welcome! i have found another way to waste time. huzzah!
now i’m the most wordpressiest wordpresser who ever wordpressed.
i use wordpress at work all day long, so there are many features i’m already acquainted with, but for the most part, i’m confused by it. Blogger is more user-friendly….in that, it’s idiot-proof. works well for a nOOb like me.
i will keep my old blogger up, so that people who have outdated links will find their way here. also, even though i imported all of my archives to wordpress, the import has caused them to double up (raymi has the same issue with her archives), so it’s a bit messy, with wonky formatting.
i used to redesign my blog once a year, but my previous purple design has been up since 2008. so i was overdue for a change. i have pretty much all of my old features up here. if you’re looking for the blogroll, it’s located in the links tab up above. my bio, my writing portfolio, my media coverage, it’s all pretty much here….just needs a bit of a clean up.
i don’t like the photo uploader wordpress has. i can upload several photos at once, no problem, BUT for whatever reason, i can only embed them in the post ONE AT A TIME. zomg pain in the ass, way to kibosh my wordpress-buzz.
so until someone tells me how to get around that, i’m going to continue to upload photos to picasa and just embed the links here.
thoughts, comments, and tips for improvement are all very welcome, as everything you see on this site at present was designed solely by me, and i barely know what i’m doing.
also, i’ve activated my domain email address -> christine@christineestima.com
dunno why i never activated it before, it came with the domain i bought.
prince wills and kate were hanging around “queen” and spadina (how apropos).
back off bitch, he’s mine.
what a similar photo. reg can be my kate middleton.
this was taken at Foursquare Day festivities . . . some sweet gifts were handed out, one being a hot red protective holder for my blackberry, it was pretty sweet, seeing as how i need one and didn’t even hafta pay for it. then later, i won a gift certificate to the sewing studio, which i’d never heard of before, but hey, i have some skirts that need hemming, might be fun to try it out. i’m holding up my winnings above with zach, reg, tony, sacha, john, and lauren‘s boyfriend whats-his-name.
oh good gawd. when horses are this lame, they shoot ‘em.
i’m a chris, he’s a chris . . . it’s chris squared.
brennan is the king of cool
i was trynna pull a geordie laforge here, i don’t think it quite worked
like glamour shots
was interviewed about my foursquare activities for a yet-to-be-seen vid. i look like a snobby venomous cunt in this shot, but trust me, i was adorable in the video.
i voted today at an advance polling station. since today is a holiday, i knew i’d have the time. may 2nd is a work day and i’ll probably be too whipped to make it out to the polling station. i arrived at the voting booth located in a catholic school, only to realize i wasn’t wearing a bra.
see! voting is sexy.
most torontonians are hearing about bullet for adolf now, a new play written and directed by woody harrelson that he’s premiering exclusively here, and not at some big monster theatre either, but at unassuming hart house. i knew about it way back in january when they announced that they were only casting non-union non-equity actors. i figured i might as well submit, didn’t get asked in for an audition, but considering the way i look and what they were looking for, i kinda understand why.
it’s produced by a couple friends of mine, and the entire cast is on my facebook. in addition, i attended this is our youth a bajillion years ago when woody harrelson directed it at canstage. i knew he was a great director, but i didn’t know what his writing skills were like….all of this compounded in my absolute NEED to see this play.
i bought my ticket well over a month ago, way before all these chumps now clamouring for tickets. i paid full price, and of course now, all the discounts for arts workers (me), tweeple (me), facebook friends (me) are coming out. pfft. whatever. i’m over it. booking so far in advance scored a wicked seat. row A seat 13..AKA FRONT ROW CENTRE. lots of leg room, no one’s head in my way, unobstructed view, felt like i was in the action.
i put a stupid little copyright on these photos, just in case anyone felt like stealing. anyway, the play was really funny! i was surprised, it was really well written, go harrelson. although it’s not the greatest piece of comedic theatre i’ve ever seen, i was humbly impressed, and i was actually expecting the worst. i think what made this play was the performances. specifically, i was blown away by david coomber as “clint” and billy petrovski as “dago czech.” brandon coffey was also note-perfect as woody’s alter ego “zack.” but specifically david coomber was a talent that i was not expecting. he was absolutely flawless, impeccable comic timing, acting chops like i’ve never seen. mark my words people, that dude is going places.
during intermission, an equity actress made a flippant remark about non-union talent that was so typical of the industry. she said that essentially she was shocked non-union actors were so good. stupid thing to say. you can’t measure talent like that. besides, paris hilton is a union actress . . . remember that next time, will ya, when ya wanna shoot your mouth off.
