Sunday Night Improv at Théatre Ste. Catherine

For the longest time I have known about the weekley workshops held on Sundays at Théatre Ste. Catherine but have never had a chance to go. Tonight I finally had that chance, and went.

The actual workshop was form 5pm - 7pm. I got there a tad earlier and bumped into Dan, who is a regular at TSC sunday night improv, and a (former?) member of McGill Improv. Inside I saw Anders (from Uncalled For) as well. The workshop itself was quite different from the McGill Impov workshops. You literally have to run up to get in a scene. Also, the "director" will stop you if need be and give you pointers/suggestions/add elements to the scene, etc. They try really hard to push technique and knowledge and try to build a scene, putting being funny on the back-burner. We went over basic terminology. A few of it I was familiar with and a lot of other stuff I never heard of, but am now aware of it.

After workshop there was a 1 hour break followed by a "Survivor" improv game. The way it works is that all the participants get a number and are randomnly called onto stage to play a game or do a scene. After the scene, the audience votes on a scale from 1 to 5 - one being the worst, five being the best. The players in that particular scene each gain the points the scene made. Then they have 2 elimination rounds and when it's down to the final 2 people, they play this "hat" game where both performers do a straight scene but anytime during the scene, when someone reaches the other's hat and grabs it off their head, they win. If they attempt to reach the hat and miss, they lose. Best 2 out of 3 makes you the winner of the Survivor game.

I was nervous when I volunteered to participate in the game, but I gave it my best and it was worth it since I ended up second.

After the show, there was a small discussion on how well they show went. Overall it was well liked. The director said he enjoyed a lot of the scenes that didn't get a lot of laughs a lot more then the ones that did. All the scenes I were in did well but I think it was a lot of gag laughs, mostly due to my part. The one thing that was brought to my attention during the discussion was that I played a panicked person in each game. Little did the director know I wasn't acting (I was hyper ok!) .

In the end I really enjoyed performing with new people and trying different things. If I get a sunday off work again soon, I"ll make sure to hit it up.

Pitch Black

Tonight I went out for dinner with Norm, Lauren and Aurit. The restaurant being O'Noir. The whole thing is that you eat your meal completely in the dark. Also, all the waitstaff are 75% to 100% blind.

Our reservation was for 9pm (they have meals set up twice a night). We walked in and each got to choose 1 entree and 1 main dish and 1 desert from a list of about 4 choices for each part. On top of the choices given, there is also a "Suprise" dish option. I didn't really like any of the entrees they had to offer so I decided to live dangerously and ordered the supirse entree. OFr the main dish I chose marinated shrimp with rice and chocolate cake for dessert.

We then met with our waiter, Guillaume (who was wearing sunglasses) and he instructed us to put a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us and in a chain like motion, we were led inside the dark, to our table. Except for a faint light coming from the exit door and sign, it really was pitch black. In the background was nice chill music. When we got there they had Lamb playing which would eventually change into some moe upbeat stuff that reminded me of the Love Boat. Finally when dessert arrived the music had switched to St. Germain. All in all it was very relaxing.

After several minutes Guillaume arrived with our entrees. I tried eating it with my fork but quickly started to use my hand to feel what I was eating (since it was a suprise) and to help guide food onto my fork or into my mouth. I immediately recognized the salad with cucumbers I was eating but I had some squishy fish smalling thing. I tried it and it tasted okay but I kept thinking it was squid and decided not to eat it (turns out it was shrimp and scallops, which I love, so I guess not know what you're eating really puts thoughts into your head).

After chatting a little I finally started to relax (for some reason as soon as we hit the dark, I tensed up). Our main dishes showed up. My shrimp were delishious.

Dinner was followed by dessert which I found was more difficult to eat because I kept using my hands to help and there was melting ice cream all over my plate, thus making my fingers extremely sticky.

Judging by the noise we heard, there were probably 3 or 4 other groups of people there with us.

After who knows how long, we finally called over Guillaume so he could lead us to the exit so we could pay.

Even though Aurit didn't want to eat any of the main courses, they were kind enough to let her join us at the table and only have dessert. Each meal was 30$ but she got charged only 7$.

