Sarah and I were invited to sip and discuss the somewhat misnomer-ed Canadian Club Whisky (it’s American-owned although it has deep roots here), at a promotional event hosted at her old alma mater.

There was the traditional tasting of some of CC’s star products, straight up…

…and mixed…

I find the CC version of a 12-year-old to be less smooth than a comparable Macallan, but comparing pricey Scotch and North American whisky probably isn’t fair.

Not that it really matters much; I wouldn’t classify myself as a CC drinker (or whisky, for that matter), but I could definitely see myself ordering a few of the tasty drinks we sampled. The food, consisting of nibbles supplied by Tundra, was also great.

But probably the best part of the event was the fact that the Canadian Club Chairman was walking around, mingling, and generally making himself available to the guests.

If you don’t recognize him, maybe this will help:

He’s not shy to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi…

…or to bring his son to events…

Sarah and I caught up in person with Toronto’s social media scenesters, drank till we were glowing, and made friends with the caterers (you never know!)

We were also pleased to see a number local businesses being supported as part of Canadian Club’s campaign. Both inside and outside the great hall, these locals rounded off the manly inspiration behind the CC campaign with things like men’s cuts, personal grooming products, and suits.

Many thanks to Canadian Club and Praxis PR for having us and for the generous swag bags we lugged home.

Cheers!

I went back to school Wednesday!
good class!

Here are some of the ppl I met:

me and Patrick!

Jayne + me! (Sarah!)

Tom + Tony!

Tony + Andrew!

Me + Patrick!

My fave course, my fave man, my fave moments!

;-)

love,
SarahD!

According to Bill McKibben, the environment has it in for us. All of us. Like, real bad.

I got the opportunity to hear him and Margaret Atwood chew the cud on the problem at the UofT Bookstore‘s Reading Series.  After all, the environment lurks mercilessly outside all of our homes, constantly waiting to pounce; needs a brainstormer, no doubt.

What I liked about Atwood was her willingness to delve into the causes of why the environment is being such a dick; let’s not be ignorant of the enemy. That and she brought up coffee and hemp as possible solutions. I like her. :)

So what did McKibben have to say? Basically that, at this point, the environment is already over the edge. Forget trying to slow it down — blast that motherfucker with everything we have!!

He goes into greater detail in his new book “Eaarth”, but wants to emphasize that it’s still, “all a long shot”.

Bill’s message isn’t terribly upbeat, even though he somehow is. Diplomacy, recycling, full-on frontal attack, we’ll need to do whatever it takes if we stand a chance against the environment.

From my regular viewing of public television, I know that small island nations like the Maldives are already under attack. They’re seriously looking into evacuation plans for whole countries, that’s how bad it’s getting. And unfortunately, publicity stunts don’t really seem to be getting the word out.

Bill had a big hand in 350.org, a site dedicated to disseminating information about the struggle. And a struggle it’ll be. According to what I’ve read there, it’s not a matter of if we’ll be attacked, but how severely. The best we can do now is to mitigate the damages. I’m definitely not getting that mortgage now.

… Continue Reading

No doubt about it, I’m going to copyright hell. Yes, I’ve once again raided the Toronto Archives (I highly recommend a search or two; lotsa fun stuff), and emerged with some gleaming gems. Should the Archives ever decide to sue my blatancy, I’ll no doubt be forced to hand over much of TCL’s total monetary earnings to date: $3.67. If I made them cry, emotional damages too. But I just can’t help it; they have way too much great stuff to hide behind a stuffy web interface.

This time around I went back to the mid-sixties in search of the very beginnings of computing in Toronto. Okay, yeah, I’ve been spending a lot of time online making sweet sweet love to the blogosphere. And programming. But the digital miracles I’m pulling out of my ass (and many of us are), these days would’ve been unimaginable forty-five years ago. In fact, even though I’m more closely familiar with most of the gizmos in these photos than the average person, even I’m at a loss to put name or function to everything there. But I’ll try.

Okay, so from my understanding, this is what computing looked like at the University of Toronto circa 1965ish:

Can you imagine what it would’ve taken to slap together a basic web page at that time? Like, look at the fellow in the photo above; picking out a frozen pizza because he knows he’s going to be a while.  It’s nice that they provided slushie machines for the programmers:

I guess he’s picking his flavour.

Oh, yeah, of course I’d be hideously remiss if I didn’t mention the sideburns. That was the requisite look in those days, from my understanding. For when you’d fall asleep on your desk on account of the speed of the computers. Sop up your drool ‘n all. (I know, gross, but hey, practical.)

So here’s Mr. Burns actually earning a living:

… Continue Reading

Tuesday, September 8th. The day when all of Toronto crawls painfully out of bed to get the crusty kids to school, crusty husband/wife to their jobs, and crusty selves to their own. The only people that didn’t seem crusty on Tuesday were the folks at Citytv. That’s because they’d just moved into their new building:

The Citytv crew made a big to-do about how the station would now be in the actual heart of the city. They’re probably right, but I suspect they just wanted to be closer to my place. Either way, it was a wise decision.

The move has been in the works for about two years. Gord Martineau, Citytv’s sneering six o’clock news anchor, has pitilessly plugged his involvement in the move stating that he was the one who brought up the idea with boss Ted Rogers, the guy who owns every co-ax cable in Toronto (and then some).

The building itself was an Olympics-themed tourist attraction for a couple of years, hence the big cone-torch thingie at the top. Aside from the pleasantly phallic symbolism (granted, a horribly deformed phallus), the building also forms an interesting arch over the intersection of Victoria and Dundas. Streetcar tracks go through the arch but there are no open power lines, probably because the construction workers were afraid of electrocution. Babies. Anyway, I’m certain that once they open it up it’ll make for a great place to throw back a couple of swigs of paper-bagged hooch, away from scornful eyes.

But Gord’s masturbatory visions weren’t the only things making headlines on Tuesday. U. of T. and York U. put their first-year students through the wash for the first day of frosh week:

All the noobs were baptized in the waters of City Hall with a ritual involving a Kindergarten-style initiation. A girl on a megaphone shouted out some rhyming instructions with all the students acting out the directions while repeating what she said. The Universities were only mentioned a couple of times during the chanting; they spent more time pretending to be alligators, crabs, and sleeping monkeys. Hurray for our future workforce!

What a time to lose my internet connection! And with TIFF coming up ‘n all:

Couldn’t have come at a worse time. Despite George Clooney and I being best buds, I doubt he’ll postpone his arrival for my technical difficulties.  I bet he’s disappointed.

Sorry, George. You’ll have to takeit up with my ISP. I tried and I guess I’m just not famous enough.