I seem to leave big gaps between blog entries, especially when lots of stuff is happening. And lots of stuff seems to have happened since my last entry, which makes it even more difficult to write a quality entry. I’m sure I won’t be giving any of the things that happened adequate quality coverage.

Anyway, when I got back from New York, I had two days to get myself together for a trip to Toronto. I was renting my place to a TV production company to film a few scenes for an upcoming late-night sci-fi program that will air on HBO and The Movie Network. Fortunately, the place wasn’t too messy, so I got it cleaned up and prepared for strangers to be here. I didn’t want to be here at all while the filming was happening. I’d probably have a heart attack seeing how 40 strangers hauling heavy gear treat my stuff and my home. So, I just make sure that all delicate things were put away, and that things were generally clean and tidy.

I headed out to Toronto on Wednesday afternoon. I checked into the Travelodge at King and Bathurst, which would be my base of operations for the next few days. This place defines clean and sensible business accommodations. There’s nothing fancy about it, but it’s a good place to sleep at night, and you can’t beat the location. The room had a small fridge so I could buy some food for breakfast and snacks. It also had decent free wireless Internet so I could stay in touch.

That night, I got to see and perform in Project Project, which was a lot of fun. It happens every Wednesday at the Comedy Bar, and is a great place to experience some experimental improv forms. That night, they had two guest beat poets who read some highly entertaining poems, which were then used to inform a montage of scenes. It was kind of like a poetic Armando.

Thursday night, I was at the Comedy Bar again for the Toronto Improv Festival. I was shooting photos of the acts. Before the show, the stormy and unsettled weather had turned the sky a sort of surreal orange and pink.

I also performed a set with James as Raging 180. We did a grounded monoscene set in our loose form, which involves a rant a la Bassprov. Our characters were roommates, and we just showed a slice of their lives. We haven’t performed together in ages, but I still felt comfortable on stage with James. I would have liked our rant segment to be more intense, but it was still enjoyable to do, and I think interesting to watch.

Friday I did a lot of shopping. I bought shirts, jeans, a jacket and socks. Sometimes I find it hard to buy clothes, and sometimes I find it too easy. Since I was kind of on holiday still, I was in “easy” mode.

That night, I was at the Bad Dog, shooting and performing with Big in Japan. There was a good crowd there, and we put up a decent set too, based on the suggestion “Righteous.”

I checked out of the Travelodge on Saturday, and went home to Hamilton. I had to see what was up with my place after the TV people left. Actually, it wasn’t terrible. It was a bit dirty, and they had left all my lights on and air conditioner cranked, but overall, it wasn’t a disaster. I discovered later that all my food in my fridge had gone bad because they’d unplugged the fridge to record dialogue scenes, and had forgotten to plug it in again. No big deal. They’re reimbursing me for the cleaning, the food in the fridge, and the dents and scratches on the walls. I talked to my neighbours, and apparently this was quite a big deal. They had blocked off serveral blocks around my place, and there were dozens of trailers, equipment vans and generators filling the streets. There were about 40 people tromping in and out of here at all hours. I’m hoping my neighbours weren’t too put off by all the commotion. I’m looking forward to seeing how this all turns out.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been booking a lot of shoots. It’s mostly headshots, but some model portfolio and glamour stuff too. I’ve got two shoots next week at restaurants in Burlington for that magazine I mentioned earlier.

Studio-wise, I made a couple of purchases. My background support system finally arrived. I’d ordered it in June, but it was out of stock, and took forever to get here. Manyk was kind enough to lend me a hand in helping me pick up the rolls of black and white paper, and getting the thing securely installed on the wall.

It’s supposed to hold three rolls, but one of the pieces is broken and needs to be replaced. They’re sending me a new part by UPS. It’s not a big deal right now, since I only have two rolls of paper anyway. I’ll use the third roller set to hold a bar from which I can hang fabric or other backdrops with clamps. I’m loving this new background system. Because the rolls are continuous paper, I can curve them out onto the floor and have nice seamless backgrounds. It makes it so much easier to do full-body photos than before. Here are some of my photos from yesterday that I took with the new background. Oh, and there are a couple I included just because I like them.