Darn. I was so hoping that one of the local dailies would run something about the TTC, specifically about the subway. There was only more complaining from St. Clair West (the concrete streetcar barriers are built, people! It’s done! Get over it!), something about Robert Prichard who’s supposed to be getting the Metrolinx program underway (trying to bring the TTC and all the regional transit systems under one roof), and some goof who got busted driving his riding mower drunk on one of the rural roads north-east of Toronto.

Haha! I know, that last one’s not transit. But I had to share. I spent enough time around that area to have seen inebriated lawnmower drivers, and let me tell you, it’s hi-freakin-larious. Under normal circumstances, these gentlemen wouldn’t think to drive an unbalanced buggy with sharp, high-velocity, metal blades underneath, up a very steep hill. But then they partake of a few. :D

I guess there was one thing kinda related to the subway, the Toronto Sun’s lament about the state of our highways. Mostly, they were talking about this:

This is the picturesque Don Valley Parkway. It’s picturesque because it’s late in the afternoon on Sunday. At almost any other time, it’s bumper to bumper, stop and go. If you’ve been on it, you know what I’m talkin’ about, right? How many years of your life have you lost on that road? And on some sections, you’ve got a foot between you, the concrete barrier, the car on the other side, and the car in front, and the jerk behind is honking his horn for you to get outta the way. That, buddy, is how that dipshit down in the valley down there crashed his car. That’s why we’re moving extra slow. That’s why you can kiss my flatulent ass you …

Gosh, even thinking about it gets me all worked up; that’s one angry road. The attached 401’s not much better, but that’s a whole different kinda rage; high-speed, low-brow, middle-finger. You can’t shout at those speeds once you achieve them.

Torontonians know what I’m talking about, right? Yeah! Grandma’s doing eighty in the fast lane with nothing in front of her, tapping the breaks a few times a meter. What the fuck is her problem?! HONK H-O-N-K *H-O-N-K* GODDAMMITYARR!! *smash smash smash* GAAAARRR!! Then black out. Wake up under a highway overpass somewhere by the airport with blood on your hands and a dead body in the trunk of your car. Evade police for weeks in a massive manhunt through rural southern Ontario. Eh? Yeah. What Torontonian hasn’t been there?

So to avoid that scene, and since there’s no way we’re biking in from the sticks every day, there’s public transit. But not the fru-fru, surface streetcar my spoiled butt takes every day. We’re talking about the city plumbing; the subway.

There’s been a lot of talk about putting new stuff into the city center, which is fine by me, but it seems like a lot of the outlying, underground stuff is being forgotten. Specifically, the Bloor-Danforth subway line. That’s not to say that the Yonge-University line isn’t need of bit of a facelift too:

Vintage. The tiles look nicotine-friendly, don’t you think? But, at least, in good condition.

However, in the stations, if you’re in a hurry, headphones in, reading email, you might not notice how rustic they’re getting.

Often, it’s not straight ahead; that’s just an attractive young blur. Sometimes you have to wait for the crowd to clear (as in Sunday), and then look up:

Or you have to be at the right end of the platform:

Right, not that right. The other right. Your right. Right :) And you’re right, it is unsightly. But I haven’t heard of any plans to take care of it. Has Scabby Row been foresaken? I did my teen years there and it was pretty grungy. I was back recently and Kennedy Station had an even more watch-your-back feel to it than I remembered.

I’m one of those incurably sunny people who think that one of the ways to deal with the problem is to make the place nicer. For being so busy, it’s a grim station. On one side, it’s got a raised road with a raised LRT train track under it (two storeys of concrete, basically) so it’s dark, and on the other the parking lot of a grey-slab of a community centre. Stabbing or shooting someone here doesn’t seem out of context.

So, change the context I say. I’m sure it’s been tried and tested somewhere. And I’m sure I didn’t come up with it; wouldn’t that be a sad world to live in? I’m just too lazy to find a link.

Spruce up the stations. Scrub off some of that water damage. Repair some of those broken chunks. Put a little more life in there.

That probably won’t come out of the downtown streetcar money, which itself is in question. And that  infrastructure funding that was supposed to have paid for things like this turned out to be not so much. But there is the community.

Ah, fall. A time when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of replacing that moth-eaten coat and maybe, finally getting that haircut. But there are so many options downtown that it’s hard to make a decision. So I thought I’d do a bit of window shopping down trendy, chic Queen West.

It didn’t pan out.

