Mike's Bloggity Blog

I’ve never even seen episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and I know that this is crazy.  The Calgary Comic Expo has announced that the entire, the ENTIRE cast of TNG will be reuniting this April, here in Calgary.    Yes, in Calgary.  I’m surprised too. Those cast members already on board are Sir Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton and Denise Crosby. Like come on, that’s crazy.  Since the show ended back in 1994, the cast has never been at a convention together.  For Trekkies across the world, this event will be huge.  Last year Calgary had Will and Kate and this year we’ll have Data. I’d say that’s on par.

Fun fact: While I’ve never seen an episode of Star Trek, I did once take my friend’s boyfriend to one of the movies, because he had no one to go with him. Needless to say, I had no idea what the hell was going on, but it was still kinda fun.

The announcement comes off of a slew of big “gets” for this year’s expo which already includes Robert Englund (Freddy Kreuger), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter), James Marsters (Spike from Buffy), John Noble and Jasika Nicole (Fringe), Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Gallactica) and Adam West (The original Batman)!

Like I said, stellar.

The Calgary Expo runs from April 27th-29th.

Never in my life would I have imagined that I would write that title for a blog post… .

But yes, this weekend, I got the chance to see one of the most crazy, insane, hilarious shows that I might ever see in my entire life.  For two sold out nights, as a part of the High Performance Rodeo, Lucha Vavoom took over the Big Four building on the grounds of the Calgary Stampede and I don’t think things will ever be the same…thankfully.

If you’ve never heard of Lucha Vavoom, it is basically a mix of Mexican wresting, burlesque and stand up comedy.  Beyond that, it’s pretty difficult to explain.  Did I understand everything that was going on?  No.  Did I see lots of people flying around and burlesque dancers do things with tassels that I didn’t even know what possible?  Yes, yes I did.

The show is a really a mix of theatre and some of Mexico’s most legendary luchadors.  The fact that it took place in the same building that once saw wrestlers like  Bret Hart, Owen Hart, British Bulldog, Dynamite Kid, Brian Pillman, Bad News Allen and The Honky Tonk Man compete in Stampede Wrestling was all the more sweeter.

From left to right: Chocolate Caliente, Terry Rock (Calgary Arts Development), ME!, Dirty Sanchez, Jim Button (Village Brewery).

From left to right: Käthe Lemon (Avenue Magazine) and Sheenah Rogers (Anstice Communications.)

Oh, I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time.

Last week, Tourism Calgary and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra reached out to twitter users asking “How do you stay warm in #YYC?” The submitted tweets that used the hashtag #cpowarmup or replied to the @Calgary twitter handle were compiled and turned into a twitter first (based on internet and social media searches) – a tweet compilation sung by a philharmonic chorus.

After selecting 20 tweets, Timothy Shantz arranged them and set them to the classic piece O Fortuna from the legendary Carmina Bruana series.

This video seriously put me in a great mood.  I’ve always loved hearing authoritative voices like Lloyd Robertson say things about Twitter because it just sounds like we’re the stupidest generation and you can imagine Robertson rolling his eyes at us,  but to have these tweets about staying warm immortalized in a dramatic choral arrangement is just too awesome.

If this doesn’t want to make you curl up with a warm cup of cocoa, I don’t know what will!

A few weeks ago I found out that I was lucky enough to be chosen to speak at the Pecha Kucha, which if you’ve never heard of, it’s okay.  I actually went to my first Pecha Kucha event only a few months ago!

Devised in Tokyo in 2003, PechaKucha Nights are now taking place in almost 450 cities around the world. Drawing their name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat,” It’s a format that makes presentations concise and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.  Essentially it’s a presentation style that forces its presenters to get right to the meat and potatoes of the subject matter, which this week is the word reclaim.   The challenge to the presenters is this:  Give a presentation using only 20 slides, each slide can only be up for 20 seconds, which means the best (or worst presentation is done is 6:40.)  It’s been a little stressful trying to get everything together and keep it until the alotted time, but it’s also been a lot of fun.  I think the slides are cool and I hope people will be fun.

So if you find yourself in the Calgary-area this Wednesday, Pecha Kucha #10 will be taking place at the John Dutton Theatre in the Central Library. Doors at 6:30pm, event at 7:00pm.
Here is the list of speakers, I seriously have no idea how I ended up on it.  So impressive.

