Every Saturday(ish) as I sit in my favourite breakfast joints gobbling up artery-hardening goodness and flipping through the comics section, I remember how much I’d been wanting to write about the Toronto Star.  I do like to link to this paper so I guess it’s no secret, I think it’s the bee’s knees.

The outstanding feature of this city stalwart is how it seems to maintain that great journalistic root of hit-the-pavement reporting. It has the fewest misleading or indeterminate headlines of any of the major dailies, probably even fewer than this blog. And they’re not afraid to go where the action is.

Today, for example, I discovered an article by a brave front-line journalist named Jack Lakey. In it, he recounts a horrific scene of utter devastation; a forgotten mound of burnt wood, broken cinder blocks, smoked glass, and protruding hunks of dangerous metal; remnants of an iconic bicycle store. And garbage:

It doesn’t get any more raw than that. A salute, Mr. Lakey.

For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to stick around too long. The overcast sky was bringing an early evening and soon the crack-heads would be rising from their graves, hungering for human brains. Brains on crack. *shiver*

By the time I regained my composure, I was already halfway up Spadina in CHINATOWN! I hazily remembered the last time I’d been here; it was only day two of the tactical strike and already the troops were taking a beating. The memories of that day were like dark, hellish, black-and-white photographs. I didn’t even want to imagine how the area had ended up.

And as it ended up, I couldn’t even have imagined:

Clean streets and empty garbage bags, even in Chinatown; who’d ‘ve thunk it?

I’m actually starting to feel a little sorry for the 416/79 command. A sizeable number of their strikers have hoisted the white flag and requested to defect to our side. I believe they have seen the error of their ways and should be afforded clemency and dignity. We must eliminate this savage brutality; that wanton barbarism; those angry little picketers with their bashy smashy little placards. Take it easy, lady!

We can all still emerge from this with a little humanity. A little understanding. A little peace.

Dream of magic and unicorns, sweet prince. Or winning the lottery.

(Click on that link, I promise the story’s interesting – it’s the Star!)

Toronto, the city that never sleeps. No, wait, I’m confusing that with another city. The city of Lesbos. Or is that an archipelago?

This is the second too-long day of a second too-short night. This time it was the tail end of the Copper film for which they were shooting night scenes. Late night scenes.

In contrast to last night’s festivities, the crew were as quiet as very polite mice. Their lighting, however, was quite loud:

Right into the bedroom window. Clean, straight line. Living room too. And that’s pretty much my entire place.

At around 2 a.m., they packed up their trucks, pointed their New York license plates south, and quietly rolled out. Not only had they crept out with a whisper, but they’d also left my neighbourhood cleaner than it was before. Aside from two strips of gaffer’s tape marking out an “L” on the sidewalk, the place was impeccable.

They were still sweeping the left-over bits of trash  from the location house this morning. The front lawn looked well-trodden but the house looked better than it had. They made it out to look like a real hussy, didn’t they?

I guess cops have to fight crime somewhere; might as well be in a nearby crack house. Or maybe it’s an abstract film where the cops stare and occasionally shout at a pear sitting on a blue plate for exactly forty-one minutes (with a midget dancing backwards in the background); those curtains are for the really-fuck-the-audience’s-mind effect. Does David Lynch still make movies?

Either way, I guess that’s fairly realistic, because danger really can lurk behind any shadowy corner:

One mistake and it’s all over. Your windshield. With open windows, your sleeve. Kid in the back gets banana peel in the schnoz. And who gets the half-drunk bubble tea cup in the frontal area? Maybe you, maybe me. And no one deserves that. It’s just not something you’d wish on your fellow human beings.

I think it’s a sign of desperation; a cry for help. Children are now being employed to produce impassioned pleas for an end to the savagery. I’m sure Walter Cronkite would have approved, and with a respectful doff of the cap, we thank him.

So under slightly more gray skies we find ourselves at the end of the week. As the tide of war waxes and wanes like a poorly thought-out metaphor (or simile?), more casualties are inevitable:

I guess it never gets easier.

It probably shouldn’t.

Well, maybe with a good night’s sleep it could.