True Urban Legends

connecting my two places of resting my bones during my time in TO. it's funny how a family will choose you, and how everyone will be connected in the craziest ways that you never thought. this six degrees of kevin's bacon that i've been waiting for to happen to me in MO has finally happened in TO. all of the things that I love and miss in Vancouver were personified in my trip to the dot. beauty-full lofts, amazing soul/hip hop musicians and shows, old friends, gay Starbucks experiences, Asians, and people speaking English (and not hesitating or feeling bad everytime i did).

i had a great time traipsing about the Kensington Market on my last few days, once with young M and yesterday alones. we found some real "gems" in the vintage shops and even sweated out trying them on. i got a huge (5xl) Aaliyah tshirt that i will refashion as a dress, incense, chopsticks, and an umbrella. oh, and the most fabulous boots that can only be described as "legend of zelda-y".

another great conversation with the say love mogul, and it culminated in me jumping the fence to retrieve my shoes because i was so motivated that sleep was not an option, though rocking out to the shower radio definitely was.

the first canadian grown edamame, more crazy connections, and another myspace meeting to have $10 ribs in a monsoon whilst discussing kanye politics. i finally meet eternia even though we haven't been able to link all week and she looks amazing! project bounce is a nice spot, with a mix of screens projecting miz gurl's vids and the dj booth/stage and E rocked it from the crowd and on the platform, alternating between dj mix and live show. gotta say i love that energy/work ethic and i finally got my signature drink (banana and ginger). i was patted down for the first time ever, and they played such nostalgia like "second round KO" by canibus, "rock the boat" by aaliyah, and "devil's pie" by d'angelo. le sigh. i also met the elusive little masia one, and hey, JB, baby i got her number don't you worry. so, it's in the works folks...i did work during my time in TO...but i gotta go back in November for the postponed Roy Ayers show. believe that. oh, and if you want to sleep on the greyhound, get a window seat, it's much nicer than the aisles. bigups to Janela for driving me to the depot in her big ol' pickup truck this morning. home again....and so loving living out east, short ribs.

beauty-full day 2 in toronto....we wake up to make homemade pizzas, so many toppings, i choose olives, kiwi, canteloupe, feta, pesto, bell peppers, onions, asparagus...so good!

i actually rock my short shorts (i got mine before american apparal blew up) and rainbow socks with my signature red and orange adidas jacket for pride and got a lot of shoutouts for it.

we convened at yonge and wellesely to watch the parade, which was late starting, but there was plenty of pre-pride entertainment from the folks around in the building spraying the crowd with garden hoses (wired through their apartments) to those retaliating from the crowd with water balloons and rooftop choruses singing call and response to a group in the crowd. we heard everything from cher (of course) to grease to britney to kumbaya and amazing grace and madonna and aretha...the parade itself was a party, glad to go to a big city pride (since i missed nyc last year because we were eating that salad!) and i can't wait for montreal at the end of next month (bigups to the peeps who spread it out!!!) highlights were the NOW float that i personally thought was the hottest, not to mention that they were giving out k.d. lang pins, i had to trade all the condoms i got for it, and seeing belinda and jack layton go through the crowd. it was pretty political, with a lot of issues from the government to the churches rolling through, marriage and AIDS research, though ironically the anti-capitalist float went first and then all the ads followed.

i saw a woman with no nipples and a man with one arm and a penis that was shaped like the liberty bell. there were lots of sparkly folks, including some pasty ones with red sparkles that looked exactly like ketchup chips to me. some free stuff, but mostly condoms and mardi gras beads (no flashing necessary).  it was a friendly time and we cracked a lot of jokes and bonded amongst ourselves.

i made my way to meet that arce (love) cat....and we rolled up queens street just chatting, getting caught up and pondering how small the world really is, as it was just a year ago that we saw eachother at the common sense show in vancouver and we went into a nice diner for breakfast and a huge burger respectively. we rolled back to his place so i could hear his music because i haven't really heard anything since The Front. we even wrote a lil' melody....so the man is magic, look out for an upcoming salsa soul humping album to make waves! i met some other cool musicians as well, and D and his boys are on this ol' better than gnarls ish. we ended up chillin', going to the store for banana slushies and those old skool onion ring snackies so that we could watch Badasssss again and smoke a little. (even though i've been scared to out here, since i'm from bc and i've smelled some of the ish out this way) i'm getting better though, because i don't feel like my chest is gonna collapse, just feel pleasantly lethargic but get paranoid when my arm dropps off the chair because it feels so heavy.

