Just What I Needed-The Cars

I remember watching a re-run of this Live Aid broadcast on TV when I was a kid and being entranced by the face that was singing to me. Check out what a babe Benjamin Orr is! Ugh, I wish he was still alive...

P.S. Please note the enthusiasm oozing out of the keyboard player.

Animal Collective - My Girls

I just realized that I've been posting lot's of videos lately...

I Beg Your Pardon

This is the most hectic/chaotic song! Why were the 80's so amazing?! UGH!

Panda Run

I made this! For school! Fun! The quality is better in real life but blogger compressed it and made it look weird... Also, the last minute is just white because I didn't know how to shorten the time on AfterEffects (a annoying Adobe program I had to use to make the movie). The song is called Night Society by Silver Jews. Enjoy!

P.S. My mom and I made the panda costume.

Term project progress... pt. 4

Maite

Term project progress... pt. 3

Judy

Term project progress... pt. 2

Josh

Term project progress

Gotta post this for one of my teachers, to show my progress for a term project I'm working on for one of my classes.

I need a better digital camera...

Aleks

The Future is Bright.

What I did this weekend...

This was my hair on Wednesday.

And this was my hair on Thursday.

As a Libra, I suffer from severe indecisiveness, but I decided that since I turned 21 recently it was time for a change. I've had long hair for about 3 years now, and as much as I loved it it was quite the challenge to maintain. With school practically doing me in the butt, I need as much simplicity in my life as possible right now. Hence, the short hair. Plus my hairdresser gave me the name of a charity that I can donate my hair to, Angel Hair for Kids, they make and donate wigs to children who can't afford them. So I'll be mailing them a 12 inch braid in the next week. Apparently it takes about 8 braids to make a wig. Craaazy.

Pretty!

As I was putting up my last post, Graeme surprised me with another early (this time much less so) birthday present. My birthday is tomorrow, so I guess he just couldn't wait any longer, which I thought was super cute. I hastily snapped a few photo booth shots of it so I could show off how awesome my boyfriend is, but was kind of unsuccessful in showing the necklace's true greatness, so I just found an image of it on the store's website.

I've taken a shine to owl's in the past year, they're really strange and amazing creatures. Plus they look a lot like bird versions of cats, and I really like cats, so... I've also been crocheting amigurumi owls like mad, as of late. They're a fun way to impress your friends, even though they're not that difficult to make. I thank this book for that. Yay for Graeme, and for owls, and for cute necklace representations of them!

4x5 Landscape

Shot with a 4x5 camera on a rural road in Nobel, Ontario, a few minutes away from Killbear Provincial Park. I had to size it down for blogger, which doesn't do the image any justice. The proportions that a 4x5 negative can be blown up to are preposterous. You could cover your bedroom wall if you wanted.

Finally...

Shot with the Diana Mini that Graeme bought me as an early birthday present.

Man and Chipmunk, at peace at last

I'm not feeling ship shape tonight, so I'm going to make this brief. I took this photo on my and Graeme's camping trip at Killbear Provincial Park, this past weekend. We had lot's of fun, but I'll elaborate and take you on a photo montage adventure in my next post, when I have more energy.

New post? Whaaa?

This is baloney. I haven't updated my blog in eons, and for what reason? Laziness. Sheer, utter, gluttonous laziness. I can't tell if the gluttonous part even goes with the laziness, it just sounded smart and appropriate in my mind. What to say... what to say? The TV is on, and I just looked up and CHRIS O'DONNELL was on the screen? Where the heck has he been for, like, the past ten years? According to Wikipedia, he was in a movie called "Kit Kitteradge: An American Girl", and will be in "Cat's and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore". Both movies have colons in the title. Sounds promising.

I'm going camping on Thursday, my first camping trip since I was about 11. I went to MacGregor Point with my parents and my aunt, uncle and two cousins, in a trailer my dad borrowed from a co-worker. I remember it being fun, there are pictures of my little cousin (about 3 at the time) wearing my older cousins fuchsia pink swimsuit backwards like an 80's aerobics uniform. Nobody knew he was planning on doing it (I think we were outside eating breakfast), and he burst out of the trailer and yelled "TA DA!" as if we were all expecting it. I also have other pictures from that trip, but I don't own a scanner, so I'll post them next time I'm at Graeme's (who does own a scanner).

I will also post the photo's I take on this trip, and elaborate more on the details. If I tell you where I'm going now, there won't be as much to write in my next post. Plus, there's the added element of mystery. You are dying of curiosity right now.

Dinosaur

paperrip
Originally uploaded by claud-hop

This is a series I created for a final assignment in my "Visual Studies" class. I find that university class titles are very vague and general sounding... I had a class last semester called "Concepts and Theories" which could really mean anything.

