I have for a while thought that Detroit might well be the place to be for up and coming artists. I don't really know the city well, except that there is mad cheap space available in beautiful old buildings. Also, the city has roots and culture as deep as any city in America.
The entire downtown has always struck me as one big version of that slightly sketchy neighbourhood where all the artists live... the one that will sooner or later sprout hip sketchy bars, and galleries, and then cafes, and Starbucks, and condos...
(If I'm at all right, now is your chance to pick up a couple of cheap condos/buildings downtown)
Anyway - check out this article (and especially the slideshow) about a new art gallery. Pretty sweet.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Monday, November 27, 2006
Monday
I have a headache today.
This weekend was pretty good. On Saturday night we went to a Toronto Groove Collective house party at Jeremy's place. There were a few people performing, one of them being FT's own Andrew H... you should really go check out his website if you never have. For definite (if he and Reeve ever joined forces, the earth would not be able to withstand the force). It was also a fund raiser to send Esther P to Costa Rica. This is a worthy 'cause, and she made about a million spring rolls which she was selling.
Also, we watched about a million episodes of The (US) Office. It is a funny show, although I am definitely leaning more and more towards the British version as a favorite. It definitely stuck closer to the line of uncomfortable realism... although some of the less realistic moments of the US version are also the funniest. Since we pretty much lead a TV-free lifestyle, I figure the odd binge weekend is OK (esp. with no ads...)
Church was good yesterday. For whatever reason, I really enjoyed Cyril's sermon on Pilate. He was able to contextualize the trial of Jesus in the social politics of the time, and approach Pilate's ethics from a philosophical standpoint, and do it all without sounding like he was trying. (This is probably because he almost has a PhD, and isn't some know-it-all first year clown - he also isn't a pretentious academic...)
Leah skipped church and made a steaming pot of Indian food. Don and Jessica came over for dinner to help us eat it.
This weekend was pretty good. On Saturday night we went to a Toronto Groove Collective house party at Jeremy's place. There were a few people performing, one of them being FT's own Andrew H... you should really go check out his website if you never have. For definite (if he and Reeve ever joined forces, the earth would not be able to withstand the force). It was also a fund raiser to send Esther P to Costa Rica. This is a worthy 'cause, and she made about a million spring rolls which she was selling.
Also, we watched about a million episodes of The (US) Office. It is a funny show, although I am definitely leaning more and more towards the British version as a favorite. It definitely stuck closer to the line of uncomfortable realism... although some of the less realistic moments of the US version are also the funniest. Since we pretty much lead a TV-free lifestyle, I figure the odd binge weekend is OK (esp. with no ads...)
Church was good yesterday. For whatever reason, I really enjoyed Cyril's sermon on Pilate. He was able to contextualize the trial of Jesus in the social politics of the time, and approach Pilate's ethics from a philosophical standpoint, and do it all without sounding like he was trying. (This is probably because he almost has a PhD, and isn't some know-it-all first year clown - he also isn't a pretentious academic...)
Leah skipped church and made a steaming pot of Indian food. Don and Jessica came over for dinner to help us eat it.
Friday, November 24, 2006
friday
So I seem to be hitting the end of the week update more often than the weekend...
This week I somehow became horribly ill sometime in the middle of Monday night. After puking repeatedly (and everywhere) all night, I stayed home with a fever and slept ALL day on Tuesday... and then stayed home and watched DVD episodes of the Office all day Wednesday.
Yesterday I came in to work, and went out to Humber. I am pretty tired, but soon it will be the weekend. If only it were a 4 day long holiday weekend or something...
Monday, November 20, 2006
Weekend
Leah and I went to Amanda and Manfred's great house on Saturday for a party. We played some songs, with Josh L. backing us up on accordian. It was really fun.
We also did some laundry, groceries, and other assorted chores.
Yesterday we did mostly nothing.
We also did some laundry, groceries, and other assorted chores.
Yesterday we did mostly nothing.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Friday!
So I haven't blogged in a good week or so... and I even skipped the weekend update... Let's see what you missed over the last while.
