Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Reviews
MAN 2020
Steve Cutts is a 25year-old illustrator, animator and creator of some of the oddest little cartoon vignettes on YouTubeTwo days ago, he posted his latest, MAN 2020He's most famous for Happiness, aka Rats
... and his unique take on what you see in the last minute of your life In The Fall
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Ready for tonight's big air show?
Air show starts above at 1.48 ....
Eat your heart out political junkies.
Monday, September 28, 2020
Kenny loves football
A lot of familiar faces in the stands at Sunday's Broncos-Tampa Bay game in Denver.
Don't see Trey Parker or Matt Stone in the crowd.
But South Park's covid special debuts Wednesday.
Could be coincidence ...
See something, say something?
So I'm at Valumart, just before closing, and a middle-aged Karen is coming the other way down the aisle. No mask. Big smile. Big eye contact.
I say nothing.
She grins at me, loaded for bear, waiting.
Masks have been the rule here since July.
I wussed out.
But next time, I may follow the advice Tom Williams offers geezers on his Facebook page ...
I am pretty sure that if I get infected with the virus I will die.
So when someone tries to get in our elevator I ask if they have a mask.
Most do and pull them out of their pockets and put them on.
Those that answer "NO" , I tell them to go kill someone else.
I get a lot of startled reactions and some dirty looks but I bet they will bring their masks with them next time.
Man up, dunf.
the mushroom coffin
In 2020's darkest days, who hasn't dreamed of turning themselves into compost?
I do, usually while checking Drudge.
With a Mushroom Coffin, you lay on a mossy bed of mycelium.
Your coffin walls are impregnated with mushroom spores.
In two years, the makers promise, you and it will be soil.
And don't worry about the price!
For bargain hunters, there is a Mushroom Suit.
Your rotten self, perfect for the garden or rose bushes.
Pose thru life, decompose after death.
This is beyond a small footprint. This is no footprint.
Here today, gone tomorrow.
Thank you, Dutch scientists.
P.S. How did that wooden shoe thing work out?
Sunday, September 27, 2020
See Spot run. See Spot kill.
It's Spot, the robot dog from Boston Dynamics.
Space-X has bought one, apparently to walk Elon Musk.
But if you really want to be creeped out, check this video inventors use to sell the thing. Especially the images in the rain at 1.16--Spot on his way to kill velociraptors in Jurassic Park.
More?
Mythbusters plays with Spot at
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Gary Lautens and Gershwin
--Richard Lautens photo
So it's composer George Gershwin's birthday this weekend, and my thoughts go instantly to Gary Lautens.
Gershwin and his brother Ira gave the world a musical heartbeat, love songs that never quit.
Lautens--perhaps the most genial human I've met--gave the world 8,000 intimate and witty Star and Spectator columns, books and chats in which he tagged our common passions, pratfalls and cheery humanity.
It's a good day to celebrate both.
Lauten's books won two Leacock awards for humour.
Fans and readers loved him.
Above, Gary and Jackie Lautens en route to fun. His wife and kids were constant characters in his tales.
Gary snuck me into the Star building a couple of times when I didn't work there, just to be naughty.
He hosted a catered lunch in a Star conference room with a dozen folks from their entertainment department.
I was his mystery guest.
This, when I was atop his paper's enemies list.
WTF?
It amused him.
I talked to him once on the radio for an hour, and ye gods, we laughed and giggled so much you would have thought we were high, siblings or gay.
I'm amazed to discover our crazy chat exists on the web. It's one click away at the end of this.
Lautens loved Gershwin's Our Love is Here to Stay.
It was his favourite song.
He said he imagined himself and Jackie in Paris.
He was Gene Kelly, dancing Leslie Caron along the Seine.
It was the last song Gershwin ever wrote.
A personalized Tony Bennett art piece hung in his kitchen, Gary said, treasured because it had the song's verse in the singer's hand...
The more I read the papers
The less I comprehend
The world and all its capers
And how it all will end
Nothing seems to be lasting
But that isn't our affair
We've got something permanent
I mean in the way we care ...
The less I comprehend
The world and all its capers
And how it all will end
Nothing seems to be lasting
But that isn't our affair
We've got something permanent
I mean in the way we care ...
Gary cared.
In an industry of cynics, he was a lovely guy.
Rest in peace, pal.
Cue Gershwin...
===========================
===================
Gary Lautens in truly fine form, CFRB aircheck found at Stephen Lautens' website ...
https://www.lautens.com/audio/1989%20Dad%20&%20Dunford.mp3
===========================
Friday, September 25, 2020
--Sharon Gardiner
This would be a fine weekend for a drive.
