Mike's Bloggity Blog

(Photo via Zack Hewitt)

To say last night was one of the greatest nights of my life, would be an understatement.

Last night, I was I was unbelievably honoured to win a White Hat Award!  Put on by Tourism Calgary, The Calgary White Hat Awards recognize the people behind Calgary’s tourism industry. I was nominated in one of the honourary categories, along with another popular blog Toque and Canoe. In the end, I ended up winning the Media Recognition Award and it was definitely a surreal feeling. Standing in front of thousands of people cheering for YOU!  That is a once in a life time moment, I’ll never forget it. To be honest, the whole thing is a giant blur. To me, when I got up on stage I literally said, “blah, blah, blah, gargle, gargle, gargle.” But apparently it came off a little better than that.

The show itself was incredibly impressive.  I’ve been to a lot of award shows (usually in the back) and I hadn’t seen a production like this, maybe ever.  The lights, the sights and the sounds were amazing.  The energy in the room was addictive and the people cheering still has my ears ringing the next day.  What I also loved about the awards, was that it was every day regular people getting nominated and winning.  How often does someone working in the Back of House of a hotel or a server at a restaurant get to get really dressed up and be treated like a celebrity?  I’m not lying when I say that I cried at least a half a dozen times because those moments were really that amazing. I know it’s cheesy, but it was so fantastic to be a part of the night.

Click here to see all the winners from the night!

And photos of the big party!

Last two photos via Tourism Calgary

Last month, you may have heard that a few thousand people had trouble getting Garth Brooks tickets?  Well three lucky people in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver are about to get their hands on the most coveted tickets in all the country and I’ll they have to do is find one lucky white hat.

This Wednesday, Calgary Stampede, Tourism Calgary, and Travel Alberta will host a public White Hat Drop in three Canadian cities simultaneously, with a chance for one lucky person to win a once-in-a-century prize!  Hidden inside one of 200 white hats in Olympic Plaza, Burrard Square and Dundas Square is one red envelope that will contain an unforgettable package to experience the Calgary Stampede during its Centennial Anniversary.  This exciting event will take place over the city’s respective noon-hour in all three public spaces.

The VIP prize package for two people includes the following:

·     Two tickets to the sold out Garth Brooks concert on July 12th.
·     Two Day Thrill package for the Calgary Stampede, includes Rodeo tickets, a VIP behind the scenes chuckwagon experience, evening show and more.
·     A $250 gift card to get officially outfitted at Lammle’s Western Wear & Tack.
·     A Stampede dining experience featuring chef Paul Rogalski at Rouge Restaurant, one of only 2 restaurants in Canada to receive the top 100 restaurant rating in the world by San Pellegrino.
·     Cocktails and tapas at one of Calgary’s newest and most coveted restaurants, Ox & Angela.
·     A look into Calgary outside of the Stampede gates, with passes to: Glenbow Museum, Calgary Tower, and the Calgary Zoo.

If you want to win these hats, here’s what you have to know.  (Times are respective of each time zone.)

11:30 a.m.  – 200 wristbands to be distributed to the first 200 people.  Participants will line up behind one of four designated entrances.

12:30 p.m. - 20 participants at a time will get access to the designated area and will have 30 seconds to choose one white hat to stand beside.

12:35 p.m. All participants simultaneously uncover chosen hat to discover if they have won the red envelope.

I won’t be trying to get a hat, because this all sounds too stressful for my anxiety riddled mind.  But I’ll definitely go check it out!  Who’s going to try and get the sweet tickets?

After almost two years of delay, Calgary’s Peace Bridge finally opened today, and I think to everyone’s surprise, thousands of people showed up to celebrate (or criticize) the stunning piece of architecture, that came with a price tag of $25 million.

Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrav, the bridge has been met with a ton of criticism since it was first announced, but all of that was drowned out today by everyone that showed up to see what all the fuss was about.

I, for one, am excited for the bridge and the vibrancy it brings to the downtown core, I’m interested to see how it will play a role in the years to come, especially as the river front continues to be developed.

As for the celebration, like the bridge’s construction, it seemed to be a little chaotic. I think there was a ribbon cutting or a speech, or something like that, no one could really tell since none of it was mic’d or even on a platform, just thousands of people huddled around, looking at something. After a lengthy delay, the bridge finally opened up and people crisscrossed the bridge, exploring it from every angle.

Here are some photos from the opening.

The bridge finally welcomes its first users.

Making my way across the bridge.

Some cool t-shirts designed to celebrate the opening.  Click here to order one.

A reflective view from underneath the bridge.

These guys camped out to be the first to cross.  Unfortunately, it opened up on the other side.  Maybe they told themselves they’d be the first to cross in the other direction.

The next morning was particularly foggy and I was able to get this shot using Instagram.

This week, I got the chance to make a video to teach kids something I get to do every day.  It’s all a part of the “Simple Fun” series put on here in Calgary by the International Children’s Festival.  For my video, I decided to talk about writing and interviewing people.  It was a really cool experience and even though I’m told I don’t look very nervous, I was definitely nervous, believe it or not, I am actually a little camera shy!  It was also maybe the first time since getting it back in 2005, that I got to put to good use my B.Ed. Yeah, I got one of those.

Take a look at the video..and please remember it’s for children, that’s why I’m talking to the camera like it is a four year old.

The Calgary International Children’s Festival runs from May 22nd to  26th.

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.