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A few months ago, us guys defended well by beat­ing the ladies in some Glow In The Dark Bowl­ing (view that here) and we were wait­ing to get part II up and run­ning, which finally came to be.

Loca­tion was Whitby, and Plus said there was a nice Glow In the Dark Mini Golf spot by the big AMC the­aters called the Putting Edge, so that’s where we headed.  I was a bit taken back by the whole spot, being that it was some kind of enter­tain­ment dis­trict, almost look­ing like some lit­tle hid­den vil­lage all in itself.

We got there before the ladies arrived, so the teams were pretty much the same, we were at a dis­ad­van­tage but we fig­ured that was all we needed any­ways (no offense ladies, ha).  But what was even more unfor­tu­nate was that Plus had to be at some jam at 10:30p and it was already reach­ing 10:10p and still no sign of the com­pe­ti­tion, so I was left fly­ing solo to defend against the three headed lady-monster.

The game started off well, even though they put me first on the bill.. but I wasn’t too rusty as I scored par

Things were going quite alright, stay­ing at par on most holes and my biggest con­cern and focus was Tash, being that we had our own side-bet out­side of the Bat­tle of the Sexes.  And she wasn’t fair­ing so well, as she was vic­tim to a plethora of bogeys and dou­ble bogeys, so it kept my game hon­est.  And then when we got to hole 11..

I got my first hole in 1!

This now con­vinced Tash that I appar­ently come here every week­end and prac­tice, and I’m some under­cover mini-golf fanatic, ha.

But as well as I did in the first 9 holes, I went pure down­hill in the remain­ing 9 holes (minus my TWO hole-in-1s).  I wasn’t pay­ing mind to any­one other than Tash, so once I got a hole-in-one on the 17th hole, that pretty much sealed the deal for me.  Not to men­tion the place started play­ing out Chris Brown’s last album a cou­ple of times, how fit­ting.. yah.

But some­how some­way, the other two ladies scored a lower total over­all (58’s, and I got 61), so I won the bat­tle but didn’t win the war for the team.  Which now leaves both sexes tied at 1

Right now we’re think­ing of what next to do, to break the tie-breaker… suggestions?

Bat­tle of the Sexes
Males — (1) vs Females (1)
next up: Unknown for Now

Today was one of those ran­dom days where the most odd­est of odd things take place.. ALL in one day.  I reach RST Stu­dios at around 2pm or so, and the usual sus­pects are up in the place and we’re just doing what we nor­mally does on a non-shoot day.

As every­body is focused on what they’re doing, Kevin shoots up and is like “Holy! Look at all that smoke” which spurs me to turn around and as I quickly sur­vey the sit­u­a­tion I blurt “What the?! That van is on fire!”

So we all dart down­stairs and we’re fully stand­ing out­side all prep­ping our record­ing devices to tape all the mad­ness going on

Ever watch a vehi­cle burn to its metal death live in per­son? I can now say I have, and it was quite inter­est­ing.  I think what made it even more inter­est­ing was when the owner of this wild-fired up vehi­cle decided to play Super­man and retrieve as much of his belong­ings as he pos­si­bly could before him too caught on fire

Luck­ily he didn’t catch on fire, although his van still got burnt out.  The park­ing lot was quickly swarmed with cops and fire­men not too long after, and they suc­cess­fully put out the fire.

Good thing I parked my car more close to the stu­dio, because I swear to you I was orig­i­nally parked nearby the burn­ing van but parked some­where else when I had to pick some­one up and come back.

Talk about your typ­i­cal Tues­day huh?

Today I had set out to have a meet­ing with an artist, Diana, from the city, who just so hap­pens to work at AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario).  So we thought it’d be cool to walk through the place and pos­si­bly get inspired by the art pieces inside, before cement­ing our own idea for our upcom­ing project.

I must admit, this whole time I was get­ting AGO mixed up with the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), which I had already vis­ited a few times already this year.

Because once I stepped into this place, I was quick to real­ize that “yeah, either I haven’t been here before or it’s been quite some time!”.  Diana also noted that the place had gone under some seri­ous ren­o­va­tions in the past few years, can’t remem­ber how much mil­lions were invested into do it, but it was a lot.  And by look­ing at the place, it was easy to jus­tify as to why that was.. every­thing was a visual treat to look at.

This was the end of my photo allowance.  There was absolutely NO CAMERAS per­mit­ted in the art gallery at all.  You had secu­rity guards in there look­ing like CIA agents, and they were pac­ing every nook and cranny real real hard, just wait­ing for some­one to pull out some­thing that was able to take a photo.  I didn’t even bother, but I kept ask­ing in every sec­tion… just in case.