I played the drums in church. Crazy but true story of how you don't always have to know how to do something in order to do it.
I also helped build some giant dancing legs out of tuna cans. Crazier story about, um, building stuff out of tuna cans.
I pulled off some sort of personal best for getting stuff done at work. Like planning entire departments of a hospital in a single day, and then doing it again the next day.
We watched the Souvenir of Canada movie. It was pretty neat, in a low-budget, sort of boring, made for tv kinda way, but interesting to see Douglas Coupland and his parents. Being not Canadian, I guess I don't really get all of the Canadiana referencing. For that matter, being <30 and not from the west coast, there was even a lot of Canadiana that Leah didn't get either.
What else... I went and saw Citizen Cope on Saturday. I wasn't sure what to expect. The place was rammed with kids that looked like they were shipped in on some suburban frosh-week party bus, which was weird and somewhat annoying. The music was pretty good though. I was hoping for some more acoustic versions of his songs, and perhaps some Dylan era covers too... but judging by the guys behind me, who felt it was necessary to yell their, um, comments, after every song that wasn't one of the two radio singles, that would not have been giving the kids what they wanted.
What else... gave a short lecture at Humber on healthcare lighting design.
...and generally did way too many things for one week...
I played the drums in church. Crazy but true story of how you don't always have to know how to do something in order to do it.
I also helped build some giant dancing legs out of tuna cans. Crazier story about, um, building stuff out of tuna cans.
I pulled off some sort of personal best for getting stuff done at work. Like planning entire departments of a hospital in a single day, and then doing it again the next day.
We watched the Souvenir of Canada movie. It was pretty neat, in a low-budget, sort of boring, made for tv kinda way, but interesting to see Douglas Coupland and his parents. Being not Canadian, I guess I don't really get all of the Canadiana referencing. For that matter, being <30 and not from the west coast, there was even a lot of Canadiana that Leah didn't get either.
What else... I went and saw Citizen Cope on Saturday. I wasn't sure what to expect. The place was rammed with kids that looked like they were shipped in on some suburban frosh-week party bus, which was weird and somewhat annoying. The music was pretty good though. I was hoping for some more acoustic versions of his songs, and perhaps some Dylan era covers too... but judging by the guys behind me, who felt it was necessary to yell their, um, comments, after every song that wasn't one of the two radio singles, that would not have been giving the kids what they wanted.
What else... gave a short lecture at Humber on healthcare lighting design.
...and generally did way too many things for one week...
Friday, November 10, 2006
End Week
This was a busy week.
Work is getting a bit hectic - I am working on a job renovating all the heart imaging pieces of Toronto General Hospital. Last week or so I crawled around wikipedia for about a day, reading about all the ways they can feed tubes through your body towards your heart, to take pictures / patch you up / feed you with xray sensitive dyes etc. It was pretty neat, and gross...
On Wednesday I took the day off to take part in a design exercise at the Design Exchange. A bunch of people were put into teams, and had to come up with ways to improve some ghetto part of the city, along with a couple of 'youths' from that neighbourhood. It was pretty interesting, and pretty hectic, 'cause we only had a few hours to brainstorm, develop, and present the ideas. My team was working with two people from the East Scarborough Boys and Girls Club. All the work will be presented at the DX some time in February...
Yesterday I had to teach at Humber. I gave a 30-40 minute lecture on the building code. This is about as dull as it sounds. Thankfully, nobody fell asleep, and nobody caught on to my relative ignorance. I guess I know (relatively) more than the students do, and more than 96% of the general public, probably, so as long as I look like I know what I'm doing, people hopefully learn stuff. This is, I guess, what teaching is all about.
I am also working on the 2006 Canstruction competition at work. This sounds neat and exciting, but is really just a lot of work. It is for a pretty cool event, at least, and involves a buch of firms designing and building things out of canned food. The sculptures are all on display for a couple of weeks, and then dismantled and distributed by the food bank.
What else...
The studio is gearing up... people are moving in... stuff is starting to happen. If anybody has a bunch of carpets/carpeting that they don't want, hook Leah and I up at once.