• Kathleen Bell, Communications Officer, Calgary Counselling Centre
• Lorna Crowshoe, Aboriginal Issue Strategist, Social Policy and Planning, City of Calgary
• Brian Johns, Wildlife Biologist
• Ben Millen, Board of Directors, The New Gallery/John Snow House
• Jesse Moffatt, Manager of Collections and Artifact Care, Cantos Music Foundation
• Mike Morrison, Blogger/Writer
• Gene Poole, Calgary Cassette Preservation Society
• Dr. Roger Saint-Fort, Associate Professor and Chair, Mount Royal University Department of Environmental Science
• Sonny Tomic, Manager, Centre City Planning and Implementation, City of Calgary
• Kris Vester, President, Slow Food Calgary

This weekend in Calgary was cold, like really, really cold.  I believe at one point the wind chill dipped down to -30.  And while I’m used to this city, that is nestled beside the mountains, getting cold, this seems an awfully early time of the year for it to be that cold.

But luckily, I had lots of activities to do in the city to keep me warm. I thought I’d do a little re-cap, since it’s still too cold out now to do anything. On Friday, I was lucky enough to judge a Gingerbread House competition.  It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it, right?  It was all apart of the celebration to kick-off Christmas All Through The House at the historic Lougheed House. It’s one of my favourite buildings in Calgary, and seeing it decorated by about a dozen different designers was absolutely beautiful.  There were six houses to judge from including a pink interpretation of the Lougheed House by Jelly Modern dougnuts, it looked absolutely delicious and made me and my fellow judge, Avenue Magazine’s Jennifer Hamilton question why there wasn’t a Gingerbread House eating competition?  The decision was tough, but in the end I chose Brûlée Patisserie as my favourite and the other judges seemed to agree since it picked up the coveted Judges Favourite award. I loved how they showed the inside of the Ginger Bread house, that’s something you never see.  Jelly Modern won People’s Choice.

Christmas All Through the House runs until November 27th and again, it’s beautiful.

On Saturday morning, with the temperature dipping to around -30, I could think of nothing more fun to do than participate in a Ice Sculpture contest.  The contest was all apart of the Christmas in Inglewood celebration and even though the frigid temperatures kept a lot of people from coming down, those who did make it down to 9th ave had a blast. The contest saw some different media types including Dan Clapson, Julie Van Rosendaal, Brian Keating and city counciler Gian-Carlo Carra chipping away at a block of ice trying to design a house.  Which when you’re thinking about ice sculpting, a house design is probably the easiest thing you could do.

After a quick lesson, we all started chipping away and while I was nervous about severing an artery, it was actually a lot of fun.  I tried to make a chimney, which I then quickly accidentally chipped off. In the end, the judges (Santa and Mrs. Clause) realized that in ten minutes, all of our houses pretty much looked the same and I don’t think they felt right awarding a winner, probably because none of our designs deserved to be called anything close to “winning.”

Christmas in Inglewood was a blast and a great example of no matter how cold it is, there’s always lots to do on a chilly Saturday afternoon in Calgary!

If you’re starting to look for Christmas gifts, I have a good suggestion for you. Actually, it’s quite bad.  In fact, it’s A Bad Portrait.

Ever since May, artist Mandy Stobo (pictured above) has been painting what she calls Bad Portraits and since then, they have become all the rage here in the city. A mix between a painting and a caricature, the relatively cheap ($20-$60) piece of art work, forces to look at some of your strongest features, from a completely new perspective.   This weekend, I got to see a small show that she put at the Market Collective and I was amazed how many people were lined up to get their bad portrait done.  It’s funny to think that we all spend so much money on clothes and things like that to make ourselves look good, but with Mandy’s paintings everyone is happy to pay to look bad.

A few months ago, Mandy did a portrait of me and I’ll be honest, the first time I saw it, I did not like it.  It’s hard to look at yourself like that.  But once I put my ego aside, I totally understood why it was so cool.  Now I’m only left with the question of where to put it?  I’m guessing above my bed would not help…things.

For more information about Mandy and her bad portraits, check out here website.

Well defending my decision to live in Calgary just got a little easier.

That’s because the city was just designated Calgary designated as Canada’s Cultural Capital for 2012! A few years ago, I probably would have been just as surprsied as you are right now. But Calgary has definitely been changing for the better and this designation is proof of that!

