A regular morning in Southern Ontario consists of the birds singing, the gentle roar of traffic, and a blooming flower with a hint of dew, but Friday morning there was a different flavour.  A familiar aroma.  One of longing.  Yes, I smell you TIFF.   Once again, I brave the streets, restaurants and theatres of the city of Toronto all in the hopes of seeing a good movie or two and starting up my relationship with TIFF again.  Oh, it’s a rocky one.  A love-hate relationship if you will.  I’ve got a big week planned and it starts NOW!

Last year, I had some issues with where I can park a vehicle for the week without being raped by parking fees.  This year, since I have to split the trip up I took the GO Train in.  My plan for today was to drive to Burlington, meet up with a girl I met on craigslist (no, not for that) and sell her my Kings of Leon floor passes to their show at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton next Saturday.  Why am I selling?  Cause I’m so sick and tired of those douchebags right now that it would just make me angry to go.  So, meet the girl at 4, scoot up the 407 to Kelly’s house to grab my TIFF tickets and back to Burlington to get the 5:14pm train.  No problem.    Epic Fail.  First of all, the girl is 30 minutes late.  By the way, I sold the tickets for $100 more than what I paid for them.  Gold!  So, I fly up the 407 and exit right into construction.  Motherfucker.  I make my way to Kelly’s, sprint to get the tickets, (it wasn’t a long run, but I was tired), fly back down the 407.  At this point, it’s 5:09pm.  There’s no way I’m getting back to Burlington, so I decide to stop at a GO station in between where I was and Burlington.  Perfect.  Nope, 5:14pm train from Burlington goes non-stop to Oakville.  Epic Fail.  Again.  I wait an hour for the next train, but here’s where good fortune smiled upon me.

A couple of stops into my ride, some punk kid with his emo girlfriend get on the train.  At that moment, GO Train officials start checking for tickets.  Now, it’s common knowledge among GO Train riders that ticket checking is very, very random and I’ve only been checked half a dozen times.  They get to this kid and his girl and her ticket checks out and when he checks the punk’s ticket he asks the kid what stop he’s getting off at.  The kid nervously says ‘the next one’ and the cop asks him what stop that is and the kid doesn’t know.  Busted.  Kid was using an old ticket, so he asks for his I.D. and walks away.  He comes back a few minutes later and the kid starts begging the cop to not throw him off the train.  It was awesome.  Finally, the cop lets him stay but writes him a $250 fine.  Should have just paid the $8 ticket like his girl did.  This made up for the earlier troubles.

I get to Toronto, drop off my stuff, grab a bite and head off to my first movie.  It’s a Canadian comedy called The Trotsky and it starts Jay Baruchel as Leon Bronstein, a 17 year old high school student in Montreal who thinks he’s the re-incarnation of Bolshevik Leon Trotsky.  For a full review, click here.

After the movie, it was cool to see all of the actors in it, including Colm Feore, who is awesome.  Check out Bon Cop Bad Cop or this past season of 24 to see why.  I get out of the theatre and line right back up outside for my next film.  The Ryerson Theatre is right on campus of the University of the same name, so while standing in line and it being a Friday night, the whole area was being patrolled by drunk, slutty dressed, 18 year old girls screaming, yelling and laughing.  One girl asked me what the line-up was for and I told her people were giving out free potato chips.   It’s the second day of school and you’re already drunk and disorderly?  Really?  It’s a good thing that you won’t get a reputation of anything.

My next film was a vampire film called Daybreakers.  It’s 2017 and vampires have all but eliminated the human race and are trying to develop a blood substitute so they don’t all die.  It’s starts Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill and Willem Dafoe.  You can read my full review here.

A decent first day.  I’ve got some women’s field hockey to watch and a zombie flick to follow on Saturday.