Alex's Journal

My DVDs of the minute shorts do not play. :( I can't figure out why; all the info seems to be there, and it's giving me the last frame of picture if I hit play, but... nada.


I really really want these guys :(

So here is the rundown of how the Gilda's Club variety show went:

Was slated to show up at 9:00 (volunteered for that). Got an e-mail a couple of days prior to the event saying it's okay, you can show up at noon. OK, awesome. Sleep in~

Day of, realized MY SHOES WERE GONE. I had no black shoes. I had to BUY A NEW PAIR (which are quite nice, but totally killed my feet - and they're supposedly size tens) which I could not return later. But. Because I had wasted so much time hunting for my old black shoes, I wound up getting to the Eaton's Center at 11:50. Ten minutes later, I am fleeing with new shoes, and I manage to get in to the Elgin only a few minutes behind schedule. (I am, to my great annoyance, NOT the last person there - I would have taken more time with the shoes had I known 12PM was a suggestion. [I don't actually think it was, people are just... yeah. :P])

We got fed: sandwiches, veggies, cheese, pop, candy... a pretty good spread, all told. Then it's off to work! This consisted of hauling wine/champagne/water/pop/glasses up and down to the various levels where the afterparty was going to be. This was annoying mostly because the Elgin's elevators? Don't go to every level. (They go to 6, 4, and 3, I think.) So carrying heavy/awkward boxes of things up and down stairs - joy of my life.

Every so often, we'd take a couple of minutes and watch as the rehearsal went. The show, by the by, has ONE rehearsal - the day of. (This is pretty common for such variety shows.) Lorne (one of our profs) is down there, doing his directorial thing. We saw Colin Mocherie doing his opening with the gentlemen from The Magic Flute, which was amusing, but Glenn (the music director) was annoyed because the audio people were screwing up the tape of the music and not starting with him.

Back to the volunteer work - more hauling things around, this time of the food variety; some things had to be taken backstage for the guests, and so at one point, I was in an elevator with Colin Mocherie, Brad Sherwood, and Tom Cochrane. That was amusing (not that they were doing anything funny, just that it was 7 volunteers and three celebrities).

More running around. 3:30 comes around and they say, "Well, that's... really all we need you for. See you at 6:30." We're all... "really?" (We were figuring a 1/2 hour break for dinner at 6.) They say, "yep." More watching of rehearsal - those of us not backstage get to see a little bit of the Rockettes. (Those of us that were backstage got to see pretty much everything and hang out with the celebs. Jerks ;)

6:30 rolls around and we're all in our black pants, white shirts. We look very snazzy, if also like we stepped out of band performance. Anyway. We spend a little time redirecting people away from the party rooms and towards the theatre, and then it's showtime!

The show: basically fantastic, though they screwed up Cochrane's sound during "Life is a Highway". Colin and Brad are appropriately hilarious as a taxidermist and dentistry duo trying to stop a fire to horrible selected-audience-member-provided sound effects. (By the by: never suggest that those are staged. They aren't.)

Aaaaaaaaand it's on to the party!

Volunteers are asked to help the wait staff take plates, which we do. The food - which has at least two different caterers on each floor - looks FANTASTIC. Rob Salem shows up and we gleefully talk to him for a few minutes each. Lorne comes by and says hi.

About... oh... half an hour, forty-five minutes into the party, the volunteer coordinator comes by. The wait staff doesn't really need our help. Go ahead, join the party.

Free food. Free drinks. Famous people. Join the party.

The food is as fantastic as it looks, even if I don't entirely approve of this move towards small serving sizes. (Things I ate: curry pumpkin soup, gelato, butternut squash risotto, many varied things dipped in chocolate and caramel fountains, an absolutely DELICIOUS pumpkin mousse cake with cranberry sauce, and more booze than anyone can shake a stick at, including cranberry martinis.)

And met, of all people, Russell Peters. (And his tour manager, Shake. Both of whom, by the way, went to Chinguacousy and are from B-dot, or, as Russell affectionately called it, "Brown Town".) Shake is this HUGE guy who is incredibly easy to talk to - he's the guy you see speaking first in the DA Russell Peters backstage vid. He's also tour manager for John Travolta when Travolta's in TO.

Anyway, Russell. A bunch of the girls kind of swarmed him, so I guess I'm not the only one that finds humor sexy. He's actually not that tall - about my height. He was funny and charming and easygoing, and one of the girls in my class was totally hitting on him. (I got his autograph later, after DA the next day).

Later, Lorne set up a couple of the guys in my class talking to the Rockettes, who, as an aside, are TOTALLY GORGEOUS YOUNG WOMEN. When the girls asked when we were going to be introduced to anyone, Lorne shouted, "I am not going to be responsible for young girls getting laid tonight!" and ran away. (As another aside, when Lorne's daughter approached Russell and introduced herself, his response was, "wait, are you Lorne's daughter?" "Yes." ...turned on his heel and walked away. *LOL*)

Didn't meet Eugene Levy, but I did (briefly) meet his father. Sadly, Russell was pretty much my only celebrity contact that night - but hey, he was the most important (and he remembered me the next day after DA!).

And that was my day at Gilda's.

Russell Peters, as I mentioned, was at Humber last week for Distinguished Artists.

Here's his backstage "talk" about Michael Richards.

I hope they're going to put up his shout-out, 'cause it cracks me the fuck up. But this is pretty good too.

New show idea: so we take Russell Peters...

and, uh, that's about it.

WAIT WAIT.

SO WE DO CELEBRITY HOT TUBS WITH RUSSELL PETERS...

(OK, that one's for people in my class. ;)

I never did post my Tuesday update, did I?

Tuesday day end was

Though today I am already to 38,362 words, and hoping to expand.

I will write more about Gilda's Club and Russell Peters (who is from Brampton! Woot!) later, but suffice for now to say it was AWESOME.

So that CS100 midterm that I thought I botched? 83%, baby. (Oh, the function that I was supposed to write was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong - I got 2 marks out of 16 - but the program that used the function was 12/12, after bonus marks, and 85% on the Excel portion.)

So HAH.

(This means I have to get... uh... something stupidly low on my exam to fail this class. Why do I come here, again?)