the play started with woody harrelson popping up over the speaker and telling us to turn off our cells. cute. and away we go. the play weaves theatre with film sequences and 1980s nostalgia. it’s essentially a retelling (with bits embellished here and there) of woody’s time in texas working construction, the friends he made, the racial binds that gripped the time, and a really cool old german guy with a gun.
some of the best lines were about child molestation (‘sexy kids’) and about abstract art (“it’s someone’s lack of imagination asking you to apply your own.”)
it’s about love, it’s about life lessons, it’s about friendship, and it’s just a hella-funny story.
there was a talkback after the show, where woody and the cast answered questions from the audience. here woody is saying “thanks fer comin’, tell yurr friends!” in his thick southern drawl. woody loves toronto, he’s here all the fricken time, so i don’t think torontonians are particularly starstruck by the sight of him anymore. he does yoga shows here, he does vegan events, pot events, and like i said before, plays. toronto is the kind of place where celebs come because they don’t really get hassled here. we’re too polite to try to chat up a movie god. either that, or we just don’t care.
anyway, you should go see this play!
there were lots of celebs and media and notables in the industry the night i went, so surely it will be like that all through the run.
layne’s in town for a month. we’ve managed to hang out twice so far, and it’s always like we pick up where we left off. we try to stay in pretty constant contact over email anyway, so it’s easy to always launch right back into things. but it’s hard having a best friend live on the other side of the country. hell, i moved to london, then he moved to the land that time forgot (aka sasquatchenon aka saskatchewan). long distance friendships take effort, and we do our best. last night we had dinner at queen mother, then walked over to canstage to see the cosmonauts last message to the woman he once loved in the former soviet union (fanks ashley for tickets!)
that title is asking a lot from an audience, i think.
anyway, some of the cast members are my friends, so i was excited to see it. layne had sat in on the auditions last year and had read with the actors, so he sorta knew what the play was about.
it was . . . interesting.
how to sugar coat this?
it touched on some interesting notions of longing and technology and relationships . . . at least, i think.
sigh. it was bad. it was just bad. the first act was like watching paint dry, the second act picked up a bit in steam, but it was terribly flat like gwyneth paltrow’s singing voice.
i mean, raoul was great, but raoul’s always great. he’s an actor you can bank on. it was just surprising, seeing as how canstage’s season this year has been STELLAR. from fernando krapp, to the andersen project, to studies in motion, to the middle place, i have been consistently impressed with matthew jocelyn‘s choices.
now, not so much.
i hate saying this cuz i’m always encouraging people to see more theatre. but i suppose in order to know what good theatre is, you have to see a lot of bad theatre.
this was written on the wall at work. it accurately describes the content that i’m writing, the audience who reads it, and basically, myself. totally femmebitious fembot….i’m eFEMMEral (see what i did there?)
i’m so femmebitious that i’m the last one to leave the office every night. once i locked up at 9:30pm. i’ve only been there two weeks, but i’m really busting my hump, i want to learn everything, and i feel like my perfectionism is holding me back. i need to write more content in a day, but i keep lingering over phrases and words and sentence structure, i can’t just let things go.
the office already presented me with my business cards, which was pretty nifty. i’ve been to a couple events already, representing the publication, handing out my card, networking, trying to find story ideas. everyone so far has commented how cool my card is. #win.
speaking of work, i was sent by them this week to get a reiki treatment, and then write about it. and write i did. my editors told me they thought it was a great article, but i think i came across a tad bitchy.
either way, it’s a funny piece about reiki and how, even though i’m all about alternative therapies, this was just a hill of beans.
read it and enjoy!
first wordpress blogpost done….only took me 12 hours.
hashtag fail.
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April 22, 2011 | Categories: acting, blogger, celebrity friends, events, foursquare, health, layne, media, portfolio, review, theatre, toronto, tweet up, wellness, writing | 3 Comments »
breaking down last week’s photo into subsections:
me and
nat, booty-bumping.
for some reason, even though this was only last week and it’s on my phone, i don’t remember taking this.
wendy looks like she’s doing the robot off to the right.
domo origato mr roboto
TORONTO STREET ART!
ah
short round. one of my favourite characters from
Indiana Jones. even though the
Temple of Doom was the most racist and xenophobic of the trilogy (yes, trilogy, i refuse to count that fourth film. i mean, DAYUM, way to ruin 80s nostalgia), i always loved short round.