It’s hard to even begin explain­ing all the amaz­ing work that was in this place, from paint­ings that dated back to the Renais­sance era to a white rec­tan­gle box on the floor that was actu­ally milk.  African arti­facts, which were also recre­ated by some artist out of shoes.. yes shoes!  Oh, and there was this cou­ple (male and female) who were stand­ing in this room and they were demon­strat­ing var­i­ous types of kisses for a good 2 hours.  Now, we didn’t stay and watch them for 2 hours straight, but Diana informed me that their rou­tine lasts for that long and then they switch off with some next cou­ple, and the whole rou­tine is chore­o­graphed com­pletely.  You have to see it your­self to under­stand what I’m talk­ing about here.  From the real weird to the straight for­ward fas­ci­nat­ing works from artists around the world, both dead and alive.

I remem­ber when I met up with Hans Poppe ear­lier this year and he told me how he vis­ited this place and there was this paint­ing of col­ored ver­ti­cal lines.  And because the col­ors were paired up together were oppo­site or some­thing, they cre­ate this vibra­tion in your eyes and it looks like the paint­ing is waving/moving.  Again, you have to go there and see it for yourself.

We didn’t how­ever go to the King Tut exhibit, because that one you had to pay to get in.. so we just decided to see a few more things before head­ing out

I was able to take shots in this place, all made of wood that was imported from Van­cou­ver and var­i­ous other places if my mem­ory serves me cor­rectly.  That big ol’ tree you see?  Some artist took years carv­ing it out (or should I say IN), and how they got that thing in there, I don’t even know.. but it was huge.

That about wrapped up my AGO expe­ri­ence, and Diana served as an amaz­ing tour guide because she really knows her stuff.  So now it was time to go find some­thing to eat/drink.. and I of course had to sug­gest David’s Tea

Every time I come into this place, my mis­sion is to try a new fla­vor tea.  And so far I have lived up to that mis­sion.. so today I set out to try Choco­late Mint, which smelled good.  Also had it in Latte style, so that was new for me.. because usu­ally I have my tea a cer­tain way but I fig­ured, why not right?  It was good, but I wasn’t able to enjoy it too long because I had to meet up with some­one that was wait­ing for me, so I had to take mines to go and bid my farewells.

Oh and that lit­tle con­coc­tion I bought?  I had eyed that thing the last time I came here with Lau­ren, and I was going to buy it then but didn’t.  So I picked it up and couldn’t wait to get home and put it to good use.  What is it?  It’s a sin­gle cup Tea Infuser, instead of using a whole ket­tle you just do it by the cup, amazing!

This all started because of a small lit­tle bet I made with Tasha via Twit­ter over the usage of the word “Burr”.  With­out get­ting into much detail about it all, it some­how turned into us going bowl­ing on the week­end, which turned into “I’ll bring a friend”, which made me have to bring a friend.. and then she decided to add another.

Haven’t been bowl­ing in months!  And with the amount of big talks that were just spew­ing out of Tasha’s mouth, I was actu­ally half-convinced that just maybe she may give me a run for my money.  So I called upon Plus, who I haven’t seen in the longest while to help come defend my dig­nity, being that we would go head to head in Wii Bowl­ing.. fig­ured it may trans­late into real life atleast a bit.

Almost look­ing like my getup was straight from Tron eh?  Plus and I waited on the ladies to show up, and the did not too long after we got there… so we got our lane and placed our names in the com­puter and began.

The ladies started out a bit strong, while my first attempt was a gut­ter ball which gar­nered much expected ridicule, fol­lowed by a 1-pin knock­down to com­plete my first frame.  Not quite the way I pic­tured my game to begin.

It wasn’t until miss Gilly punked me by leav­ing my high­five up, dry and lonely that things started to take a turn for the bet­ter.  Oh, can’t for­get me touch­ing Danielle’s ball, which also added to the woes they both shared.  So as their games regressed, I pro­pelled into the lead and didn’t look back.

Not the strongest of wins by any account, but my 116 proved to be enough to beat every­body else, leav­ing me to do noth­ing but grin pure teeth.

But what hap­pened to Tasha in all this?  The same one that sparked the fire and spoke as though I should count my bless­ings and only pray that I come close (well not in those exact words, but you know).. well, let’s just say she had an ‘off-night’.  But for the good­ness of it all, we squeezed a frame or two in the next game before our hour was up, and she did in fact man­age to pull out a strike!  Hence the last photo, ded­i­cated to her

Bat­tle of the Sexes
Males — (1)  vs  Females (0)
next up: Glow in the Dark Mini Golf

I actu­ally woke up mad early this morn­ing, I think at around 3am.. and it was funny because last night I had went to bed a lit­tle early and I got a call at around 11:30PM, but seri­ously thought it was 11:30AM the next day and shot up out my bed think­ing I was late for my shoot sched­uled for noon on Sun­day (today).