The series is titled "Dino The Office Dinosaur". The title sounds a bit like a low-budget late 80's early 90's children's television show, which I thought was funny because, growing up in the 90's, there seemed to be a lot of anthropomorphic dinosaur related entertainment, ie. "The Land Before Time", Pterry from Pee Wee's Playhouse", and of course, the really strange and chaotic television series "Dinosaurs", which was about a working class family of dinosaurs who's society has this bizarre toxic lifestyle. But I digress. I wanted to make a series that displayed something remarkable living a completely unremarkable life, so I chose to create an office series of mundane images, but spice it up with a dinosaur-man-creature that works amongst the "normals". The images display Dino interacting with his co-workers like a normal man, but struggling at times because of his walnut-sized brain and impatient dinosaur tendencies.

Thanks to all of my friends who helped me out with this shoot, especially Graeme, who had to endure the hot flashes being inside of that rubber mask. Also, thanks to my mom, who got me the permission to use the office (that she works in) on a Saturday. Oh yes, and if you are wondering, "but what mark did you get on this assignment, Claudia? I simply must know!" I got 100%, boo yeah. Click on the dinosaur to see the rest of the series on my flickr page.

Theme 5: Cardboard

Here it is, the last of the class blog photos, Cardboard! Ba-dah! (that was... a success sound of sorts). This means that next week is my last photography production class, and I am a little sad because it was definitely the most fun class I had this year. Here is young Macaulay Culkin, in, dare I say, his prime... Home Alone is one of my favorite movies of all time, when I was little because I had a crush on Macaulay Culkin and wanted him to be my boyfriend, and now because it's just an all around great movie. Also, I think it must be mentioned that as of late I have been having a recurring dream where it is 1990, and I am in Home Alone. I'm Kevin McCallister's older sister, and the two of us are outwitting Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern (Harry and Marv) together. Yup. I am THAT cool.

Theme 4: Blue

Took me a while to post it, but here's my blue photo. It occurred to me as I was preparing for this shoot, that I have a crapload of blue clothes and accessories. I guess I really, really like blue, I've always been drawn to it for some reason. The doc's in the middle of the makeshift clothesline are my favorite shoes. I've never seen anybody else wearing the same ones in all of Toronto, which makes me happy because it's really hard to be original in this city.

Theme 3: Injuries

Here we have class blog theme number 3, injuries. My friends Shira (make-up) and Maddy (model) helped out a great deal, without them this would just be an image of my shower's walls. I put some others on my flickr page, you are encouraged to look at them. You are also encouraged to enjoy them.

Theme 2: Water

I put this up on the class blog almost two weeks ago... I'm not very proud of it, but I figured I should update this blog for my plethora of readers, all waiting for my next post with bated breath. The next theme, injuries, is due this Wednesday. I haven't started planning, let alone shooting, which is silly because I'm on reading week and have been just the laziest person. It's two pm, and I'm still lying in bed in my pajamas. I sicken me.

Scary dream

I dreamt last night that Graeme and I had several little tots, and one was a baby, but every time I held her she bawled until her little voice was hoarse. But when Graeme held her she was fine and dandy. It scared the crap out of me. Having babies.

Theme 1: Hair

I have completed my photo for the class blog under my teacher's chosen theme of "hair". Next theme, "water". If anyone would care to see how other people decided to depict the profound subject of hair, I have provided a link to the class blog on the left. It's the first blog on the list. Or click this.

YARGH!

I just received the most infuriating email from the head office of the company I work for, Cineplex. Apparently they decided to make new uniforms for us, because, goodness knows, every two years you must blow thousands of dollars on redesigning and reissuing new uniforms. Don't put that money towards raises for the hardworking, underpaid employees, or as they call us "cast members", which by the way is the gayest thing in the world. Then they issued a whole list of new crap that we have to follow, on top of the other bullshit that they think makes us a reputable company. The only reason they have so many customers and make so much money is because they're practically the only movie theatre chain in Canada. I only cut and pasted about half of the new rules, just because reading the entire thing gave me a huge headache.

Female Cast:

-Conservative hair styles with natural looking colours are preferred / required.
Extreme cuts or colours not encouraged

-Bangs should be short or combed back and held out of the eyes
-Long hair must be tied back, not tucked underneath caps or a hairnet maybe be
required
-Additional decorative ribbons, ornaments, barrettes, etc., not permitted
-Only lightly applied and natural shades of make-up, mascara, eye shadow, eye
liner, lipstick and blush permitted
-Fingernails kept well manicured
-Nail polish is not permitted for those cast members working food service
positions
-Other positions may wear clear or natural toned nail polish

All Cast:
-Rings - only wedding sets or one normal small ring per hand

-Watches; the only permitted wrist jewellery is a watch, except Medic Alert
bracelets and tags
-Necklaces; no visible necklaces allowed, except Medic Alert
-Earrings; studs or small hoops in the lobe portion of the ear and only one
earring in each ear is encouraged / preferred.
-Body Piercing / Tattoos; visible body piercing are not permitted while on duty.
Visible tattoos, perceived offensive, must be appropriately covered.
-Scents; strong perfumes or cologne are to be avoided

What the hell is an "extreme haircut"? A mullet? Because nobody wears those anymore, so they really shouldn't worry about it. They should just fire all of us and hire robots... if they existed. And when they do exist, one day, they probably will fire us because they are money-hungry douche-bags that cut every possible corner just so they can make a few extra bucks. Tomorrow, I'm getting a tattoo, dying my hair bright pink, wearing all the jewelry I own, dousing myself in a vat of perfume, and rubbing my hands in dirt before I go to work.

