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...