Many years ago, some brilliant people from the Ivy League (nothing to do with the schools – The Ivy League was a one hit wonder band from the early 80s) realized that Halloween is too awesome to only celebrate once a year.  Now Halloween Day is an annual tradition in honor of Halloween that happens every year on May 31.

Halloween Day was a big deal around the bnotions and Harth TV offices.

I brought out my special occasion cape for it.

Front:

Rear:

Peep the costumes at the office:

Who Ya Gonna Call?  Maybe Carolyn…

Regina is an 80s girl.  You might think Marie from Nat & Marie did not participate, BUT…

…she is an Olympian rockin’ the official gear and the official sponsor’s food.

Happy Halloween Day to everyone!  Make sure your workplace takes part next year if you didn’t on this one!

On the way back from our adventure in Austin, Texas, there was only one all-out touristy thing that we all wanted to do: visit Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee.

The man’s flying 2 bedroom apartment, named after his daughter.

This is where Elvis received The Beatles when they dropped by to visit.

They make a big point about how Elvis spent most of his time upstairs, and only came downstairs when people came over. Also, no one ever got to go upstairs – that was his private space. And so they’re not going to show us the upstairs out of respect. #EPICFAIL #WACK

So here we are going downstairs – but it’s cool because the whole stairway is mirrored!

The basement:

The sign on the TV set above reads “Gift from RCA to Elvis for the sale of 50 million records between the years of 1956 and 1960.”

This was the part I perked up at the most – the display case with the memorabilia from Elvis’ 1968 prime time TV special. He hadn’t had a hit in a while, and had been out of the public eye for a few years. It’s scarier for a performer to go out after he’s been big and isn’t so much any more than it is when he’s just starting and no one knows who he is yet. And on the show you can see how nervous Elvis is.

#WANT

This trophy room used to be Elvis’ personal racquetball court:

The house itself was way more modest than you might think, being that it’s the home of one of the biggest stars of all time, but it’s decked out so that you can see where Elvis got bored and decided to mess with a part of the house to make a new hangout pad for he and his friends.

I was really disappointed to not see the upstairs, especially after they play up how it was Elvis’ private space. And it’s chilling to reach the end of the tour, be standing at the graves of Elvis, both of his parents, and his grandmother, and realize that he was only 42 when he died.

I’m glad that, like the Hollywood sign, I got to see one of those things I always wanted to see through my own eyes.

And I’m glad that a quick stop into the gift shop means that DMC has a homey to kick it with.

What up to my contest winners: Aleks, Reado, Shaun Hawaii, Aaron Broverman ★ Gail Gabrielle, 40deuce, Dave Coleman, and props to Jon (the Big Thinker)

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Hello! Thanks for checking out my website.  Feels like I haven’t poured my random craziness into this blog in a while.

Winter is in full swing here in Toronto.  I’m still spoiled by the winter I spent bombing between Los Angeles and the Mexican Riviera on a luxury cruise ship two years ago.  I spent that winter away, most of that next year just hanging out in California, and I have never been the same since.  I got back just in time for last winter but I hadn’t resolved the personal issues that led me to seek a change of scenery in the first place so I was still away from Toronto and generally hiding from life.

Now I’m bringing the action and satisfaction, out in the big city, making moves and shaking things up.  I’m having fun, but I am definitely not cut out for this winter business.

It’s been a great few weeks since I moved into the new pad.  Living smack in the middle of everywhere you go downtown is pretty great.  We’ve got the green screen studio set up, have already run a few successful tests, and are almost ready to shoot a few new videos I’ve been cooking up.

Speaking of videos, this weekend is going to be the first table read of my next big movie – Julian Assange and The Double Damn Burger.  I cannot effin’ wait to hear those words come out of the mouths of the people I wrote them for.

In other work news, I’ve started working with a few new clients in just the last week or so on some really cool stuff.  One project in particular is an animation project.  I haven’t done an animation project in several years.  I’m really looking forward to putting that in front of you.  Stay tuned!

I think that about catches you up on what’s going down in my world.  But enough about me!  How are you doing??  Leave a comment and let me know what you’re up to.

And come see my Social Media Week session tonight!!!

You know I’ve got you.  I’m your connection.  So check out this video – catch the game from the best seats in the house and come behind-the-scenes into the heart of the Air Canada Centre…

This was one of those experiences you’ve heard me talk about that you just can’t buy.  These aren’t just great seats that we were sitting in…

We were sitting in the seats that belong to Richard Peddie, President of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (basically, the boss of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC, and Toronto Marlies).

