BLAMBLOG v7

Blamblog: March 15, 2002 - April 30, 2010

2010-04-30T01:45:00.001-04:00

The End

2010-04-29T22:15:00.008-04:00

Bairrada Churrasqueira, College Street

It was shortly before Eva left the country and we moved out of the apartment ...

BLAMB: See this shirt? This shirt I'm wearing right now?

MARIA: It's a fukkin' grey shirt.

BLAMB: I used to have pyjamas just like this shirt. Damn I miss those pyjamas. But that was ten years ago ...

MARIA: What? You're mourning your fukkin' pyjamas? You're mourning your pyjamas ten years later? Did you have a pyjama funeral for them when they died?

BLAMB: They were great pjs ...

MARIA: Did they get buried or cremated? Maybe you should have a seance to get back in touch with them.

EVA: Amber should buy you some new pyjamas.

AMBER: I did. He keeps repeating this story about those grey pyjamas.

MARIA: What if you went back in time and found those pyjamas again and realized that you hate them?

JENN: Maybe it's not the pyjamas you miss. Maybe you miss that time of your life.

BLAMB: Nope, its the pyjamas.

MARIA: They have a fukkin' internet now and you can go online and find any pyjamas you want. I bet you could find places that tailor pyjamas for you. Don't get hung up on a fukkin' cheap pair of pyjamas you bought at The Bay when you still had hair.

EVA: Pre 9/11 pyjamas?

BLAMB: I was wearing them on 9/11.

JENN: Everyone remembers what they were wearing on 9/11.

BLAMB: That's right, grey pyjamas.

MARIA: You know what would suck?

ALL: What?

MARIA: Being naked on 9/11.

EVA: Here. Find some new pyjamas.

BLAMB: Is this an ipod or an iphone?

EVA: What do you think?

BLAMB: I think it's a generic "i"-branded device.

MARIA: Remember when computers used to be gigantic, man?

BLAMB: You know, my favourite computer, from way back in the 80s was the size of a ...

EVA: A suitcase?

MARIA: A barn?

BLAMB: Well, it was a C64, so it was the size of a keyboard.

JENN: Funny, people used to write sentimental songs about old movies but they don't write them about old computers.

BLAMB: Call Ian Thomas.

MARIA: Or Vangelis.

EVA: Who the hell is Ian Thomas?

BLAMB: Ian Thomas is a famous singer. How could you not know who Ian Thomas is. I think he's also Heather Thomas' brother.

AMBER: Hey, something's wrong.

BLAMB: What time is it? We have to get home in time for 'The Fall Guy'.

MARIA: He's in some kind of daze.

BLAMB: Duuuuhhhh ...

EVA: Wait a minute ... Brett, what year is it?

BLAMB: It's 1982!

EVA: He accidentally activated the hypnotism app on the i-device. He thinks he's gone back into the past!

MARIA: But he's gone too far!

BLAMB: Did you guys watch 'Real People' this week?

JENN: Who cares ... ask him about his pyjamas!

AMBER: Brett, you've gone too far. You were only supposed to go back to 2001.

MARIA: What kind of pyjamas are there with you?

BLAMB: Oh no .. oh no ... the pyjamas here are terrible!

EVA: Leave the 80s ... come forward in time!

MARIA: Yeah, but don't go to like ... the year 3000 or something like that.

JENN: Brett?

EVA: Are you there?

BLAMB: I'm in the year 3000. I'm a guest at the Ryugyong Hotel. I think someone just set off an atomic bomb ...

MARIA: Ok, whatever. What about the fukking pyjamas? How are those?

BLAMB: Well ....

Everyone leans forward.

BLAMB: They're perfect!

Last Days of the Blamblog

2010-04-28T15:18:00.000-04:00

At the end of this week, this blog will come to an end. Google is ending ftp support for Blogger on May 1st ... so instead of going through the trial of some sort of migration I've decided to pull the plug.

Besides, this site has been coasting for years.

Instead, I'm going to switch to providing work-related updates on my main page and -- coming soon -- a new project. Ok, maybe not so soon. But I am mucking around with a worthy distraction. Hopefully it'll come to something.

