Archive for September, 2026

Raisin Gang: Dan Ramos

Posted on September 22nd, 2026 – Comments Off on Raisin Gang: Dan Ramos

Too late to turn back now … it’s vector omega time. I didn’t think you’d make me do this, Raisin Gang, yet here we are.

The final actor in this grim “comedy”: Dan Ramos

It seems Dan never left Gang land. Instead, he doubled down. As the last surviving member* of the Raisin conspirators, he is paradoxically also the most public and prolific. He regularly posts videos and social media content; safe to say that he’s not exactly laying low.

But this is to be expected. After all, Dan wasn’t exactly shy when he worked with the Gang.

Not only isn’t Ramos in hiding, he openly advertises his schedule. His malevolent m.o. hasn’t changed, his ill ideology is exactly the same; if anything, he’s only expanded them! And this has been going on for years.

If that doesn’t make the bile in your stomach lurch around uncomfortably then I don’t know what will.

Conclusion

At this point you may be asking why I’ve waged such a harsh campaign against the Raisin Gang. After all, aren’t there other detestable groups of humans out there? Yes, but this particular group injured me personally.

When I first encountered the Gang they told me that they would provide a few exclusives for TCL. I understood that they were probably busy so I waited. And I waited. And I waited.

To this day I’m waiting.

The betrayal cut deep. But then again, what did I expect from a criminally deceptive Gang?

Other Conclusion

I hope that no one took this series too seriously. It was, after all, about a local comedy troupe whose work I truly enjoyed. It’s a pity the group had to split up but life is rarely static. A reunion is highly unlikely at this point so, I thought, at least I can do a retrospective.

I could’ve just pointed the reader to an early archived version of the Gang’s website (worth a visit), and prattled on about the good old times, but I wanted to explore what the members have done since they split up.

Some of the information was genuinely elusive. I’m still not 100% certain that I’ve linked to all of the correct social media profiles but the details seem to fit. Besides, I usually included my reasoning along with the faux venom.

As a side note, that venomous tone came together pretty easily: I noted that the Gang did indeed offer to send me some content early on, which never materialized, and that they advertised themselves as “100% REAL GANG”.

The fact that their official mailing address was an unassuming semi near Chinatown sealed the deal.

I was, like, that’s it, that’s the take: they’re liars, scoundrels, and undoubtedly criminals.

Despite dedicating myself to exposing their publicly “villainous” profiles, I’d still love for any of the members to contact me. It would be nice to sprinkle this project with some anecdotes and other less public facts.

For now, however, it’s time to wrap up and thankfully acknowledge the Raisin Gang’s excellent contributions to Toronto’s comedy scene, brief though they were. Genuinely funny shit.

The Gang

Tom Conway
Marissa Caldwell
Mikey Kolberg
Daniel Kurland
Michael Peddle
Kye Fox
Mary Kelly
James Boyd
Dan Ramos

* To the best of my knowledge, all former Raisin Gang members are alive. Dan is simply the last on the list.

Filed under: B Sides, Patrick Bay, Pictures, Videos

Waning days

Posted on September 11th, 2026 – Comments Off on Waning days

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted many photos recently. Truth is, I think that my camera might be on its last legs.

It’s suffered some damage — not all at once but the accumulation appears to have caught up. I tend to put my cameras through their paces so arriving at this point is not entirely unexpected. Still, the imminent retirement’s a little sad.

For a while the problem was just a cracked body. As a result, controls were a bit wonky but otherwise the photos still looked good. Then the camera took some more damage, this time to the lens, and after that the writing was on the wall.

Up until now I’ve muddled through as best as I could but the equipment’s producing some moody pics these days.

Brief panoramas are still workable but most of manual mode has become unusable.

The image stabilizer’s shot so if I optically zoom in too far it becomes nearly impossible to focus or to keep the subject in frame. At the same time, something in the lens casing, probably the image stabilizer ring, has shifted and now produces a noticeable vignette in one corner; only way to get around it is to zoom in.

Basically, zoom in too far: no good; don’t zoom in enough: no good.

On top of that are the randomly switching settings like exposure, f-stop, even the shooting mode. I consider myself lucky when I hit the shutter button and the camera takes an actual photo instead of powering off or recording video instead.

The pictures in this post are from this past Monday. I thought I might take some snaps of the air show during the last day of the Ex but with the aforementioned zoom problem it’s clear that my optimism was misplaced. Even when, by some fantastic stroke of luck, I actually managed to snap a pic the colour balance was off. Don’t even get me started on the contrast.

Maybe these settings silently switch between shots. Maybe the optical sensor is also damaged. At this point it could be anything and post facto image editing just isn’t cutting it.

I still have access to a couple of small old Cannon point-and-shoot pocket cameras that I might be able to use but, as hard as it is to accept, this season marks the end of an era.

Goodbye, old friend.

Filed under: Dispatches, Patrick Bay, Pictures