Civic holiday dance

Ready for the long weekend

Yo Algonquin

What's better than a two-tree hammock?

A one-tree teardrop tent.

Now Algonquin bears can eat you from the bottom.

New directions in sky writing

So yes, the Halifax pilot did it on purpose.

A flight path that can only be seen on radar.

To count all the planes in the air at the moment,

check out

flightaware.com 

Regis & Dave. Coulda been cowboys

Artifacts of Our Age: dumb cluck shoes

What if the world's ugliest footwear and the planet's primary fried cluck franchise had a baby?

They did.

At high noon Tuesday, KFC Crocs will be unleashed, a mash-up of slip-ons that look like greasy chicken on your feet.

$60US. 

That sound of hoof beats? 
The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse are near.

Person woman man camera tv. Wow!

"He's cognitively t-h-e-re .... "
               ---Trademark pending, Republican National Committee

Barry Blitt: Trump's brain test cartoon

 

Barry Blitt is the genius behind New Yorker's political covers.

Trump's brags about his cognitive test triumph prompted the cartoonist to recreate the actual exam result.

The weekly sent it to everybody on its humor list.

Their daily newsletter lures eyeballs to the mag itself.

 

Finally found out why the fish weren't biting....

 

--manpage/facebook

 

"I got no place to play either..."

 

"People don't want the truth anymore. It's too messy. Keeps them up at nights. You practice anything a long time, you get good at it. You tell a hundred lies a day, it sounds like the truth...."
               --Denzel Washington, Safe House (2012)

The new zoo?

They stay out in the rain.

They don't hide from visitors.

They never need food or vets.

You never have to return them.

Lego pandas.

Just toast them a little

The coolest thing about writing a daily column for a big city newspaper--okay, boomer--was that nobody talked to me about what was in tomorrow's column, or today's, or yesterday's.

For years, running on a hamster wheel, I had no time to be anything but grateful. Let me run. Type on, fool.

I thought of myself as the golden goose. Don't mess with the eggs. Plop! Another golden morning. Good Goosey.

But now, in my dotage, I realize the root of this benevolence.

No editor, copy desk toughie or manager ever wanted to answer "Yes" if asked: Did you know about this Page Six thing?

The answer had to be "Of course not. He's nuts. Nobody knows what he's doing. He's worse than Rimstead."

I guess Page Six amused The King.

Who The King was seemed a mystery.

But any gatekeepeer who might have said "Hey Dunf, what BS is running tomorrow in your endless slagheap?" knew they were definitely not The King.

I didn't know who The King was either.

That was the beauty part.

I was always self-editing to please The King.

Be careful. Be funny.

Only Weeniegate prompted a crisis. 
And such a small one.

Page Six had an item about a weenie roast, in which the tagline was a hope that nobody burned their weenie.

"It has to be weiner," a guy who was Not The King instructed.

"But when you cook hot dogs at a campfire, isn't it a weenie roast?" asked the Page Six typist, twin to the sad little man who hid behind the Wizard of Oz.

"You can't say burned their weenie."

"Who says weiner roast?" I asked.

"A weiner is a hot dog, Dunf. A weenie is the other thing."

"No, a weenie is both of them. That's the joke."

"It has to be weiner if it's hot dogs."

"But no kid calls them weiners."

"Weenies is not going in the paper. It's offensive."

I should have snarked: "What about Lubor Zink?"
I'm glad I didn't. Maybe The King liked him too.

The result: a two line item about a weiner roast, in which for no apparent reason, we hope nobody burns one. Whatever.

This was way before the Internet, boys and girls.

Long before revenge blogs, infinite clickable research and powerful fantasies.

So I submit the following to The King.

Google search ...

. Weeny is an adjective meaning tiny.

. Weenie is a frankfurter, or a man's penis, or a weak and socially inept person.

. Weiner is a frankfurter, or a man's penis, or a weak and socially inept person.

. Weener has only one meaning, a boy's penis.

So changing my weenie to weiner was just as smutty.

And a waste of all our time, My King!

Off with that meddler's head.

Vengeance is mine.

Plop!

A good goose just can't stop.

Coming soon: What to do with a pail full of mice

Small world

"If you wash your hands too much, look what happens"

Nope, nobody knows nuthin'

z
Takeaways:
. Nobody knows nuthin'
. Trump knows nobody knows nuthin'
. Obama knew everything.

what's next

Indeed

Or just levitate

You can't un-see this

 Condo kisses and alien dreams....

Meet the creepy insect man

Newly installed at Redpath condos

Story at

https://www.blogto.com/arts/2020/06/creepy-alien-sculptures-have-toronto/

 

Ask her a question

                                                Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

How does Trump's press secretary spew bile and bumpf 

so quickly? Check out Kayleigh McEnany's crib sheet. 

 It includes the following tabs: ABSURD, BLM, BALLOT, CASES, CDC, CHINA, COVID, EARLY, ECON, ELECTION, FLYNN, GOLF, GOYA, HATCH, HATE, HEALTH, HOGAN, KARL, LGBT, LIES, MARY, MASKS, MEDIA, MUELLER, OBAMA, PPE, PRIVIL, REOPEN, RUSSIA, SCHEDUL, SCHOOL, STATUES, STONE, SYSTEM, UNIVER, WINS. 

"There are a few other tabs too, that aren't quite readable," CNN's Brian Stelter posts,"though one appears to say FAUCI. Another seems to say TEST."

meth mask

Tim Hamilton/New Yorker

Cereal of the stars

Good for the gut.
Or whatever.

FLASHBACK: When Toronto was music city

Joey DeFrancesco (Organ), Guido Basso (Flugelhorn), 
Vito Rezza (Drums), Lorne Lofsky (Guitar)

Once upon a time, not that long ago,
many of the best and busiest session musicians 
in the world called Toronto home.