I started this blog a little over eight years ago on March 15, 2002 when I was single and working mostly on corporate work that didn't require a lot of creativity. I could blog on and off all day without any distractions. Things peaked around late 2004 and started to wane after I started contributing to istock. Suddenly I had an outlet for fun work that also paid the rent.

A few fun reruns:

Advanced Monkey Pee

A Long Walk

Trudeau's Long Walk

Condom Tree

Anyhow ... go buy some junk!

Rob Ford Enters the Race

2010-04-25T12:44:00.000-04:00

To Everything, Turbine, Turbine, Turbine

2010-04-19T23:11:00.007-04:00

Funny to see Glen Debaeremaker on the wrong side of an environmental issue again. The Toronto city councillor has a reputation for being "green", but supports the installation of a huge wind farm -- 60 turbines -- in Lake Ontario, just off the shore of The Beaches and the Scarborough Bluffs. Advocates of the turbines have been lucky so far because the campaign against the plan has been so feeble and ham-fisted. Opponents have spent more energy undermining themselves rather than winning hearts and minds, even though the Star said:

... the wind farm opponents, thwarted so far at every turn, gave it everything they had.

No wonder they've been thwarted. Witness savethebluffs.ca, a website that reeks of "right-wing crank". You'll never find a larger collection of self-defeating arguments. Even the site's name is a flub ... the bluffs don't need saving, it's the lake, stupid!

The messaging on the site is all over the place and the muddle allows people like Debaeremaker to define their position for them:

"De Baeremaeker said he understands only the aesthetic argument against the turbines. "I think they’re grand. I think they’ll be a tourist attraction, and boats are going to weave in and out of them.""

Ok, if he thinks that then Glen De Baeremaker is an idiot.

Our aesthetic instincts often tell us when something is wrong, even if we can't quiet put our finger on it. The savethebluffs website shows that the opponents can't quite put their finger on why they really oppose the plan. They sense that it's wrong and don't know why so they grasp at statistics and theories. And it might be because it's just so damn simple.

The dog and I just got back from an evening walk on the boardwalk at the beach. It's a clear night and we could see a lot of stars and the entire beach was deserted and we walked for ages before passing other people. The contrast is the most striking thing in the evening; behind you are the lights and the dull groan of the city and on the other side there's ... nothing. The huge city just ends and there's just this big, empty void.

And that's where the opponents have fallen down: they've been "out-environmented". Their key message should be: the lake is a wilderness. Sure, it's a spoiled wilderness from years of pollution and invasive species ... but aren't we supposed to be working to correct that? What the wind farm does is take a huge amount of wilderness and turn it into large scale industrial space (the proposed turbine are something like 140 metres tall).

That's not an aesthetic change, that's a functional change.

Proponents of the plan are looking at the lake the same way the polluting industrialists in the mid-20th Century did. They see is as a vast entity that can absorb all sorts of abuse. Look how big it is! How could 60 wind turbines hurt it? It's greeeeeeeen! That view isn't green at all ... it's the same ol' industrial mindset. What's the point of green power if you're going to despoil a wilderness?

Instead of making that argument, the opponents posted this dumbass shit, making themselves look like a bunch of redneck morons:

At the referendum, a number of years ago, leading to Scarborough's forced amalgamation with Toronto, the majority of residents here voted against giving up our values to Toronto's vision.

Feel free to make yourselves look crazy.

Now, if you want to get a bit fuzzy, consider the precedent this sets and the message it sends to everyone within view of the turbines (the country's largest concentration of people): nothing is sacred. If you want to industrialize Mt. Everest, go ahead.

In the end, the real troublemakers are Toronto Hydro for exploring a project that will probably never be built. For one thing, there's likely not enough wind. And then there's this:

That entire shoreline is urbanized and I would bet real money that serious opposition would arrive if the project ever moved beyond the study phase. Those communities have already done their bit for king & country, hosting the stinkiest sewage plant in the history of the world, a natural gas plant and a nuclear power plant (with a second one just a bit further along).