North of Toronto, towards Algonquin Park, this may be a peak weekend for fall colours.
If you like shocking pops of red and orange against dark green, the top of the leaf change is here.
From here on, landscapes will be closer to yellow.
And then beige.
Photographer Sharon Gardiner is sharing her current photos weekly in the online Madawaska Valley Current at
Scream tourism
Given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and the fact that few of us travel to Iceland right now, our immediate needs have changed. With the current stress, pressure, and uncertainty, the country's tourism board thinks we all would benefit from letting out a cathartic scream—yes, scream. And they're offering up Iceland's vast wilderness.
"In Iceland, we are lucky enough to have vast open spaces and beautiful nature that is the perfect place to let out frustrations," says SigrÃður Dögg Guðmundsdóttir,
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Me not smart
. UPPER CASE LETTERS
. lower case letters
How could I not know til now that the terms we use to describe the size of the written alphabet is tied to a dead technology?
The BIG letters were in the top of a printer's suitcase-sized type rack, the small ones in the bottom.
Letterpress printing, killed in the late 1960s by offset, produced these crazy words.
Teachers now call them Capital Letters and the other ones Itsy Bitsy Little Babies.
I blush, since I spent a couple years cursing those individual, damn backwards-letters each midnight at the Daily Orange.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Trudeau & Ford Rev Up to Build Electric Cars
LIBS USE THRONE SPEECH TO ROLL OUT ELECTRIC VEHICLE STRATEGY
"Hey look over here, I'm a car guy!"
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Monday, September 21, 2020
Print's Cruel World
If you write a book with an endless enemies list, aren't you asking for trouble?
Rosie DiManno, the Star columnist who claims to be tagged in Barbara Amiel's new memoir, returns truly unfriendly fire--the only thing I read today that made me laugh.
It was a line I dare not repeat. But you will find it at ...
Such borderline bombs tossed at My Queen.
Be kind.
Don't be cruel.
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Good night, Chewbacca
Are you still counting sheep to get to sleep?
Count rocket ships ... from your bedroom on a Space Station.
P.S. Did you hear about Chewie's new sneakers?
Do you have a ghost movie theatre?
Does your headspace harbour a favorite Toronto screen that was bulldozed, condo'd or buried in the name of Cineplex decades ago?
Nobody under 40 has any idea what we're talking about.
Once there were Toronto flick showplaces. Grand. Dark. Cool.
Mine was the Odeon Carlton, a few steps east of Yonge St, on the path to what was once Maple Leaf Gardens.
If you worked a crappy night shift at Canada's largest and most self-important newspaper, you would report to this curved marquee movie palace at 2 p.m, and watch three curtains open to reveal the afternoon's cool flick.
The Odeon had a scalloped Radio City-style beauty across the full proscenium, thru which you could see endless folds of a second drape that changed colour.
And behind that one was a hidden third curtain that only opened when God Save the Queen opened the day's screenings.
Everybody would stand.
Afterwards, run to a Young St. lounge, to admire the celery plate that allowed you to have a beer during the "afternoon close". Dinner before the shift.
"My God, you ate those veggies?" a friend gasps.
"They weren't for eating, dummy. Do you know how many times those prop plates were recycled out to the bar?"
Disgusting.
All this is to point you to
Derek Flack's
Lost Movie Theatres of Toronto at
There lurk two dozen archival images of theatres that no longer exist. Oh leveled Lowe's. Oh doomed Bayview.
Once there were fantastic movie palaces, my babies.
And ushers! And dinosaurs.
P.S. Does anybody else remember the shoe store X-ray machines, where you could look into the top of the box to see your toe bones wiggle?
X-rays, dude!
No shielding!
No lead aprons!
Kids.
X-rays zap tiny feet!
Watch as long as you want.
X-rays are fun!
Like sea monkeys.
More vanished Toronto movie screens at
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Little women
President Trump asked some of his female supporters in the crowd if
their husbands had approved their attendance. Trump pretended to poll
the crowd on who to nominate when he apparently recognized some of the
women in Fayetteville from other rallies. “Ok let’s do a poll. Oh there
they are. How many of these have you come to?” he said. “What is this,
number what? Like, 90? I see ‘em all over the place, they’re great. I
hope your husbands are okay with it. Are they okay?” He went on to say
he would nominate a woman to fill the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg’s seat because “I like women much more than I like men.”
Steampunk was real
New York's Museum of Modern Art has the most fascinating collection of film, art, flotsam and jetsam on YouTube.
Here, a two-minute ride on the Wuppertal Suspension Railway, shot in 1902. The town's railway still carries millions of passengers a year along 13 km of track in Germany.
