ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER 100 PEOPLE WITH RAY GUNS

This weekend I went back through the rabbit hole to attend a comic convention here in Toronto. This was the Wizard World Comic Convention, my first time at this particular con, normally I attend the Fan Expo which occurs in August.

This is a smaller convention, which has advantages and disadvantages. There were not as many people, which meant few cute girls in costumes but I was not entirely disapointed

This particular con seemed to have a rather military feel to it, costume wise, expressed in ways one could only find at a comic convention. Look at these costumes, should I be nervous?

But there were advantages to attending a smaller con. You could actually talk to people for one thing. I go to buy as much as I go to oggle ... er I mean appreciate the costumes ... and while this convention had the usual large booksellers it also had people who were passionate about their particular fantasy and were selling books that actually interested them. It was nice to chat with them and get their opinion on certain titles and to listen to their reccomendations knowing they were not just trying to make a sale, they were trying to share.

I always enjoying wandering around Artist Alley, where the actual creators of the work you see are sitting right there; at this convention, I was actually able to converse with them. That led to my favorite encounter of the convention.

The above illustration is an example of the work of an artist named Da Xiong. He hails from China but now lives in New York City. His reason for emigating to the US was not purely commercial, he was forced to leave his homeland. Western governments seemed enarmoured of the idea of China and its potential of 1 billion consumers; they sometimes forget that it is a country where people live with the threat of being imprisoned for simply believing idealologies in opposition of the government.

All that aside I enjoyed Xiong's artwork and decided to purchase one of his books. When he asked if I would like it to be signed I was just expecting his signature. But that is the wonderful thing about true artists. They constantly surprise you. Instead of a mere signature in my book, I got this ...
For those readers fortunate enough not to recognize that sketch, well it has a resemblance to a certain erstwhile video and comic obsessed blogger. I mean, how cool is that? That is what I call a personalized book

I made my usual checklist of purchases including books, video games and DVDs, the latter being Samurai 7, an anime series based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, only this time in a futurized Japan. There are so many versions of future Japan out there I wonder if they get to pick and choose which one will come true.

It was a small yet very enjoyable con so I will make this a small post .. whether or not it's enjoyable is your call. Just keep it to yourself. I put it out there, I don't care if it comes back. So, before the obligatory video, here are a few final images from the convention

Actually I do need to comment on this final pic. Most of the people attending the convention were in their happy space but arguments do occur and sometimes they get violent; after all, when someone suggests that Green Arrow was only existing in Green Lantern's shadow, what else can one do but go medieval on their ass ...

So here's the video

Toronto Comic Con from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THE DISTILLERY DISTRICT

On a lovely early spring day during the March Break, Collette and I decided it was a perfect opportunity to take a trip to one of favorite locations in downtown Toronto: The Distillery District.
This is a huge complex of beautiful Victorian industrial buildings that was a distillery opened by Worts and Gooderman in 1859. There are many buildings, cobblestone laneways and a smokestack about 100 feet tall.
The distillery remained in operation, under different owners, right up to 1990. It became very popular as a location for movies. David Crongenburg used it for his version of The Fly among many others. In 2001 it was bought by a real estate development corporation and two years later opened as a tourist attraction, featuring shops, resturaunts and a professional theatre company.
They host a lot of events there but sometimes it's just fun to go down on a nice day and wander around, admiring the architecture and grazing the way too many pastry and ice cream shops, not to mention the Mill Street Brewery, one of my favorite microbreweries in the city.

It was quiet when we went there, which is kind of nice, it gave us time to dally about, taking images of this architecture that was intended as functional but still has a kind of beauty to it

The buildings here are not pretty. At first glance they are big and heavy and perhaps, with their dark brick, even oppressive. But there is a beauty to them, in the arched windows and doors, in the little details in the cornices and the cupolas. And beauty and atmosphere in the brick lanes and gas lamps.
Here's the video of our visit, it doesn't include the lovely lunch we enjoyed, but seriously, who wants to see that

Distillery District Outing from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

CANADIAN AVIATION AND SPACE MUSEUM: IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S 3 KELLARS IN OTTAWA

While Collette and I were visiting Kingston, my brother Edward suggested going to Ottawa to visit the Aviation and Space museum. Gosh, a chance to highway drive my new car, the BRB (the Big Red Beast) Um, sure, OK, force me .. please please

I've never been to the museum before but I am a fan of flying and a fan of airplanes and the history of flying. And it was nice to have a particular Canadian bent on that history (bent like a hockey stick blade, get it?)

Among a concentration on Canadian military aircraft the museum had a nice collection of the bush planes that figure so importantly in Canadian culture. I've flown with bush pilots before, in float planes, so it was a pleasant kind of nostalgia to see these homely yet loveable work horses of the North

The breadth of history covered in the exhibits was pretty impressive, from Alexander Graham Bell era airplanes, basically bicycles with wings that only madmen would actually fly, up to Harrier jets.