“I, VERY LITTLE! YOU CHEAT VERY BIG!”
it occurs to me that i’ve always had a fascination with street art but never fully realized it.
two years ago i was documenting it. wasn’t even sure if i was conscious of my appreciation for it then…
in fact i was documenting it FOUR years ago— look at these photos i took in 2007 while i was living in london:
i took this on my camera phone in 2007 on Whitecross near
Old Street in London. it’s a
banksy original. i think this one resonated with me a lot because I WAS CERTAIN i’d seen this image before. so today i did some digging….
this postcard i’ve had for donkey’s years is copyrighted 1985.
another 2007 phone snap of a Banksy original. i took this off Camden High Street in
Camden Market. if you back away from this particular piece, you see that she’s sweeping the yellow lane divided under the wall sheet. banksy also repainted the yellow line to make it veer into the wall.
another 2007 snap of a Banksy original, this time with my actual camera. i was on holiday in
Bristol (for those of you out-of-the-know, Bristol is a city in south western england, not far from Bath). i found this piece on Park Street. the residents of Bristol had to petition the city to KEEP the piece from being removed. it’s now protected under law.
i saw this stencil spray painted on a metal container in London’s
Soho in 2007, snapped this with my phone. i thought it might’ve been banksy at first, but it’s not his style. it’s quite clever though.
i was walking through the
Ealing Broadway area of London with my friend Jonathon in 2007 when I found this post-it-note stuck to a pedestrian crossing button. snapped it with my phone. to this day, it’s still the screen background on my phone.
this was probably taken in early 2008 on my phone. i was on a double decker bus headed for my flat in
Elephant & Castle, and this was chalked into the ground not far from
Waterloo Station.
okay this one isn’t street art. i took this in january 2007, about 7 days after moving to London. it was the very first picture i ever took with my phone. i was shopping at the
east street market near elephant and castle, and there it was….words we find funny in north america have different meanings over there.
okay back to toronto
after work on friday, i decided to revisit the old graffiti alley behind queen and spadina. i used to visit it quite often about 6 years ago when Swing Alley was there.
so i guess my fascination with street art can be traced back at least six years then? gosh, who knows. maybe i’ve always had it the love.
this skateboard with the words “vote with your $$$” appears all over graffiti alley. they’re actual skateboards nailed into the poles. i think
it’s a gregory alan elliot piece.
there it is again!
i see
gregory alan elliot quotes all over the city. remember way back in february when
i found this in kensington market? he’s kinda everywhere, and i like finding his pieces, i think they give the city something. too bad so many other graffiti writers keep messing up his stuff. you can see they’ve either written or crossed out his stuff, in some cases breaking the signs in two.
looks like a young jean chretien with an axe to grind.
tit for tat, just like that
this one is cool cuz if you look closely, the artist incorporated the wires that were already attached to the wall, and made his caricatures part of the wires. brilliant
i finished my first week of employment at a staff writer. i still haven’t officially revealed who i’m writing for in any online forums. i get the sense that it wouldn’t be a big deal with the company, because they have a big online presence and what not, nonetheless, i’m going to refrain from mentioning them online. better to err on the side of caution in these instances….. even though i DO have that disclaimer at the bottom of this blog that my opinions here are not the opinions of any employer.
oh who am i kidding?
my opinions ARE the opinions of my employers.
AND YOURS AS WELL.
(deal with it.)
i am enjoying the work but it’s not a cakewalk, i have to write a lot of content in a day and i’m struggling to get it out in a timely fashion. i have to let my perfectionist-nature slide somewhat. i’ve been described in the past as a line-by-line writer. i labour over each sentence, and i need to relax in that area whilst still delivering well-written copy. there’s a learning curve, surely i’ll get the hang of it.
but it’s fun! i love being able to write all the livelong day, and i’ve consistently been the last person to leave the office, locking up sometimes as late at 9pm. the day just flies by, and i’m not in a hurry to get home. everyone in the office is totally chill, and the act of writing is my zen anyway, so it feels almost criminal.
growing up in small hick town in rural quebec, aiming for a job like this seemed impractical and beyond reality, especially if you’re on the wrong side of fortune. glad i never listened to anyone else’s ideas for what i should do with my life.
in my last post i asked
“what colour does a smurf turn when you choke it?” perhaps Gargamel here can answer that for us.
rob ford, remove me. i think the “remove me” refers not to the stencil, but to the man himself.
but if we have the stencil removed, is that not like an act of voodoo? symbolically removing the twat from office?
bazinga!
testing testing, is this thing on?
this is untamed brilliance.
