Well, it’s happened. I’m getting antsy.

I was watching Breakfast Television this morning to see if Dina Pugliese would entice me into a passionate new day (and for the weather report). She didn’t; she’s just so dry (and it’s supposed to start raining tomorrow).  The over-boiled supposed-to-be-soft-boiled egg was digesting in my stomach, as was the thick, crunchy, crusty hunk of Vienna Rye (I buy it for a reason!) I was up early again and was feeling the need to get inspired. Portfolio’s a waitin’

Dina obviously wouldn’t do it for me so I decided to kill a few birds with one stone: head outside for a walk, get some inspiration, and take a few photos of it. I firmly believe that to solve a problem it’s best to walk away from it; just the excuse I needed.

My first thought when I hit Yonge-Dundas Square was to make the portfolio like a building. Each floor would house a project I’d worked on that you could fly into via the magic of Adobe Flash. The Woo building (I’m sure it has another name — but is it as catchy?), seemed like a suitable candidate. Lots of windows and spinny, twirly, moving things. Plus, I remember the Woo website being somewhat slick – the location must’ve worked for them.

Except that it’s been done, like, a million and one times already.  Every agency and creative somethingorother showcase their loft, or their building, or some nearby space on their web pages.

Okay, how about something like a construction site then?

I could have the shovels, umm, shoveling content. And the dump trucks … dumping … stuff. Hmmm.

That idea had two unfortunate connotations. First, the connection between trucks, dumping, and the intertubes. Not sure if that’s the image I want to give off. Second, this thing:

Ultra-cheese since it first appeared in a Netscape window. I haven’t used Netscape since I don’t even know when.

So that pretty much put an end to the construction idea.

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This is starting to look bad, isn’t it? Second Friday post that didn’t make it out until the weekend. But this time, dear reader, I want to assure you it was an absolute necessity. You see, an event took place this weekend that marks TCL’s first technical anniversary and I didn’t want to waste a post on something more mundane.

I say technical because if you look at the archives, TCL only goes back to January. But it’s really been online since November of last year.

Luckily the WayBack Machine has, as yet, no record of it.

At that time TCL had a mostly-black theme with content that induced hemorrhaging from the eyeballs and projectile vomiting. Pretty awful stuff. Back then I didn’t have the experience or the sphincteric relaxation to do anything interesting, really. Had anyone suggested I run a shocking exposé on what really happens at the annual Santa Claus Parade, I would’ve balked!

But in mid-November I attended Illuminite, the annual Christmas lighting of Yonge-Dundas Square. It was a cold and rainy November night, but the show went on anyway. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to muscle my way up to the front of the crowd, and it was in that soggy moment of inspiration that I remembered it was Toronto City Life. Most of these people were alive, so they qualified. I was getting all bent out of shape for nothing!

That epiphany, and the attitudinal adjustment that came with it, carried me through all the way around to this year’s event. Good thing too because there were a lot more people this time around:

Most of the show, consisting of fire, sparks, trampolines, and dancing, took place at the far end of the square. There was a lot of loud music that, more often than not, descended into a raucous noise that in no way said season’s greetings to me. Eventually, the same spooky music I remember from last year came on as the fire dancers wound their way across the square toward the stage I’d plunked myself behind:

The dancers paraded around on stage in wintry white and silver, twirling fiery objects and having pyrotechnics go off behind them as if to say, “here’s the last blast of warmth you’re getting for the next six months”:

The audience were close enough that one slip and the girl in the red hood got a face full of fire. Now if that’s not a reason to go see something live, I don’t know what is. The fireworks were pretty scary too:

Behind the dancers was the reason for the whole display, the tree.

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