This piece of film is 120 years old.
It's the IMAX of a century ago.
Eye test: spot the chicken, the kid on the swing.
But no barriers at the end of station platforms? Yikes!
Friday, September 18, 2020
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Covid reaches South Park kids
z
It's never good when our crappy 2020 world bleeds over and 3D infects the 2D fantasy world of TV cartoons.
It's wrong.
With animated horror, I learn Co-vid has reached the tiny, notorious, troubled mountain town of South Park. Oh no!
Stan, Eric, Kyle and Kenny live there.
A one-hour virus special is coming September 30, with dire advance pootytoots.
A Covid-190 outbreak and the on-going pandemic presents continued challenges to the citizens of South Park.
The kids happily head back to school, but nothing resembles the normal they once knew; not their teachers, nor their homeroom, not even Eric Cartman.
Comedy Central/South Park
I pray nothing happens to Kenny.
I have my mask.
Teaser for South Park virus special:
https://youtu.be/u6bEaBeOVkg
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
It's Smile Cookie week at Tim Horton's. Sales benefit local charities.
Its second-quarter results last month, the numbers for Tim Hortons were brutal. Tims' same-store sales (revenues at stores open for one year or longer) plummeted by 29.3 per cent. Burger King was down only 13.4 per cent on that crucial measure.
Would you call that a crumby year?
Even before the cookies?
Animal cracker
So the animal is called a jag-waar.
But in TV ads, the British car is a jag-you-are.
Do Brits think the dip is called gwar-koo-cah-moh-lee?
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Saturday, September 12, 2020
Alexa is a dirty bird
I'm watching a bird try to make an Amazon Echo fart.
As one does.
Onni's owner discovered her cockatoo has added items to Alexa's grocery shopping list. Hello. Farts. And eggs.
Can the bird say "Alexa! Fart!" The owner can and does.
The Echo in the video instantly farts.
But from across the room, both my Amazon Kindles "DING!" and also immediately fart. They hear the owner in the video.
"Would you like me to play a squishy fart?" my Kindle Alexa asks me. Well yes. And she does. I mute the video.
"Would you like me to hear a juicy one?" Phhhht.
"Would you like me to play a rumbly one?" PHHHHHT.
"Would you like me to play a bubbly one?" Glugetyglugety.
"Would you like me to hear a noisy one?" BLAM!
"Say RANDOM." A galaxy of farts.
Alexa knows more farts than have ever come out my butt.
I bailed long before she did. She wouldn't stop.
Do not share this information with a child.
Alexa is way worse than a Dirty Bird.
She's shameless.
And very gassy.
Never eat anything with a face
--Jolanda Stokkermans
Food Art is now a thing.
"Never eat anything with a face."
Does this count?
Friday, September 11, 2020
Four Horsemens' Dictionary
. APOCALAI ... plural of apocalypse. When many apocalyptic or potentially world-destroying events happen at the same time.
. Doomscrolling ... checking phones or computers obsessively for updates on apocalai
. Fecalese ... over-sharing details of your toilet visits, the result of apocalai and doomscrolling
Wombats poop in cubes?
"Discover all you ever wanted to know about poop and more with Poop Bingo! Featuring 24 animals and their uniquely shaped poops, this is the bingo game to end all bingo games. Kids will delight in discovering that wombats poop in cubes and penguins poop in squirts that are different colors, depending on what they've eaten! Be the first to fill your game card with animals and poops to win Bingo!'
--amazon.ca sales pitch
https://www.amazon.ca/Poop-Bingo-Aidan-Onn/dp/1786277476/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=poop+bingo&qid=1599587303&sr=8-1
Copies of Never Sit Where The Cat Shat still available.
Wednesday, September 09, 2020
Under the cardboard palm
Oh, sweet cardboard palm tree!
Which crazed publicist made you?
Six feet tall, you were a beacon in the Toronto Sun city room.
For years, editors walked past The Palm atop my desk.
Probably not in rapture.
I have not forgotten you, dear RattyPalm.
Nor have a decade of Sun staffers, still wondering: WTF?
How does he get away with this crap?
It was a golden era.
There was silly. There was fun.
Okay, boomer.
Bedtime.
They still have a TV show?
--Dutch cartoonist Hajo De Reiijge, via TSanfordMessy, Ron Evry
they're creepy and they're kookie
mysterious and spooky
they're altogether ookie
the white house family
the house is a museum
where people come to see 'um
they really are a screa-um
the white house family
Tuesday, September 08, 2020
Really, Ontario?
Labor Day leftovers in Algonquin & Sandbanks provincial parks.
Just trash the place, eh?
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