Saturday, April 30, 2022

Doug's got an idea

 See original image_

Widen the 401 to 36 lanes.

Or 42. Or 60. Whatever.

Give budget spare change to poor people.

Budgets always stirred, never shaken.

Slide hidden pea from first cup to third cup.

Voice own PC commercials as good times guy, Dougie on the block. Hot dog hero.

Backslaps. Photo ops.

Make big buy on YouTube and socials.

Piss on political pipsqueaks. Yahoo flea bites.

Covid? What covid?

Cross fingers.


Night Bus

Warning: the above click is a gory, vengeful, murderous cartoon. It's pretty horrific.

If you enjoy Saw, Clockwork Orange, slasher flicks, playing video games where the kill count is in the hundreds or blood and lust graphic novels, this short may hold some charm for you.

Since YouTube and the New Yorker put this in my in-box, it may have redeeming artistic value.

If you think 2022 is already over-run with crazies, hate and spontaneous violence, take a pass. Think Itchy & Scratchy on The Simpsons.

Yes, I watched all of it. (20 mins)

In a week of tech and socials navel-gazing, why has an algorithm decided I--and now maybe you--should see it?

Is it entertainment?


Obviously, I'm leery.


Questions

 So Many Questions

Friday, April 29, 2022

Dip and chip

 


Break out the snacks! 

Prince Chuck and his wife The Camster will come for a Canada quickie May 17 to May 19, 2022.

Boat blues

 _

 

Cottage crew

 

Surf's up

 

Time to break out the Lobster Crocks.

NOT SO LOST SONGS: Let's Misbehave

They say the spring 

means just one thing 

to little love birds,

We're not above birds ... Let's Misbehave. 

 

A song Cole Porter wrote in 1927 has been re-recorded and newly energized almost every decade since.

The tune was tossed out of Paris, a musical and replaced with Let's Do It.

One of the latest versions above...

And the original, below.


Hot pocket

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Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Modest meows

 Weird-Images-Worth-Seeing_

                                                                            --boredpanda.com

Look away, you perv ...

Woke up this morning ...

 The sign at the main student centre on Yonge Street is already being removed. Ryerson University has been renamed Toronto Metropolitan University after the board of governors approved the new name at a meeting on Tuesday._

Ryerson becomes "Metropolitan University"

The school announced the change on Tuesday after Ryerson University’s board of directors voted last summer to change its name, following public condemnation over Egerton Ryerson’s role as a primary architect of Canada’s residential schools. 

                             *   *   *

Woke up this morning
Got a blue moon in your eyes
Woke up this morning
Got a blue moon in your eyes

You woke up this morning
The world turned upside down,
Lord above, thing's ain't been the same
Since the Blues walked in our town.

 

Our town is--of course--Tkaranto

The Mohawk word for "where there are trees standing in the water"

Get with it.


 

Happy tabs

 

CREATIVE KITCHEN: Noodle ribbons

 Weird-Images-Worth-Seeing

Look ashamed

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Monday, April 25, 2022

Big gulp

 

Cartoonist Rivers appears in the Washington Post and other U.S. papers. His cartoons are here.

Adweek

Air Bud

_

If you love hoops, movies, golden retrievers or The Moral Question of Dogs Playing Basketball, John Oliver put up the above web special at midnight, last night. (14 mins)

Space rat

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Sunday, April 24, 2022

The defamation trial continues

 See original image_

Johnny Depp put this childhood pal/artist in a penthouse and gave him $100,000 to make more of these. 

Art: Isaac Baruch

Bears in the basement

 Bear Hello GIF - Bear Hello GIFs_

I'm always intrigued by things that Go Bump In The Night.

So news that five hibernating bears knocked around a renter's floorboards all winter, strikes me as charming. He'd heard a  thumping, bumping and eventually -- a growl.

The bears were lured out of a South Lake Tahoe house in recent hours. 

If Netflix or Quentin Tarentino were involved, it could be far worse.

Plumbing the Depps

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Pics: AP

 

Thank goodness Netflix prepared us to binge-watch eight or ten hours of bad actors mumbling dim lines about unlikely events. 

It makes it a breeze to choke down a daily dose of the Johnny Depp - Amber Heard bouts.

A complete cast of hangers-on and enablers encircles them, a fantasy world of teacup doggies, penthouses, 40 cars, broken cabinets, secret tapings, drunken e-mails, an island and ... a horse. 

MMA and Wrestlemania, go fish. Ditto Bridgerton.