In the end, it was expensive, but definitely something worth trying once in your life. It's a totally different experience to eat and enjoy the company of others when totally in the dark.

A night with David, Usher that is

Last night I went to see David Usher (former frontman of Moist) with my brother last night. THe show was really good. It was at Club Soda. It only cast around 25$ and was a very intimate show. Him and his band had a lot of energy even though some of his songs are slow.

They mostly played songs from his new album, Strange Birds, and most of his hits from his other albums (I believe he's had 5 now as a solo artist). On top of those, they played 2 Moist songs (Push and Ressurection) which really made me happy and they did a very interesting cover of Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. It couldn't of sounded any more likea David Usher song when they were through with it.

There were two encores and for the finale David Usher let tons of girls (~30) sit ont he stage while he sang in the crowd (earlier he was walking around as well with no security at all!).

He really has a great voice and sounded no less better than he does on the records.

Budman gives this show 2 thunbs up.

Why my life should be made into a sitcom - Reason #243

It came to my attention taht today was a job and training fair at the Palais de Congrés. Although it didn't seem like it was something specific for graphic designers, I decided to give it a shot and attend. I went and printe dmy CV, dressed all nice, brought business cards and even my portfolio.

As soon as I got there I realized I had made a great error as all the booths were more for specified jobs (the Army, Home Depot, McDonalds, etc.). I figured, though, since I was there, maybe I could talk to a few booths and see if I could get info on their graphic design departments. I start walking around and decided to approach a booth:

Booth guy: "Hello"
Me: "Hi"
BG:"How are you today? What can I do for you?"
Me: "I realized that this fair is not really for me, but you see, I"m a graphic designer looking for work and I saw on your sign the word 'marketing'. I know that marketing and graphic design are related so I was wondering if I could get some more info on your company"
BG: "It's telemarketing"
Me:"oh... right..."

The Way You See Me

A few weeks ago I went to a confidence building workshop called "Know it, Believe it, Sell it!" for tips on how to keep up my spirits and not get discouraged while looking for a job. One of the exercises we were given was to choose a bunch of words from a list that I thought best described me. The next step is to get people who know me to choose words from the same list that they think best describes me, and then compare them with my results.

The point of the exercise is to find out if others percieve me different in ways that I see myself (both good and bad) and if so, maybe i should try and change things (or not change things that I think I need to).

So faithful readers (friends, family, creepy old guy) I ask you humbly to look at the following list of words and post an anonymous comment with the words you think best describe me. Please answer truthfully and seriously:

Focused
Serious
Creative
Honest
Planner
Energetic
Dependable
Aggressive
Opinionated
Down to earth
Pragmatic
Effective
Balanced
Judgmental
Expressive
Reserved
Helpful
Generous
Responsible
Calm
Assertive
Objective
Giving
Anxious
Go-getter
Selfish
Tired
Thinker
Outgoing
Worrier
Organizer
Flexible
Artistic
Arrogant
Passive
Untrustworthy
Leader
Carefree
Sensitive
Procrastinator
Kind
Scatter-brained
Unreliable
Fascinating
Concerned
Happy
Controlling
Cautious
Follower
Shy
Dreamer
Frustrated
Social
Hard-working
Excitable
Antisocial
Nervous
Self-centered
Fair
Sad
Adaptable
Rigid
Spontaneous
Gentle

Thank God You're Here!

Monday night i watched NBC's newest improv show called "Thank God You're Here". The premise is that every episode there are 4 "celebrities" that guest star per episode. Each celebrity is brought back stage and given a costume they have never seen before. Then they are brought back up front where host David Allen Greer directs them through a door which leads to set they've never seen. From there, they have to improvise their way through the whole scene with actors who have set lines and whose first line is always "Thank God you're here!". The scene goes on until judge Dave Foley (who got SO old looking) hits a buzzer.

After each guest does thier scene, the final scene is done with all 4 together. Finally a "winner" is chosen and receives some plastic award (The Summit awards are way cooler looking).