↑ Our tickets!  These seats are incredible.  We were dead on centre ice, nine rows up.  We could see everything, right down to the expressions on the the players’ faces as they left the bench or the penalty box.

My press pass

Here’s me and Jon Sinden, my host for this game.  Jon is the community manager for MLSE so he runs the Twitter and Facebook for all of those teams I just mentioned, in addition to a whole bunch of branding and outreach activities.  Jon is one of those friends who I don’t see as often as I would like, but when we do spend time together it’s always tremendously eventful and inspiring.  We’ve got a few projects we’re cooking up (hence why I got to go to this game), so keep this site open in a browser tab for when that drops.

Here’s where Jon works (I presume) ↑

Sonny Weems from the Toronto Raptors sat two rows in front of us!

Face off!

Penalty!

Goal!

Fight!

Another goal! Doesn’t Anaheim’s goalie look dejected??

This game was amazing.  It was as close to the perfect game of hockey as I’ve ever heard of.  It was fast-paced, high-scoring, low on fights and penalties, and the home team won.  I saw the most amazing goals I’ve ever seen.  I’ve always said that the Leafs come off like a bunch of guys bumbling around, accidentally scoring goals once in a while.  But for this game they were smooth and in control.

I’m still overjoyed now, a day later, over how for all the games I could have been invited to with this unbelievable level of access, I got to be there for this game in particular.  Just brilliant.

Here’s me with broadcasting legend Andy Frost, the Voice of the Leafs and radio personality heard on Toronto’s AM640 and Q107 FM:

His voice is so iconic and burned into my subconscious that meeting him and hearing him talk was a trip. He’s a super cool guy and I was really excited to meet him. During 2nd intermission we went to say hello to everyone up in the media gondola. We got to see all of the TV and newspaper people both from here in Toronto and the Anaheim media, covering the away game.

This is a man having an incredibly fun night out.

This was right beside the rink between periods.

Here’s Leafspace Monika running the show during intermission. Remember when she did that freestyle rap for us??

Thanks and congratulations to the Toronto Maple Leafs!

Check out these links for more with me and the Toronto Maple Leafs:
Leafs bum-rush an amateur game and select one player to be Leaf for a Day
Coke Zero Fans First game against the Ottawa Senators

2010 was the year that blogging & social media exploded, and thanks to my daily videos and status as an influencer I was able to connect with a whole bunch of luminaries this year:

Chali 2na from Jurassic 5, Ze Frank, Mike Komisarek & Colby Armstrong from the Toronto Maple Leafs, Biz Markie, Colin Mochrie, Tricia Helfer, Trailer Park Boys, Ron Artest from the Los Angeles Lakers…..

It was a year of putting pieces into place, trying different combinations, getting a bunch of “I always wanted to try that”-type-of-things behind me, and doing work to cut & polish the vision for what I want to do in art, comics, movies, and music.

When 2010 started out, I was about six months into doing Super Party as a weekly webcomic.

I was in the hotel room after getting back from partying with Vanilla Ice back in July, 2008 when I got the idea for Super Party. It’s what I had been putting all of my energy into designing and workshopping lo these several years of hustling underground comics like they were the hottest dope on the street.

Six months of a weekly webcomic gave me a platform to hone my joke-writing, develop my supporting cast, pad out the world, and define the style.  But ultimately I realized that’s not the way I like to do comics.  For me it’s the whole thing of privately crafting the story, letting snippets leak out and building mystique around it, and the explosion of it when I finally deliver that story and put a book in people’s hands.

So in January I was doing a weekly Super Party comic strip, and starting to experiment with daily video.

The last weekly Super Party comic strip went up on March 12 as a tribute to the March 11 anniversary of Biggie Smalls’ murder.

That was right after Canada won the Gold Medal in Hockey at the Olympics (and my video of the downtown chaos that ensued went nuts when it was picked up by local media), when Lady Gaga dropped the music video for Telephone and it was like an atomic bomb went off in everyone’s mind…

…and right when I, Raymi the Minx, Casie Stewart, and Carly-Anne Fairlie were preparing our epic Social Media How-To Seminar.

The story of how this event came together has never been told.

