little get together" and she says "what get together". At this point little spark plugs starting going off and everything made sense - it's a suprise party! Oooooops...... Quick thinking, I turned extrememly red and started making absolutely no sense until Yusin made me explain myself to which I replied that sometimes I mix up people and told her I was talking about my friend Nadine's party. I also explained to her how once I was invited to a party and saw the host at school and went to confirm the place and time until I realized the person was actually not who I thought she was but a complete stranger...(that really happened so it wasn't hard to make it sound believable). Well hopefully I didn't ruin anything and lets REALLY hope Yusin doens't read my blog... haha....

In other news, I saw Lady in the Water. I liked it but it got really mixed reviews and is not in anyway a scary/horror movie. It's more of a fantasy movie. Think The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe with less plot and a shock here and there rather than the Sixth Sense or Signs.

In the music front, I picked up a few albums as of late.
Thom Yorke - The Eraser. I like it but it;s kind of tough to get into. It's sooting at parts and very like some of the stuff from Kid A - more electronic and less band heavy.
Muse - Black Holes and Revelations. I'm having ahard time getting into it but it's not a bad album. The only song I can say I really like is the last one called Knights of Cydonia
Angels and Airwaves - We Don't Need To Wisper. I heard bad things about this one but decided to get it anyways. I havn't even listened to it yet except a second from each song to make sure they worked and from what I heard everything sounds the same.

Ok... so I didn't really gert that great music after al, now that I think about it...
well I need new music for my MP3 player. Anyone have anything they recommend?

Panic! At the Budman

Been hard to post more than once a week altely due to 1. being to busy with school work and 2. due to point 1, have not done anything that exciting to post about. That's not completely true though since sunday I went to go see a show with Norm.

I had bought tickets about a month ago to go see Panic! At the Disco. I was excited to take a break from school work and go out and enjoy myself at a show. Plus, I hadn't had a chance to really catch up with Norm in a long itme so it was fun talking about movies and comics and crazy things we rewmember from our childhood like Eerie Indiana (if you know what that is, you're cool!).

The show was at the Metropolis and the opening bands were supposed to be The Hush Sound and the Dresden Dolls. Which reminds me...

Another exciting thing that did happen is that my dad was over kind and bought me an mp3 player for my soon to be birthday (1 week today!). I picked out the Creative Zen Vision M. It's pretty awesome and definitely the most expensive thing I own at the moment. It plays music, videos, show photos, has a radio, voice recorder and can be used as a hard drive. Number of gigs: 30. Number of songs capable of holding: several thousand. Number of hours it can play video before dying: 4. Number of times I've almost dropped it already: 1...

Getting back to the topic at hand, I had downloaded both of the openers current albums but did not have a chance to listen to them. The show was suposed to start at 7:30 but instead started at 8:30 because the Hush Sound didn't make it through the US border. It suscks to because since then, I have been listening to their album and it's quite good. It's called Like Vines and it's very happy pop rock music. I highly recommend it if you just want to be put in a nice chill happy mood. The Dresden Dolls, on the other hand DID play and i didn't like them very much. THeir basically a girl on a piano and a guy thrashing on his drums. The music is... interesting.

Finally, Panic at the Disco came on at 9:30 and they rocked. The stage had a lot of props. There was a backdrop of a windmill with a this giant fan with lights all over it. They had in huge letters Panic! At The Disco with each letter that flashed in bright lights and let's not forget the moon with a mustache, the fake trees and the drummers drum kit that lit up to the beats.

During the set, they had 2 chicks and a guy dress up in cabaret 20 style clothing and run around doing crazy things. They played most of their songs in the exact same order as the album which was a bit of a drag but they totally suprised Norm and I when they covered Karma Police by Radiohead and Tonight Tonight by Smashing Pumpkins. Teh worst thing of it all was that we were probably one of the handful of peopel who actually KNEW those songs since almost EVERYONE was 16 or younger and mostly female(yes Norm and I DID feel a bit out of place). Even before the encore, they had a little interlude where the cabaret people were getting the crowd all exciting by talking about each band members likes and dislikes and how they are all single and looking for love.

The encore was great and they ended the show with the last song on the album which is one of my favorite song from them. Then during the last rendition of the chorus, the singer just jump out into the crowd! (I hope he jumped into some bounders because I doubt a few 14 year olds would br able to hold him up).

After the show, Norm and I walked through the Just For Laughs area and showed up just in time to get lost in this crazy fantasy thing where loud music was being pumped out of speakers and there were people manipulating giant hot air ballon sea creatures. It was literally out of this world.

And now something COMPLETELY different: I just recieved an e-mail from Eugene. I havnt' hread from that guyin a couple of years and apperently he stopped writing e=mails a couple of years ago but decided to start up again. His e-mails are LONG! I mean REALLY LONG! Take ther length of this blog entry and multiply it by 5, that's be about 1/3 the length of the e-mail I just recieved from him. I won't go into specifics about the content (actuallY i'm not even have done it yet and it's been about 20 miunutes...) but he was just writing how he's still in chem and he was taking a safety courseon radiation so he can learn how to work an x-ray machine to do tests on chemicals in his lab. The funniest thing I read from him was this:

The tech guy made them watch a movie and was talking about radiation and stuff afterwords:

Tech Guy: We all get gamma rays from background terrestrial based radiation
anyways, how much is living beside a power plant going to do to you

Eugene: Well, if it blows up, you might be in trouble. For instance, I
lived really close to one that blew up when I was a kid.