The icing on the cake is that I have to wear a baseball hat with the Cineplex logo on it, you know, in case the customers (which head office calls "guests". Also gay) get confused by the uniformed polo shirt that I, and every other employee, is wearing and don't quite grasp the fact that I work there. Baseball hats have visors. Visors block off light. The Varsity (the name of the theatre I work at) has very low, defused lighting, some customers even complain about how dark it is in there. So it only makes perfect sense that the employees wear something to block off what little light there is. Also, the booth is a pretty dark place, and the super cool visor gets in the way of threading the projectors because it's a wide and protruding piece of cloth-covered cardboard coming out from my forehead.

I was planning on making my image for my photo production class blog before I went out tonight. Then I read that email and was crippled with rage. And now there's no time. Cineplex has fucked me over once again. Curse you Cineplex, curse you.

A first.

It's late. I can't sleep. I'm tired, but I can't seem to make my brain calm down, which is rare cause there's not always a whole lot going on up there. Nothing profound, at least. The problem: I keep thinking of all these ideas I have for photographs, and my mind is all over the place, mentally putting the props, locations, and poses together at a speed normally reserved for greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit. My photo production teacher Robyn, decided this semester that our class should have a by-weekly themed blog, this weeks theme being "hair". I was pretty excited, I had a photo all figured out. It was going to be shot underwater. I hadn't expected the next theme to actually be "water", which threw off the whole plan when she posted the themes for the upcoming weeks (water, injuries, blue, cardboard) and my brain just lost it. "Too many ideas!" it shouted, to which I replied "Pipe down! I'm trying to sleep... Jerk..." Anyways, I've grown bored of writing this post, so I'm going to end it abruptly, without any proper resolution. Goodnight.

Medium format

Today, after a thorough art history lecture, I went over to Elpro Photo on Elm street (a street really close to Ryerson) and picked up a roll of 120 film I had dropped off on Friday. Preeetty exciting. I never use film anymore mostly because I have gotten used to that instant gratification from digital, and with school projects and deadlines digital is just more practical. But I've noticed that digital prints have this weird hyper-clarity to them that I don't always like, and I miss the grainy, dreamy quality that one can only achieve through using film and a cheaply made medium format camera. So here's a print of Data, the rest I'll put on flickr, and cheers to film.

Suuunnndaaay...

No power outages at work today. No fires, floods, earthquakes, Godzillas, or other natural disasters either. Maybe exciting things will happen tomorrow. I will be picking up a roll of developed film tomorrow after class, so perhaps there will be photos to share with you. Whoever you are. For now, I have "What a feeling" from Flashdance stuck in my head.

The darkness

"Why is the title of this post so emo, Claudia?" I will tell you, invisible person who only exists in my head. Yesterday, a big chunk of downtown Toronto lost its power at about 11:30 am. According to Toronto Hydro Services it was due to a burst water mane. My place of work was lucky enough to be affected by this event, but me and my fellow employees were not allowed to actually leave work, incase the power came back on (I work at a movie theatre, and the idea of ever being closed is a travesty to the company's head office, who, by the way, get about 2 months off a year). So, we hung around, talking and fooling about, taking turns telling the confused customers to essentially fuck off, but in a nicer way. It's shocking how incredibly stupid some people are. We'd say, "I'm sorry, but we're closed for the time being because the power is out. We don't know how long it will be out, so you should probably go home," to which they'd reply "So I can't even see Avatar? Can I at least get a diet Coke?" No my friend, both those things would require a magical thing called ELECTRICITY. Hard to understand, I know, but you'll wrap your precious little head around it soon enough.

2:45 pm rolls around, and suddenly all light and power is restored. Everybody reluctantly rushes around trying to get things ready for the eager movie goers. Being the projectionist, my job is to go upstairs to the projection booth to thread the prints and start the movies. The booth is already a slightly scary place; a giant room full of big, loud machines that make strange sounds at random times, and a catwalk above your head also emitting sudden sounds and freaky shadows lurking about. I never thought about how blood-curdlingly frightening the booth would be when completely silent and pitch black. But no worries, I had the benefit of finding out. While threading the first projector, apparently the power said, "umm, no thank-you" and went out once again. Excuse the lame cliche, but it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. But you wouldn't be able to see it. You also wouldn't be able to see the Projectionist Killer (a serial killer invented by the mind of Claudia while in a state of sheer terror) coming for you while you frantically ran down the stairs, using your crappy cell phone as a flash light.

I'm guessing the power was out most of the evening, because it was still off when my shift was finished at 5 pm. My next shift is tomorrow, 4-10:30 pm, and I'm slightly nervous, I hope I didn't anger the Projectionist Killer by narrowly escaping his clutches. I hope the ghosts in the booth (the ones I blame when something inexplicably goes wrong) take care of him...