Me and Carly-Anne met and had dinner together in December of 2009, talking about where we saw social media and blogging going in 2010.  We had a lot of similar ideas about it, and we thought that we might work well together.  I shared with her my vision for a social media how-to seminar that talked about the finer points of getting ahead as a ‘personality blogger’.  I felt like Casie Stewart, Raymi the Minx, and me were the premier representatives of this style of blogging in Toronto, so we would be the speakers.  Carly would take all of the credit for dreaming up and staging the event, and I would just be one of the esteemed speakers on the bill alongside one of the pioneers of blogging and the then-social media director for MTV and MuchMusic. It was all very strategic around maximizing the cult-of-personality value for everyone, which was basically the subject of my keynote presentation How to Be a Blog Star: The Artistry of Your Personal Brand.

Our event was standing-room-only at Function 13 in Toronto.  I still think that the me/Raymi/Casie combo at that time was one of the most timeless and historic collaborations ever.  We really crystallized a moment, and had a big impact on Toronto’s Internet scene.

The buzz around the Blog Stars event dove-tailed perfectly with Bite TV reaching out to me and inviting me to be one of the founding contributors to their Bite Daily blog.

Glassbox Media (the company that owns both Bite TV and AUX TV) is notorious in the blogging community for not paying much for blog content, but I had other things I wanted to get out of having that platform available to me. I liked that Bite was a brand established in traditional media, but new and off-the-radar enough that we could work cheap & lean, and do exciting things.  I thought that this would be a good chance to take another stab at the kind of thing I didn’t get to do at Ed’s Night Party.

I was their #1 contributor right out of the gate.

At one point, I was the author of all of the top five most popular posts on the site.

I used Bite Daily as a great opportunity to sharpen my comedy writing skills, and it gave me the impetus to start making more ambitious comedy videos.  It got me and Jennica working together again, and I will go on record right now as saying that Jennica is one of the the most most professional, most agreeable, and most delightful collaborators it’s been my pleasure to work with in all of my years in art & entertainment.  I love the hell out of that girl.

I only wrote for Bite Daily for a few months, but during that time it was great fun to know that I was making a splash.  I really believed that their relaunch as an all-comedy channel presented a brilliant opportunity to make history, and I wanted to be a part of it.  But in the end their approach would be more conservative than the ballsy, gonzo, full-frontal-assault that I was looking forward to, and I wouldn’t be taking part in their relaunch.

At the end of March, I got my first smartphone. My relationship with mobile technology would blossom as the year progressed.

Every year during the first weekend of May, Free Comic Book Day is a great time at the Silver Snail and I was particularly proud of my 2010 drawings.

On May 10, I began one of the biggest projects I had yet undertaken – I would post a video blog every single day for a full year.

Here was May 10th’s video, the first in the official series, announcing that I would be resuming the posting of daily videos.  You’ll notice that I don’t mention that I want to do it for a year.  I kept that private because my confidence was at a lull after a series of projects and partnerships not working out the way I had planned on.  I couldn’t stand it if I ended up cutting it short before a year was up and blowing it quite so publicly.

In June, I first met a future friend and frequent collaborator, Miss Lauren O’Nizzle at a #RandomTO.

My North by Northeast coverage was “Best of Toronto”.

I got day-by-day coverage of both the Music portion of the festival and the 1st-ever edition of the Interactive portion.  I got world-exclusive footage from the epicentre of a massive downtown blackout that affected many festival venues, and got up close with Ze Frank, the NXNEi keynote speaker.

crackin’ jokes with Ze Frank

My coverage of the final hour of the stand-off between police and protesters during the weekend of the G20 summit was a huge hit.

And then what I captured proved to be nothing compared to the horrible abuses of Sunday.

By July, I set myself upon a big challenge: I would make a comedy video, shoot the making of it for the next day’s vlog, and post both videos the next day, quietly ‘soft-launching’ series 3 of The Sean Ward Show.  Series 3 of The Sean Ward Show premiered with the release of the silliness titled Stuntman Steve and the Big Dream.  This was my first experience with the partnership known as The Wonder Mint, and the video would not have been made were it not for them.

When it was Michael Nus’ birthday, he and I had met but never had a chance to connect so I was surprised and delighted to be invited to this birthday party. After that we were buds, became friends, and remain to this day.

Things got super-hot in the summertime when we turned the Toronto Independent Music Awards into a family affair.

I was the host and our friends The Ruby Spirit were the event’s headlining performers as the previous year’s winners in the ‘Best Live Rock’ category.