The episode I saw had Wayne Night (better known as Newman from Seinfeld), Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle), Joel McHale (some guy I don't know) and Jennifer Coolidge (Stiffler's mom from American Pie).

I'm not a professional improv player but after doing it for 4 years I could tell some of it, although funny, was pretty bad improv. For example, Wayne night was dressed in a white medical jacket and was plummeted into a scene where he had to promote some sort of pills. When asked certain questions, instead of accepting everything he was given, he was blocking pretty badly ("Actually, I'm not a doctor at all, and those aren't vitamins, their supplements to vitamins"). Although he got some laughs, I felt that it got tiring after a while.

Also, after 1 episode, I feel like i had enough. The rest of the episode wasn't too bad, neither was the 2nd episode they aired afterwards, but I dont' know how much of that I could really take. It was funny, but the way it's set up, it's as if the actors are always leading the scene and just allowing the celebrity guests to "insert joke here", and after a while it gets boring. The only person I saw to somewhat break from that was Bryan Cranston, who immediately got into character and was trying to push his way through the scene which I think truly made him deserve winning the episode.

It's already April!?!

Either i'm getting busier and busier or I have less improtant things to talk about but I notice that my posts are getting further and further apart.

So what have I been up to that's been keeping me so busy?

Not a whole lot...

but lets see:

-Since December i've been done school and looking for a professional job in graphic design (anyone know of someone hiring?). It's been so tough with everything going on (distractions, work, losing interest, etc.) but I'm trying hard to stay focused. I've been meeting with councelors, going to workshops and sending my CV out on the itnerent almost everyday. I may be in luck. A teacher recomended me to her friend whom I'm meeting on Thursday. I'm not too sure what he does or what he's loking for but let's hope for the best.

-I"m still working at Old Navy which is becoming more and more fun (surpisingly). I've been there a year and a half!

-In March I was busy getting involved with McGill Improv. We had Vaganza at the beginning of the month and The Summit at the end. I've been busting my balls to get the summit website (http://improvsummit.com) updated but it's so time consuming. I promise really soon there will be photos from the event, which was a BLAST by the way! McGill Improv didn't make it to the finals but I had the honor of participating with member from Sherbrooke, UQAM and U de M against members of Ottawa, Toronto and Carleton for the All Star Round.

-Right now it's passover. Last night was the first sedar and it was a typical family dinner here at the Budman house. Both my brothers were over with their wives (and son), although my brother Mark and his wife connie and son Charles live here, so they didnt' have far to go for dinner (just a long walk up the stairs).

-It's really hectic around here with the extra people in the house, but my brother put an offer on a house and may possible move out to it in May! I can handle a month (originally it was for July!). It's been great hanging around with my nephew though. He's the cutest kid ever (And the craziest). I taught him to say "awesome"!

-Also, today happens to be Emilie's birthday. She's now 23. Although I've only known Emilie for a short time (since the summer) she's got to be one of the coolest, hippest, interesting (and possibly craziest) chicks..er I mean "girls" I know. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Montreal Parking Meters SUCK!!!

I'm currently downtown waiting for the others to show up to practice improv the summit on Saturday and I'm totally bummed! I had the chance to use my brother's car ro drive downtown but unfortunately I got to learn how shitty the meters here are!

First I put in 1.25 and it gave me about 25 minutes. I went to get 5 loonies and went back. I added 3 loonies and it only gave me an hour! Then I thought maybe I needed to do something special to add time to what I already put in and I hit cancel.

That was the worst mitake.

Not only did I soon discover that no matter what it would just reset what I already paid for, it DIDN'T give me back the 3$ I just spent. So I put in 2$ more and only got 40 minutes! Now I have no change... BOO!

Is it like this elsewere because this really sucks...

The fun side of an (semi) unemployed person

Yes I've been looking for a job but that hasn't stopped me from having FUN!

In the past month or so I've gone out at least once a week. At the beginning of the month I partook in Vaganza 7 and it was awesome! I stood up the whole 24 hours and performed improv almost every second hour.

