Take Me Away!

I’m escaping for the day! Ford is treating a bunch of media to a day long adventure that includes lunch at the Arta Gallery in the Distillery District, some driving in a Ford Escape, rock climbing, and dinner. We’re venturing to Rattle Snake Point to rock climbing and for a hike. Nature FTW! I’m really into adventure sports lately (see skydive). Last time I went rock climbing with the City of Cambridge Mayor & city council in high school I somehow got a bloody nose and ended up ambulancing to the hospital. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen! This is gonna be me: Check out this video of me at the Ford Innovation conference in Michigan last month talking about green technology. I’m not dressed and need to be there in 30 minutes. Damn you Internet for being so awesome and full of interesting things to distract me. Hopefully  that is you reading this blog right now when you are supposed to be doing something else. Ok, now more importantly, rock climbing, hiking, dinner, and an art gallery, what the heck does one wear? Follow along today’s adventure on Twitter @casiestewart or the hashtag #FordEscape. My tweets have been a lot of First World Problems today and you might like them. I’m feelin’ sassy. SAVE THE PLANET!

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Media Dinner at Alimento Fine Food Emporium

The other day I was invited to an intimate Italian dinner for media at Alimento Fine Foods on King at Bathurst. I live right around the corder but wasn’t sure what was going on there. It looked kinda intimidating in there TBH. Inside is a huge selection of groceries, mostly imported from Italy & around Europe. There’s heaps of gluten free pasta options, and a massive selection of meats & cheese. There’s a great dining area and bar. We ate a ton of amazing food and drank lots of wine. It was wonderful. I suggest you check it out. Find Aliemento on Twitter at @alimentofoods or at alimento.ca. I seriously loved the lasagna, I had two pieces. The owner had the chef bring me out another piece! I was kinda embarrassed but I didn’t even care. GAGA GARFIELD STRIKES AGAIN!  Thanks to Ryan Emberley for the photos and this great shot of Pay Chen and me. Follow her, she’s awesome. See all photos from the night at cdaily.ca/AlimentoMediaDinner Salute!  

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This BLEW My Mind: Invisible Bike Helmet #fashion

I was at Sazerac Gastro Lounge for a media dinner last night and my Andrew Dobson told me about this crazy Invisible Bike Helmet. Say wha? I hate wearing a helmet but I have one. Call me intrigued…he sent the video but I hadn’t looked at it yet. Today, Lauren O’Nizz wrote a story about it for CBC “Would you trust an invisible bike helmet?“. Call me intrigued…  If you haven’t seen this yet, please watch: The Invisible Bicycle Helmet | Fredrik Gertten from Focus Forward Films  Hövding operates like a collar for cyclists around the neck that inflates like to an airbag for your head.  The trigger is controlled by ‘sensors which pick up the abnormal movements’ before you get into an accident. My favourite parts of the video other than being invisible:  

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SummerWorks Performance Festival: Peachy Coochy at the Performance Bar

I subscribe to the Say Media blog and truly love the Venn diagrams that come every Friday morning. This one is from one of my favourite books “Steal Like An Artist”. Tomorrow night, 9:30pm at The Lower Ossington Theatre, a Peachy Coochy performance will grace the stage at the Performance Bar as part of the SummerWorks Theatre Festival. The name comes from the Japanese ‘Pecha Kucha‘ where each presenter has 5 minutes to deliver 15 slides with only 20 seconds for each slide. I know these as Ignite presentations, people do them at conferences sometimes. The cast will be sharing Venn diagrams in a form that is  ‘smart and playful, sweet and earnest, with a healthy dose of cheek’.  See the description on the SummerWorks site. I creeped YouTube for Peachy Coochy and there’s some funny ones. I’m looking forward to this! Performance Details: Date & Time: Thursday August 16, 9:30 pm – Location: Ticket: Pay-what-you-can Participants: Philip Akin: Artistic Director, Obsidian Theatre Company Tara Beagan: Artistic Director, Native Earth Performing Arts Ravi Jain: Artistic Director, Why Not Theatre Matthew Jocelyn: Artistic Director, Canadian Stage Laura Nanni: Festival Director, Rhubarb Festival Richard Rose: Artistic Director, Tarragon Theatre Cost is PWYC so if you are broke as a joke or rollin’ in dough you can still go and have some smart fun. I’ll be there and hope to see some familiar faces so we can laugh together.    

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Media Preview: X-Men: Gordon Smith Exhibit at TIFF Bell Lightbox

[insert Jaws music]  It’s coming! TIFF is a super exciting time of year for the city of Toronto. So many international people, celebrities, films, events, and business deals. I’ve got a few things in my calendar already as it’s less than 25 days away. Today I went to the media preview of the X-Men: Gordon Smith Exhibit at TIFF Bell Lightbox. It was so cool! I’m a big X-Men fan despite not talking about comics that much. Tried to get a good 360 for y’all to see the exhibit but it was dark and there are restrictions on what you can photograph. Looks like this but bigger. If you click on the photo it will take you to 360 website for an interactive view. Gordon Smith is an Ontario native and thirty-year veteran in the film industry who has worked on some MAYJAH films (X-Men, Platoon, Natural Born Killers) . His Imdb is stacked. Mine will get crazy one day I hope! The contact lenses, so much variety. Skin of Mystique uses silicone prosthetics that could be applied directly to the skin. Has a life-like texture. It took 12 hours for each shooting day and four makeup artists to glue them onto Rebecca Romijn’s skin, then apply paint, powder, and makeup. This is the pattern. Nightcrawler had plaster moulds and they used computer graphics paired with real actors wearing 3D silicone prosthetics to make the characters life-like. The scarification on his skin, which represents his sins used Maori moko tattoo as inspiration. I always knew I had a special connection to this movie. Maori are native New Zealanders and Gordon Smith is Canadian. Anna Paquin who plays Rogue is  Kiwi/Canadian like me too! I love Wolverine. Such a babe. They used plastic blades for most the movie but these are actual metal and…

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You’re Part of It, We’re In This Together

Yesterday I treated myself to a nice brekky at the Drake Hotel before afternoon meetings, SummerWorks, and a media dinner. I was feeling meh and a dining experience for one always makes me feel better. I’m working on some new things to launch at casiestewart.com in September. This space hasn’t changed much since it started in 2005 and I feel that it needs to grow along with how I have. It all started as “people, places, things & thoughts, in attempt to keep more memories” and it’s an amazing memory bank for me but I feel it could be better. I’d love your thoughts on things you would like to see me do, write about, or cover. Some ideas from around my head and the Internet are: Monday Inspiration Memory lane – stories of meeting people IRL Contests App/Product reviews New music Travel Tuesday WIWT (what I wore today) – my outfits Blogger interviews more videos Hat & collar from H&M I just went to this totally RAD media preview of the X-Men exhibit at TIFF and have a really fun SummerWorks theatre show to tell you about. I’ll be writing all day and trying to keep mute as I’m fighting a cough. I have little to no voice at the moment so don’t bother calling me, Tweet! I hope your corner of the Internet is full of sunshine 🙂

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