Tech Guy: Which one was that?

Eugene: Chernobyl

(He's dead serious, he was born in Russia)

Waiting Time

I'm currently at school. I've spent all afternoon working on this assignment for my photoshop II class. Basically, it's taking a scanned picture of woman from a magazine and then tracingit in photoshop using the dodge (shadows) and burn (hgihlights) tools. The result looks more like something that was done using a spray gun. I just finished doing the eyes and although not perfect (...yet?) it looks pretty wicked. However, due to the file being 425MB i ahev to wait 10 minutes until it's on my USB key. So here I am killing time.

Nothing new lately in my life except I recently got a raise at work. The yearly evaluations happen in the summer and mine was highly positive and I just have to continue dong what I'm doing. The want me to work there more btu with school, I'm going to have ot keep my 2 shifts per week limit.

Other than that, I got see see Adrienne, Mariana and Dustin who were both in town for Nikki's wedding (Mazol Tov Nikki and Rob!) and there was a party at Andrew's friday night so it was most of the improv gang back together again. It was a chill arty adn Bryan organized a kick ass version of the Family Feud on a whima nd it was quite funny.

The rest of this week I'm devoting to homework and will have to miss manhunt again :( Fortunately, I'm going ot be seeing Panic! At The disco on Sunday and that seems like a promising night for fun times.

Well the USB transfer is done. I'm out of here to shop for an MP3 player.

I Pod You Pod, We All Pod for iPod

My birthday is coming up at the end of the month (gah!) and my parents have insisted on buying me a portable mp3 player as a gift. So much so that my dad has the money all ready to be spent this second. Unfortunately I've been so busy with school I haven't had a chance to research what's good/bad, new, or actually what's even out there. I've never owned an mp3 player and am unfamiliar with even the common features. I have been told that although an iPod is the most popular it's not necessarily the best. I do know there are two main times - smaller ones that are flash memory and larger ones that are like hard drives. Right nowI can say that I'm not too crazy about being able to watch movies on my music player but the advantage of getting a big hard drive one would be being able to store some of my homework on it.

Anyone recommend a certain brand or model? Or even a good website to check out for reviews? Any suggestions can help point me in teh right way.

I Like Rocks A.K.A My Trip to Ottawa

Many months ago I had met Owen Hewitt through the McGill Improv Summit. Carlton University had come all the way from Ottawa to compete. I had again met Owen a month later during Vaganza 6. Since then he'd been inviting my out to Ottawa. I finally took up his offer and went out there this past weekend to celebrate Canada Day.

Friday evening at 5:05pm I was on a VIA Rail train headed to Ottawa. The whole ride was under 2 hours! I read a magazine half of the time and fell asleep for the second part. Once I reached Ottawa, Owen was there waiting for me. The two coolest guys in Ottawa were ready to party.

We reached Owen's lovely home where I met his parents and had a nice chat with his mom. She was very pleasant and had left us an amazing turkey dinner to eat. The highlight of the evening was when during our conversation, Owen's mom commented that I had to most elegant hands, to which embarrassed Owen. Also, him and his parents talked a lot about politics and history and religion - all subjects I"m not too knowledgeable on - which spawned our inside joke of "I like rocks..." Which one is to say when you are completely lost on the topic of a conversation.

After dinner, we had our first beer of the weekend. Well, Owen had more than one, but I'm a slow drinker and I had almost one. He showed his book collection and when I commented on how I always wanted to read The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, he gave me his copy! He even wrote a note. That means when he becomes a famous poet I may have in my hands a one of a kind item. I can't wait to read it.

The evening was spent at his long time friend's Tina's house. She was turning 22 and to celebrate her birthday had a few friends over. I met a few cool people and we all chatted in the kitchen which was the tiniest room in the house (see Andrew, it's not just at your place that this happens...). Tina was having a fun time drinking and I got to watch her play this checkers game where each piece is a shot glass and when you lose your piece you drink it. It was fun to watch because she started to drink all the pieces, the ones she lost and the ones she moved and just anyone she felt like drinking. Her boyfriend Steph showed up and he was a cool guy. Owen and I got him cracking up so hard. The highlight of the night had to have been when Tina fell on the ground and withered like a fish behind her couch.

Around midnight I think, we called it a night for we had a big day ahead of us.

I got woken up at 9am and headed down to the kitchen for soem of Owen's world famous pancake mix pancakes. By 10:30 we were out of the house and on a bus to the downtown area. Already I was starting to sdee red and white everywhere.

Once we reached downtown, there were already tons of people outand about. Owen was dying to go see one of his favorite performers, Buck 65, who was to perform twice that day, so we headed immediately to his stage. Unfortunately we showed up near the end but I got to witness one of the coolest things. A bunch of performers - Buck 65, Kinnie Starr, some guy who played amazing accoustic guitar and this group called K'Naan, were all sitting on the tiniest stage just listening to each othet while a bunch of spectators like myself and Owen were able to just relax and listen. It was the chillest thing ever. I really admired how the other artists bobbed their heads to the one that was performing. We had only come in on the last song but I was told that each artist played 4 songs and they each took turns. We had missed Buck 65 but shortly after the show got a chance to talk to him while he was selling/signing cds. Owen got him to sign his lucky hat and had a nice chat with him.

