Month: August 2008

It is with mixed emotions…

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Earlier in the week Torontoist reported that Yorkville’s Cumberland Cinema will soon be demolished.

The Cumberland Cinema is being demolished to make room for another towering condo development. We don’t know yet when it is going to happen, but we do know that this is a terrible shame: while the loss of the theatre isn’t significant from an architectural or stylistic standpoint, it’s a saddening blow to independent movie fare in the downtown core.

I’m torn about this news. On one hand, as Torontoist points out, the Cumberland shows a lot of first-run indie films that tend to start there, move to the Carlton and then disappear. It serves the niche of films that are a little too indie for the Varsity, and much to indie for the Scotiabank or Yonge-Dundas 24, but not so indie that they go straight to the Bloor. Put another way: I’m pretty sure every Wes Anderson movie had its Toronto debut at the Cumberland.

On the other hand, the Cumberland is a shite theatre. The screens are small, the sound is awful, the sight lines are bad (especially for my vertically challenged wife), and it’s always cold enough in there to chill white wine while you watch a film. I suspect I’ll miss the niche the Cumberland filled more than I’ll miss the Cumberland itself; my hope is that the Varsity picks up a little of the slack. It is, in my opinion, still the best theatre in Toronto.

Just a note: I was going to list the four movies currently playing at the Cumberland to demonstrate the quality of movies they usually show, but the lineup this week is Man on Wire, Closing the Ring, Step Brothers and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. That’s one well-reviewed documentary along with three pieces of crap. Maybe I’m not so torn after all…

[tags]cumberland cinema, torontoist[/tags]

Like a Christmas turkey

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Last night Nellie and I went to Amaya, which we’d so enjoyed during Summerlicious. Nellie had some errands to do in that neighbourhood anyway, so it seemed a logical place for dinner.

I arrived before her and had a Kingfisher. When she arrived we ordered a pakora and somosa trio and some cassava fries. Next up: aloo gobi (which I don’t normally care for, but this one was fantastic) and kala chana masala, paired with a very strong Australian shiraz. Lots of naan and rice as well, of course. I don’t know how (or why) but we shared the spiced brownie (with coconut ice cream) for dessert. At this point I was so full that I prayed for sweet, sweet death, but somehow paid the bill and grabbed a cab before lapsing into a coma. I spent the rest of the evening in discomfort. I haven’t been this full since I stopped eating meat. Stupid expanding rice and bread…

I woke up this morning still full. Normally I’m ravenous by 7:00, but this morning I still felt like a python digesting a pig. I just ate a croissant about half an hour ago and I think that should tide me over until dinner. Plan for today: go see Pineapple Express, visit CBGBLB and then go out for dinner. Again. Sucker for punishment = me.

[tags]amaya restaurant, pineapple express[/tags]

Turn out the lights. The party's over.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Well, nearly.

I just submitted my very last assignment* ever. I’d celebrate a little if I didn’t have to sign in and answer a bunch of work emails now.

But…yay!

* assuming I pass this final course, that is. Actually, if I don’t pass, I’m likely to hurl myself from the parapets of Casa Loma, so I guess it’s my last assignment no matter what.

[tags]mba, casa loma[/tags]

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum

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A few notes before I slip back into MBA mode (last assignment woooot!):

.:.

I’ve acquired a metric shitload of reading material: I just bought And Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris and The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda And The Road To 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. I also have the latest issues of The Economist, Toronto Life and Adbusters to get through. That issue of Adbusters is weird reading, since it goes from right to left, but it’ll be worth the effort when I get to the article entitled “Hipster: The Dead End of Civilization”. Just a few pages in and I’m captivated by the story on China’s approach to global politics.

We’ve reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum. So while hipsterdom is the end product of all prior countercultures, it’s been stripped of its subversion and originality, and is leaving a generation pointlessly obsessing over fashion, faux individuality, cultural capital and the commodities of style.

Right now, in between magazines and MBA cases, I’m reading God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Mark Kingwell said that “[p]reaching to the choir…is corrosive of courage and reason: it makes you soft-bellied and soft-headed” but sitting in the atheist choir is fun when it’s Hitchens at the pulpit.

.:.

Somehow Anya Yurchyshyn ties her hatred of marketing to a book about 20th-century totalitarianism in an article called “Adolf Hitler Was A Marketing Genius“.

Although I think advertising/marketing/branding are evil industries (that help to supply my paycheck), I’m not about to compare the people who work there to Nazis or fascists or even Satan’s gleeful minions. Some of my best friends work in advertising! But it is scary that there’s a superstructure that is trying to control us, and most people have stopped questioning it. Advertising is a part of the landscape; it’s weird when it’s not there.

Somehow I agree with her.

.:.

Toronto made Forbes’ list of the world’s ten most economically powerful cities.

Growth and quality are as important as size in our rankings, so smaller but briskly growing economies like Seoul, South Korea, and Hong Kong also make the list. North America, with relatively lower growth areas, still boasts a number of cities in the current power list, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Toronto, the latter of which squeezes past Madrid, Spain; Philadelphia and Mexico City, Mexico.

[via Creative Class, Accordion Guy and a slew of others]

[tags]joshua ferris, lawrence wright, adbusters, christopher hitchens, mark kingwell, anya yurchyshyn, forbes, economically powerful cities[/tags]

Smarter, relieved, sleepier

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While we’ve kind of had an Olympic theme running (ha ha) throughout our MBA program — we started in 2004, the year of the Athens games and we’re finishing just in time for Beijing — I didn’t realize the timing worked out so well. We actually write our last exam on one of the last days of the games, and the closing ceremonies will take place on the 24th…just as we close out our final MBA week and return home. I don’t think they planned it like this either; the class schedule’s been set since 2004 and I don’t think the Olympics schedule has been out that long.

On that subject, I guess I’ll miss the last week of the Olympics. But I guess I won’t mind that so much.

[tags]mba, olympics[/tags]

Oh sleepy day

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Been a busy couple of days…lots more family goings-on: visiting, singing, eating, celebrating, playing, and so on. Now it’s raining and gray, so we’re all hiding inside and lying about. I just had my ass handed to me at crib (skunked, narrowly avoiding being double-skunked) so I’ve scampered into the office to blog and lick my wounds. There may be a drive to find fried clams later. There may not. That is the extent of our planning and forethought this day.

[tags]family reunion[/tags]

Old Germany

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Last night some of us drove to Amherst, a nearby town, for some dinner. My brother had eaten at a new German restaurant in town the last time he was here, and he quite liked it, so we opted for that. It wasn’t a hard choice; there’s just never been a good restaurant in this town for as long as I can remember.

What a pleasant surprise the Old Germany restaurant was. We all left stuffed full of delicious food (enormous hunks of meat & fish, spaetzle, mashed potatoes, etc.) and proper (Lowenbrau! Erdinger!) German beer. The couple who owns the restaurant, one cook and one server, were very pleasant and friendly. It was extremely reasonably priced too: I had fresh bread, tasty garden salad, delicious Talapia in a mustard sauce, lots of mashed potatoes and two large beers for $22, tax in.

The ambiance is a little weird, since it’s built in an old Dairy Queen (and even still has some of the cheap plastic seating) but the food more than makes up for it. Anyway, when you have nine family members, three of whom are under the age of 10, you just make your own ambiance.

[tags]old germany restaurant, amherst[/tags]