Monday, October 31, 2011

Halloween 2011

 You can't really tell but this guy was a streetlamp and it looked really good.  He was sticking very close to his large group of friends so it was hard to take his photo.
 My favourite was the Prince from Katamari Damacy.  He even kept rolling the ball around.  Everyone kept saying "Who is that guy???"
 This guy was a ferris wheel, but like a little bit of a creepy one.
 There were thousands and thousands of people.  The streets were full like the day before Pride.
 Liz kept hawking her perfume.
 This one was also excellent, the people were standing behind the seats. The best costumes were originals.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

There's a Strange Cat Outside

Nuit Blanche 2011

It seems they edited Blogger as inserting photos and placing text between photos is now quite nearly impossible, plus once you do get it when you hit post it looks like crap.  So good job, thanks for that.
Less to see at Nuit Blanche this year. I couldn't find as many crazy things like looking up a woman's dress or a huge clown head.  I picked four things.
The first was an exhibit called Residue where a guy breaks into abandoned buildings and takes photos and objects people have left behind.  I liked this locker for the ninja turtle and the found porn.

Isn't the word "Oriental" racist?
The exhibit was okay but the photo gallery had too many photos and the sizes were too small.  They had some great photos of Detroit but they should have made larger prints and had less of them to help show the scope of the empty buildings.  They also had what looked like exhibition catalogues for sale but with no posted price I couldn't buy one.
As I was leaving a 1951 TTC Streetcar mysteriously pulled in front of me, no idea what that was doing there.
This was my second stop, a video presented on a 360 degree screen from Moscow called "The Feast of Trimalchio".
The concept was cool and you had to keep rotating your head around to see the different images. The video was about 1.5 hours long so I only saw the first 20 minutes or so.  These people arrived on an island by cruise ship, and I noticed it was the huge cruise ship I was on:
Then they got fanned, saw peacocks, played tennis, it was kind of weird actually but I think I liked it.
On the walk to my next item I saw "The Police Station" where fake cops arrest people.  Weird.
From there on to "Another Protest Song: Karaoke With A Message" which was hosted by Keith Cole and someone else and when I went the someone else was hosting. This guy sang "Dream On" by Aerosmith and was the worst singer I have ever heard.  He had no tone, didn't know the words even though they were printed in front of him, it was a disaster. I tried to take a video of it but screwed up and when I thought I was hitting start I was actually hitting stop; I got about 1 second of video.
Finally, "Honey, I'm Home!", a 90's sitcom where YOU get to be the character of the dad.  The show was pre-taped and random people from the street got to be digitally inserted into the show, with the idea being that 90's sitcoms were controlled by white men and this would create some alternative families. There were lots of females, a 6 year old Asian girl and a drag queen all who played "Dad" while I was there.
The video was projected on to a brick wall:
And beneath it was the set where the people could jump into the show.
Least year I went with friends, Kent Monkman signed my book, had an amazing time, so this year was a bit of a let down.