Right next to the cd table was a both with this special guitar called the Six String Nations Guitar which was handmade from a bunch of historical pieces aof wood and what not including a piece of Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle and gold from Maurice Rocket Richards' gold ring. I even got a picture taken with it and will have it sent to me by e-mail. There was even a suggestions ballad for a name for the quitar to which I could only come up with "The Canada". I know, original...

It being the hottest time of the day, we headed to the Highlander, a Scottish pub that Owen traditionally goes to every Canada Day. There we listened to soem duo play classic rock tunes while we eat great pub food and had some beer.

After lunch Owen was kind enough to give me a tour fo the city and talk about all the historical sites and buildings. He really knows his stuff especially since h's studying history and wants to be a librarian. Once our tour ended, we hit the grass and I dozed off enjoying the cool breeze. When I had awaken, the sky had begun to get grey but thankfully no rain. We walked off our haziness (I think the sun/beer mix had hit me) and we had a quick dinner just after finding out that France had kick Brazil out of the World Cup.

By 7pm, we were back at Major Hill's Park to catch K'naan, Kinnie Starr and Buck 65 perform ful 30 minute sets. When Buck 65 came on, everyone rushed the stage and really got into it. He put on a great set and Owen was rocking out.

After the show, we had bumped into thsi girl that Owen had been playing phone tag with and had a bit of a liking to. I only later found out he had met her only once before but we were going to try and hang out with her and her 2 friends for a bit. As we followed them, I noticed then and all day rather, that someone had been writing on the ground with chalk stuff about "Bring Peace and Justice" etc. I think i even made a coment to Owen. Then suddenly his friend stops and starts to take out chalk and write the same thing to which I immidiately thought "oh...".

Nothing much was going on so we ditched that group and were about to head home until I rememebered about the fireworks and convinced Owen to let me stay and watch them. He knew the perfect spot to view them and they were AMAZING! Some were SO big and loud that you could feel the ground vibrate and it looked like they were going to fall on you. It was spectacular.

On the way to the bus, I could tell that all the families had left, leaving behind tons of drunken people read to fill up the bars since it was only 10:30pm.

Once we got to his stop, we debarked and somehow ended up walking right in the middle of a group of 14-15 year olds since teh sidewalk was narrow. Figuring we;d split directions at any moment, Owen and I made no attempt to pass the first half of the group. Unfortunately this went on for what felt like TEN blocks.

The night ended winding down in Owen's basement watching a hilarious episode of South Park to which the gang goes to Canada and it is all done in the style of the Wizard Of Oz. My favorite part being on "French Canada being the Best part of Canada".

Sunday morning I managed to sleep in until 11am. Really needed that. Thsi time I had Owen's world famous pancrepes because they came out kind of thin but tasty none the less. To kill time, we went and caught Superman Returns. My brother didn't like it that much but I thought it was pretty good. The effects were crazy but the bad guy plot could have been a bit better.

We returned back to Owen's and had a delicious BBQ with his parents and his brother Andrew who had come from Edmonton to stay with them for a week or so.

5pm came and it was time for me to say my goodbyes and head to the train station. Owen left me off and I got inside just in time to board the train. Almost an hour and a half later I had returned home to Montreal.

All in all I had a great time and a much need break from school.

Sushi Party!

After a couple of weeks of craziness, I decided to drop all homework related stuff and focus on having fun. And fun I had.

Thursday morning I drove down to schol with the ol' van. I knew parking would be a bitch so I had planned to park in teh underground parking at in the building of my school. Unforunately I had a hrd time finding it and accidently drove down this incorrect very narrow, very curvy and VERY steep driveway to which I had to reverse out of (how I didn't crash the car I don't know...). Afterwards I found the parking lot and found a spot close to the elevator (with trouble getting into the spot. How I didn't crash the car I don't know...). I spent all afternoon fixing my menu project and I think it looks great. Sometime soon I will post the final edition of the menu of the made up restaurant I created called Bracha's (after my mom's hebrew name).

At 5pm I headed over to the rendez-vous point at Amin's (while almost breaking my dad's side mirror while exiting the car lot. How I didn't crash the car I don't know...). There, Amin, Norm, Lauren, Kevin, Mariana and Ian were there ready to hit the West Island. We took 2 cars and eventually met at my place. We decided on supplies and went shopping for food. Back at my house we spent the bulk of the evening making sushi using chopped cucumber, peppers, carrots and cooked smoked salmon.

Yes everyone got in on the fun:








Here's how most of sushi turned out:



and here's how my sushi turned out:



Once done, we did what you should always do after eating sushi - go play at a park! Yes, we relived our youth for a short while until we returned to my house to watch the Daily Show and the Stephen Colbert Report.

Then we literally crashed. Everyone basicaly mass slept on the pullout couch or occupied one of my spae sleeping areas. I wisely took my bed because in the morning the only complaint I got was about the house cuckoo clock which happens to go off EVERY 15 minutes.

