The sudden TTC strike this morning is really throwing the city into traffic chaos. My office is half empty, partially because regular TTC riders can’t get to work, and partially because the resulting car traffic has overloaded Toronto’s streets and highways — which are stretched paper thin on a good day — causing substantial delays in getting anywhere by car. It’s going to be a weird day.
[tags]ttc, strike, toronto transit commission[/tags]
Two good bits of news from Spacing today: the City of Toronto finally plans to go ahead with the Bloor Street revitalization they’ve been talking about for years (while we’ll have moved downtown by the time it’s completed, I still work up here), and they’re also (finally) going ahead with the Union Station overhaul. Hopefully this means no more being crushed when you take the escalator down to the platform at rush hour. Actually, being 6’2″ / 220 I’m less concerned with being crushed than I am with crushing some tiny Korean lady.
Regarding the Bloor Street sidewalk work, I echo what Torontoist is saying: hopefully the lack of a bike lane is just an oversight. Take Make The Tooker.
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And now, two bits of news from the Toronto Star: the (c)Raptors lucked out and won the #1 pick in the NBA draft lottery last night (though there’s no clear #1 this year), and Alexa Ray Joel lucked out and got her mother’s looks. Actually, on second look, she does kind of look like her father…but I guess there’s enough Christie Brinkley in there to make it work. Thank god. Not a big fan of the music, but at least it doesn’t sound like the usual American Idol excretions.
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I’d love to see the Freakonomics guys take a run at bullshit claims like this:
“Smokers’ rights advocates say 1,000 businesses will go bankrupt and thousands of people will lose their jobs as a result of Ontario’s new anti-smoking legislation, set to take effect in a week. ‘At least 4,000 businesses will be impacted,’ Edgar Mitchell, of the Pub and Bar Coalition of Canada, said at a news conference in Toronto Wednesday. ‘Possibly 2,000 will have severe difficulties and as many as 1,000 will be forced out of business. Yes, some pubs and bars can adapt, but it’s a damned hard road.'” [via CTV]
Setting aside for a second that — on the very day that Heather Crowe died of lung cancer from the second-hand smoke she inhaled working in a bar — this asshat wants us to put the business interests of 1,000 bars (a venture with a high failure rate under any circumstances) ahead of the health of the tens of thousands of citizens who’d pass through them…where the hell did he get that nice, round number? What’s he basing the figures on? What research shows this? Has he found another market that underwent these changes and matches Ontario’s? Has he extrapolated it from the earlier municipal bans and restrictions imposed in Ontario? And if so, I’d love to see his numbers; there’ve been considerable research findings to the contrary.
Paging Steven Levitt…
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I find this little doodad fascinating, addictive and frustrating all at once. Blame boing boing.
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I got a 90% on my marketing assignment. I was convinced that an entire paper of bullshit didn’t merit anything better than a C-, but I guess this mark makes sense. Talking out of one’s ass never get anyone fired from a marketing job.
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I worked through some of my music “inbox” today, checking off the new Concretes (yech…except for “You Can’t Hurry Love”), the new Magneta Lane (killer, as expected) and the new Final Fantasy (only two good songs: “This Lamb Sells Condos”, which is a Toronto in-joke, and “Many Lives -> 49mp”, which he played last year the Arcade Fire concert and freaked us all out, what with the shouting into the violin and all). I started into the new Pilate disc, which seems ok, if a little bland.
[tags]bloor street, union station, tooker, raptors, alexa ray joel, american idol, freakonomics, ontario smoking ban, marketing, concretes, magneta lane, final fantasy, pilate[/tags]
This morning CBGB called and asked us if we wanted to go for brunch. After some minor waffling because we had brunch yesterday, and because I’ve got lots to do today, we happily caved and met them on the Danforth. We went to the Old Nick, a pub well known for their brunch. I was pretty impressed, actually; I had the “Well Hung” breakfast, consisting of scrambled eggs, chicken sausage (with bits of pineapple and red pepper), home fries, greens and toast & jam…all of it organic. GB got pretty much the same thing, and CB got some french toast that looked pretty damn tasty (also organic through and through). Nellie went old school and got the non-organic bacon & eggs, and couldn’t get her eggs done properly (she never can; does anyone know how to ask for eggs fried over very, very hard, with nothing even remotely resembling liquid left inside?) but she seemed to enjoy it overall.