With work, I went to a sugar shack a few weeks ago. I volunteered to watch a couple of kids from a community church while they were bused to a sugar shack for the first time. I had 3 kids, 2 girls and 1 boy and they behaved greatly (both girls were 11 and the boy 8). It reminded me of the time I worked at Sunny Acres Day Camp. There was a part when the kids were entertained by a guy singing who was teaching them songs to sing and dances to dance. I participated as well and realized I was the only adult having as much (or more) fun then most of the kids.

Two weekends ago, I went out with my friend Emilie. I hadn't hung out with her in ages. We went to see this show spearheaded by Jason Bajada. I never heard of him but he was one of Emilie's favorite musicians and the show was quite good and chill to listen to.

Last week I went bowling with a bunch of people at Sharkx. I actually
bowled pretty damn well. In my second game I got a turkey (3 strikes) and scored a total of 164.

This past weekend was also loads of fun. Saturday was not only St. Patricks day but it also happened to be Aurit's birthday. The night started with dinner at 3 Amigos with a whole bunch of her friends followed by drinking at Thursday's.

Yesturday I went skiing for the first time in 3 years. I went with my brother Lorne and my friend Arvind. We went to Mont Broment and it rocked! I had SO much fun and the view was beautiful. The weather wasn't too cold, it was icy but there was also lots of soft snow and we skied from late afternoon well into the evening (9pm) so we got a bit of day and night skiing in.

Who says you can't have fun when you're not working?

Life of the (semi) unemployed

As most of you know, I graduated from a Graphic Design program in December 2006. I still work at Old Navy part time and have been spending my free time looking for a professional job. By "looking for a professional job" I mean "kinda sort of" looking.

I will admit I have been putting in more effort than before. I joined 2 organizations that aid in teaching skills to help find jobs. Both of them have excellent workshops I've attended and I have a counselor in both who also give great advice. I have about 4 websites I check for job postings and have been sending out my resume a few times a week. I even cut my days available at Old Navy so I could spend more time concentrating on the job hunt. I fixed up my resume and even printed some business cards.

I'm also building a website for the improv summit happening this saturday (March 24th) - http://improvsummit.com
It's not finished yet but when it's complete I'll have something non-school project to put in my CV.

Although I've done all these things it doesn't seem like it's enough. I still need to put my portfolio on the web, make my CV more graphical (it's only in word format now), start researching for companies in the field and start concentrating on cold calling. Cold calling is basically calling a company without knowing the person you are going to talk to. The whole point isn't to call asking for a job but just to learn more about the company/industry. The outcome to put your name out there while also discovering more about what it's like to work in that field.

I will admit I've been a bit distracted as of late (for example I didn't do anything this morning because I went skiing yesterday and I'm completely exhausted).

I'm going to keep trying to update this blog but as you can tell the posts are more spaced out. That's because lately I find it so hard to be structured while not having a concrete schedule, which hopefully will occur in teh next month or so.

Vaganza 2007 - 24+ hours later

Vaganza is OVER! It started yesturday at 12pm and concluded today at 12pm. Due to a meeting I had with a counselor at JEM, and partly due to the snow "storm" we had, I was only able to make it to Vaganza at 12:30pm. After a quick bite, my first performance was at 1pm.
For the most part, until 7pm, there were probably at most 5-10 people in the audience who were not improvers. At 7pm, Uncalled For, the first special guest, took the stage and the audience had definitely grown to 20-30 people. This stayed like so for most the night, with some traffic of people coming and going. 3am marked lock-down with this years theme being After maybe 4am, all the audience members left and remained that way until 11am where a whopping 2 people showed up. It sucks that we had such a a bad turnout due to the bad weather.

In the end, we all had fun, I managed to stay awake the whole time (by 5-6am I was having a great difficulty doing so) and we raised about 200$.

For pictures click HERE!

After Vaganza I went for lunch with my mom in which I found myself blacking out mid-sentence several times. I promise never to make fun of my dad again (who has a sleeping problem).

Until next year!

Also, don't forget the OTHER big improv event: IMPROV SUMMIT! It's on the Saturday, March 24th. Universities involved include Carleton, McGill, U de M and UQAM.

Best sense of direction EVER....