Lauren had work at 9am so everyone save Ian and Kevin left at around 7am. I went back to bed however and only really got up at 10-10:30am. After cleaning up and eating, I brought the guys downtown.

Ian had wanted to be dropped off somewhere so he could watch the world cup. Fortunately a wicked spot opened up in time fo rme to grab it right in front of Carlos And Pepe's on Peel. Then when I went to pay for parking, Ian noticed a giant sign saying the place we were standing in front of was showing the game. We walk upstairs only to find a really fancy lounge with several T.V.s, couches and people wearing suits and dressy clothes, while I was wearing my cowboy hat and Ian was wearing a hoodie. Although we seemed out of place, no one cared and we stayed to watch the Argentina play Germany during overtime. Germany lost, but I thoguht it was a cheap win because they only won due to penalty shots. It was fun though, since Ian told me a lot about the World Cup that I had not known.

I then went home got soem errands done and got ready for my trip to Ottawa.

Small Break

I've been SO busy lately with school. It's just been project after project. Actually, the way it works, I should be able to multi task but it hasn't been happening. I've been working countless hours to finish somehting just in time and right after handing it in, I'd have to START the next project which in the last case, was the next day. This week, I've also got the house ot myself since my parents are in Toronto watching my nephew, Charles, while my brother and his wife are in Vegas for his 40th birthday trip (even though it's in August?!) so it's been quiet in the house and with staying up late all alone working on stuff, I started to go a little crazy... I hadn't something in today half assed btu got an extension and on top of that instead of actualy having ot redo my stuff due to the mistakes, all I have to do is write a note stating I understand what I did wrong and what I would do to fix them. My teacher rocks!

Thankfully, I'm at the end of the hump for a short while since all my next projects aren't due for a few weeks. I was totally dying earlier in class and was totaly about to fall off my chair. Things are going to get crazy again but in the meantime I'm taking a break starting tonight. I'm gong to go see Nacho Libre with my bro. Tomorrow night is a sushi party at my place which should rock. Friday I'm off to Ottawa to hang out with Owen and celebrate Canada day. Nothing beats his e-mail I recieved the other day:
Dude before you come i need to know a few things: 1. Is there antyhing you can't eat besides pork? 2. What time are you do in? 3. Are you afraid of titties? We'll be seeing plenty on Canada Day 4. When is your train back to Montreal?
Oh Owen, how much we'll have together.

I better get back to work since i"m still in class but a quick blurb: We use a program called Quark that basically is a text editing program (for layout in magazines, books, panflets, etc.) and a feature in it is called Jabber Text. It basically fills the area with random text. I had apractice example to do in class and this is what came up in the jabber paragraph:

The Klingnons fight Quark. one Jabberwokcy marries two.

Holy Crap I'm screwed....

I don't understand what I did wrong but school is just going crazy. I've been trying realy hard to keep up to date with things but today felt like it was all for nothing. I have this assignment due tomorrow. We basically only had a week to do it plus we have all kind sof assignments for our other 5 classes. The prof made a special class today to realy break into the assignment. My whole plan was to get most of it done during class and finish it off tonight for tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, the 4 hours of work I spent this morning was all lost. When I was transfering my file from my computer to my USB, I accidently transfered the file from my USB to the computer, thus erasing my new file with my old file. I tried cancelling the transfer once i realized my error, but upon doing so my new file diappeared completely. I t was frustrating but I kept my cool and realized I'd have to stay up late tonight to finish it.

There are 5 parts to the assignment and I was halfway through the first part this morning. Once the first part is done, the other 4 are the smae thing in different variations, thus would take less time to do. I finally finished th efirst part after a few hours and then flew through part 2. Things were looking good until I came to part 3 and was unsure what to do. Not to worry, I decided to just take a chance and get through the work, since it was already after 11pm. Then all of a sudden, what I was doing stopped working. I couldn't understand what was going on. Everything was fine and then it just stopped working. I then realized somehow I accidently changed one of the modes in the computer program. Unfortunately for me, I must have done it at the beginning for I noticed that both part 1 and 2 which I finished, were all set in the other mode. WhenI tried switching back to normal mode, all my work disappears meaning everything I did may be wrong.

Now I am frustrated and tired.

It' snto really a big deal since if I hand it in late I only lose 10% and now i cna really make sure i get everything right. It's just that I have another huge project due wednesday which I also have not finished and was planning on working on that tomorrow. Now that I can't I may ahve to hand that one in late too! I feel totaly swamped with work and don't understand how it happened all of a sudden.

I know I'll get through it all eventually but I just had to rant. It's shitty being in shitty situations.


It's 12am and I'm goign to be exhausted tomorrow which won't make getting my work done before deadlines any easier. I may have to become a hermit for a the next couple of weeks if this keeps up.

I could really use a hug right now...

Manhunt 5: The Return Home

Yesturday was the 5th edition of manhunt. This time it was held back at where it all began, Carre St Louis (crack park) at the end of Prince Arthur and St Denis.

This time, instead of it being from St Laurent to St. Denis and Pins to Prince Arthur it was Prince Arthur to Sherbrooke. For added bonus, it WASN'T raining AND we had the St. Laurent street sale to help for cover.

