_MY PHOTO plastered across a retail storefront in PARIS_

I was contacted by someone in the Graphic Arts department of a French men's clothing retailer this week, inquiring about using a photo I shot for their store window displays. Be still my fluttering heart... MY PHOTO plastered across a retail storefront in PARIS (my favourite city of all the places I've been)?! I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven (aka, a place where Ryan Gosling reads poetry to you while offering a light for your cuban cigar handrolled by the ghost of Fidel Castro himself). What is WRONG with me?!

Anyways, back to my story. The message from said retailer didn't mention anything about 'buying' my image, just a request for the original file (photo below). I googled my way onto their website, and got punched in the face with their pricing - their dress shirts ranged from 115 to 450 Euros!! So I politely responded that I would provide them with a copy of the file for the nominal price of 100 Euros. Surely, an upscale purveyor of French fashion that felt right charging customers 450 Euros for a piece of cloth with some buttons and two sleeves sewn on it could afford to pay one quarter of that for a photo which would be used as promotional material to further increase the sales of their - did I mention the price of 450 Euros?! - shirts.

Well, turns out I didn't even get a response from them. My Ryan Gosling/ Fidel Castro-esque dream has been crushed, but I also feel good that I didn't provide my personal work for a "pathological profit at all costs, screw the artists" type of corporate entity to use in their advertising.

But still... feeling a little bittersweet at the moment. Having said all this, I'd still throw all moral qualms and principles out the window if they agreed to my (generous) terms. Vanity, eh?

Adventures in Fooding - Big Fish

Another weekend, another food and drink blog post. As I sit here blogging about our eating adventures (again!), Anita is currently doing what appears to be endless sit-ups to work off our restaurant meal (technically, MEALS considering we haven't had one single homecooked one this weekend). It's amusing to watch her work out, but it also makes me feel like a total lard ass for not joining in. Whatever, I have photos to upload, and typing to do! Clearly, my threshold for justifications and rationalizing is extremely low.

We hit up Big Fish Seafood Restaurant and Oyster Bar tonight for... wait for it... seafood and oysters. The name sorta says it all. We shared a half dozen fresh oysters, which Anita informed me was the first time we'd consumed these libido boosters in 293 days. For real. She keeps a log of every raw oyster we eat, complete with which region/ bay/ coast they're sourced from, and the taste profiles of each... sort of like an extreme version of a wine snob. We also indulged in: 1) sturgeon skewers served with spaghetti squash fritters and mango lemon aioli, 2) lamb and lobster burger with cambazola cheese, avocado and salsa cruda, and 3) seared salmon on French lentils with wild mushrooms, sage, and dungeness crab. YUMMY! Unfortunately, the specific dish I really wanted to try (a softshell crab sandwich) was only available on the lunch menu. Who wants to meet us there for lunch sometime?


















I'm holding an oyster shell, in case you couldn't tell what it was.

Ox and Angela - Crispy Fried Sardine Bones, anyone?

Anita and I have had our fill of strange food fare on our travels, so it was interesting to finally have something exotic that we haven't tried before, within our very own city. We hit up Ox and Angela yesterday afternoon for a quick meal, and the menu offerings were an extensive and eclectic mix of Spanish tapas. The place was packed full with reservations, so we were ushered to the bar to eat, where we had a great view of the bartenders mixing a variety of very interesting looking cocktails (I would probably return for those alone). The food was decent, and the highlight piece of 'ooh how interesting' were the grilled sardines. Those in and of themselves, were good, but the surprise was that post consumption, they took away the bones and crispy deep fried them, representing them to us on a butcher block with a paprika aioli. Very TASTY!





The presentation of these fried fish bones reminded me a little of my 'Dead Bird Diaries' series of photos.








Afterwards, we went to see The Place Beyond the Pines (Ryan Gosling!!!), which was some heavy heavy subject matter. But that's beside the point - what I really wanted to talk about was the dude beside us who was eating THE. STINKIEST. PIZZA. EVER. It smelled like an unwashed dog and a bag of vomit blended into one, topped with a pile of sweaty socks. Seriously, that lethal cocktail of aromas should have been enough to knock out even the most hardy Spartan. I have no idea how he managed to chow down on it like it was actually food. And I thought I had an iron stomach...

Easter Weekend Photodump

Anita and I spent the Easter long weekend eating, drinking, and hiking in Banff. We also pretended to be ritzy socialites and took in the Afternoon Tea at the Banff Springs Hotel. I may even have extended my pinky while sipping on tea and eating dainties. Sorry, hard to come up with more tales of humorous shenanigans given the events of this week. Pray for Boston.































Photos shot on various cams: Leica M6 & Voigtlander 35/1,4; Kiev88 & Arsat 80/2.8; and Nikon D300 & Nikkor 35/1.8.

Life on Two Wheels - Ho Chi Minh

Here's a long overdue post of more photos from Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh, the people tend to refer to vehicles not as cars and motorbikes, but rather in terms of numbers: either you ride two wheels or four wheels. Most of the population relies on two wheels (mopeds and bicycles) as their means of transport and livelihoods.

These shots were taken while riding on the back of a Xe Om's moped. Xe Om is pronounced 'Seh Om', which is essentially a hired moped driver - not necessarily a properly registered cabbie, but rather, a mercenary with a scooter and a tank of gas at your service. My Xe Om had a particular fondness for black coffee and purple corduroy pants (and no, he was not a hipster). Picture a rotund-ish Japanese Kamikaze pilot, but instead of a plane, he would attack oncoming traffic (head on, more often than not) with his tiny little moped. While wearing Purple.Corduroy.Pants. He wasn't Japanese either, but that's beside the point. I would be the equivalent of the gunner in the back, shooting anything and everything in the way. We made a good team - his slightly erratic driving (to me, anyways) gave me the opportunity to snap off some candids of two wheeled folks in action from their perspective. I would not have captured these same views on foot (the lowliest of low in the transport hierharchy). Thanks Purple Pants! You rock.



