Toronto Independent Music Awards night with your host… Me! Interviewed by Lauren O’Nizzle

In August I got my first taste of creating a Trending Topic on Twitter when I was part of the #CokeZeroFansFirst crew, going to ambush a mens’ amateur hockey game to declare one player “Leaf For A Day” at the upcoming Coke Zero Fans First game.  This also gave me my first experience working with the Toronto Maple Leafs.  The actual Coke Zero Fans First game, lost 5-0 to the Ottawa Senators, was quite abysmal by comparison.

interviewing Mike Komisarek, Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs

After that, vlogging got super hot all of a sudden and I was starting to get some really cool invitations to cover stuff.

My Dad surprised the hell out of me when he got us tickets to go to the Paul McCartney concert.

As I neared my Day 100 milestone in my Daily V-Loggin’, I wanted to mark the occasion with something suitably epic.  As Social Media exploded in 2010, our calendars were being increasingly occupied with marketing events, and I noticed the degree to which us within the scene were deriving our self-worth in how many invitations and how much free stuff we were getting from PR companies.

Talkin’ Social Media Blues, premiered at a private Daily V-Loggin’ #100 celebration, stirred up both laughs and controversy within the scene for its satirical commentary on the current Social Media landscape.

If you were a Social Media influencer in 2010, the Toronto International Film Festival was your oyster.

Come Fan Expo time, me and Michael Nus and Lauren O’Nizzle totally repped hard for the bloggers and then got invited to organize an epic blog posse for Toronto Raptors Fan Jam ahead of their home opener.

The theatrical releases of Nowhere Boy and The Social Network were each a big deal in my world.

And then it was time for my next release.

My next short film was the much-forwarded William Shakespeare’s Antoine Dodson and the Bed Intruder of Lincoln Park.

It was pretty awesome to perform with the Trailer Park Boys and get closer to Mike Smith (Bubbles) than traditional media can get.

This year was all about the daily videos.  Nothing was going to stop me from keeping it going every day – not being sick, not being too busy, and definitely not breaking up with a girl.

As 2010 neared an end, I launched a new show with TheCellularGuru.com – MOBILE DATA – after a series of successful videos featuring the iPhone 4, Blackberry Torch, and Samsung Galaxy.

When the Los Angeles Lakers came to town to play the Toronto Raptors, I was one of the artists invited to exhibit in the Loveable Badass: Artists on Artest art show.  Ron Artest, Forward for the Los Angeles Lakers, dropped by the show the night before his big game!

At the end of the year, I dedicated my 2010 Christmas Record to the fans, and raised funds for War Child Canada by organizing a great big Twitter Christmas Pageant and Talent Show.

Thanks to all of my friends, fans, and supporters for giving me a spectacular year, one full of growth and rebirth.  I think I felt more me than ever this year, and I’ll keep pushing in 2011. So buy my art and hire me to make your videos!!!

To the ladies: stay beautiful (not that you have to worry because you’re always beautiful to me).

To the children: The grown folk don’t know any more than you do. Keep the ideas you’re having now safe.

“Nothing to get hung about.”
-John Lennon

On Monday, December 20, The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto was the site of ELECTRIC CHRISTMAS 2.  This was a Christmas pageant on another level featuring: a Twitter Talent Show, Corey the Cellular Guru’s birthday, and a historic performance by one-night-only show band GIFT RECEIPT.

Watch the video:

When you come in, say hello to Regina and Christine at the door.  Put your Secret Santa gift on the table behind them!

Send your tweets to our Twitter Fountain – use the hashtag #ElectricXmas2!

Be sure to get your photo with Santa (whose beard was mightily filled by Lauren O’Nizzle)

OUR PERFORMERS:

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Regina Sy

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Rayanne Langdon

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Marie Nicola

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Kat Langdon & James

In the middle of Kat and James’ set, we found out that #ElectricXmas2 was a trending topic on Twitter!

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Secret Santa Gift Exchange

sponsored by The Cellular Guru

Everyone who brought a gift for the Secret Santa Gift Exchange was enterted to win a phone.  Corey the Cellular Guru lined up a laundry list of mobile sponsors who all donated big prizes from phones to 1 year of mobile service.  Big thanks to Corey for sponsoring the Secret Santa Gift Exhange!

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Christine Estima

teaming up with me for a dramatic reading of The Night Before Christmas – Twitter Edition!