For the first game the hunter was Marc D. Rowland, he's the real version of the character Robert Patrick portrays in Terminator 2. I ended up at Sherbrooke and bumped into Jason whom organized Frosh with back in 2002, so that was cool. Afterwards I hit up St. Laurent and saw no one so I thought i was safe. I was wrong. I turn onto Prince Arthur and was spotted. I ran back through the crowd and turned into a parking lot which led to a dead end. In the end Andrew caught me. The rest of the time I spent hunting people and got a couple of victims.

Round two was a lot better. I ended up staying incognito for 20 minutes. I was walking aorund the streets and then due to a scare, ended up at Carre St Louis and didn't notice anyone with the orange arm bands. I walked around, sat on various benches and hid behind numerous trees. Ken was standing behind one tree the whole time but I ignored him for he was definitely not caught. Some bystanders were kind enough to give me the heads up of hunters hidden in the grass on teh other side of the park. A couple of 11 year old girls walked by me as I peeked out from behind a tree with my hood up and said somethign rude to me in french and placed their hands in my face like I was thinking of molesting them or something and them showing me I was way out of their league. Finally I decided to make myself comfortable against a tree, glancing around every now and then. I kept that up for about 10 good minutes until out of nowhere Andrew comes and gets me. I was so confused as to how he found me until he pointed out to me that literally 15 feet directly in front of where I was standing were all the hunters who decided to quit a few minutes early, relaxing by a bench. I can't believe I didn't notice them. Admitting my fate, Andrew and I decided to get Ken. As We chased him, the two people who were hiding in the grass, Adair and Rebecca, thought they were going to get caught and jumpped out of their hiding place. I saw this and immediately changed my course for them. In a quick effort to escape, Rebecca jumps into the fountain and gets soaking wet. Apperently it was both her and Adairs plan the whole time but Adair chickened out last second.

Fun was had by all and we got to converse about it over great bbq food and some beers. Can't wait until the next one. Unfortunately I won't be around for the immediate next one since it's on Canda day but for those who can, I highly suggest it!

Rocking out with your block out!

Friday night I went to see We Are Scientists and The Arctic Monkeys at The Medley. I had an extra ticket and was looking for someone to go with. In the end I went with Rachelle. I met her at Lauren's birthday party and she's Lauren's coworker at Starbucks. She's probably th emost positive enthusiasitic person I've ever met and never heard of either band but was really excited to go.

As for the show itself, I think I enjoyed We Are Scientists more than The Arctic Monkeys. I never heard of W.A.S. before buying tickets but I downloaded their cd and it wasn't bad. However, at the show, I really gotinto them because a) I knew all the songs and b) they had great stage presence. Their last 3 songs really rocked. The way the stage was set up, rather then take away the first band equipment and replace it with the second's, they had both drum kits on stage,one behind the other. Durting my favorite song on the album, I notice some guy walk on stage and take a picture of the crowd. At first I thought it was some roadie but then he sits down at the second drum kit and I immediately knew it was the Arctic Monkeys drummer joining in! He totally started to rock out with them. It was awesome to see TWO drummers do this kind of drum roll accross their kit at the SAME time!

After a great set, the Arctic Monkeys came on and they looked SO bored. The music was good but at this point I was farther away from the stage (we went for a bathroom break and lost our spot) and would have enjoyed myself in the mosh pit for I couldn't really jump around since it was so packed on the floor. When the singer did speak, you just couldn't understand him.

After the show I bumped into Dave Kolin. The last time i saw him was at the Franz Ferdinand concert. He STILL has to walk on crutches and he's going to rock concerts! He's truley crazy.

In the end, I did enjoy myself for having discovered a new great band, hanging out with Rachelle and buying a sweet Arctic Monkeys t-shirt (for almost the price of the show)

Celebrating Birthdays In Style Since 1998

Today is Aussie Lauren's 19th birthday! Happy Birthday! To celebrate a bunch of us had dinner at Le Taj a fancy Indian Cuisine restaurant. Norm had told me it was a dressy night for us, so I wore my blazer, shirt and tie all day since I couldn't go home and change beforehand. All day people at school were wondering why I was dresed so nice. After the twentieth response of "to impress you!", I got bored and decided to tell the truth.

After a long and frustrating day (actually week) in front of the computer and not getting good sleep, I felt totally at ease (and tired) at the dinner. The food was great (I had butte chicken) and the company was even better. I had bought Lauren two Canadian tank tops at Old Navy and she appreciated them (or is really good at lying, haha), while Norm and Amin bought her a wicked dark red cowboy hat. Now I have a partner to hit the streets with in our fancy shmancy cowboy hats. To check out photos of the night click HERE!

Tomorrow is work and The Arctic Monkeys show. Yay!