queen of hearts, king (of spades? not sure), and the macabre-like Joker.
bike riding weather is upon us. i rode my bike in to work the other day, left the house at 8:20am, hit the downtown core at 9:30am, and walked through the office front door at 9:45am. it was a great ride, so sunny and quiet.
gosh . . . cycling, street art, hipster music, funny clothes, writer, vegetarian, café-loiterer . . . i would fit the hipster moniker to a T if it weren’t for the fact that the hipsters of Toronto don’t accept me. i’m not awkward enough, or neurotic enough. or ugly enough. there’s like these qualifying hipster targets you need to hit if you want to be amongst the gods. i attend all the same events, underground meetings, artistic rendezvous’ and hang at the culturally-iconic-hotspots, but i can feel them unfairly judging me as an interloper into their exclusive society. they don’t believe i have the brains nor the brawn to withstand the requirements of being amongst their key players. when i say awkward neurotic and ugly, i don’t really mean those as slights or backhands. i mean them in endearing ways (and i blog that sans-irony…for once). the endearingly ugmo-neurotic-awkward hipster is a fine specimen of society that everyone loves and wants to get closer to in order to understand. and they all know each other, they can pick up each others scents like a lioness in heat.
unfortch, i am of an undefinable ethno-cultural minority dominated mostly by Ginos and thereby refuse to leave my pits unshaven or allow my body to physically fall into disrepair. so while i have hipster-leaning-proclivities/sensibilities, the elusive Toronto Hipster does not in fact understand me well enough to accept me.
i make scientific studies of things that really don’t matter.
maybe i AM neurotic enough to join the club.
last night at the
Foursquare Toronto event, my friend Chris said that men don’t ask me out because they’re intimidated by me. that’s not the first time i’ve heard that. it’s probably the 50th time actually.
to me, that means i’m doing something right.
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April 17, 2011 | Categories: banksy, foursquare, graffiti, hipsters, london, miik, street art, street culture, toronto | 1 Comment »
>
breaking down last week’s photo into subsections:
me and
nat, booty-bumping.
for some reason, even though this was only last week and it’s on my phone, i don’t remember taking this.
wendy looks like she’s doing the robot off to the right.
domo origato mr roboto
TORONTO STREET ART!
ah
short round. one of my favourite characters from
Indiana Jones. even though the
Temple of Doom was the most racist and xenophobic of the trilogy (yes, trilogy, i refuse to count that fourth film. i mean, DAYUM, way to ruin 80s nostalgia), i always loved short round.
“I, VERY LITTLE! YOU CHEAT VERY BIG!”
it occurs to me that i’ve always had a fascination with street art but never fully realized it.
two years ago i was documenting it. wasn’t even sure if i was conscious of my appreciation for it then…
in fact i was documenting it FOUR years ago— look at these photos i took in 2007 while i was living in london:
i took this on my camera phone in 2007 on Whitecross near
Old Street in London. it’s a
banksy original. i think this one resonated with me a lot because I WAS CERTAIN i’d seen this image before. so today i did some digging….
this postcard i’ve had for donkey’s years is copyrighted 1985.
another 2007 phone snap of a Banksy original. i took this off Camden High Street in
Camden Market. if you back away from this particular piece, you see that she’s sweeping the yellow lane divided under the wall sheet. banksy also repainted the yellow line to make it veer into the wall.
another 2007 snap of a Banksy original, this time with my actual camera. i was on holiday in
Bristol (for those of you out-of-the-know, Bristol is a city in south western england, not far from Bath). i found this piece on Park Street. the residents of Bristol had to petition the city to KEEP the piece from being removed. it’s now protected under law.
i saw this stencil spray painted on a metal container in London’s
Soho in 2007, snapped this with my phone. i thought it might’ve been banksy at first, but it’s not his style. it’s quite clever though.
i was walking through the
Ealing Broadway area of London with my friend Jonathon in 2007 when I found this post-it-note stuck to a pedestrian crossing button. snapped it with my phone. to this day, it’s still the screen background on my phone.
this was probably taken in early 2008 on my phone. i was on a double decker bus headed for my flat in
Elephant & Castle, and this was chalked into the ground not far from
Waterloo Station.
okay this one isn’t street art. i took this in january 2007, about 7 days after moving to London. it was the very first picture i ever took with my phone. i was shopping at the
east street market near elephant and castle, and there it was….words we find funny in north america have different meanings over there.
okay back to toronto
after work on friday, i decided to revisit the old graffiti alley behind queen and spadina. i used to visit it quite often about 6 years ago when Swing Alley was there.