There was a ton of food on my plate, but I didn’t feel stuffed or greasy after eating it. I think we’ll be going back; now that we’re going over there more to see CBGB, it’s slowly sinking in that the west end of the Danforth really isn’t very far away. I blame the Don Valley for being a mental barrier.
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The Senators, once again, have bowed out of the playoffs much sooner than expected. To me, their chances of winning the cup faded badly around the same time as my chances of winning my hockey pool: when Dominik Hasek was injured early in the Olympic tournament. As Bob McKenzie says, the team will likely be dismantled to some degree.
I gotta say, if you’d told me that Ottawa would be knocked out by Buffalo and Carolina would have New Jersey on the ropes, while Anaheim was moving on in the west and waiting for the winner of Edmonton & San Jose (which looks to be the only real scrap in round 2, unless Jersey can win today), I’d have called you a crazy man. Or woman. Or what have you.
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Sigh…have to start reading marketing again.
[tags]brunch, old nick, organic, danforth, ottawa senators, nhl playoffs, marketing[/tags]
I’m a bitter critter. My Bomb The Blogosphere t-shirt didn’t arrive in time for the mesh conference (which starts Monday). I was so looking forward to stirring up some shit.
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For some reason, a colleague asked me today if I remember Clint Malarchuk. Specifically, if I remembered seeing the video of the game where he had his throat slashed and nearly bled to death on the ice.
Uh, yeah. I remember that. Apparently, so do lots of people, ’cause they’ve put it on YouTube. Warning: do NOT watch that video if you don’t like the sight of blood. Seriously.
[tags]mesh conference, clint malarchuk, youtube[/tags]
Freakonomics + NHL = dishonest parents?
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This Malcolm Gladwell post is chock full of interesting stuff (which he nicely distills so that I don’t have to read anything complicated myself), especially the following:
“One of the curious facts in the study:Â in both the United States and the United Kingdom, the more money you make and the more education you have, the more you drink. There are roughly twice as many heavy drinkers in the best educated English cohort as there are in the least educated English cohort. So much for class assumptions about alcohol.”
Huh. Who knew?
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Toronto is getting a Major League Soccer team. I had no idea. But I might actually go. I have no desire to shell out my life’s savings to watch a hockey team I despise (not that you can get tickets anyway), and I don’t particularly care about/for the Jays or Argos. I occasionally buy Raptors tickets, but am less inclined to do so in recent years, for obvious reasons. I’m guessing the tickets will be reasonably priced, at least.
[tags]freakonomics, malcolm gladwell, toronto fc, mls[/tags]
Last night Nellie, T-Bone and I partook of a Santé Wine Festival event at Pangaea, a restaurant near where we live. It was sponsored by Lungarotti wines, and hosted by a former sommelier who now works for the winery. The idea was that the chef would make dishes to match each wine course for the dozen or so tables in attendance.
As soon as we sat down our server poured a 2004 pinot grigio; as we were waiting for the rest of the guests to arrive they just kept pouring the wine and bringing appetizers: grilled quail with plum sauce, truffle quiche, a seared tuna amuse bouche, and a shell containing scrambled egg and caviar. I loved the quail, skipped the quiche, didn’t mind the tuna and cautiously tested the caviar. I’d not tried it before, and I can’t say I’d spend a small fortune on it, but it was interesting.
Next came two appetizers: rabbit stuffed with wild leek and morels, paired with a 2004 torre di giano (both of which I liked a lot), then fiddlehead risotto with grape tomatoes paired with a 2002 cabernet sauvignon…also both good. The main course was a lamb shank with lingot beans (whatever those are), truffles and vegetables — which I thought was just okay — with two wines: a 2002 rubesco and a 2000 rubesco riserva. It all ended with a raspberry Bavaroise (like mousse sandwiched between a thin shortcake and a biscuit, I guess) with poached rhubarb and fresh berries, paired with a 2001 dulcis. I liked this a lot more than Nellie, who gave me most of hers, but it was all so sweet that I felt a little sick. But it was nothing a little water splashed on my face couldn’t fix.
The funniest part of the evening was when T-Bone’s social instincts took over and she made friends with a nearby table. While the rest of the room emptied out we all turned around and chatted with the two couples, probably for half an hour or more. I think T-Bone knew their life stories by the end.
It was a pretty great deal, really, since the tax and tip was included, and we had a great deal of wine to go along with our food. We also found out that Lungarotti makes some pretty decent wine for some pretty low prices, so Nellie could be looking for it on her next trip to the LCBO. Which was the point, I suppose.