This One's For Norm

Been working all on an assignemtn that's due tomorrow. The assignment was to take something out of it's context. I don't how my crazy mind cam eup with it but I decided to take the poster for the Usual Suspects and replace them with characters from Looney Tunes. I drew all the characters by hand, then scanned them and traced it in Ilustrator and finally added color and text. I ran out of time and couldn't make all 5 characters so settled with 4. I'm totally exhausted and have a big day ahead of me tomorrow but promised Norm I'd post it before bed.
So here it is, enjoy:

Stupid Rain

So the weather has been really crappy lately and I think it was starting to get to me. Thursday I finished one of my assignments but jsut couldn't get into the next one. I finally gave up and headed over to Amin's where he was having a "dye your hair" party. Well sort of. Him and Norm dyed their hair the other week (his a blue mohawk and Norm,s head was completely purple save a bright red exclamation mark on the side) and wanted to redye their hair again to make it more vibrant. Lauren decided to add red streaks to her hair and due to peer pressure decided to let her bleach a few streaks in my hair. She did it pretty randomnly. You can't notice it but I could tell that the hair where it was done looks all frayed and thin. In fact whenI was thanking Lauren on my cell phone and explaining what had happened to my hair, I was in the car with my mom and upon hearing the words "dye in my hair" my mom stops the car, put it into park, turned on the inside light and started to examine my hair. It's a good thing I didn't dye it bright red...

Friday I worked all day and for the first time in a long time had a headache. At the end of work, one of the employees (a girl still in high school) comes and gives me a hug and says "that's because you look so sad today". See how much the weather affects me!

Saturday was no better, I tried working on my MP3 panflet, right now it looks good but I wanted to move on and add thigns to it and just couldn't come up with anything that looked good so I gave up. Thankfully I had something to take a break from it for saturday night I headed over to Lauren's apartment to celebrate her birthday. In fact it was the first event of a week of things involved to celebrate her birthday (lucky suck...). We had desdert, some drinks and even some skipping in the rain. I ended up getting home and going to bed at 3:30am.

Bright and early this morning I got up and went to work (well only at 10am but still that was 5 and a half hours of sleep) and actualy had a lot of energy. I realized that outside it was sunny for abit and maybe thats what changed my mood. In fact I was so good I asked a coworker if she wanted to go to a concert together (I have an extra ticket) but things got awkward because I then realized that all the other staff memebers were around us (we were all exiting the mall) and I think it toally looked like I was asking her out which probably isn't the best since a) we're not really supposed to date co workers (not that that is my attention) and b) my boss ended up being right next to me and overheard. I lost my cool and hid myself in my jacket. Once outside I said goodbye to everyone and forgot to get my coworkers cel number so I could remind her about the show since it was like a "that sounds cool, maybe I'll come" kind of answer. I don't know when I'll see her next since the next time I work is friday which is the day of the concert. Oh well, at least I didn't pull a Budman and actually asked her to join me. Baby steps.

Portfolio Update

I realize it's been a while since I've shown my progress in the work I've been doing for school so here's a few treats for my fellow friends and family.

For my image processing course, our assignment was to find a picture and make 7 copies. To each copy we had to make a drastic change like change the texture and color. Once that was done using this tool funciton in Photoshop called the History brush, where I was able to paint on top of the original using my 7 versions as if they were 7 different paints. It sound complicated but it's not at all.

Here is the original photo I used, a pictre of Sydney, Australia:



and here is what I came up with. I quite like it.



For my Visual Communication class, I have 3 small excercises I have to complete. I already finished the first 2. The first one was to make a self portrait without using your photo. In other words, to show something that represents you, soemthing that someon can look at and go "from this I can totally understand it's Josh". Wanting to be a little creative, instead of doing my first idea of making a collage of items that are meaningful to me and arranging them to look like a face or body (it's been done a lot), I decided to compile a bunch of words that represent me and arrange them so from far it looks like a picture of me.
Here is my result:



If you save it and then zoom in on my face you'll notice that my hair, mouth, contour of my face, glasses, etc. (basically everything except my clothes) are made up completely of various words. It took me a while to do but was more tedious than difficult.

Finally, the last new thing I have to show you all is the second excercise for the same class, which was to create a coin that has on the front some sort of image that represents my view on the economy. I don't really have a view but ended up somewhat choosing a view and came up with this.

More cool stuff to come, I promise.

Manhunt 4 et al

This morning on the way to class, I was sporting my cowboy hat, my shades and was listening to INXS - Guns In The Sky. I'm the coolest guy ever.

in other news, I went to Manhunt on saturday and it rocked. As usual, it was raining off and on but was enjoyable none the less. This time it was played at Parc Jeanne Mence. There was a lot more open space and less building and pedestrians (especially due to the shitty weather) than the other times we had played.

During the first round I was walking with Adair, figuring out our strategy on how to play at the new region, just as we turned the corner to see the first hunter. Adair used me as bait and quickly disapeared as I was hunted down. I cheaply tried my open umbrella trick ( at the guys face - I know I"m an asshole) but it failed and I was caught. I spent the rest of the round running after everyone one and got tired fast. I did manage to tag at least 3 people.

During round two I decided to try something different. I was tired of running and thought if I pretended i was a hunter the whole time I wouldn't have to run as much. I was wrong. Fortunately it kept me untagged for 20 minutes. I fllowed Amy for a good 15 minutes pretending to hunt her and she just kept walking ahead. To keep up my facade, I kept stopping to breatj like I was out of breath (for the most part I was) and at one point I even deliberately dropped my umbrella to give her a chance to run away. Then I spent the next little while chasing after everyone I saw. It totally worked until Emily (who had known I was not a hunter at first) had since become a hunter and saw me and came to gave a high but when I jumped out of the way and ran, my gig was up. Out of nowhere appeared Norm, and I was a dead duck.

