June! June! June!

Let's begin June, shall we?

OK let's end May first, oops.
Thursday, May 30: Post Secret.

Frank Warren of PostSecret showed up in Toronto at OCAD to give a talk about the website and secrets in general. I got there an hour and a half before Karen did with one of her friends she randomly met on the subway...however ex-roomie Amy showed up an hour after me with people, so I only sat on the pavement doing my Spanish homework for an hour.

The show was really interesting. He showed a lot of postcards which cannot be published and talked about what he's learned about secrets as well as different experiences people have shared with him regarding letting go or keeping secrets. It was difficult to talk about that in Spanish class the following Monday.


Previously never seen postcard.


Frank Warren.

Saturday, June 2: Luminato
The disappointment of the summer. This was a week long arts festival going on all over downtown TO.

Camera didn't come out until stop 2, the distillery district.

Karen.


Art.


T-shirt by an artist, now property of Karen.


Look how busy the distillery was!


They had mega-scrabble, I did not partake.


More art!

The evening was supposed to hold a concert, however due to dining, we got there late and didn't feel like paying cover and such, so we opted for wandering around.


Karen hit up the sketchiest bathroom in Chinatown..


What?! This is a restaurant.

Let's skip ahead to Sunday, June 10, shall we?
Met up with Jen, newly returned from a month in Europa, at the bus station to head down to London. Oh yeah.


We ended up walking to the hotel since we are all too familiar with public transport in London. Sweet room, huh?


It was a two bedroom suite... wait...


Phone on the can! Amazing! Disgusting! What?!

After kind of hanging out for a bit, Jen and I caved and hit up sushi... yum!

Post-dinner we decided to walk another 2 feet to Barney's

London, this is the last time I'll see you, I'm sure.


Cheers to convocation! Oh yeah, we went to London for graduation! Undergrad is over.... *sniff* *sniff*


Aww Jen and me

We had a bit to drink when Nelson finally showed up... and shortly thereafter one of his high school friends randomly walked by and joined us, sort of. He wasn't really there.


Always attracting young men, Nelson nabbed this feller. (how much do you hate/love me now Nelson??). He's kind of dreamy like Max Steele.

The guy kept telling us about his recent breakup with his 10 year girlfriend, etc. and how she was flirting with other guys right in front of him. He kept pointing to different girls though. Also demonstrated on Nelson what the guys were doing to her... Nelson also convinced the guy that we were engaged (ok, didn't take much, dude was drunk) and that he'd let me do whatever I want as long as I came back. We were peeing ourselves laughing...on the inside. Oh Nelson.

One reason that I liked London was that...

Whenever you go out, you randomly run into friends you never see! Ann!


Then they grope you!


You also see their friends again... you may remember that tall guy from Ann kicking his ass at Irish Car Bomb drinking.


Nelson has the best cellphone wall paper of all time.

We had to break up the night pretty early, convocation required us being with gown and cap at 8:45, oof.

Monday, June 11: Convocation

All prettied up.


My dad is now one of those dads. He came down from the stands to photograph me sitting down.
Hey that's half of Fried's face.


And getting up..There's about 20 of these.


The Academic Procession nearly had me on the floor. Dude, I think I'm in the wrong room, this is the wizard convention.


Look, I graduated!


Me and Ann post ceremony.


Ran into ex-roomie Amy on the way out.

Here are the papers kids, four years and this is what I got for my student loan debt:


Thanks extra credit!





Thursday, June 14: I went to Montreal and didn't take a single photograph, what?

Friday, June 15: Return to Toronto
Met up with Karen at the train station for dinner and then with Jen and Andy to go see the Hidden Cameras. Best show of the summer, hands down. After the show (Andy took pics, clearly still on her camera) we began to wander around and I found some guy's notebook...see this. We tried to call, but there was no answer. Then Jen and Andy got some sushi.


See? I wasn't lying.

We got drinks at the taste of little Italy and hung out. I caught the last bus home that night. Oof the suburbs suck.

Saturday: I slept.