After a nasty divorce comes a public round of you bastard, you bitch. Who shit the bed?

Will we ever again watch a Bravo Housewife   throw a wine glass or tip a table and think: "Wow"?

I doubt it.

How did Depp and Heard find their wildly odd lawyers?

Central casting?


GHOST VOCALS: El DeBarge

A unique voice/writer of the 1980s, re-visits his Motown R&B hits recently ... 

DeBarge is 60. The falsetto is solid.


The house of terrror

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Pussycat pouts

 

                  --Koren for newyorker.com

How reality works

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Friday, April 22, 2022

Flying

 Image

                                    --Terry Mosher / Aislin

Guy Lafleur ( 1951 - 2022 )

 

Pig pal and boar-ing flicks

 Weird History_

I thought about this boar repeatedly during a screening of Coda.

Forget the Oscar slap. The real shocker is why a  stereotypical, trope-laden example of Screenwriting 101 won Best Picture.

Coda makes Sandra Bullock seem believable in Rudy. Almost. Let's not go nuts here.


True Romance

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Right on, right on

 Right On Rock_

This way to Band Camp...

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Wetheads

 Niagara Falls_

The Maid of the Mist, since 1846.

 

CANADIAN TV: When k.d. lang spooked Peter Gzowski

Three minutes of k.d. lang in 1985 ...

Song: Hal David and Sherman Edward

  A Joanie Sommers hit, Johnny Get Angry appears on many Worst Songs Ever lists

They are among us

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COWABUNGA!

_

Cowabunga!

1954, American English, exclamation of surprise and anger by "Chief Thunderthud" in "The Howdy Doody Show," 1950s children's TV show.

 Also used by surfers 1960s as a shout of triumph, 

Bart Simpson,

and spread worldwide 1990s by use in the TV cartoon "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." 

                                  *   *  *   *

A chilly reminder of what made the Peanut Gallery laugh. Buffalo Bob Smith, Chief Thunderthud and Clarabelle the Clown.

 

Robert Morse ( 1931 - 2022 )

Morse, the Tony-award window washer kid at World Wide Wickets, years before his TV turn at Mad Men.

Song: Frank Loesser, How to Succeed in Business

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Etcetera

The Great Thinker by Michel Kress

Stephen King's career was primed by "the first horror movie I ever saw," Bambi

(I made it thru Bambi, but fled the theater during the original The Thing. Remember the claw in the door?)

                             *   *   *

Bird-Friendly Beef. Cattle ranchers want to label cow parts as Bird Friendly Beef. The Audubon Society will authorize the blessing if farms show their practices restore bird populations.

(Do the cows know they're bird friendly? Eat him, not me.)

 

Now is better

 The VV-IV, produced 1911 to 1924

 

 Whenever I drift into the warm current of memory, I grab this Mark Morford quote ...

 

"In 1942 you couldn't buy a vibrator to save your life, much less your marriage. People were playing scratchy 78s on their steam-powered turntables and danced in heavy girdles made of bailing wire and lost hopes. Merely uttering the words "double soy mocha latte" in some states would get you shot for being some sort of Communist. Life was brutal. Thongs had yet to be invented. Radiohead didn't exist. Telephones were made of wood and string and lots of yelling. People ate meat from a can. Power steering was science fiction."


Exactly.

Morford was a popular columnist in San Francisco, but has morphed into an on-line yoga guru who now seems a most serious soul.

(Yes, I seed nightmares of what-happens-to-old-typists just before sleep. Yoga. Yikes.)

_

 

President Zelensky's Groundhog Day

 _

“When some leaders ask me what weapons I need, I need a moment to calm myself, because I already told them the week before. It’s Groundhog Day. I feel like Bill Murray.”

“Russian propagandists say that we’re eating people here, that we have killer pigeons, special biological weapons … They make videos, create content, and show Ukrainian birds supposedly attacking their planes. Putin and Lukashenko—they make it sound like some kind of political Monty Python.”

This late-night confessional and j'accuse makes amazing reading...

LINK: Zelensky interview (Atlantic mag)

Volodymyr Zelensky

This way please

 Wheelchair Friendly Stairway

Mall man

 This Mall Has A “Husband Depository” With Massage Chairs And Phone Chargers

This Tokyo mall has had enough of men cluttering up the corridors and benches.

Is there anything sadder than a grumpy guy sitting outside a women's store with a 33% off sale?

Stick him in a husband depository. 

 

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

King of Tweet?