After the game we headed to Phil and Adair's for the usual beer drinking, hot dog eating, resting party. This time they were kind enough to let us throw our socks in the dryer. Thanks guys.

On another note, last night I saw X-Men 3. I liked it and totally needed to disappear into Movie Land for a while but if I had to rank the 3 movies from favorite to least favorite it would be X2, X3 and then X1. This movie definitely had a lot of action but they killed off a lot of people which should have brought a shock factor but it lacked something, and they also introduced a lot of cool new people but again did it in such a way and didn't use them so much that it lost it's appeal. Plus there are like a billion characters in the comics that I don't see the point in making up new characters for the movie.

The Advetures Of Budman - Weekend Edition

My mom rushed me out of the house this morning, telling me we were going to be late for the bus. Then the metro broke down and she was worried I make my 8am class on time and sent me off to get breakfast on my own. So here I am in my class - all alone - just realizing class got moved to 9am on Wednesdays as of last week...

On the bright side, I finally have the time to write about my weekend which, as most weekends, was packed with fun.

Friday was my day off school and I was at Old Navy working from 3pm to 10pm. After work, my friend/boss Mike and I went over to my high school buddy Mike's house ad watched Hart's War. It's an older movie but I had heard good things so was iterested in watching it. It stars a pre-"I'm a hollywood bad ass" Colin Farrell and a "I'm starting to get too old to play bad asses in movies" Bruce Willis. In the end it was an ok film but I thought, being a war movie, it'd be more lke Savign Private Ryan, but instead the whole movie focuses on the racism that was going on in a POW camp between 2 african american soldiers and the rest of the camp. Not a typical war movie.

I had about 5 hours of sleep friday night for I had to get up early to meet Lauren downtown. I can't remember if I had spoken of Lauren before but a quick intro: She is from Australia and is travelling across the world. She is currently living in Montreal until the end of the summer. She only got here a few weeks ago, where by chance on McGill classifieds, met Norm and has since joined our circle of friends.

She had told me she bought a matress off of someone and needed help picking it up and moving it to her new apartment (which is not furnished). So I made my way downtown and we headed to pick up the matress. About 1 minute before we get there, I find out she had bought the matress for 10$ and had never gone to check it out. When we got it, it was old looking covered in all sorts of stains, but I'm sure really comfortable. Lauren didn't care, she said she'd wash it with disenfective and it beats sleeping on the floor. we carried it by foot to her new place that was just a few blocks away but unfortunately, we turned right instead of left and walked a few blocks in teh wrong direction before noticing our mistake.

Once we found her new place, her new roomate, Amy, let us in and we chatted for a while. Turns out the world is tiny. Amy just happens to be Norm's ex-girlfriend's best friend [Spaceball's quote: Lonestar - "What does that make us?" Helmet - "Absolutely NOTHING!"]

The rest of the day was spet helping out my Aunt. She's also moving into a new place. By far the funniest moment fot he day was when my mom asked me how the matress moving went. When I told her how dirty it was she screamed out in concern "That's DISGUSTING! She's going to catch AIDS if she sleeps on that!" Oh mom, how much I love you, haha.

Saturday night I went out dancing with Lauren, Norm, Amin, Kevin, Neil and Norm's friend Jetendra. Norm and Amin had just returned from NY and had dyed their hair. Norms is purple with a red exclamation point coming out the side and Amin's is shaved into a pseudo blue mohawk. I was sporting my new cowboy beach hat that I bought at Simons earlier that day.

We headed up to Jupiter Room in hopes of a packed place filled with dancing. Instead we found a dead place with hardcore porn on the TVs. Not just regular hardcore porn, either. Gigantic breast porn. Thankfully, they turned off the porn, replaced it with Caillou for a few minutes and stopped on Terminator 2. The place did get sort of packed and my friend Mariana and her friend were in town this weekend and decided to join us. It was great seeing her again!

After a while, the music got boring so we moved to Cafe Campus minus Mariana and her frien Rachel since they wanted to get up early and take full advantage of Museum Day. Cafe Campus was a lot better but packed. Highlights of the rest of the night include some random guy sticking his finger in my mouth while I was posing for a picture, and this random chick who decided to join our dance circle. Afterwards when we had left the place, Norm comes up to me and was like "You know that chick was totally into you but then you moved to the other side of the circle." Oh? "And then she gave up and went back to her friends who all gave her sympathy hugs for trying." Oh....

Norm was kind enough to drive Lauren and myself back to my house. No I didn't pick her up. On sunday was the Amazing Race 2 event organized by Hillel West Island and was supposed to be a race similar to the one on TV. To make things easier, Lauren crashed at my place. (That's for clarification for my brother Mark)

Suday morning, we got up around 11am and I got to make Lauren breakfast. Thankfully she wanted her eggs scrabled since it's the only thing I know how to cook! 12pm came around and my buddies Simon, David and David came to pick us up for the race.

The race was intense. I promise to write a full description of it in another post. My team ended up in 4th palce and Lauren's team bailed the race at the halfway point and she went home early, but had a lot of fun.

Sunday night I went back downtown to hang out with the gang and caught the last 30 minutes of Spaceballs (love that movie).

Freakin' Excited!