Friday night I was driving down to Laval. By accident, instead of heading North, I went South. Unfortunately, I didn't really know which direction I needed to go specifically, I just knew by sight that I hit the wrong exit. That being said, I knew I just needed to go the other direction (but did not actually know which direction I was going not, which was South). No problem. I just needed to get off at the next exit, turn around and go back on the 13.

Not so sweet.

I got off at the next exit but ended up on another highway (250) heading West. Ok, so I was now going back towards my house, no biggie. Just get off at the next exit and turn around... The next exit was Dorval! I drove past the airport! Finally, I got off at Cardinal dt. turned around and ended on the 520 est. I was getting somewhere!

And then more lost...

When I hit the 13 yet again, I accidently went South. Again. This time I didnt' even know it and I drove all the way until the highway stopped existing and it turned into the 20. Again I got off the next exit, which was Lasalle!

Anyways, 45 minutes total of driving, I finally made it to Laval.

On the way home it took me 15 minutes.

ON the bright side, I'll never forget to go North to Laval from now on.

VAGANZA 2007!

That's right. McGill Improv's annual 24 hour spectacular is back!

Click the picture to read all the info!

For those who don't go to McGill, it's in the Shatner (SSMU) Building located at 3600 McTavish way up the hill on the left.

When you're done with us, there's Nuit Blanche, an overnight festival happening all over Montreal. Sleep deprivation of 48hours! Hooray!

Note: The word Vaganza was chosen for the sole purpose of it being a shortened version of the word Extravaganza and has no affiliation with the word Vagina (although they look/sound the same). That being said, I had no intentions of a pun when I put down "Unlimited re-entry" (in fact I only realized this after I printed it)

Job Hunting Sucks

I finished my graphic design program back in December. At first I used the holidays as an excuse to dick around. Then I sort of looked around for jobs but was getting so many leads from my recruiter, was busy working on stuff for my client and was working a lot at Old Navy.

Now it's almost March, I haven't had an invitations for an interview, haven't heard back from the 2 interviews I did have, stuff with my client is on hold and Old Navy cut down everyone's hours. This leaves me with tons of free time, and I"m bored out of my mind. I know, I know, you're probably yelling at your computer monitor now wishing that you had nothing to do because you're so sick of work/school/killing hookers and burying them in your farm, but a lot of nothing to do gets boring after a while. I've been going out a lot lately but don't feel I deserve it because I spend my days either in front of my computer (reading Dr. McNinja comics), watching tv or a movie on TV or going downtown.

On the bright side I did start to apply to more jobs. On the really shitty side, I just discovered today I had 2 spelling mistakes on my CV from DAY ONE! Unfortunately I don't own a copy of the program I used to type up my CV (Quark Xpress) on my PC at home (actually I downloaded a ripped version. It worked fine and I was completely surprised until I realized I can't save for some reason...). So, I have to go to school to fix it up. Would someone night hire you for misspelling urgency as ergency?

I did go to a YES (Youth Employment Services) orientation and learned that networking is key. Anyone need a graphic designer??

New book time!

I was reading Tad Williams Otherland series. I read the first book and really liked it. The second one was SO bad. It just kept dragging on and on. I wanted to finsihed it but I lost it. That goes to show how much I really wanted to read it all. After not reading anything besides a couple of Maxim magazines I decided to buy a new book. I was looking into getting this book a friend recommened about Professional pick up artists. It looked really interesting but WAY to expensive for me (40$!). So I opted for Stephen King's Dark Tower book 1. I heard good things and decided it's time to try it out. A nice 10$ price tag helped seal the deal.

Job seeking looking up... way up

Today I had an interview for a graphic design job at Joseph Ribkiff (designer womens clothing).
In typical budman fashion, I had to print my portfolio (yet again, this happened last time) the DAY of the interview. This time however, I didn't even have time to eat breakfast. Last time I printed my portfolio it cost me 50$ because I got charged each time they had to open a file. They suggested the next time I put it all in a PDF file and that way I only get charged once for the open fee. So I did and it was cheaper. Yay! But all the prints came out with slightly different colors due to the program. Fuck! ("Oh! I like it much better that you changed the background from purple to blue" "Wait... I didn't change the backgr... WTF?!?"). Thankfully no one that looks at them would realize those are different colors so I'm in the clear.