So much radio, TV, commercial, club work, 
you can't even count the guys' gigs.

Here's a flashback to that time, one I revisit 
almost monthly. Four celebrated players plunked at 
Phase One Studios. Picking the tunes they'll jam.
Once. No do-overs. Recorded in one take.
For a CD and DVD called One Take. I own both.

My Romance is at the heart of any musical songbook. 
But this goes well beyond any expectation....

Eleven minutes circa 2004, the day it was recorded.
Historic heart ... toss a pebble into our polluted pond.

Jeez, Guido.
Jeez.

Cool tweets

It's 7/11. Sad.

The Hamilton POLKA?

z

Weird Al Yankovic riffs Hamilton, the musical, as a polka.

And what does creator Lin-Manuel Miranda make of it?

 https://youtu.be/G8kIQ9i1bfY 

Now you don't need to give Disney a penny.

                              My fave new T-shirt

If you go down to a Paris pub today ...

 

you'd better not go alone

lake moon

 

Evan Croskery‎

Drunken bears terrorize Paris

Demanding rum tea with honey & croissants

Drinking with The Inflatables

Three celebrated bars have been Toronto Sun hangouts, 
after the Little Paper first moved to 333 King Street East. 
In sequence....
Hoofer's, a block away with Lurch in the basement cave.
Then came Crooks, a little to the west, ring-mastered by  cop-turned-barbud and True Blues Bro Richard Kruk.
And last to host daily crews of Sun newshounds, party animals and high-functioning drinkers, Betty's.
The last pub still exists.
A pal sends a link to a story on it.
Betty's is suddenly full of balloon people.
I fear for the Dominion.

Story at
https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2020/07/toronto-pub-blow-up-dolls-tables/?fbclid=IwAR3U1bCsbZoOdJy1IVnB52HyjO_qbyecTNwQC-dYVPknvNdYmuEYRJfqwWo

"Not the 5th, not the 3rd it’s the 4th. Not a lot of people know that”

Happy hats

Terry Potockin/Nordair's Facebook page

Canada Day

In the lake.
By myself.
Skinny dipping.
Waiting for the 5.30pm duck parade.
Thinking about what seems to be the lost summer.
But it's the first day of July.
How can the summer be lost?
Masks. Covid. Empty cottages.
Even the loons seem listening for ... what?
But a long time ago ...
... I wrote this ...

===========================

Canada Day

Canada is eating toy food at 30,000 feet and looking down on the most amazing herringbone of blacks and whites that turn out to be the Rocky Mountains.

Canada is coming home from Kensington Market with a vegetable that looks like a carrot, smells like a melon, feels like a banana but may be a potato.   The lady next door knows how to cook it.  You give her half.

Canada's lying on your stomach on a raft and watching shy fish circle below, safely hiding in your shadow.

Canada is slogging down a narrow, snow-clogged street in Quebec City, to watch a midnight traffic jam of ice floes in the St. Lawrence.

Canada's sitting on the shore of Newfoundland's Grand Lake, sucking at a bottle of Star while a pal balances a bottle of Moosehead on his forehead.   Laughter tickles the stubby pines.

Canada is paddling three hard days only to discover two other tents are already pitched at your "secret" place.  Windlocked, you'll meet the strangers you meet there again each summer for the next 20 years.

Canada is Muskol.  A hell of a lot of Muskol.

Canada is patching the hole in the tent and killing the last mosquito at 5.23 a.m. to finally fall asleep. The sun rises at 5.33.

Canada is climbing a tree with two friends in August and waiting two long hours to drop a balloon filled with water on your best pal.

Canada is a sharp green stick with one brown hot dog on it. The first frank falls in the fire but the second is perfect.

Canada is an amazing red trillium in a hillside army of white ones. Sprawl in the foot-high flowers and it takes them 15 minutes to find you.

Canada is poring over your priceless pile of 44 maps of lakes and portages in front of a roaring fire in January and never thinking about a black fly.

Canada is a metal mug of coffee too hot to hold, on a misty morning that's too cold to be there.

Canada is standing on the deck of the last B.C. ferry of the night, watching the water slide by.  From somewhere deep inside the ship, a door closes. Or opens. Stars wink at their twins in the sea. Time stops.

Canada is meeting a bear at the rural garbage dump. You consider each other thoughtfully for long moments. The bear has other things to do.

Canada is dogs wading in lakes, sitting in shallow water to cool their bums.

Canada's the lightning storm that scares you witless.

Canada is whipping into a beach on one water ski to land at the exact edge of the sand ... just ... so. Keep your stomach sucked in: those girls are watching.

Canada is one perfect fiddlehead green.  So small, so fixed in your mind as a fragile growing thing, you dare not pick it.

Canada is discovering the dog has eaten all the marshmallows. The marshmallows are already upchucked in your sleeping bag.

Canada is unpacking Christmas lights in a chilly attic.

Canada is watching the field mouse run up to, then over your girlfriend's sleeping bag and never telling her when she wakes up.

Canada is one ear of yellow corn, a plate of butter and a napkin. You feel yellow a long time after.

Canada is sitting in a privy, hoping porkies don't come for another 10 minutes.  Swallows have torn the toilet paper into confetti, no piece big enough to hold.

Canada is a deep lake, a sloping rock, a warm sun and a perfect curve of time.  Afternoons arch to the blue horizon.

Canada is a brown envelope from Revenue Canada. And the modest boat you christen ... REBATE.

Canada is whitecaps on the lake, transparent smoke spirals above winter chimneys, the speckled rocks at the bottom of a clear, glassy stream.

Canada is a big secret.

Shared.