brett and jason go to mitzi’s
How do you guys know each other?
B. We went to high school together. That's where we met.
J. We're cousins in some people’s eyes.
B. Shout out Mason Marino!
J. Officially this one person still thinks we're cousins. We went to high school together for four years and all throughout, and to this day, he still thinks we're cousins.
B. That really is the crux of our friendship, that inside joke.
J. We've become close because we've had to put on the role of being cousins.
B. We've been going to each others family functions, taking pictures and showing Mason whenever he asks. But for real, we started having the same spares and then started hanging out more and more at school and then eventually out of school.
J. Then there was this thing called “The Walk” where the St. Mary's and Balmoral Hall girls come to St. Paul’s and you perform for them. Brett and I both did a performance. Brett what did you sing again?
B. I did a City and Colour song, ‘The Grand Optimist,’ I think.
J. And I did ‘Thinkin Bout You’ by Frank Ocean.
It sounds like they're trying to marry you off.
B. Honestly, kinda. Didn't work though.
When will you say you've arrived with your hair?
B. Woah. Honestly I don't think I've arrived yet. Still searching. This is a mere pit stop on the journey that is my hairstyle.
J. I think I'm going to have this hairstyle for the rest of my life. I'm here, I'm actualizing. There's no growing left. I dunno, I just think it suits me maybe? Like, I don't want to go back to having short hair.
B. Well now I have to find a picture of Jason with short hair.
J. I infamously had a hickey in that photo. I remember that. That was during our grade 12 mass. Hickeys are funny, they're so dumb.
B. "Yeah I had a pretty good night, what did you losers do?"
How do you get ready for a night on the town?
B. Take a shower, usually I wait until the very last second to shower for some reason, cause I'm really lazy. Right at the time I'm supposed to be there, I shower. And then shave my little whiskers, moisturize, put on all my creams n shit, then uh, sometimes if I wanna look really good, I might put some pomade in my hair. I generally don't like putting stuff in my hair because I don't like the way it feels when I go to bed at night, that's why I wear a hat all the time.
J. Pomade feels so weird on your fingers too, feels like honey dill.
B. Then you pick your outfit. I put on either black jeans or brown jeans, a t-shirt, then I put on a sweater, a jacket, I load my backpack and I'm good to go.
J. I don’t have anything crazy. How can you deviate, what crazy things can you do? Friggen wash, put on clothes.. me and Brett both do the creams though, for sure.
You have a ring though, you're a jewelry boy.
B. Yeah, have you been wearing that the last little while?
J. I got this in Toronto when I was visiting my brothers. It was on Kensington, this one dude was a very interesting looking man. He had crazy, gray dreads. I dunno, it could be enchanted. He honestly looked like a warlock of sorts.
Has anything weird happened to you since you got it?
J. Quite a bit, yeah. I don't want to say he was the cause of all that, but he could have been. I cannot prove nor disprove that he was the cause of all those things.
“They used to call me ‘Muscles Aniceto.’ I used to work out a lot, then I was like, ‘this doesn’t look great. It’s heavy and it’s tiring.’ There was one day when I was like ‘fuck, I’m tired, walking around with all this weight.’”
What is your weirdest food day, or most shameful day of eating?
B. Every day.
J. It's always when you're drunk at 2 in the morning and you wake up and that McDonald’s is sitting in that belly, undigested. I think a lot of our Filipino cultural food is considered pretty weird. There's this one dish that I really love, that's like heart and lungs. It's so good, I love it so much, but it infamously gives whoever eats a lot of it gout. My dad has gout, and we can't have it anymore so I'm really pissed. It's called Bopis. I don't know the specifics of it but it's got to be marinated in vinegar and soy sauce. And blood.
B. I've always been a really picky eater so I don't really like that stuff, I always just stick with the regular meats. I'm a flesh guy, I like the flesh. Not an organs boy. Not for me. I want those muscles.