First off, I wouldn’t know fashion if it ran up to me, tugged at my sleeve, and called me dad. So most of the clothing stores and their slight, jaded attendants with aborted personalities, were out of the question. And any haircut I would plunk down three digits for (as if!), would be experimental. I don’t wear experimental well. I have a utilitarian, European head. It’s made for thinking, imbibing spirits, and spectacular love-making. Not for unusual hair styles.

But that’s okay. If I can’t spend my money on anything else, I can always buy a new MIDI controller of some kind that I’ll use, like, three times and then forget about.

I used to flip through the comics at Silver Snail regularly as a teen, but they don’t carry much of what I enjoy anymore. I keep tellin’ em there’s a market for it. They keep tellin’ me that what I want is “illegal” and “sick” and that they “never carried it” and “please stop masturbating”.  Hey, their loss.

I’ll happily take my business elsewhere.

I enjoy a genital piercing as much as the next guy, but I was pretty intent on getting that haircut. That’s the problem with Queen West though, isn’t it? There’s always something to distract you. If it’s not a novelty condom store or the exciting fall 2009 line of designer bongs and smoking accessories,  it’s street voodoo:

So, naturally, by the time I got to the old Citytv building, the first thing and the other thing (there were two, right?), had broken free of my skull and fled. Something about a hat and a vest?

Oh well, there’s always tomorrow. Wish I could say the same for  poor Moses Znaimer.

Oh yeah, now I remember. Yeah. No way I’m getting a haircut now.

Okay?

Just flour. Maybe bleached. Let’s say it is. And slightly lumpy.

If you chucked it in my face, that’d suck. If it got in my eyes, like happened to a high school vice-principal in June of this year, it would really suck. Could it do some longer term damage? I think it’s likely. But would you call it a weapon?

I know that legally, if it’s not your fist it’s a weapon, but it seems like a funny definition. Why not assault with an object? Does an object become a weapon the moment I pick it up to bash someone with? So if I were to fling cats at people, those cats would become weapons? Haha! Oliver would not want to stay in a police evidence baggie.

Laws is weird! :o

Hmm. I guess it kinda makes sense that laws would be a bit loopy. They’re put there by people who’ve listened to the most fucked up criminal trial shit day in day out for decades. Like the Rengel case. You remember:

Oh man — that doesn’t get any easier.

This is the teenager who coerced her boyfriend into killing another girl because she was jealous of her. She was tried and sentenced as an adult and the boyfriend, D.B., is on trial now. In his case, it’s going to be simply a matter of how much time he’ll get. The trial will just be going through the motions. And they’re deliberating whether or not to try him as an adult, meaning they’d release his identity as they did hers. Sure hope they do! I’m curious to see, aren’t you?

The other thing I’d be curious to see would be the plans for the proposed Loblaws supermarket / Ryerson hockey rink. Right. And not just some weird hybrid, but inside the hallowed halls of Maple Leaf Gardens, no less:

You may remember a few years back when Loblaws tried to buy the Gardens to make the building into another supermarket. I’m one of those odd Canadians who don’t follow hockey at all, but even I knew that that wouldn’t fly. After all, the Gardens are an institution. To have a university hockey team in there seems appropriate, but a supermarket… It just doesn’t sound like a way to popularize the idea of re-opening the place.

There’s also the problem of having all that flour (not to mention other baking supplies), near all that violence and with no laws.

Out of TCL’s loyal following of at least three readers (hi mom!), I’ve recently received a comment that made me think that I need to clarify things a little. It has to do with veracity; the veracity of these posts. The truthicity of the blog.

In other words, do I make stuff up to fill in the spaces between the photos?

The answer to that is complex. I like to think of the question as an open-ended one, like religion or Marxism. Or the purpose of the chicken in crossing the boulevard. So the answer is, yes, I make up nonsensical sentences to sandwich between photos. Or are they so sensical that they’re BLoWINg yOuR MiNd?!

Okay.

However, I only make up stuff real-sounding stuff when it’s easy to verify as being made up. Like me being friends with George Clooney. I mean, if anyone took that seriously … I found that jerk passed out on my couch one Saturday morning, the whole place trashed, underwear of every gender on everything, I don’t know how many condoms on the living room table; I told him, if he’s gonna self-destruct, he’s not taking me out with him. He basically spat in my face for an answer. Friends, we are not.

Anyhow, I don’t feel it’s fair to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes when I talk about the day. If it was boring, I’ll just resort to writing a post in which I explain the factuality of the blog or some crap like that.

