There’s just not much money in it:

Scott and Maggie Cassella discussing equal opportunity sex toys:

Deep in the gooey grey mush of sexual nuance with Scott and Maggie Cassella at the Flying Beaver Pubaret:

On Toronto’s downtown-east side sits a quiet, unassuming, and intimate little comedy club called the Flying Beaver Pubaret.

The establishment is split into two halves: one a traditional Canadian booze can and the other a sliver of a (usually) comedic performance area. I’d find it shocking if a forty people could find room to watch a show and a hundred would probably fill up the place entirely. These capacity limits have not, however, been big concerns whenever I’ve visited.

Basically, the aptly named Pubaret isn’t spacious or particularly remarkable, and while it features many struggling and up-and-coming comics it’s not the kind of place you’d think to rub elbows with the likes of Kids In The Hall’s Scott Thompson or the incomparable Paul Bellini (also of KITH fame).

Yet the Flying Beaver is exactly the place to experience this juxtaposition in a truly intimate way — “rub elbows” can be taken literally. This is one of those iconic places, those awesome and seemingly undiscovered spots in which you can feel history being made. And did I mention that most of the interactive, meaty, uncensored, off-the-cuff discussions can be experienced for the price of a beer or two (and you get the beer)? That shit still blows my mind.

Here’s an example of the magic in which Pubaret co-owner Maggie Cassella asks Scott to recount his experiences performing at the Griffin Poetry Prize awards:

The sieve that is Rob Ford’s administration continues to leak the vital fluids of the municipal body of City Hall consisting of staff and fellow councillors. Yes, the analogy is as lousy as Ford’s retention rate.

I’ve lost count as to how many people have decided to stand up against Ford’s petty tyranny, but this time around it’s councillor Paul Ainslie jumping ship from Ford’s executive committee, saying that the blubbery one bullied him and other councillors into making ass-backwards, idiotic decisions based on fantasy, bluster, and lies (a.k.a. Ford “logic”).

The back-breaking final straw came with Ford’s bull-headed insistence on subways for Scarborough, now enacted and thereby sealing the fate of that whole part of the city for decades.

“I think it’s irresponsible of me to go to taxpayers and say ‘here’s a basically free LRT being given to you’ or ‘you can spend a billion plus dollars on a subway that’s going to take 10 or 20 years to build,’” he said. “I don’t think there’s enough planning from the mayor’s office on how to ease gridlock in this city, or public transportation, or just getting people to work.”

Complete lack of planning, entirely made-up facts and arguments, lies, name-calling, law breaking, denigration and attacks and finger-pointing: all in a typical day for Rob Ford and his brother.

Ensuring that his ignorance was on full display, Robbie followed up the vote by saying that downtowners have enough subways and there’s just no reason why anything needs to be done to accommodate an influx of extra commuters (you know, with these new subway lines that he pushed through), into an already at-capacity system.

But Rob Ford, being justifiably emboldened, decided to take it one step further, once again breaching a bunch of laws in the process (he’s already been openly and illegally campaigning for over a year), and following his buddy Stephen Harper’s cue in placing automated calls (a.k.a. robocalls) to Scarborough residents specifically to rat out Ainslie as the only person to vote against subways (and for LRTs).

Of course, the bloated one didn’t bother to mention how he personally voted to increase Scarberians’ property taxes to pay for his bullheaded project, after years of screaming about the evils of any new tax hikes, etc. etc. — directly contrary to his campaign promise, and everything he’s claimed up until very recently. Ford is so dishonest that he managed to flip flop four times on a single motion — actually voting against himself!

This comes shortly on the heels of more political hypocrisy (laced with heaping dollops of ignorance), from the Fords as they rejected a Toronto memorial for Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

Asked about why he supported honouring late NDP leader Jack Layton with a statue on the waterfront, Ford said, “Mr. Layton did a tremendous amount for the city. Pierre Trudeau did not.”

That’s the hypocrisy part…

Contrary to Ford’s assertion, Councillor Peter Milczyn, who seconded the motion, said Trudeau made a significant contribution to Toronto with the creation of Harbourfront Corp. in 1972, which “started opening up the water’s edge.”

“He is one of the great prime ministers the country had; the father of our Constitution and Charter of Rights,” Milczyn said. “He is a person that a lot of people look up to and admire. So I think it’s reasonable that in Canada’s biggest city we would have some kind of commemoration of him.”

He was not surprised that the Ford brothers reject the idea.

“If people want to be hyperpartisan here, they can answer for it,” he said.

For his part, Doug Ford chided Milczyn as he passed him on press row, joking that “he would name his ward after Trudeau if he could.”

I know that this is completely out off the “Toronto”, “City”, “Life” categories, but as you may probably know from reading this blog, social justice and abuse of police powers weigh pretty heavy on my heart.

So it was with dismay and disbelief that I watched US news networks last night vilify and outright lie about Christopher Dorner during his final hours in San Bernardino County, Los Angeles.

The fact of the matter is that Dorner was one of the last few good cops left, a guy who believed in justice and law, a guy who saw the ranks of his fellow law-enforcers filled with racists, liars, and the kinds of criminal scum that not only should be behind bars for a very long time, but should also never be allowed to carry guns and badges and be allowed to call themselves “justice”.