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For the first time in a few years, the films we saw at Hot Docs didn’t win any awards.* Martyr Street, which we had on our short list but didn’t end up picking, won the best documentary award; Mystic Ball (which I think T-Bone went to see this weekend) won the special jury prize.
*unless, of course, one of them wins the audience award, which will be announced tomorrow
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Ever see the movie Cop Land (imdb | rotten tomatoes)? It’s not bad. Nellie and I saw it eight or nine years ago, just after she moved here, and I remember being severely annoyed with the old woman behind us who exclaimed “Oh my! Oh dear! Tsk tsk!” every time anyone swore or fired a gun.
Anyway, it was on IFC last week and I tifauxed it just for kicks. I forgot how many good actors were in it: Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Peter Berg, Janeane Garofalo, Robert Patrick, Michael Rapaport, Annabella Sciorra, Cathy Moriarty and John Spencer, with Edie Falco and Deborah Harry in bit parts. Even Sylvester Stallone, who stars in it, is pretty good, and you can’t say that very often. If you skipped it ’cause it looked like another dumb Stallone cop movie, give it another chance.
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[tags]santé, pangaea, lungarotti, hot docs, martyr street[/tags]
Let it be known: if ever I see some fuckwit throw a puppy out of a moving car and into a river — like this mouth-breathing shitbag did — I’ll make it my life’s work to track him down, spit in his face and piss on his foot. If I were a more violent man I’d bring along a softball bat and break his dog-throwing arm.
I wonder if he did it because he’s so incredibly cruel that he doesn’t mind throwing a dog into a river to drown, or if he’s just so stupendously ignorant that he doesn’t know what else to do with an animal he doesn’t want or can’t care for. Either way, he deserves to wear some of my piss.
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[tags]assholes, puppies[/tags]
Weird…I was looking for a sample menu from Dooney’s, a cafe/restaurant in The Annex, and found their site…which is like some kind of left-leaning editorial/news service. Lots of literary news and books reviews (not surprising; Dooney’s is a known writer hangout), but I’m still looking for that sample menu.
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Congratulations to the Senators for making it to the second round. As my second favourite team I’m hoping they win it all should my beloved Habs falter. This would also have the added benefit of sending Leafs fans into a state of catatonia.
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[tags]toronto, dooney’s, canadiens, ottawa, senators[/tags]
I just picked up a brownie from Camros, the new organic food store that’s opened up near my place. Yes, it was over $3, but it was so big that I had to split it with T-Bone.
And lest you think an organic brownie would taste like muddy sawdust, it was a damn fine brownie. Not the best I’ve ever had, but certainly a good brownie. Put it this way: if you haven’t told me it was 100% organic, I wouldn’t have known.
Stephen Brunt, in yesterday’s Globe column (it requires registration, but if you search for ‘Stephen Brunt’ through Google News you can get the full content) is all too happy to jump on the reduced expectations of a Stanley Cup win in Montreal, recounting a friend’s observation that the city, content with winning a round or two nowadays, has become like Toronto. In this he may touch on the truth, but he’s more wrong that right. Montreal doesn’t have the same expectations now that they did, even as recently as 10 years ago (once Patrick Roy, who was known to single-handedly win a cup, left town just two years removed from their last cup win, the expectations began to drop), but become like Toronto? Not quite. Having lived here in Toronto for the past few, I’ve had plenty of chances to roll my eyes at LeafsManiacs. Yonge street doesn’t fill with honking cars when the Leafs win a playoff series, it fills when they win a playoff game. When they win a series, the mayor begins planning the parade route (at least, Mel Lastman did; David Miller seems a bit less frantic. Lastman actually wanted to throw them a parade for getting to the third round, for chrissakes).
There’s also a difference between the cities in the sports demeanor come October. Montreal fans are hopeful that their team can win it all, and passionate about the season’s outcome, but will grudgingly admit that their chances aren’t good. Toronto fans, on the other hand, seem genuinely convinced that their team will win it…each and every year. I’ve never experienced anything like it. They like to claim it’s devotion and dedication, but it smacks mainly of delusion. It’s kind of creepy. Like being in a sports bodysnatchers town.
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Hot Docs starts tonight. Our first documentary is about soccer-playing Guatemalan prostitutes. Seriously.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 