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And the evening’s finale…

GIFT RECEIPT

The night closed with a truly epic triple-ending.  Check out this uncut video:

We got everyone up on stage for rousing round of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, to the accompaniment of an extremely drunken Corey taking turns with an extremely drunken Jesse shouting “Hannukah!!!” into a microphone.  That was followed by Raymi jumping on the drums and rockin’ her solo skills, and finally Joey “AccordionGuy” DeVilla brought his accordion on stage to deliver a rousing round of a certain Cee-Lo Green song with a swear word in the title.

Seriously, watch the video above. It’s chaos!

Thanks to everyone for coming! We raised a little over $300 just from donations at the door for War Child Canada.  I’ll put up a video of going to see them after everyone’s back from the Christmas & New Year’s break.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this event something special.  Thanks to Regina, Chris, Rayanne, Kat, James, Marie, and Christine for performing.  Thanks to Dwayne, Alex, and Mike for taking part in my foolishness.  Thanks to Lauren for being a good sport and bringing the party with the Santa thing.  And thanks Affan for making the Twitter wall happen.  And Regina gets a double dose of thanks for her help on the administrative side, stepping in quite late in the game and making the event come together in ways it otherwise would not have.

And thanks for the photos: Joey DeVilla, Ava Zack, Chris Brooker, Lauren O’Nizzle, Christine Estima, Dan Levy, Jason Howlett, Marie Nicola.

The Christmas fun doesn’t stop! Click here to check out the 4th Annual Sean Ward Christmas Record (but only until the holidays are over)!

When I was a kid, we moved often. The average length of time we lived in any one place was probably two years.  One magnificent summer, we lived out of suitcases and the whole family – Mom, me, and sisters Laura & Lindsay –  moved 9 times in six months.

Moving so much and the complications around having to leave stuff behind, starting all over again just when I’m feeling settled and secure, and never quite knowing when the ground beneath my feet was going to come unstable, it’s made me have trouble with momentum.

That’s what I realized when I looked at where I was investing my attention, and decided to do the one year daily v-loggin’ project.

I knew that it would give me some much-needed structure, and the small day-by-day victory of getting the videos up was what I needed to get a rhythm going and get the juice to tackle other projects.

Now I’m working away on those other projects – writing scripts, plotting pages, dreaming up marketing schemes, etc. – and sometimes I feel like I want to drop the whole daily video thing and just focus on next year’s product launch.  But it doesn’t take long to realize that if I stopped doing daily videos, I would just be doing the same thing I always do – jumping from one big idea to another without staying in any one place long enough to tie them all together.

I set a goal for myself of one full year of daily vlogging.  I will admit, sometimes it’s really difficult and I have to dig deep.  I’m a private person, despite how everyone thinks I’m really extroverted.  And my artistic process is such that sometimes I need to vanish for days at a time, seeing and being seen by no one.

But at the same time, I fully credit doing the daily video project with how I was able to start answering long-lingering questions I’ve been asking myself about how I’m going to tackle the next phase of my career.  I’m very blessed to have been able to live out many of my childhood dreams.  Doing the daily videos, in a weird way, gives me the focus and deep introspection to build the confidence and refine the abilities required to tackle the next set of challenges.  And had it not been for the Daily V-loggin’, I wouldn’t have even met many of the people who are now an important part of my life and my Art.

My Daily V-loggin’ is a sketchbook, a sounding board, and a dream machine.

NEXT: Daily V-loggin’ as a portrait of a city.

I’m working on my second video for Springfree Trampoline, and I just finished the stack of drawings that are being used in it.

I needed to devote two days to finishing this off.  Drawing is something that I can’t do well when it’s squeezed in for moments at a time. To get anything good, I have to devote whole days to it and get lost in it.

If you don’t see me on Twitter for hours at a time, it usually means that I’ve gone all “Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings” on you.

Where do you go when you’re getting down to business?

That’s me!

At least, that’s how I felt when I got to go on a helicopter ride for the first time in my life.  That’s a pretty fun and big fat checkmark that goes beside an item on my big lifetime must-do list.

Check it out, me and my friend Chelsea going up into the sky:

photo thanks to Richard from shot7.com

Next: Hang gliding? Hot air balloon?

At the end of the video, you will hear us talk about how this was an event put on by Microsoft for their #InTheCloud campaign. We discuss how well we think Microsoft is situated in taking on various web services that are already kind of established.

I collect photos of interesting views of the CN Tower. I had to act fast to switch my camera from video mode to photo mode and get a few snaps from the helicopter. It’s not every day that you get the chance to snap a picture of the CN Tower from above!