so i guess my fascination with street art can be traced back at least six years then? gosh, who knows. maybe i’ve always had it the love.
this skateboard with the words “vote with your $$$” appears all over graffiti alley. they’re actual skateboards nailed into the poles. i think
it’s a gregory alan elliot piece.
there it is again!
i see
gregory alan elliot quotes all over the city. remember way back in february when
i found this in kensington market? he’s kinda everywhere, and i like finding his pieces, i think they give the city something. too bad so many other graffiti writers keep messing up his stuff. you can see they’ve either written or crossed out his stuff, in some cases breaking the signs in two.
looks like a young jean chretien with an axe to grind.
tit for tat, just like that
this one is cool cuz if you look closely, the artist incorporated the wires that were already attached to the wall, and made his caricatures part of the wires. brilliant
i finished my first week of employment at a staff writer. i still haven’t officially revealed who i’m writing for in any online forums. i get the sense that it wouldn’t be a big deal with the company, because they have a big online presence and what not, nonetheless, i’m going to refrain from mentioning them online. better to err on the side of caution in these instances….. even though i DO have that disclaimer at the bottom of this blog that my opinions here are not the opinions of any employer.
oh who am i kidding?
my opinions ARE the opinions of my employers.
AND YOURS AS WELL.
(deal with it.)
i am enjoying the work but it’s not a cakewalk, i have to write a lot of content in a day and i’m struggling to get it out in a timely fashion. i have to let my perfectionist-nature slide somewhat. i’ve been described in the past as a line-by-line writer. i labour over each sentence, and i need to relax in that area whilst still delivering well-written copy. there’s a learning curve, surely i’ll get the hang of it.
but it’s fun! i love being able to write all the livelong day, and i’ve consistently been the last person to leave the office, locking up sometimes as late at 9pm. the day just flies by, and i’m not in a hurry to get home. everyone in the office is totally chill, and the act of writing is my zen anyway, so it feels almost criminal.
growing up in small hick town in rural quebec, aiming for a job like this seemed impractical and beyond reality, especially if you’re on the wrong side of fortune. glad i never listened to anyone else’s ideas for what i should do with my life.
in my last post i asked
“what colour does a smurf turn when you choke it?” perhaps Gargamel here can answer that for us.
rob ford, remove me. i think the “remove me” refers not to the stencil, but to the man himself.
but if we have the stencil removed, is that not like an act of voodoo? symbolically removing the twat from office?
bazinga!
testing testing, is this thing on?
this is untamed brilliance.
queen of hearts, king (of spades? not sure), and the macabre-like Joker.
bike riding weather is upon us. i rode my bike in to work the other day, left the house at 8:20am, hit the downtown core at 9:30am, and walked through the office front door at 9:45am. it was a great ride, so sunny and quiet.
gosh . . . cycling, street art, hipster music, funny clothes, writer, vegetarian, café-loiterer . . . i would fit the hipster moniker to a T if it weren’t for the fact that the hipsters of Toronto don’t accept me. i’m not awkward enough, or neurotic enough. or ugly enough. there’s like these qualifying hipster targets you need to hit if you want to be amongst the gods. i attend all the same events, underground meetings, artistic rendezvous’ and hang at the culturally-iconic-hotspots, but i can feel them unfairly judging me as an interloper into their exclusive society. they don’t believe i have the brains nor the brawn to withstand the requirements of being amongst their key players. when i say awkward neurotic and ugly, i don’t really mean those as slights or backhands. i mean them in endearing ways (and i blog that sans-irony…for once). the endearingly ugmo-neurotic-awkward hipster is a fine specimen of society that everyone loves and wants to get closer to in order to understand. and they all know each other, they can pick up each others scents like a lioness in heat.
unfortch, i am of an undefinable ethno-cultural minority dominated mostly by Ginos and thereby refuse to leave my pits unshaven or allow my body to physically fall into disrepair. so while i have hipster-leaning-proclivities/sensibilities, the elusive Toronto Hipster does not in fact understand me well enough to accept me.
i make scientific studies of things that really don’t matter.
maybe i AM neurotic enough to join the club.
last night at the
Foursquare Toronto event, my friend Chris said that men don’t ask me out because they’re intimidated by me. that’s not the first time i’ve heard that. it’s probably the 50th time actually.
to me, that means i’m doing something right.
Like this:
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April 17, 2011 | Categories: banksy, foursquare, graffiti, hipsters, london, miik, street art, street culture, toronto, Uber 5000 | Leave A Comment »