I made there at 9:52 with my interview at 10:00am. I realized when I parked I forgot the person who I needed to meet's name. After screaming on the phone at my mom to turn on my computer and find it, I was all set. I run inside, and a couple of people walk by from both directions, one with a bunch of clothes. Reminded me a tad of "the Devil Wears Prada, but not as crazy.

After rushing in and being told that I had to wait, I put my coat in the closet and sit down. I look around and realize, Amélie, my former classmate and friend has been waiting there the whole time. She had an interview after mine.

The whole interview was 15 minutes. I met with the person, sat down, got asked to explain myself, she flipped through my portfolio faster than 747 jet, explained to me that they need someone to make layouts and work with photos on all kinds of jobs and finished with the fact that she'll need to try me out for a little "test". At most I'll be given a logo and a picture and text and just need to make a small poster or something.

So I'll just wait and see

McGill Improv Masked Ball

Last night I attended a formal masked ball. It was great. The people who organized it put lots of effort decorating the ballroom with all sorts of theatre props (including giant puppets hanging from a rope). There were a lot of interesting masks. I felt that the fact it was a masked party, a lot of people seemed to act slightly different. Perhaps the masks made people feel secure and incognito or soemthing. I know I felt that way a bit.

For pics, click HERE!

Budman strikes back

Last night I went to Grumpy's Bar to perform stand up comedy at the Open Mic Night. After watching my old video of me doing stand up 3 years ago I decided to give it abother shot. Unfortunatley I got so busy I didn't really have time to prepare properly. Having a pint and a half before going on stage also didn't help - I was pretty tipsy and was having trouble seeing straight. Fortunatley for me, the guy before me really sucked and I got a bunch of laughs.

A bunch of my friends came otu to suport me. I was told by many of my friends that I was pretty funny. In the end, I thought I was really sloppy but I did get some laughs from other audience members (i.e. not just the pity laugh). I was even told that some of the other comedians thought I was funny, so that's cool.

Turns out the host of the night, who is a comedian, was at the open mic night at the Comedy Nest back when I performed the first time. He even remembered me and after my set, gave me his card and told me he know runs the open mic night at the Comedy Nest and suggests I give it a try there. I might in the future but i think I need to come up with some better jokes before I start running there.

Here's a video of the night:

My very first interview

Yesturday was a long day.

Still being tired from 12 hours in front of the computer the day before, I had to get up early and run to a print place near my house to print my portfolio. It cost me 40$ but with less than 2 hours until my interview I didnt feel like running around for prices. I had 30 minutes to eat breakfast and put the sheets in proper order in my portfolio book.

I showed up on time and met the woman who was to interview me. It was an interesting interview since we moved from the cafeteria to her office and then to conference room because we kept getting booted out from where we were talking. She showed me a lot of the stuff they do there and explained to me what I'd be doing. I'ts all very cool and interesting.

The only snag I hit was when we had a tiny argument over nothing. It wasn't anything bad it's I was making apoint on something and she thought i had made amistake and was trying to correct me by explaining to "right" thing. The only problem was that the thing she was re-explaining to me is a ket thing to know if I wanted that job and although I didn't want to correct her, I also wanted her to know that I did in fact know what she was talking about (even though that wasn't what I was trying to talk about from the beginning). So, in all Budman history, things got awkward for a few minutes, but not enough to have narrowed my chances to have the job or anything.

She told me that she had other interviews to do first before she could let me know if I got the job or not.

Trying hard not to stress

I have an interview tomorrow.
It's 5:50pm.
I've been infront of the computer since 10;30am laying out all my work so I can print it out in a professional looking way.
Some files are so big it's taking like 20 minutes just to open and save in the right format.
The printer place upstairs closes at 7pm and I still have 8 other things to layout before printing.
I don't htink I'm going to have time to print tonight at all.
I hope I can get it done tomorrow so I have a printed portfolio before I show up at t he interview.
*sigh* That's what I get for waiting last minute. Man I got to learn to stop doing that...