at 3:30 ish, we decide to call it an evening and retire to our separate train cars (felt like summer camp, really) and B was supposed to wake everyone and woke no one so this morning was a hodgepodge of pasty conversations about futbol and patios and plans for popeyes and synchronicity because it turns out that B and M were at the ol' private skool together back in the day. (good cuz M was worried about me crashing not at home the nite before and the Banks street boys were worried about me getting home in the middle of the night) aw. say love.

the metro and i are now on friendly terms and i no longer feel that it is necessary to keep score of our meetings.

it was a pretty smooth adventure to the bus depot, though i wanted to hurt whoever was bumpin' that stupid "hips" song by shakira and wyclef at 7:15 am. it was a nice ride on the greyhound (my chariot) and i made friends with some folks who should've thrown tantrums at the tim horton's we stopped at halfway through but i mostly slept. i bonded most with my seatmate, who became my mom of the ride and wanted to make the photo she took of me the wallpaper on her son's phone, but we figured that it might throw his girlfriend off. i mostly just slept, got caught up on that and listened to the conversations around me. highlight of the mother and daughter behind me: d: "you mean i have another three hours sitting next to you?" m: "if you're gonna be a snot then get your own watch and stop asking me what time it is all the time" d: "so why did dad marry you again?" m: don't you have some music that you need to pollute your brain listening to?" it's funny how you can tell why someone is the way they are because of how they interact with their parents.

M met me at the stop and we made our way through Dundas and Spadina to his beauty-full loft in the Kensington Market. he made all this sushi and we got caught up with the other M and M and then we went to the lab for a minute so he could do some work.

the highlight of the evening was seeing Mz. Belladonna just freaking rock it at Ryerson for the live to air broadcast on CKLN 88.1 fearlessly for Pride. it was soo nice to hear her with her band, rather than with makeshifts and homegirl kicked it live/love. bigups. http://www.myspace.com/belladonna for a sample, but if you can catch this one in person...DO IT.

her followup was the deep dick collective and they also rocked it hard. my man buttafly soul was the bestest and he was so sweet when i told him after the show that, "i just have to tell you that i love you". anyone that wears a brokeback poet shirt and pastes his own face over jake's is down in my books. gay hip hoppers. heaven. heaven i tell you! "my favorite fruit is elton john" (an actual answer on a survey at uvic).

first "family" visits come by accident. thank-you madge and grand prix for making it all possible. the great victoria to vancity girls came to bless my fair city with their prescence and after my psych experiment on friday morning, i headed right to st. laurent to tour the girls around. we laughed and got caught up and exposed our inability to jay walk (and i admitted that the tim horton's strawberry campaign really got me as i had to stop and get a tartlette on my way) more terraces though all new, no pineapples but gogo's had thier "grand prix" decor. there's this restaurant where the girls are clad in the sexiest uniforms ever, this fushia and mint lace number...(whoo) we had ice cream from ripples (i had rum raisin and the girls had moka and grapefruit/guava respectively) and i bought this little denim/cotton/crinoline mini (that i made into a tube top) from a vancity designer with the label main & hastings.

later that day...we had a beautyfest (R straightened my hair! and while it's pretty straight already, i felt like mimi and had to sashay past the mirror a few times) we went for dinner and i had a lovely goat cheese ravioli and we killed some time watching the "new" show America's Got Talent. bigups Moesha and Hassel the Hoff but whatever.

we started our club hop at 737, notorious in the city for the batman-esque light that shines from atop the 40th floor and just because of a tip from a young frenchie, we got in for free....drop it like it's hot. we had some nice photo-ops and bad shots (i didn't do any because i know better than to consume anything that smells like nail polish remover). we made our way to crescent via st.cat's all cats were revving their ferraris and other cars that i should care about but don't. crescent was madness and we contemplated going to the vatican (if that's not an ironic name for a club, i don't know what is, "i'll have two of what the pope's drinking, oh, double blood of christ it is then") but didn't want to wait to make our pennance and wash away our sins with the flowing libations. we did end up at another club and somehow bypassing the cover and the lineup and finding ourselves back on a rooftop narrowly missing having our tongues get stuck to the ice sculptures. i also ran into the same nasty gentleman who was stripping at la boom the nite before.

all in all, it was a great nite and i had to go home and pack my things for the 416 to tha 905, though i ended up sleeping for a hot minute. toddy palm seed.

whoo, my first taste of montreal club life...ya, it seems like it's late in the game, and it's not exactly true, since we hopped during the st. laurent street party.

but on my way to "la boom" on st.cat's and pine, i stopped by nickel's diner to dine and dash on a chicken wing and some fries with VICTORIA representin' moving to VAN and poppin' their Montreal cherry for Madonna. Madge was in full effect, playing two nites in the city, cars were bumping her ish everywhere and t-shirts were reading "Madonna for president" in windows all around.