Of course we need to be exploring sustainable energy options ... but we have to consider what the point is. If we develop every square inch of space without regard for the quality of that space, we've lost sight of the goal.

Bad Apple, Part XXIV

2010-04-15T15:17:00.000-04:00

Interview.

2010-04-14T15:37:00.000-04:00

There's a post about me on the Getty Images blog today.

portrait

2010-04-07T10:54:00.000-04:00

My portrait on the istock 10 site ...

10

2010-04-07T02:40:00.000-04:00

iStockphoto turns 10 today!

City Skylines

2010-04-06T16:34:00.000-04:00

My city skylines thumbs page has been updated with new file links.

2010-04-04T18:32:00.000-04:00

Oh, Those Ads!

2010-04-01T15:35:00.004-04:00

Last year, some religious folk got uppity after atheist ads appeared on the sides of streetcars and buses. Given the chance to counter the ads this month, the result was predictable:

A replacement statement read, in part, "It has become apparent that, while one is free to ask the question, 'Does God care if I'm gay?' one is not so free to answer the question from a Biblical perspective."

.....

In an interview yesterday, Harrison suggested that same-sex couples who were legally married were still sinners.

2010-04-01T00:09:00.000-04:00

2010-03-29T13:04:00.000-04:00

QWAC Fundraising Gala

2010-03-26T23:58:00.003-04:00

The Queen West Art Crawl held its first fundraising gala and silent auction at the Gladstone Hotel tonight.

There was a good-sized crowd up on the second floor taking in the art & performances:

We have paired 10 visual artists with 10 performing artists or groups. They represent a diverse cross-section of the arts: music, theatre, comedy, sculpture, video, painting, spoken word, film, and dance.

Lanie was the host:

My work was an animated tour of Queen Street West from University Ave to Roncesvalles in the form of a side-scrolling NES-style video game. I used the original NES resolution and colour palette to create the graphics. The soundtrack was composed and recorded by Suba Sankaran and Dylan Bell.

And now, they're rich!

Sometimes a Tire is Just a Tire

2010-03-19T13:25:00.003-04:00

Isaac & Gretel's gardening choices & confrontations are featured in today's Star:

On the one hand, that's my old 'hood and most of the front yards around there are ugly messes of chain-link fence and concrete. Some residents just pave over their entire front yards. On the other hand, those tires are toxic waster ... they are, after all, made of oil. As they break down, they leach heavy metals into the ground. But the big question I have is: why no tree?

Smells

2010-03-18T14:26:00.001-04:00

A West-Ender's Guide to East Toronto

If you live in the West End, you're familiar with the smell of chocolate from the two chocolate factories. The East End has a distinct smell, too ... it's sewage.

West Goes East

2010-03-11T01:12:00.007-05:00

A West-Ender's Guide to East Toronto

I've been meaning to post about our move east, but now I don't have to. Today's issue of NOW Magazine takes a look at Toronto's East vs. West divide: people in this city tend to associate themselves with the side of Yonge Street, the city's spine, they live on. In the past there's been very little cross-pollination; west-enders stay in the west and east-enders stay in the east. As a west-ender, I once didn't cross the valley for five years in a row ... and I still don't have a good sense of the layout of the east. Where exactly is the "Upper Beach"? St. Clair & Victoria Park?

But NOW missed the real story. Six years ago, some friends moved from Little Italy to Leslieville (which was a barren, neglected stretch of Queen Street East at the time). I thought they were nuts: why would anyone move EAST? A year later another friend moved to Leslieville. The trickle continued and more friends moved east until we ourselves picked up and left for Leslieville in December (joined by more friends all moving at roughly the same time). This was a story we heard over and over as we were house-hunting: priced out of the west, people are migrating east in droves.

[above] one difference: the west end is mostly deforested compared to the east. Leslieville even has a spring 'tree festival'..

For us, it was a no-brainer. We were priced out of the crappier parts of the west end and by moving east we traded up in almost every way that matters. Out in the shadow of the Dufferin Mall, it was a minimum ten-minute walk to do or get anything ... here in the east, we have everything we need within a few blocks. Some trades are significant; we have a galaxy-class LCBO compared to the tiny Parkdale & Little Portugal stores we used to rely on. And we can walk up and get Indian take-out any time we need it (which seems to be often). We even have a little French cafe right on our corner ... but it's run by west-enders.