How Dorner went about bringing attention to the criminality he witnessed was misguided and, as he himself realized, ultimately doomed. He knew that the media would demonize him, focusing on his actions and completely ignoring or even misrepresenting the reasons behind them. The fact that he killed police officers is and was presented as valid justification for his assassination but his own recollections of police brutality and murder perpetrated on civilians (resulting with him being fired from the force instead), are hardly mentioned, if at all, except by “fringe lunatics” like me who believe people, regardless of their position in life, should be held to account for their actions. That means a fair and open trial in front of a non-corrupted judge, and ending with incarceration if found guilty.

To make matters worse, I was listening to police scanners live as his cabin was being raided and comparing it to what TV news was reporting, and the amount of misinformation and just outright lies was stunning to witness first-hand. There were reports coming over the dispatch, for example, of police putting a “burner(s)” in place, setting it / them off, shouting “Burn this motherfucker!”, calling for the fire department, and then raiding the cabin. The news, on the other hand, was speculating about why Dorner was setting his cabin on fire (or they’re probably smoke or “flash-bang” grenades set of by the loving police who only want to take him alive if at all possible), and debating why he would be shooting off ammunition (as he was being burned alive).

(Incidentally, I assisted Max Blumenthal, one of the few non-official sources, and one of the few to question the official story, to reconnect to the police scanner feeds when they were taken offline):

Did big media not know what was going on? How was it that some schmuck in Toronto knew exactly what was happening, and they didn’t? Is it possible that they’re so completely incompetent that they couldn’t tune into the publicly available police scanners (RadioReference.com, if you’re interested), to monitor the situation, or is it more likely that they were busy spinning and manipulating the story while it was happening? After all, it’s one thing to simply not report on what’s happening (as the police were demanding of everyone, including Twitter and Facebook users), but it’s something else entirely to spout off plain old lies and misinformation, backed up with so many “experts” waiting on hand to bring validity to it all.

I’m genuinely sorry for Mr. Dorner, his family, and the people who’s lives he took (assuming one buys official reports, all of which are currently unproven accusations). None of it would’ve happened if the police he was surrounded by weren’t such rotten criminals, if the media and the agencies responsible for keeping them in check weren’t in direct collusion, and if justice, truth, and the law prevailed. Will anyone bother to look into the upper echelons that Dorner directly accused of the highest corruption, or will their criminality be buried even deeper? It’s tragic that Mr. Dorner felt he had to resort to such drastic actions just to be heard, and more tragic still that even now the demonization of those who would stand up for the truth would be carried out so viciously. And before you remind me that none of Dorner’s allegations have ever been proven, I’ll remind you that Dorner was also never tried in a court of law before the cops decided it’d be more expedient just to kill him on the spot, and that big media haven’t raised on iota of criticism.

I guess George Orwell was right … in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

If you consider yourself a “revolutionary” by this standard, you’ll probably also be interested to hear the police dispatch from San Bernardino County. I took the liberty of recording a number of channels live, as it was happening. Contrast what you hear against what the “news” are busy pumping out even today.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to arrange the audio files so they’re somewhat scattered, but here is what actually happened last night, along with Dorner’s own words in what big media love to term his “manifesto” (because, don’t you know, all the crazies have one):

http://www.torontocitylife.com/downloads/Christopher_Dorner.zip

*yawn*

It was just sleepy time all over the city today.

There was a brief, bright flash of sun during which I ventured out to eat lunch — I’ve decided Sushi Queen is my sushi joint of choice along the Queen strip, despite incessantly playing Rogers and Hammerstein show tunes over the meal. Fresh sushi / sashimi, good tempura, and a teriyaki that actually tastes and smells good. Surprisingly rare, that last one.

Then it clouded over again in the afternoon, and everything goes kinda hazy again after that.

I believe Sarah Thomson threw in the towel and is now joining forces with George Smitherman in the upcoming election. And maybe it’s a fuzzy recollection but I thought I remembered the Star starting up a new series called “The Smell Test” where they dissect election promises for feasibility. Will the Star-backed champion win, I wonder?

But it may just be fuzzy dream also. Just that kind of a day, you know?

Ladies and gentlemen, Mister Chet Baker on vocals and horn, and Patrick on the shutter:

Go on, press the round play button above.

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It’s been a while since the Toronto mayoral race had a scandal, don’t you think, dear reader?

The last one toppled Adam Giambrone, reducing Jammers to a sobbing wreck as he was delivering his stepping-down speech. To be honest, we all kinda saw that one coming, didn’t we? Young guy, in politics since he was in diapers; he was overdue for a political misstep. According to the Toronto’s Sexiest Councillor poll (you haven’t voted yet?), he gives most of the councillors a run for their money, and even I’ll grudgingly concede that he’s a fairly good-looking guy, so the fact that it was a sex scandal that took him out (the standard had sex with another woman kind), really didn’t come as a surprise.

The latest one involving Rob Ford, however, was a bit of a surprise. To say it came out of left field would be a bit of an understatement.

Seems Rob got himself tangled up with a Dieter Doneit-Henderson (first name pronounced “Deeter”, second like “doughnut”), a gay guy with Fibromyalgia living somewhere on the west end of the city. From what I could glean; just outside of Rob’s electoral district anyway.

… Continue Reading