it was the usual club stuff, plus a bit more. schoolgirls stripping and having a pillowfight in an inflatable pool was the main event, the first set were very "american apparal-ey" and the second set was considerable more raunchy. a midget wearing a shirt that read "what happens at la boom stays at la boom" was the judge. cats were booing when some boys with really tight trunks got into the pool, but they were fighting considerably harder and it was quite homoerotic.

bday boys and i had a sip of cristal (like the rappers) and i have to admit it's pretty good. old guys were doing stripteases and trying to get at my girl. nuts. ok, gotta do my experiment now! bootleg internet from med students to blog!!!!

and a cereal killer to boot (remember that red and meth track?!) both are me...

just had to update the score on the riches: $37 made off experiments, the latest was spacebar reading words flying by the screen with trick questions...almost made it as a cat petter, but i don't live in mile end. geographical discrimination if i never heard of it!

 i finished reading "Shug" yesterday, and bigups to Jenny Han for bringing the racialization of Asians into her America coming of age story. very very sweet, like cherry popsicles indeed. i stumbled on this book about the video ho-fessional who starred in Mystikal's and Ja's videos, and I got hooked at the part where she started having an affair with Ray-J and how he wouldn't go down on her and how his family wasn't impressed since he had just broken up with his longtime girlfriend from 702. ya, like that's the biggest reason not to be impressed that your son is hooking up with a video dancer.

oh, and how is it that lupe fiasco is going straight from the brooklyn hiphop festival to playing new westminister in bc?! what's going on with that?! see JB, i woulda had a chance to get that cat, but again, it's the geographicals...and speaking of hiphop in vancity: http://www.eya.ca/wuf/wuf_mainstage.html wuttup with this steps away from my old hood?! chek it out though, vancity peeps, it looks interesting. well, i'm gonna hang out with belladonna and eternia in toronto this weekend...so there. (just kidding, i don't mean this in a catty way...support all people trynna do good for the hop, i'm just sensitive that's all.)

in a Biggie kinda way. whew! bigups everywhere, especially to the folks at shotgun reviews: www.shotgunreviews.com who direct you to my lyrical lounge waxings with a wonderfull dedication on their front page! and all the MySpace loves!

It's a funny beast, that MySpace. For example, I spent a good ten minutes looking through 16 pages of pussytwat dolls on my beau's page just to get a glance of one triffling, nice car driving to make up for his no-job having cheating not even with the good sense to lie about it ass (I comforted the sweetest girlfriend who got very murderous last nite-you don't want to mess with an Asian girl for real) but whoops, I don't think that that's the type of blogging about my honey that will make his head blow up. Ok, to make up for that, my honey is the opposite of trifling, has no car (so he doesn't have to make up for having a small dick) wonderfull man who has a job and better get his butt out here to see me for the jazz fest nonetheless (relying on above mentioned punk ass friend for a ride is not suffice of a reason not to get here since I cut my Toronto trip short just to make the 30th, the planned date) that's right, mess with me and i'll put that shit on the web, you know I will. Whoops, did I just go into the territory as explained by my girl Tara in her latest column for XXL? See for yourself: http://xxlmag.com/online/?p=2352 

but on a kinder note, I have met my match when it comes to Prince love!!!!! also on MySpace, check it out: my computers (ha, my "borrowed" computers at McGill) diable sound so I don't know what this musics sound like, but dammit, the man knows some Prince (see my profile change) so I gotta give him a shoutout: http://www.myspace.com/mudkids

wow, could i have any more links in this one little blog?  

that's it for the links, my update on the Metro vs. Me is that I'm back on top, with my near mastery of the green line, a rockstar pushing me over the edge for a six-pack of tickets and the operator letting me on for free (no jumping required this time)

my riches as a guineapig? well, i've collected $27 so far today (and I'm getting another $10 or $15 later in an hour) for my work deciphering gibberish and picking out piano sounds (crescendo/decrescendo along with staccato or legato) and telephone ring tones and busy tones, long and short. I think this was for about 58 minutes worth of "work" so we're not too shabby and my total earned is now $32. not too shabby.

oh, and are there really so few Asians in this city that people just automatically assume that I'm Spanish? it's cool, i have a chance to brush up and i had a lovely conversation about Sucommandante Marcos and the Zapatistas in Payless Shoes yesterday with a little woman from Chiapas, Mexico.

oh, and not all Subways (of Jerrod affiliates) smell like pee. The one that's melded with the Couche Tarde across from the Stewart bio building is actually in the shape of a submarine (the ship) along with the decor and doors and is sans that urine-y aroma. kooky quebecois! i love it!

oh, and the fashion week sucked, and my apartment was too hot to sleep in all nite yesterday so i wandered the streets falling into Ben & Jerry's and getting a free cone from the lovely employees there, Apple Pie yummmm and Boul de Maisonneuve is the shit, if only i could've gotten into the house of the goddesses not too far away.

 ok, i have a hankering for the Adams Science building fountain water now.

