First Photography Class

I enrolled in a beginner photography class at Ryerson and last night was the first class. Ryerson isn't very far from where I work so I decided to walk. There was a line-up of people outside the Elgin Theatre and naturally I assumed they were waiting to see me although I had no idea how they found out my route. I forgot about the Toronto International Film Festival, which is what they were actually lined up for. It looked like the action was about to start so I hung around to do a little "star gazing". It's been a dream of mine that one day I'll run into Lucy Liu, our eyes will meet, she'll immediately recognize the potent combination of rugged manliness and a poet's soul that I possess, fall madly in love with me and we live happily ever after surfing in Hawaii. I didn't spot Lucy but I did manage to see Tommy Lee Jones. The unfortunate part is our eyes did meet and he made me his bitch for the night. Ok, that's not entirely true, I did see Tommy Lee Jones and possibly three other celebrities. People were taking pictures of them but I have no idea who they were. I mostly hung around just to irritate the film fest volunteers who kept screaming, "if you do not have a ticket you cannot stand here. You must either cross the street or continue walking. You cannot stand here." Umm, I'm pretty sure your film fest t-shirt and clipboard don't entitle you to any power whatsoever so put a lid on it.

I got to class about 20 minutes early and was the first one there so I had my choice of seat. The desks were crappy tablet arm designs. If you told me yesterday I would have to sit in a tablet arm desk I would have said who cares. That's because yesterday I had no idea what a tablet arm desk was but I looked it up and now know that they are the desks with a small piece of wood extending from one side that you're supposed to be able to balance your binder and textbook on and still have enough room to take accurate notes. If you're my size they also jab painfully into your stomach the entire time you're sitting in them. The classroom was hot and stank like a the locker room at Jenny Craig after a spirited game of tag. The class started filling up, the instructor handed out the agenda and started reviewing it. Something was terribly wrong. He was talking about black and white film, processing negatives, spending time in the dark room. He said we were kind of dinosaurs for wanting to learn about film photography. It slowly dawned on me that I was in the wrong room. I have an incredibly bad habit of remembering key details incorrectly. I once spent a frustrating 45 minutes looking for an address that I thought was 207 but was actually 210. I thought perhaps I was dyslexic but friends have assured me that I'm just an idiot.

I left the B/W film class and went back to the front door where there was a sign listing all the classes and rooms. I was lucky that there were only two photography classes in that building last night and even luckier that the other one was the one I registered for. The good news is that the real class is much bigger and have actual tables I can sit at instead of crappy half desks. The instructor is hilarious and had me laughing the whole class. There are a couple of numbnuts in the class though; there always are. One student said she didn't have a printer and wanted to know how she could show her portfolio if she couldn't print her pictures. Is this really that difficult? How about you buy a printer or print them at a friend's house or take them to a photo studio or upload them and have Shutterfly print them and mail them to you. I wonder if she even has a camera. The other yahoo was a woman with funky red hair, horn-rimmed glasses, lip piercings and tattoos to make her look super-artsy and oh so hip. Just her look was enough to irritate me but what really put me over the edge was that her pants kept riding down displaying a deep, dark, disgusting ass crack. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of callipygian women but if you're ass is the colour and consistency of rice pudding, try to keep it covered up.