Shockingly enough, I have a video that illustrates our visit. The music may be a bit too tres obvious but what the hell, this is my blog and I get to make all the artistic decisions, no matter how weak

(By the way, this is the part where I'm sticking out my tongue)

Air Museum Ottawa Ontario from Collette Scale on Vimeo.

LIMESTONE CITY HOUND DOGS, I MEAN, BORDER COLLIES

This is the first blog of our recent trip to my hometown of Kingston, Ontario. This was Terra's first trip there, so Hayley seemed eager to show her some of her famous doggie haunts. OK, to be honest, Hayley was eager to go visit the resovoir and the dog park at the Memorial Centre but she knew that Terra would tag along

It's not like Hayley has any choice in the matter. A border collie choosing. Not something you really want.

It was spring time in Kingston. Mild temps. Melting snow. Mud clinging to fur with the tenacity of a supermodel attacking a high all you can eat buffet ... and the dogs got pretty muddy as well

Hayley & Terra in Kingston from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM: THIS MUSEUM WILL BE TELEVISED

Our most recent visit to the Royal Ontario Museum, the ROM, was inspired by TV. No, not the history of TV, which pretty much consists of talking puppets, men in drag and horny spaceship captains, but by a TV program about history. Or, more accurately, a TV show about museums, which have just a little bit to do with history. And (you have to love this irony) the show airs on the History Channel. It's called Museum Secrets.
The show visits museums all around the world, relating stories not heard in a long time, and examining exhibits that have not been seen by the public in a long time, if ever. The series visited the ROM and to celebrate, the museum this month put on display a few of the exhibits discussed in the show.
The exhibit was small, but certainly diverse. They showed everything from a headdress owned (if not actually ever worn) by Sitting Bull ...

.. to a bull dog who's genes can be found in the majority of English Bulldogs in Canada today ..
.. to a rather a gigantic medieval cross bow, accompanied by some mysterious vessels that seem to have thermal properties ..
... some speculate that these vessels may have been an early form of hand grenades ..
.. and some fossil remains, never before displayed, of a "lost" ROM dinosaur ...
Perhaps the most compelling object in the exhibit was that of a baby mummy

Not a lot is known about the infant. It was a male, approximately 6 months old, perhaps from a wealthy family
The museum has never opened the elaborate wrapping for fear of damaging it, or the mummy inside, so they have only had X-rays with which to glean any information about the mummy.
After going through the Museum Secrets exhibit, we decided to spend some time in the ROM's Native Canadian Exhibit, a space that we haven't explored in some time.
Although the exhibit touches on the life of early Natives from all over Canada, much it focussed on the peoples who lived in this part of the world, around the Great Lakes.

One of the objects that really captured my attention and my imagination was a war robe, an elk hide robe that through pictures, told the personal history of it's owners life through the battles in which he had been involved.

You'll see the robe, along with other highlights from our visit, in the video below.

Royal Ontario Museum: Museum Secrets from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THE NEW ARRIVAL

Yes, we have a new addition to our family. And this time, it is not black and white and furry with a long tongue and a four legs.

This time it is red, with a long cargo area and four tires. And instead of being of English heritidge as are border collies, it is Japanese ...

No, we did not adopt an Asian child or give life to a character from anime. We bought a new car

Collete and I are the proud parents of a spanking new Subaru Outback. There is some irony in our purchase of this particular car. Eleven years ago, when we were looking to purchase our first new car, we liked the Outback; it was more a station wagon then and it suited us nicely but out our price range, so we ended up buying our Saturn which served us well for a decade. But we always looked fondly on the Outback.
Recently we've decided we needed a new car (Yes, two car purchases in over ten years, we're wild and crazy people) The Saturn has become too small to accomodate Collette, myself, Hayley and Terra .. seeing as how Terra seems to have the ability to give herself the exterior dimensions of a small pony at will. And although the Saturn was a swell little car, it's not something you can use to bring home a 7 ft long picnic table, unless you put it on the roof and used it as a sail
So when we began searching for prospective new adoption, we knew we wanted something roomier, something with a hatch, and something with all wheel drive. The Outback of course satisfies all these criteria but it has been a while since I've seen one and I still had this image of a little station wagon in my mind and wasn't sure if that was what we wanted
We were at the Ex this past summer and got to check out the Chevie Equinox. We liked the size, it had a back seat that could slide forward, giving more cargo space while we still had the girls in it, etc. But when I test drove one, I found it well appointed but essentially gutless. And by the time I loaded in all the features I have in the Outback, the Equinox was about the same price.

Also, we had made the decision to go for all wheel drive. I drive all year long and we go up north enough, I thought that would be beneficial. Of the vehicles I looked at, like the Escape and the Equinox and the RAV 4, the Outback was the only one with full time all wheel drive. I drove the Subaru Forrester but it felt small to me, and sort of cheap ...