To confess, I do sometimes embellish. A little. A difficult woman with a large heinie may, for example, be described as a backside as gelatinous and stark as shrieking horror itself. But I don’t think the embellishment’s that extreme. And I think it helps get the point across: that the big-bummed woman was unpleasant.

I guess it’s the high school semester I spent hunched over the junior writer’s / gofer’s desk at the prestigious Scarborough Mirror, but that *umph* for journalistic integrity stuck with me. Journalistic integrity with irritable bowels. Sometimes uncomfortable and cramped, but relax and it’s party time in your pants.

So, since I’m on the ugly truth thing, I guess I should come clean about something. I didn’t care to see Natalie Portman today because something distracted  me. And it had something to WITH THIS!!

… no, wait. WITH THIS!!

To begin with, what’s with the giant blogTO plug? Who nibbled on who’s private parts to get that in there? This is the kind of thing that makes my inner journalist vomit internally.

Can you imagine TCL in print on the street? What a rude way to use to use a dead tree. Seriously.

Then, you’ve got this teeny-tiny format tabloid newsed-paper that looks suspiciously like the National Enquirer. It’s being handed out at strategic locations by … not my words … retro-branded “Newsies”. I shed a tear every evening watching them stand there on the corner pretending like the thirties are relevant to anyone. And for the dumb hats they have to wear.

When you visit the website of the paper, it’s suspiciously void of any information. Owned and operated by “three Torontonians”? That narrows it down to everyone here. Seems shifty. Real shifty.

And with all the free publications around town, t.o.night is stepping into a snug alley. I’m pretty sure that Now Magazine and Eye Weekly aren’t above administering a mugging.

Good luck, t.o.night. Because there’s an ass-kicking scheduled for t.o.morrow.

Okay, so now it’s going to look like I’m obsessed with movie stars or something. But that’s not it at all. I just happen to pass the TIFF bigwig red carpet every day, and the bigwigs just happen to be there. In essence, they’re making themselves available for me. I’ll drop in for half an hour but, I mean, I’ve got other things to do. If they can move it along and show some appreciation for my sacrifice, I’ll humour them. I’m not a jerk.

They’re usually pretty courteous and … oh look! It’s Keanu Reeves!

Thanks, Keanu. You’re looking … well.

But Rebecca Miller, she’s too transfixed by someone’s scruffy locks to say hi to me:

… Continue Reading

Roy Thomson Hall. TIFF premiere of something starring someone.

“Who’s here tonight?”

*mumble* ” Sheen.”

“Martin Sheen? Really? I didn’t know he was supposed to come.”

“Yeah.”

“Haha! You can’t handle the truth!”

“What?”

“You know … from that movie?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

I was sceptical.

I’m not very good with names, but I was pretty certain that no *mumble* Sheen was involved with A Few Good Men. The shrug that I got along with “Oh. Yeah”, also made me think that Martin Sheen wouldn’t be showing up. But before I had a chance to ask anyone else, people started to arrive for the premiere.

First to stroll up the path  (guess the locals walk — or take the bus), were a few members of Toronto FC, the city’s red-scarf-donning professional soccer club:

With Jim Brennan (the team captain), and his cadre making an appearance, I figured the movie had something to do with soccer. Or football, as the majority British crowd was calling it. Those were also important clues :)

While I waited for the search of the evening’s screening schedule to load up on my mobile, I exchanged pleasantries with retired general and current mayor, David Miller:

Many people think that because of Miller’s handling of the War on Trash, he might be out of a job come the next municipal election. I was also disappointed that after a forty day strike, he ended up giving the unions everything they asked for.

Oh well.

Let’s ask these people what they think:

Never heard of Miller. Who struck who now?

But, as it turns out, the British couple had seen The Damned United (the movie being premiered), a full six months earlier. The gentleman confirmed that it was indeed a football pic about Brian Clough, the manager of the Leeds United football club. Mr. Clough’s part was was played by Michael Sheen, which explained the earlier confusion about the name. Except that I still had no idea who Michael Sheen was. But then … oh look! It’s Michael Sheen!

Riiiight!

He played the leader of the Lycans in Underworld and, more recently, British TV personality David Frost in Frost/Nixon. No relation to Martin Sheen.

I like to think that if I’m ever being held hostage and threatened with my life unless I can identify who this actor is, I’ll walk away safe and sound. Not sure what circumstances would lead me to be in such a situation, or why my captors would ask such a question, but at least I’ll be prepared.

Of course, I’ll still stand around future red carpet events like an ignorant potato. I could find out who’s coming, but unless my life’s in danger, what’s the point?