Since coming home I had to go into my room and relax a bit. I startd off with Thievery Corporation's Cosmic Game (highly recommended). I have since moved onto Pearl Jam's new album but it's started to get me excited again so let's see... Ah yes! Bonobo Live Sessions... Starting to feel chilled.

Wh was I so excited earlier today you may ask? Today was the deadline to submit your version of next years agenda cover. The winner gets his/her's version printed but even if it's not picked it's a great start for a portfolio.

Here's what I submitted:



I spent tuesday afternoon and all of today working on it. My idea was to do something similar to that IPOD commercial where all the CD albums are going into the IPOD. So I went outside and draw the school by hand and then drew it on the computer. Then I got pictures of items that represent the 3 programs that my school offers (design, beauty, and 2d/3d imagery) and traced them to give that logo look I have througout the poster.

I had to hand in a printed color version of the cover and since the store tht did the printing was open until 7pm, I had until 7pm to finish. being me, I finished at 6:55pm. I had about thirty minutes left when I finished tracing my last object and then had to figure out hw I wanted to lay them all out. The color background and the bottom green part I winged last minute. I also ran into a small problem in trying to cut part of something off which started to get me frustrated. Finally, I was done (i.e. ran out of time) and bolted upstairs to get it printed. Unfortunately my energy levels only increased because the printing wasn't working. Turns out it was just due to not having chosen the proper printer (we use the computer ourselves to print) and the guy working there didn't help at ALL. He looked totally lost and then walked away! So I waited a few minutes and then approached him talking to his coworkers and convinced him to try and help me again! it then printed and I handed it in. I felt SO MUCH better. It's truley an awesome feeling to hand in something you feel proud about. It's rewarding.

--

To get me even more excited when I got home, I confirmed things and it's official: Sunday I am participating in The Amazing Race 2.

No it's not the REAL Amazing race but its an event similar to the real show where we are in groups of 4 and we drive around the west island solving clues and doing physical tasks in order to reach the finish line. Thee are supposed to be great prized, a meal included and the weather is predicted to be really nice. Plus, Australian Lauren showed interest to participate and she will be joining the event but will be on another team (You're going down!).

Sunday's going to rock!

Ninjariffic

I don't know if this is some crazy coincidence or it wa menat to happen but lately I've been discovering these hilrious ninja related things on the net.

First it the really cool and funny Dr McNinja (http://drmcninja.com). Owen introduced it to me and I quite like it. The art is really cool and it reminds me a lot of Batman mixed with Deadpool.

Owen also introducedme to another comic featuring a ninja - White Ninja Comics (http://whiteninjacomics.com). This one however has nothing to do with ninjas and doesn't realy make much sense but I just love the creators wacky humor.

Finally, I was bored one day and stumbled accross something called Ask A Ninja (http://askaninja.com). It's great. It's kind of like Strong Bad e-mails (www.homestarrunner.com) except he's a ninja and it's live not cartoon (well not all of it). I also can't get over how muc the guy acts just like Gil. It's almost scary. And to add to that they had a videa called Ask A Samurai, some fan made a while back, and that guy sounds just like Jeremy.

I look forward to watching you read a ninja related comic before I kill you! (To uderstand that you need to go to one of the above links, but which one? Muhahah!)

Manhunt 3: Hunted by Men (and women and kids)

Today was the third meet of the Montreal chapter of Manhunt. As has been the case lately, it was raining all day. And like the last time I went, the rain stopped for the duratio of Manhunt only to continue once we were done. However, having rain led to an advantage for me for I had an umbrella which proved quite useful (more details below).

This time the game was held in Vieux Montreal. Our starting point was the Centaur theatre and we had a small within invisible boundaries to run frantic within. Lot os fun and interesting things happened today:

-Right before we began, a mother showed up with her son and his friend (both probably 10-12).

-During the first game I walked through a pay parking lot and the worker came up to me and said soemthing about a car. I responded yes to ensure he wouldn't yell at me for walking through the parking lot. The he responded with me following him to pay for the parking as to which I replied I had no car...

-After successfully staying not caught for 15 minutes of the first game, I got cornered in a small street with 5 people on one side and 3 on the other. As Maryam came up to tag me I thrusted my close dumbrella at her, pushed the button and tried to block her with the open umbrella. I failed misreably but it was worth the shot.

-Two guys decided it'd be fun to hide up a fire escape which led to them scaling accross a legde on teh second floor almost all around the building. Not cool...

-During the second game, Norm volunteered me to be the first hunter.

-My plan as hunter was to walk around with my umbrella up. First I noticed a guy hidding behind a dirt mound that after circling him and with the aid of a girl, cornered him and tagged him.

-I noticed a group of 3 people walking down the street and walked completely hidden under my umbrella. I kept getting closer and closer and they never noticed me until I gunned it too quickly and close dmy umbrealla and jumped accross an interesection, thus scaring the shit out of some tourists. I ended up scaring my prey away but caught up to the girl in the bunch only because she dropped her cell phone.

-Kevin Anderson got stopped by the police because they saw him running and thought had stolen something.

All in all, manhunt was great but can't wait to play it in nice hot weather.

After Manhunt, we walked to Phil and Adair's and had a BBQ. It was fun talking abotu the game to others and just plain meeting new people.

Cab't wait until the next one!