[above] one trade-up: parks and the dog beach. A year ago, we didn't even know the dog beaches existed.

Because we've only been here for a few months, we're seeing the neighbourhood with fresh eyes, so here's my 2 cents on NOW's coverage.

In NOW's feature, Michael Hollett defends the east and Josh Errett defends the west. I thought Hollettt lived out here, but after reading his east end article, I have my doubts:

East-enders know that pedestrian traffic, even late at night, helps make a neighbourhood safe, not surly, and the ease with which our latest fun ’hood, Leslieville, has sprung to life with an ever-increasing number of excellent galleries, restos and bars illustrates this.

Um, no Mike, east enders don't know this. Dufferin & College has more pedestrian traffic than Leslieville, especially at night when Leslievile turns into a ghost town. Heck, Bloor & Lansdowne has more nightlife. And the Danforth has one little stretch that's walkable. The west has far more pedestrians and far fewer front yard parking pads, than the east. I actually signed a petition the other day to help a new pizza place -- a really nice pizza place -- get a liquor license because a neighbour opposes the place being open after 8pm. It's on QUEEN STREET, why wouldn't it be open after 8pm?

Josh does a better job although, being Josh, he does it in a bit of a dickish way. But he mucks up at the end:

The East lacks that ability to reinvent itself. It is staid, which ultimately spells boring. Greektown along the Danforth is a prime example; it hasn’t changed in nearly 40 years, and probably never will.

Stupid thing to say at a time when the east is rapidly reinventing itself. See paragraph 2, above.

[above] Even the people in Leslieville have told us that the Beach residents are a bunch of conservative douchebags.

But while the divide is real, it's not really a fair comparison. The city's centre of gravity really is in the west and the east is smaller and quieter. To paraphrase 30 Rock: the east end is just like the west end, just without all the stuff!

Crap Shit

2010-03-10T00:51:00.004-05:00

Idiot song -- idea pretty much pilfered from an old beer commercial -- by 'Grayson Matthews' played on CBC's The National tonight:

Not much different in style and substance from all of those post-9/11 patriotism songs ... except that he doesn't try to rhyme "Bin Laden" with "forgotten":

Knee-jerk patriotism is ridiculous at the best of times ... it's completely uncalled for at a time when the country is sucking so badly.

Bad Apple

2010-03-08T23:29:00.001-05:00

If Apple wants to be a real leader, it should be fostering innovation and competition, rather than acting as a jealous and arbitrary feudal lord.

In other news: 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted

LOST

2010-03-05T01:23:00.001-05:00

Great analysis of the crappy start to LOST's final season. [ io9 ]

Defender of the Manly Men

2010-03-03T14:22:00.002-05:00

Jason Kenney's always been a bit of an oddball when it comes to sex. As a young Reformer, he was vocal about saving himself for marriage. Now, this:

But Kenney, who fought same-sex marriage when it was debated in Parliament, ordered those key sections removed when his office sent its comments to the department last June. Senior department officials duly cut out the material, but made a last-ditch plea with Kenney in early August to have it reinstated.

QWAC Gala 2010

2010-03-03T11:23:00.002-05:00

I've contributed an 8-minute animation to the first-ever gala fundraiser for the Queen West Art Crawl. The event is March 26 at the Gladstone and tickets are $75:

The artists are split into two ‘waves’ of creativity. Ten artists will get the party started by creating original works based on a Queen West-related theme. After an intense two-week creation period, these works are submitted to the second wave of ten, who take inspiration from the first group and respond with their own original works.

My work is currently in the hands of a musician who has two weeks to compose ... something ... to accompany the animation and will perform it live at the gala.

Polley Punk'd by Product

2010-03-03T11:15:00.001-05:00

Polley pulled her name from the project because "my film is also being used to promote a product," namely Becel, a Unilever brand. [via Mondoville].

Feb

2010-02-25T11:48:00.001-05:00

The month on Mondoville.