Leah and Trent will be performing live acoustic jams next weekend at Amanda and Manfred's party.
That is pretty much all...
Work is getting a bit hectic - I am working on a job renovating all the heart imaging pieces of Toronto General Hospital. Last week or so I crawled around wikipedia for about a day, reading about all the ways they can feed tubes through your body towards your heart, to take pictures / patch you up / feed you with xray sensitive dyes etc. It was pretty neat, and gross...
On Wednesday I took the day off to take part in a design exercise at the Design Exchange. A bunch of people were put into teams, and had to come up with ways to improve some ghetto part of the city, along with a couple of 'youths' from that neighbourhood. It was pretty interesting, and pretty hectic, 'cause we only had a few hours to brainstorm, develop, and present the ideas. My team was working with two people from the East Scarborough Boys and Girls Club. All the work will be presented at the DX some time in February...
Yesterday I had to teach at Humber. I gave a 30-40 minute lecture on the building code. This is about as dull as it sounds. Thankfully, nobody fell asleep, and nobody caught on to my relative ignorance. I guess I know (relatively) more than the students do, and more than 96% of the general public, probably, so as long as I look like I know what I'm doing, people hopefully learn stuff. This is, I guess, what teaching is all about.
I am also working on the 2006 Canstruction competition at work. This sounds neat and exciting, but is really just a lot of work. It is for a pretty cool event, at least, and involves a buch of firms designing and building things out of canned food. The sculptures are all on display for a couple of weeks, and then dismantled and distributed by the food bank.
What else...
The studio is gearing up... people are moving in... stuff is starting to happen. If anybody has a bunch of carpets/carpeting that they don't want, hook Leah and I up at once.
Leah and Trent will be performing live acoustic jams next weekend at Amanda and Manfred's party.
That is pretty much all...
Monday, November 06, 2006
hmmm...
The weekend went something like this...
Friday - we took a bunch of stuff over to the studio, met up with Jen, who was dropping off her newly acquired jewelry bench, and then swept out the nastiness that was housed in the small basement room. All of this happened around the strange spectacle of Karl shooting endless pictures of a kid in a cape, and then more pictures of a crazy monster beast thing. Afterwards we went to Nova Era...
Saturday - not much, we ended up doing some more sweeping / vacuuming / mopping of the studio, and hung out with Mae (who was doing some major cleaning...)
Sunday - we discovered an urgent need for somebody to play music at church, so Leah ended up leading solo... I was doing sound, and got a really wicked headache. I seriously thought I might puke on the subway.
Oh yeah - we also watched Junebug on Saturday night - it was a pretty neat movie... Despite being kinda sad due to some major family dysfunction, it was one of the better depictions I have seen of American southern life in a movie (this is by no means saying much, given the usual mockery/caricaturing of anything 'southern' in movies). Also, the soundtrack is by Yo La Tengo, which is an added bonus.
The end...
Friday - we took a bunch of stuff over to the studio, met up with Jen, who was dropping off her newly acquired jewelry bench, and then swept out the nastiness that was housed in the small basement room. All of this happened around the strange spectacle of Karl shooting endless pictures of a kid in a cape, and then more pictures of a crazy monster beast thing. Afterwards we went to Nova Era...
Saturday - not much, we ended up doing some more sweeping / vacuuming / mopping of the studio, and hung out with Mae (who was doing some major cleaning...)
Sunday - we discovered an urgent need for somebody to play music at church, so Leah ended up leading solo... I was doing sound, and got a really wicked headache. I seriously thought I might puke on the subway.
Oh yeah - we also watched Junebug on Saturday night - it was a pretty neat movie... Despite being kinda sad due to some major family dysfunction, it was one of the better depictions I have seen of American southern life in a movie (this is by no means saying much, given the usual mockery/caricaturing of anything 'southern' in movies). Also, the soundtrack is by Yo La Tengo, which is an added bonus.
The end...
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Some links...
Check out this skate ramp...
(longer than a football field, 8 storeys high, and it ramps over a creek..!)
(longer than a football field, 8 storeys high, and it ramps over a creek..!)
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)