J. I'm actually a bones guy. Just a flesh guy and a bones guy.
B. Just a couple cousins eating flesh n bones.
J. There's this one dish called Sinigang where you use a part of the cow that has a lot of bones but also meat around it. Me and my mother, the way we bonded was to stick around after and try to eat all the meat off the bones. My dad would always take his bones and dump them on my mom’s plate. Cause my dads a flesh guy obviously. You know what they say, opposites attract. A lowly peasant bones girl, and an aristocratic flesh guy. They met in the Philippines.
B. *posh accent* "What would our parents say? My mother would never forgive me if I made it with a flesh man. I'm but a lowly bone girl." It's a modern day Romeo and Juliet.
What would you say is your most perfect day?
B. Waking up, 5pm.
J. Waking up at 8pm, staying awake for a little bit on your phone, scrolling through Insta until it doesn't load anymore, then set your alarm for 5pm the next day.
B. Literally nothing to do, just kickin’ it with the boys, and usually a funny movie is involved, or a new video game. I love delving into a new adventure game and getting immersed into a big story like that. Basically a perfect day is where I don't have to do anything in real life, and can just immerse myself in fake life. Real life sucks.
J. Mine’s way more corny than any of that.
Getting a bunch of hickeys and going back to sleep?
J. I wake up, go to the mirror. That's how I know how good of a day I'm going to have, by how dark my hickey is. I pick out a V-neck. My closet is just a rainbow palette of V-necks. I dunno. It's not even specific activities. I'm thinking like any time you can exercise on some small level, and spend time with your family and friends on some small level, do something productive, and then have wind down time, that's a great day.
What would be your first hit when you'd walk into Blockbuster?
B. First things first, you'd see all the new releases, then you'd walk to that aisle that has that table top game, like in a doctors office - a bunch of wires and shapes, so play that for a little bit.
J. I wanted to work at Blockbuster so bad, but right before I came of working age, all the Blockbusters closed down. Biggest tragedy of my life.
B. For me, we rented movies but I was more of a video game rental guy. I'd let my dad pick the movies then get a video game for myself.
J. What's it called, Jumbo Video on Maples? I remember seeing N64 games and then looking over to the entrance and seeing the poster for ‘Justin & Kelly,’ Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson and thinking 'that movie looks fuckin' trash.'
B. I always got that movie mixed up with ‘A Walk to Remember.’ Is Mandy Moore on American Idol or was she an actress first?
J. They'd always show her on Much Music, and I remember because I was a big tennis fan at the time and she was dating Andy Roddick. I'd be watching the US Open finals being like, ‘when are they going to flip to Mandy? You haven't flipped to Mandy enough times.’ Just not giving a shit about the game.
What's the raciest thing you saw on TV when you were younger?
J. I think it was the "ladies leave your man at home, the club is full of ballers and their pockets full grown" video.
B. I think mine was a Pussy Cat Dolls music video. A lot of straps going on.
J. There's a Fergie one that's pretty racy too. Oh it was definitely ‘Dirty’ by Christina Aguilera. I even knew when I was younger I shouldn't be watching it. There's also that Britney Spears one with the snake. Anytime you hear breaths in a song you know the music video is going to be bumpin’.
What are the best meme accounts?
B. Honestly @grapejuiceboys is definitely up there, one of my tops. @meirlbot is an Instagram account from a sub-reddit called meirl, and it's just the funniest..
J. It has a really high percentage of funny stuff.
What do you think the future of memes is?
J. It's definitely nearing towards less rational and more absurd. So kids growing up, their humor is getting more irrational. The more random it is, and more non-referral it is, the funnier now.
What's your favourite kind of mustard?
B. I recently started to like mustard.
J. Brett has two lives, pre-mustard and after-mustard.
B. PM and AM. Probably straight up regular. Dijon- I like the idea of it, but I don't really like it on hot dogs. It's too fancy for hot dogs.
J. I'm not a huge mustard guy. I like French's.
Interview by Katy Slimmon & Ali Vandale
Photography by Ali Vandale