So I ended up returning, as it were, to our first love

So we've come full circle, but it has indeed been a long slow circle. So far I am very happy with the new addition. And let's be honest: How cute will all three of my girls look in it as we go whizzing along?

HOW TO GET BEAT UP BY THE UFC WITHOUT EVER ENTERING THE CAGE

For those of you who regularly read this blog (I will stop asking why, we all have mental health issues) you will know that Collette and I both fans of the combat sport know as Mixed Martial Arts, or MMA. You may also remember that I have been a big supporter of this sport being sanctioned here in Ontario and that, of course, I take full and personal responsibility for making that so

Ahem

At any rate, it did not take long for the UFC to announce a major MMA card here in Toronto. They wanted to break an attendance record for the fight and were careful to load the card with Canadian fighters, including the reigning welterweight champ, George St Pierre

UFC president, the urbane and erudite Dana White (that is so a joke, this guy has all the class and manners of a drunken 500 pound gorilla from the Ozarks and yes, that is an insult to people from the Ozarks) selected the Rogers Centre, formerly the Sky Dome as the venue, hoping to sell at least 40,000 seats. No, that is not a typo. Forty thousand seats
Collette and I wanted to go. Not just because we are fans of the sport but because we have been waiting for this for a long time. We've never before been able to see a big scale MMA event and we wanted in on this one And for once, we were in a position to grab really good seats, even with an announced price range from 800 dollars (ringside and close enough to identify which fighter's blood you have just been splashed with) to 50 dollars (in the upper 500 seats where you not only good nose bleeds but you are given free oxygen.
We knew these tickets would go quickly. MMA and the UFC are hugely popular here, Ontario regularly buys more UFC pay per view events than other location in the world. But this is also Toronto, where if something is new, if it's the first, people have to jump all over it, just to say they could. And if it costs money, like an inordinate amount of money, they have to get in on it, just prove they have more money than brains. That is like a badge of honour in this city.

So we knew we had a fight on our hands. But I never thought it was a fight that would make me feel as if I had just gone a round with the champ

OK, Mr St Pierre could make me cry with a stern look, but you get my point. One thing I did to gain an advantage was to join the UFC Fight Club, which would allow me pre buy tickets a few days before the general public for the oh so lovely low low price of almost 100 bucks. Yes. It's true. During this whole endeavour, I may have lost my mind

Or lost more of my mind

Or the rest of my mind

Or something

Now, for this pre sale, the only way to acquire tickets was online, via TicketMaster. You know TicketMaster, otherwise known as the Anti Christ. I hate Ticket Master. I have never had a satisfactory experience dealing with them. It always seems to me that no matter how diligent you are, jumping through the hoops they establish, I never get the seats that I want, seats that always seem for sale on the street the evening of the event. Whenever I can, I deal directly with the box office of the venue, but that option at this point was not available.

So there I go, my 100 dollar pre sale code in hand, at my computer right on time, hovering around the Ticket Master site as if it was going to do something miraculous, like part the Red Sea or turn my ponytail brown again ...

I connected with Ticket Master right away. Less than a minute after the tickets went on sale, the best I could do was the 200 section at the Dome. A minute after that, only 500 level seats were left. Five minutes after 10 am, no tickets were available ...

I know some people through this offer were able to get the floor seats I was yearning for. Part of the problem was that you were allowed to purchase 8 seats per order. I know for a fact that many people did this even though they did not have that many people in their party. So golly, we aren't much encouraging scalping are we?

At first "only" 40,000 seats were available. They were sold out by the time the public could purchase, a couple of days later. So they opened up the rest of the dome. For kicks, I went online again. Public tickets went onsale at 10 am. I was offered a couple of seats 10 seconds after 10 .. and only 500's were available

At first I was disapointed and certainly pissed off. All is not kosher here. There are lots of floor level seats available on Craiglist and sites known for scalping. There is no doubt in my mind that Ticket Master "loses" large blocks of tickets that show up for sale elsewhere

But I know many many many many people, who paid their 100 bucks and did their due dilligence were not able to get seats. And I know at least half a dozen people who "lost" their tickets in the electronic Hell that is Ticket Master

So I am not so much disapointed. Not pissed off, but I'm disgruntled. Hell, I'm almost always disgruntled. I think that is part of my charm.

Ahem. Shut up

But it actually does piss me off that one company can have such a monopoly. Who's policing it? Probably not police, there isn't a Summit to patrol and young women with soap bubbles to intimidate ... but I digress. Which is pretty much the point of this blog anyway

But for all my whining and moaning I did buy tickets. And for more money than what they are worth. And we will go see the fights. And buy the overpriced beer and fart out the overpriced food ... Will we go to see another? That remains to be seen

I'm going to start saving now. And waiting in line for my tickets