And below, I introduce you to the Mopedaire himself, Mr. Purple Pants. In four days of riding with him, I never did get his actual name, but I think it was something that sounded like 'Ayuk.' Regardless, it mattered not for we didn't greet each other by name, but rather through exchanges of manly head nods and restrained half grunts.



Photogeeks: The street photos were taken with the Sony RX-100, while the portrait of my Xe Om was taken with a Kiev88 CM on Fuji NPH 400 (a film stock which yields terribly flat colours).

Ms. Vickies, you are a naughty seductive temptress.

Dear Ms. Vickies Jalapeno potato chips: This weekend, I'm going to ravage you like a man who hasn't eaten Ms. Vickies Jalapeno potato chips in 46 days. Stupid Lent**.

I went through potato chip withdrawal for the first 2 weeks before the shakes finally subsided. I would walk into the pantry absent mindedly 3 or 4 times an hour, and reach for the unopened bag of delicious chips before realizing I was participating in this exercise in restraint. Ms. Vickies, you are a naughty seductive temptress.

Also, if you read my previous post about Mr. Van Damme, apparently his actual last name is Van Varenberg. Jean-Claude Camille Francois Van Varenberg. Camille?! No wonder he became a martial artist. Imagine the number of asses that needed kicking in school, with a name like that to make fun of.


**Technically, I'm the stupid one for lenting myself of chips when I'm not even Catholic. Stupid George.

_my drop kick homage to Van Damme, c. 1990_

I was out jogging in the late afternoon today, when a fatass in a white Pontiac Sunfire gave me a drive by heckling. The bastard rolled down his window, squeezed his pudgy face out of it, and heckled me with some unintelligble high pitched yelling while he passed me. I slowed my pace for a second in confusion... I was slightly disoriented, and momentarily thought I had travelled to some alternate universe where obese men cruising the streets of suburbia in an old white Sunfire was considered cool. But alas, I regained my senses and realized HA - there IS NO.SUCH.UNIVERSE! Seriously, a Sunfire! The most pathetic excuse of a vehicle a man could ever drive. Google 'Is a sunfire' and see what the auto fill comes up with, and the page results for those autofills. He may as well have been wearing a dress, sporting a perm, and pounding Taylor Swift through the tinny speakers.

Sadly, I got over my confusion too late to chase the unlikely bully down and dropkick his car into oblivion, Van Damme Style. You know THE KICK, where JCVD jumps and spins and does the splits while connecting with a vicious back heel, and the victim's face does one of those slow motion mouth wiggles as teeth and spit fly in 3 different directions. Only, in this case, it would have been the Sunfire's radiator exploding into a fountain of green gatorade from the impact of my drop kick homage to Van Damme, c. 1990. Sorry Mr. Damme*, I let you down.

*Do you think he goes by Mr. Damme or Mr. Van Damme? Is Van a middle name, or an additional surname? Why didn't they teach us these important facts in school?

And in a completely unrelated matter, this is a photo I took of stuff . Good times.


Three overlapping exposures, taken with a Diana mini on Ilford XP2 Super 400 film.

_Prince William buys a latex ball gag_

If you are reading this post because the subject line actually intrigued you... well, read on. One of the perks of using Blogger is that you get access to some interesting statistics for your blog. This includes page visits, what country your audience is visiting from, what browser they use, and even what their favourite type of underwear is. Okay, you don't actually get that last one, but that's about all that google can't tell you. One of the other interesting things is that you get information on how people found your site - including some of the strange keywords that people actually look up. Below is an example of how a couple people found my blog today (they ended up on a post about Tytus' birthday party from a few years ago):



So the next time you decide to look up some random topic that pops into your head, keep in mind that googling isn't as anonymous as it seems, and people can quite easily see what you're looking up. When you get the urge to look up potentially embarrassing keywords like 'Prince William buys a latex ball gag**' you may want to do that on someone else's computer. Just saying.

**Dear Royal family: please don't sue me for defamation. I don't actually think Willie looks like a ball gag kind of dude. Strikes me as more of a leather chaps man. But that's his business, and who am I to judge.

Adventures in Fooding - Sushi at Red Ember, Calgary

Blogging our fooding adventures is almost becoming a weekend tradition... we've been dining out a lot lately, and tonight I present you with some photos from our latest adventure at Red Ember, a great little Sushi restaurant in Kensington. While the parking situation was a little confusing for this place, the rest of the evening was pretty much spot on perfect.

The sashimi was fresh, reasonably priced ($34.95 for 24 pcs), and very generously portioned. And for fans of Uni (sea urchin), it's currently in season, and you can get very large portions of fresh Uni for $3.95/ piece. YUM! The menu was fairly standard, offering the gamut of your typical Japanese appetizers, sunomonos, sushi/ sashimi, and rolls, but there were some unusual items that we hadn't tried before as well. These included Akimo (monkfish liver with ponzu sauce, topped with grated daikon and chives), and the house Red Ember roll (a tuna and salmon roll, tempura battered and fried, sliced into 6 pieces, laid onto their sides, and then each topped with one of six different ingredients - seaweed salad, chopped scallops, spicy tuna, spicy salmon, mango salad, and spicy crab). All told, our meal came to a shade over $100 including drinks, and we were rolling out of there stuffed like overloaded suitcases. The wait staff were friendly and attentive, and while we were paying the cheque, inquired if we enjoyed our meal. Our reply was a resounding, "We'll definitely be back."