Taxi, bus, car, 500 km from Ottawa to Toronto.

John, coming from a weekend wedding, took a flight from Thunder Bay to pick me up. We spent the first three days at the house of John’s parents. Circumstances like these always put me on edge; with adults around, we tend to behave, and I’m generally obnoxious when I’m with John.

The step-mother rules the house with an iron fist. No noise after ten. No noise before seven. No using the guest towels or soap.

One morning, I was having toast with some marmalade when I realized that the orange, unlabeled spread in the back of the fridge had a rather sharp taste, signifying that it was either offal or expired. John stopped me as I opened the kitchen garbage bin.

“You can’t throw that out”

“Why not?”

“It’s food. Food smells.” John pointed to the dish drying rack. It was filled with milk bags which were used, emptied, washed, and dried before being thrown out.

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“We’ll throw it in the back yard for the birds”

“What if the birds won’t eat it? A piece of toast covered with marmalade would be harder to explain than food in the garbage.”

Eventually, we put the toast in a Zip-Loc bag and disposed of it in a public trash bin four blocks away from the house.

The beautiful garden in the back presented some great photo opportunities.

Toronto was our chance to relax. We just hung around and rented movies. When I’m with John I get to see the classics that I’ve missed — every time it’s mentioned that I haven’t seen a certain title in the store, it’s always met with his button-pushing, “You haven’t seen that?!”. He already has of course, but his memory is so bad that it’s like he never watched them in the first place. This time it was The Shawshank Redemption (very satisfying), Diner (a great coming-of-age film for guys), Four Weddings and a Funeral (ruined by Andie MacDowell’s delivery of “Is it raining — I hadn’t noticed”), and Sideways (fucking amazing). We also saw Out On Bail, which garned many an excruciating reaction.

I still laugh my ass off every time I watch this.

For Canada’s 139th, Aaron and Karen braved the rainy weather and hosted a small gathering for a barbecue. By the time I arrived, several hours early from helping Trolley in the morning, I was tired, moody, and smelling rather fresh, so I decided to leave by the time people were supposed to arrive in the afternoon. Fortunately, Pat and Jen showed up early too, bringing with them a deck of Dutch Blitz. It was a game I had never played before, but grew addicted to quickly. The fast-paced, and convivial nature of the game lightened my mood, and by the second round I was feeling jovial. There were other games too — bullet chess, Trivial Pursuit (90’s Edition, which the guys won for the first time ever), Soul Calibur 2 — all of which I partook through the rest of the evening.

I had such a good time that I ended up staying the night because I missed my last bus. In the morning, we slowly rose with coffee and greasy food, eventually playing some more Dutch Blitz before I had to leave.

It’s hard to remember a time when I was so at ease in a large group, or when I laughed so much. Maybe we’ve finally cut out the intolerable people, the ones who rub me the wrong way with their simple presence. Maybe, as a sign of my growing confidence, I’m getting more comfortable around other people.

Or maybe it’s a combination of both.

A tribute to Nick and Alison, my old laid-back roommate (who taught me how to make a mean grilled cheese, offered a significant challenge in Counter Strike, and introduced me to Lamb) and his new bride.

I would say something about the wedding, but the video says it all.

At one point in the night I was running around with my Karachi Outpost strapped on my back, and my camcorder bag around my shoulder, feeling like a one-man documentary team, even though my focus was on video instead of stills. There are a couple of camera issues, such as focus and zoom speed that still bug me when I watch the footage, but until I can afford a Canon XL2 my cheap Hitachi DVD-cam will have to do.

Surprisingly, the easiest part was picking the song, something that can take days itself. I needed a single track that would work through landscapes, kissing, and drinking, three things that evoke vastly different emotions, and Tulips by Bloc Party was perfect. Even the timing of the lyrics worked out. I wish I could say that I was able to obtain a score for the music, analyze it, and symetrically break down the scenes according to the development. To be honest I just didn’t have enough footage, so I just put what I could in the parts that would fit, without interrupting the flow of the story.

The entire clip took about three solid days to complete, half of which was just getting the scenes in the right format to work with in Adobe Premier 2.0. I was plagued by video format problems and asynchronous audio issues. It was also the first time I was able to try this latest version of Premier since I was running 1.5 for a while. The process really pushed the capabilities of my system; loading only Premier with the whole sequence took up 1.6 gigs of RAM. Render time was about 20 minutes on a dual-core AMD 4400+. Uncompressed video size is almost 2 gigs.

Influences were Michele Gondry from the Hardest Button To Button video, as well as the smart and witty stylings of Spike Jonze.

Moving is often a task I avoid at all costs. The mess of packing, booking elevators, organizing rides, and physically shifting dirty boxes around becomes a lot more complicated than I care for. Being approached to help move by a close friend is a different story, however, as it becomes one of the few times that I can prove how much I’m willing to do for them.

It thus becomes a rather galvanizing scene to arrive with a party of friends at a doorstep, ready to help bring someone else into another phase in their life. This weekend was no exception, when helping Pat and Jen settle into their new place, a newly built four bedroom house out in the west end. Through most of last week, Pat and Jen had already moved the small items themselves, so the only things that were left were the bulky furniture. There were only eight of us, but we were finished before we knew it.

Pat and Jen paid us in beer, pizza, and wings, but given the fact that they had already done most of the work, we hardly deserved it. The rest of the day was spent playing Mario Power Tennis, Donky Konga, and table tennis.

Helping them moving was a reminder of how we’re all growing up. Getting married, getting old.

I once asked Darren, the only other male cousin with whom I share a Generation name, whether he thought we’d end up like our fathers, two brothers who also share their own. Our fathers who are moody, wasted old men who work too hard, and don’t get enough sleep. Before we realized it though, we had already turned into them, surviving the days on mostly restless sleep.

Look at us now. Pat and Jen are engaged, starting their family here. Aaron and Karen are one block away.

And the couples take home leftovers the way the parents do at all the Christmas parties during the holidays.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To cover three birthdays (Pat’s, Aaron’s, and Karen’s respectively), we all met up at McEwen along the river. The merriment consisted of some light drinking, friendly poker playing, and rather serious photo taking.

They say that the ruder you are, the better a photographer it makes you. Since being rude goes against the very basis of my personality, getting candids of people with a large camera and flash becomes quite a mental challenge. Some people really don’t like to have their picture taken, and they signal this by blinking rapidly with bewilderment, combined with the furrowing of their brows in annoyance. This reminds me that I primarily bought a camera to have memories of my friends, who are all comfortable with my paparazzo tendencies. It certainly makes me appreciate the strangers or acquaintances who don’t mind.

It was also a happenstance meeting of the four bosses, although definitely not the private affair that it usually is.