Saturday, June 23
Francofete - also disappointing, but less hype



These drummers were cool though.

We met up with some of Jen's friends for dinner at harbourfront. Just as I had to leave a really good French band came on.. but I left. Met up with Andy and Karen and one of Karen's friends then went to the most ridiculous art show of all time.

First, sketchiest area ever...well it was little Portugal or whatever it's called. Then the instructions involved us going through a back alley and down some stairs. We came in to find that the artist was showing videos of her little sister reading things about her while she stood beside her. These videos were hosted on YouTube and were being projected onto her kitchen wall. I don't remember her name. but she's from the trampoline hall...new research: lauren bride. Watch these incoherent videos. Anyway, there were a few guys there taking it all in. We were trying not to laugh our heads off. Then we walked into the other room, presumably her bedroom, where she had fake math equations up and various love letters. Then we went to the bathroom, where we, along with two strange men, listened to voicemail messages left to the artist answering the question "what is your place in the world?" It was pretty hysterical. We left and got some ice cream before heading home.

Skip ahead some more...
Friday, June 29
Had a ridiculous drunken night with friends, here is some evidence


Carolyn and I


When I do this, I've been drinking.


Awww.


Saturday, June 30
Got home at 4:00 am and woke up at 7:30 am... that's not even enough time to disinfect my contacts. By 9:30, the whole family was on our way to Detroit Rock City to see the Henry Ford.

It took over an hour to cross the border, which was mega-annoying, but we still made it in time for the 2:00 bus leaving for the factory.

I'll give you a bit of a recap of the tour. We hop on a city bus type thing, where this really epic music starts playing with a video and it's supposed to coincide with things we're driving by. We felt like we were heading to Jurassic Park.

There was about 10 of us on the bus and the guy at the first station still felt it was necessary to use a loudspeaker. Anyway, we watched one movie about the history of the Henry Ford (Factory) and all that crap. It was pretty annoying because it was on three different screens. My dad slept. Second station, another movie, this time with 8 screens in a circle. Fuck, you're kidding me. Anyway, this one was really like Jurassic Park, it was about the manufacturing process and the chairs swiveled and stuff. They even had lights, smoke and water to emphasize the movie. SO ridiculous.

Next we were loaded into an elevator where they showed us the different parts of the factory from the top of the glass enclosure.




The roof is covered with this moss stuff.


OHHH. What?


The factory's only solar panels, strategically placed.


Those smoke stack things are where the cars are dried, I think.


Fantastic.

After this we were herded to station 4, the factory floor. We saw where they make the F150, but it was a Saturday so the factory was closed and we still weren't allowed to take pics. There were stations with inane videos explaining really simple concepts. Somewhat insulting.


The end of the tour. Thankfully.

Having some time to kill before dinner, we headed to a local mall that resembled an Escher picture.


Omer tried on sunglasses at Holt Renfrew.




We're artistes. That's my mom and Omer. They were laughing so hard, it took about 10 minutes to snap this.

We got lost on the way over to my grandmother's cousin's house (a.k.a. Aunt Lola) so we had to stop at some sketch gas station. Scary.

Dinner was nice and full of food. Omer and I went to sleep at Lola's sister, Helda's place.

Sunday, July 1: Brunch
After a pre-brunch breakfast at Helda's, we went to Lola's daughter, Vera's house for brunch with a whole whack of family. Their house is the most amazing thing.


That's my mom on their deck.


My mom and Lola (she's looked like that since I met her in 1991)


That's Mitchu (spelling?), Lola and Helda's older brother and my dad (do I make more sense now?)


That's me and Helda, who apparently looks just like my grandmother, the one I'm named after.

My brother then took off with my camera..



You can see their house back there. So nice.


Artsy ohms.

A bit later on, Omer and I ventured around their house. They had monogrammed paper towels in the guest bathroom. It was a gorgeous house.


Lounging.


Greatest livingroom.

After this, we headed home and got home around 8:00. By this time Omer had a full cold, so no going to see Final Fantasy perform, sadly. That's all for June folks.