Toronto, look out! the countdown is officially on at 3 days....kalamata olives.

oh my.

so, after waking up from my workout/party induced coma that was saturday, i headed to the gym for salsa class. i was disappointed to see that i missed the drag races, but it turns out that i was available for the chicken burlesque and D called me up in the nick of time (quicker than johnny depp-mizthang i see ya) to secure that plan.

i stopped by indigo to read my latest indulgence: Shug by Jenny Han. read it, it has a big popsicle on it, and a stunning author pic/bio. she also hearts jordan catalano because i found her on myspace and she could very well be a virgo/ goat too.

i made myself the yummiest salad rolls...yummy! and headed to st.laurent. i always forget how long that dang street is, but since the street party was still going on, it seemed shorter. that and brazil won (gol gol gol.....) and people were smoking their meat/hawking their wares all over. i met up with D and we got a very nice "cafe au lait froid" before waiting to get into our show, and got caught up on the happenings of before we both left vancouver and were riding lowrider bikes.

the show was amazing. all the singing and dancing and pasties were on-point and worth the money paid. (yes, i paid to see a show) he also smuggled in some fabulous polish custard donuts that were the bomb. we went by the tam tams on mt royal and i got to see the hippies get down.

walking back on st.laurent, i ran into kent (coloured lights no longer MIA singer) and after getting him a beard trimmer and me a pineapple on a stick and escorting his american aparelled co-worker home, we headed out to the jam space and it was magical because my jam cherry was popped, and i freestyled over the live drum and bass....i'm totally hooked. they're getting gigs and i couldn't be happier for them because they are a solid group of guys...they teased with a little bit of "sweet child of mine" and let me be their tambourine girl once i had to relinquish the mic back to kent, but i have to admit that doing "hypnotize" and "rappers delite" with jay and his rock band were the freaking highlight of the evening. rock and soul people....look out. "don't just tell me that you need me".

so, it is true that they do close up the street and open up the terraces...free flowing alchohol and it's a fashion show of beautiful people prancing about the streets in their latest and greatest gear. but why are the women so extra-ordinarily beautyfull and the men so ordinarily blah? there were some hotties representing the sausage camp, but seriously...bad ratio. and where are the gays? i thought this was a freaking gay city?

so, fresh from the bellydance, i met up with K on st. cats and we went through some francofolie performances and caught some live hip hop, but it wasn't really so spectacular, only french.

st. laurent though whoo hoo..we went through that hiliter that is american apparal, and if i could remember all those ways to tie that scarf, maybe i would cut my own piece of cloth and tie it up all day in my house, but as it stands, without the video, i am lost. whatever. better for me that i don't spend $30 buying a piece of cotton.

we went to eva b which is a fabulous costume/retro/newskool store and tried on some gear. fun fun.

found ourselves a terrace and made some fast friends, ended up smoking clove cigs ($2 a pack, and they're gold and black, i may end up being a smoker after all!) the cast of the fringe version of sex and the city stopped by to promote their show, elexa gave us female condoms with vibrating rings, we ate free candy on a stick from "sucre bleu", the popcorn man gave me a fresh street popped bag, and an aussi bought me a thong from a giant gumball dispenser that dispensed panties.

we were shopping, watching K get drunk, wandering and club hopping from 10-4. we ended the nite with a lovely slice of bacon pizza (muslim nightmare) and got up in the morning to go back to the gym for salsa cardio and power yoga. whew.

so, i found the utopia of gyms..."la vie en forme" on st.catherine's and bleury...across from musiqueplus and various sex shops/stripper havens, is a diamond in the rough.

it is a ladies only facility with rows of cardio machines, weight area, and 60 different classes ranging from yoga to bellydance to kickboxing to this provocative animal called "salsa cardio"...and it is only $160 for fourteen months!

it's insane! my body's reacting in a lactic acid panic, but it's good, we'll get through the cramps. i was so euphoric last nite after my first body sculpting class with free weights (you want how many reps of what?!) and it's an interesting mix of bilinguists..."un, deux, three, quatre.." and some machines are in english and some in french, so we joined forces, i taught a francophone to use the bikes and was left in the dust on the elliptical machine because there wasn't anyone around to help me read it.

there's also tanning and waxing available for nominal fees.

who says you can't work out downtown in a major metropolis for peanuts?!

i heart montreal.