Posts in category "Video"

Birthday Surprises

My friends know I don’t cel­e­brate my birth­day, because I don’t believe in rit­u­als1. I went through most of Thursday with­out any­one men­tion­ing any­thing, aside from Louise call­ing me from the road, remind­ing me that we were going out for lunch the next day — which the three of us do on our birth­days at work.

So when I got home around 9:30 that night — tired and hun­gry after Tai Chi — I was sur­prised to find a let­ter taped to my front door. This let­ter lead to my birth­day game:

Then, before I went to bed, I real­ized I had two phone mes­sages:

Hearing Dan and his fam­i­ly singing was awe­some, but hear­ing my dad’s voice was some­thing else. He had nev­er called to wish me hap­py birth­day him­self; it was a day only my mom would remem­ber, and she would always pass the phone to him.

It seems like every year I expect noth­ing to hap­pen, but I end up being sur­prised in one way or anoth­er.

  1. And this was before I dis­cov­ered Taoism [↩]

Rachel Beausoleil at the NAC

A demo reel I made for Rachel Beausoleil, using footage I shot of her jazz vocal per­for­mance at the NAC Fourth Stage, as well as snip­pets of an inter­view I did with her. As a way of get­ting more expo­sure for future gigs, she asked for some video that she could shop around to dif­fer­ent venues. I agreed to make this demo reel for her in return for some tick­ets to the show for me and my friends.

It was a won­der­ful con­cert in an inti­mate set­ting. The reper­toire was quite var­ied — from waltz to Bossa nova to bal­lad — but all songs were per­formed as a jazz inter­pre­ta­tions. The setlist includ­ed Aquarius by The Fifth Dimension, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, and Evangeline by Isabelle Pierre.

Of spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance is that the per­for­mance was on Rachel’s 40th birth­day. She had planned the con­cert over a year ago as a come­back after hav­ing two kids and giv­ing up her time for them.

I can now embed videos in HD after acquir­ing a Vimeo Plus account; they look oh-so-sexy, and even bet­ter in full-screen.

One of the high­lights of the night was Tom Posner’s bass solo dur­ing Caravan (a clas­sic Duke Ellington big-band piece) clock­ing in at almost two min­utes. You can see how sur­prised Rachel is when Tom los­es him­self in the music and keeps going on this great flur­ry of notes. This solo is some kind of awe­some that I can’t even describe.

Awkward Brunch

The time my words dig a hole out of which my best friend must climb.

If you pay spe­cial atten­tion at 1:21, you can see ____’s face when he sub­tly shakes his head as if to com­mu­ni­cate to me, “YOU ARE MAKING IT WORSE”.

Trolley and Steph's Wedding

Changing groomsmen

Not only the day that Trolley got hitched, but a chance to see Adam and Tomasini and Eric and Nick and Alison; the peo­ple I only get to hang out with when camp­ing or par­ty­ing at the farm. I missed Adam and his ever ebul­lient atti­tude most of all, some­thing that nev­er fails to buoy the spir­its. Even though we did­n’t get a chance to talk much through all the prepa­ra­tion, it was enough to hear his voice and laugh­ter.

Handshake

Thumbnail: Wedding handshake
Thumbnail: Wedding handshake
Thumbnail: Taking cell phone photos
Thumbnail: Walking to the aisle
Thumbnail: Just married
 

It was back to Stanley’s Maple Farm1 for the out­door wed­ding. The rain con­tin­ued up to half an hour before the cer­e­mo­ny then stopped com­plete­ly, as if god him­self had a hand in ordain­ment.

You just need to look at the smile on Trolley’s face to under­stand how hap­py he is.

The recep­tion was open bar, with prime rib and a dessert buf­fet at the end. I had been wait­ing over a year to have the prime rib din­ner, as I was going through an undi­ag­nosed case of IBS at Aaron’s wed­ding and was left eat­ing bread. Even Pat, my gour­mand friend, said that it was cooked to per­fec­tion, and found out that the venue has a deal with the farm up the road to get the best cuts of meat.

We sur­prised the new­ly wed­ded cou­ple with the shoe game, where they answer a series of ques­tions with­out know­ing how the oth­er one will answer. They sur­prised us with how many they answered in sync. A good sign for the new­ly wed.

Thumbnail: Wedding guestbook
Thumbnail: Center piece
Thumbnail: Photographer sticks his tongue out
Thumbnail: Aaron drinks
Thumbnail: Wedding favour
 

Nick humourous­ly not­ed that there weren’t many sin­gle girls around, but being able to hang out with Aaron in the MC booth made me feel much less awk­ward and aban­doned than the last wed­ding I went to.

At one point, Trolley came up to me and asked me _____ __ _________ ____ _____. It was his wed­ding, but he was con­cerned about me. I could­n’t believe it even entered his mind with every­thing going on around him, and it was cer­tain­ly the part I’ll remem­ber most about that night.

  1. The same place Aaron got mar­ried. [↩]