The designation and support from Canadian Heritage will augment the $2 million commitment to Calgary 2012 made by Calgary City Council in April of this year. The designation will enhance the celebrations and investment programs planned by Calgary 2012, which include the recently announced granting programs and grassroots engagement activities.

The celebration will include a new residence program, a national and international cultural exchange program, a mass participation spectacle event and the creation of a municipal cultural plan. Basically it will be the Calgary Stampede…but artsy. A family-friendly celebratory launch will be held at the start of the Cultural Capital year, April 2012. The formal completion of the Cultural Capital celebration will be March 2013.

So if you ever thinking about coming to visit Calgary, 2012 might just be your year.

Today was definitely a day of firsts. Most notably, I hosted my very first fashion show.  Yes people, it’s true.  I initially thought I was indeed the last person on earth, but The Core insisted they wanted me to host their Fall Luxury Fashion show.  I was immediately concerned because, I’m not definitely not the most stylish person around.  (Don’t let the outfit fool you, that was crafted together by a team of 15 of my friends.)

But when the moment came to start hosting, it was actually quite fun.  If I wasn’t nervous enough, The National was there filming Mayor Nenshi has he watched the show, now I fear that Ian Hanomansing, thinks I represent Calgary fashion.   But in the end, everything went off without a hit.  I even learned that there was a store called BCBG.  How crazy of a name is that?

When the glitz and the glamour of the fashion show was over, it was time to announce the winner of the Core Mini Challenge. All week long, I had done every thing I could to make sure that I got the most photos of the now infamous Core Mini.  I took it to Flames Games, 17th Avenue, Business parks, shopping centres, you name it, The Core Mini was there.  Sometimes I was even lucky enough to be followed by the Perogy Boyz and Fiasco Gelato food trucks, who wanted to lend their support.   It was an amazing (and exhausting) week. But would it be worth it?

You can only imagine my shock and surprise, when Randy Ferguson, Vice President of 20 Vic Management from the CORE announced that Mike’s Bloggity Blog had won and I got to give my $5,000 prize to Kids Up Front.

I shockingly did not cry in public. Wow.  But was it ever an amazing feeling!  They handed me the check and I immediately ran over to Kari Scarlett from Kids Up Front and gave her the check, it was probably the best feeling that I’ve ever had.

In the end, it was probably the busiest week of my life, but it also reminded me how awesome Calgary continues to be.  For a guy not from here, this city is pretty good to me.

So now the Thank Yous, and there’s a lot of them.

Kari and Evan from Kids Up Front.
Breakfast Television
Mount Royal University (especially Danielle Montgomery!)
Perogy Boyz
Fiasco Gelato
Melrose Cafe and Bar
Chelsea Klukas Creative
The Core
Anstice Communications

What could you do with $1,000?

Turns out, with a creative mind, a classic movie and food trucks, you can create perfect fall night.

On Saturday night, I had one of my most favourite nights ever in Calgary, and it was all because of a really cool program called Awesome Calgary.   The initiative sees one lucky Calgarian every month  win $1,000 so they can do something that will make Calgary more awesome.  Well Matthew Hamel won and he decided to create @YYCmobileMovie, a wonderful event that will see classic movies displayed outdoors, for free, for everyone to enjoy.

On this particular Saturday night, it was easily one of the hottest days of the year and a crowd of 200 people gathered to sit under the stars and watch Casablanca. Watching the movie displayed on one of this city’s most historic buildings was just icing on the cake.

The project will continue next week with The Incredibles in Inglewood, and if there’s any lucky, we’ll hopefully see it again next summer.

If you think you have a way to make Calgary, make sure you submit idea to the Awesome Calgary foundation.

Until the next time, here’s looking at you….Calgary.

You know how it’s always so much cooler to own the complete series of a show, then just have an episode? Well here is the complete series of my trip to Chicago and the amazing opportunity that I got to go behind the scenes and meet the cast and crew of Cirque Du Soleil’s OVO.

During my time backstage, I basically made it my goal to make it on to the stage that night. As you’ll see over the series of these videos, it didn’t go well.

The show opens here in Calgary on September 7th, and like every Cirque show, it is AMAZING! Which I’m guessing why they didn’t me to make it better, you know, cause it’s already awesome.

The one where I try to juggle….

The one where I find out about the show!

The one where I dress in the costumes!

The one where I sneak under the stage!

Click here to buy tickets!