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What the hell is "398.2"?

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Clue: Dewey decimal for social studies

Bart would be 35 now

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CANADIAN TV: Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb - Wichita Lineman

_

Three minutes of Canadian TV, 1988.

Below, a CHCH-TV staffer remembers... 

I was fortunate to be the recording engineer on this show, recorded at CHCH-TV in Hamilton, Ontario on Dec 9, 1988 as part of the incredible "In Session" series. Glen also recorded an episode in 1983 with Leon Russell. He was a pleasure to work with on both occasions. No star attitude whatsoever, and a great sense of humor. The musicians were all Toronto studio session "A" team players: Kevan McKenzie on drums, Peter Cardinali on bass, Bob Mann on guitar and Lou Pomanti on synths. These shows had almost no rehearsals. The band learned the ten or twelve most famous songs by each artist the night before and musical director Bobby Edwards would write out chord charts. We would arrive around 10am the following day, tape about three hours of music with a one hour lunch break in the middle, and hope to get two half-hour episodes out of it. Other pairs of performers on the 26 episodes were Stevie Ray Vaughan with Albert King, Johnny Winter with Dr. John, Emmylou Harris with Rodney Crowell, Spencer Davis with Dave Mason, Chet Atkins with Liona Boyd, BB King with Larry Carlton, Mickey Newbury with Larry Gatlin, Brenda Lee with Owen Bradley, Richie Havens with John Sebastian, Steve Cropper with Eddie Floyd & William Bell, Burton Cummings with Don Everly, and many more that featured great Nashville songwriters who were not household names. Many of the shows have been posted on YouTube by fans. Just enter the pair of artists' names and "In Session". The producer who put all these talented people together and came up with the concept was Ian Anderson, who passed away last year. The shows were directed by the late Ron Meraska, a brilliant director of music specials here in Canada. 

 

 

 

A terrible sight for the hard-boiled survivors

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Back to the damn hole

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Monday, April 18, 2022

City Tree

 




Back when Bruno Gerussi did his live CBC Radio show out of the Colonnade Theater, I wrote   performance pieces for him. City Tree hasn't been on the blog. Perhaps you can hear Bruno's voice...

                         *   *   *

it's hard to be a city tree

  last summer i had six leaves

  this summer i've got ... four

  (a lady closed my bottom branch

   inside her taxi door)

 

it's hard to be a city tree

  i've only heard that there are birds

  no birds land on bay street

  except pigeons

  pigeons are more people than birds

  have you ever noticed?

  pigeons never sit in trees

  they prefer concrete

  like people

 

it's hard to be a city tree

  you wouldn't believe what they do to me

  the dogs who lift or squat

  while pleasant-faced owners

  smile at passers-by

  what is there to smile about? 

  soiled trees

  soiled sidewalks

  and trees with so many problems

  facing that final indignity:  pee

 

it's hard to be a city tree

  look up!

  you cannot see the sun

  mornings it hides behind the bank

  afternoons beyond those towers

  it's only noon i see the sun

  i wish the sun would always shine on me

  for trees weren't meant to live in tunnels

 

it's hard to be a city tree

  frozen in snow the winter

  frozen in cement the summer

  my roots tingle in a sea of hot asphalt

  my tap root's in the sewer

  and i can still taste last winter's salt

 

  see my wound?

  the snow plow clipped me.

 

it's hard to be a city tree

  i fear i can't breathe properly

  some days my leaves are gray

  and the city settles on me

  like dust in a dead man's room

 

  i envy the trees in front of eaton's

  it always rains on them

  it only rains on me when the store behind me

  has its awning up

  it rained this morning

  but i guess it stopped

 

  i love the rain!

 

it's hard to be a city tree

  the tree that lived next door to me ... isn't

  they broke him--

  the people in the night

  his stump was there for six days

  and the hurry-people who work downtown

  walked around him

 

  the city eventually took him away

  covered his hole with hot tar

  i didn't know him well

  he was only a little tree

 

    and the city makes sure to plant us

    fifty feet apart

    so we can never touch each other in the wind

    city trees can't  touch

    it's very sad--

    don't you think?

 

it's hard to be a city tree

  they built a cage around my trunk

  wire mesh so i could not be touched

  i guess it's for protection but

  trees ... like ... being touched

 

  a friendly pat from a passerby

  kids climbing

  the tickles of squirrel feet

 

    i wonder what

    squirrels 

    look like?

 

bay street

is such a lonely place

     for a tree