I already wasn’t look­ing too too for­ward to today, because I had pre­vi­ously promised myself I wouldn’t jam in a shoot on the same day I have to work, espe­cially a 12hr shift.. but here I was, on my way once again.

Got there on time, and 3 of the 4 mod­els that ended up com­ing were get­ting their hair all done up.  Today is a sim­ple shoot, pro­file shots to show­case the tal­ented hair skills of Zel­ica Alexander

And while Joel was fig­ur­ing out that he didn’t have much bat­tery life for his mini video­cam­era, it was almost food time

The fact that the pizza arrived before I even took a shot was a lit­tle frus­trat­ing, sim­ply due to the fact that I was on a very tight time sched­ule.  Really not sur­pris­ing though, how often do shoots go as planned?  Meh.  After the food got yam out I think we were finally ready to get the shoot on the go and start snappin’

Qual­ity over quan­tity was my motif, as I snapped my way through.  Time wasn’t my great­est friend right now as it was already an hour past the time I had orig­i­nally wanted to leave to head home and get ready for work.  So by now I’m a bit pissed off, but fin­ished up and attempted to drop Joel at York­dale before head­ing home.

So as I’m dri­ving along Allen towards York­dale, I first notice how stiff my steer­ing wheel was.. it was almost like dri­ving a bumper-car at Won­der­land.  And then I was turn­ing on the heat and usu­ally it takes a bit of time to warm up, but this time it wasn’t blow­ing heat at all.  I some­how man­aged to make it to York­dale, and as soon as Joel hopped out and I pro­ceeded to jump back on the high­way, my car starts light­ing up with all these warn­ing signs.

And then, boom.  Dead out. Right at the cor­ner of the mall, in front of the damn under­ground park­ing pretty much block­ing pure traf­fic.  So I put my damn blink­ers on and am try­ing to fig­ure out what the hell to do at this point.  I call up CAA, and tell them that my car is mashup at York­dale and I will need a tow.  I attempt to start my car again and it put­ters up a bit, and juu­u­u­u­u­ust enough for me to get into the under­ground park­ing and park my car, somewhat.

I’ve got like 10’s of thou­sands of dol­lars worth of equip­ment in my car and the last thing I want to do is leave it unat­tended.  Cause really, at this point that was JUST how my damn day was going.  So I hid what I could fit in the trunk and took my cam­era bag and waited inside York­dale till the tow truck got there.

Good ol’ Zack from Abrams Tow­ing was my chauf­feur for the night as he escorted both me and Mazzy allll the way home.  And I could kiss my 12hr good­night, cause I had no way of reach­ing Aurora at this time and my night was shot, no pun intended.

I hate going to bed upset, and that’s just what I am set to do.. not exactly how I imag­ined I would start my week, espe­cially this week of all weeks.

Lord give me peace, please.

One of the signs at work, must I really explain why? FAIL

Just wrapped up part II in shoot­ing some con­tent for the inter­view.  It was a lit­tle more pres­sure this time around because had quite the num­ber of ears in the place, whereas the first time we shot it, it was only the video­g­ra­pher (Shena) and myself.

I swear I was look­ing all over the place, just feels so weird look­ing straight into a cam­era and talk­ing to it.  I don’t know how celebri­ties and ath­letes do it on the reg­u­lar when they have those 1-on-1 inter­views.  We even got Tony Jorge to get in on it and say a few words about me, which I was antic­i­pat­ing to hear

Then we asked Mikey to say a few words, which I just knew he would men­tion our bat­tles.. which he did.  But both put in a good word, so appre­ci­ate that.  After the sit down, we bom­barded Mikey’s shoot as he was shoot­ing Jacky Lai and I came in to sneak a few shots to get some behind the scenes footage for the video.  Kristy Muy (makeup artist) heav­ily requested that I actu­ally shoot for real and not play around, and once I got started.. it’s hard to stop, ha.  Sorry Mike, all yours!

That was one of the shots.

After we wrapped that all up, Mikey con­tin­ued to shoot while Tony was gear­ing up to do some cre­ative work.. which was very inter­est­ing indeed

The hair was seri­ous!  And we even had Kristy trans­form into a koala bear doing makeup, it was a sight to be seen.  Never a seri­ous moment at RST huh?  Yet we some­how man­age to get the job done

Do what ya love, love what ya do.

Last week my mother had informed us (the fam) that she wanted to take us all out for din­ner and to keep tonight open for just that.  Then ear­lier this week, she tells us that ‘the car’ will be pick­ing us up at 6pm and to be home and ready to go.. so by now, I’m per­son­ally think­ing she has some major announce­ment to make.  Lot­tery win?  Mar­riage?  Bet­ter not be any­thing bad, errrr

So I aim to be ready and on-time, as I’m usu­ally min­utes behind the clock and I am actu­ally ready on time.  It is min­utes after 6p and every­body (my 2 sis­ters, my brother, my nephew Malachi, my mother and myself) is wait­ing upstairs wait­ing to head out.  My mom is pac­ing a bit, and tells us that appar­ently ‘the car’ isn’t com­ing any­more, so we’ll just take 2 of our cars and start head­ing out there.  None of us were really dis­ap­pointed, so we just said ‘alright’ and started putting on our coats and shoes.  I was the first one out the house, when I see this black stretch lim­ou­sine com­ing down our street.  I don’t know if this was part of my mother’s lit­tle show, but I head back inside to tell my mom that ‘the car’ has actu­ally come, and she looked more sur­prised than I did.  My sis­ters are a bit dra­matic, so they’re hootin’ and hol­lerin’ and act­ing like unpar­ented chil­dren, while my brother nod in approval and head for the car.  Malachi though (my nephew) acted as if rid­ing in a limo was yesterday’s news, so he’s just like “I went in a car like that before”, mind you he’s 4.

So we’re head­ing to the spot, which my mother chose.. Man­darin.

Buf­fet, she knows we all like the food (espe­cially me, and how picky I am), so it was the per­fect choice.  And it was a lit­tle weird com­ing out of a stretch limo to eat at a place like Man­darin.  I’m sure peo­ple were won­der­ing what was up with that   Cause I know I would have been still.

We are shown to our seats and as quick as our coats hit the backs of our chairs, we were all already get­ting our first plate.

I pretty much knew what I was gun­ning for before we even stepped foot in this place, cause if there is some­thing I love.. it’s chicken balls and chicken fried rice!  But to my sur­prise, they had pizza.  Oh no, don’t do this to me

Plate 1, Round 1

2 Slices of Cheese Pizza

3 Chicken Balls

Gar­lic Bread

and a nice help­ing of Chicken Fried Rice.

Murked all that real quick, and just sat back for a moment to digest all that before head­ing right back out.  Kamila was tak­ing for­ever, she was the last one to return to the table, while the rest of us were prac­ti­cally ready for the next

It was now time for the next, and I was feel­ing for a tad bit more this time around.  So I ven­tured back out amongst the mounds of food sit­ting there and filled my plate once again

Plate 2, Round 2

2 Slices of Cheese Pizza

2 Pieces of Fried Chicken

3 Meat­balls (can’t even remem­ber what kind they were.. but didn’t end up lik­ing them anyway)

MORE fried rice

and a splash of lettuce

Man­aged to still fin­ish off the plate, but left the meat­balls after tak­ing one bite.  The meat was too red inside, and had this zangy taste that I didn’t admire much.  But every­thing else was good to go, and it was gone.. but this time I had to sit a bit longer before head­ing back out there.  I con­tem­plated on whether I should go for plate #3 or just take the fin­ish­ing blow of some sweet desserts.

I decided it was now dessert time, and I’ll give Man­darin an A for pre­sen­ta­tion because every­thing looked real damn good.  I think my dessert plate was more heavy than both of my food plates combined

Plate 3, Final Round

2 Sugar Puffs

3 Choco­late Cov­ered Strawberries

2 Choco­late Cov­ered Croissants

1 Piece of Car­rot Cake

1 Piece of Deep Choco­late Fudge Cake

and not one pound gained, boo me.  It was now around 8:30p and the limo wasn’t going to be back to pick us up until 9 o’clock, so we had to talk out the rest of the wait and sip on more water and Shirley Tem­ples.  I love those heat cloths they bring you at the end to wash your hands with, Malachi liked it too.. and showed us by putting it all over his head and fresh new hair­cut.  And then the for­tune cook­ies, ooooo.. what­ever did mine say?

What hap­pened last night, will hap­pen again

You damn right it will, cause the Toronto Rap­tors won last night and I’m quite sure it shall hap­pen again and again and again and again.  Smile.

thanks mom

So my brother comes and tells me that we have to dis­pose of these two crea­tures that are dead in the back­yard, and he says it jok­ingly so I’m fully think­ing he’s jok­ing.  But he was not.  So I gear up for what he describes as ‘real real nasty’ and head outside

One look or smell into this bin and I’m telling you, you would either gag or lit­er­ally throw-up.  Putrid is not even the word to describe this smell, and dis­gust­ing isn’t the word I could use to best jus­tify what was in there.  We must have spent a good 5–10 min­utes just debat­ing on how we’re gonna get these things out, where are we gonna put them and who’s gonna hold the garbage bag.

Ready for war, but hate con­tact with rodents and insects.  We man­aged to deal with the ‘prob­lems’ still, but I sure ain’t eat­ing break­fast or lunch for a goooood cou­ple of hours!