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amiel book cover

God Save the Queen of King Street

Be still, my foolish heart!

My torrid love affair with Barbara Amiel is re-kindled by an alarming chunk of her new autobiography that surfaces in Britain's Daily Mail.

By the excerpts, Friends and Enemies is an acrid page-turner.

It tells of Barbara's nightmare years.
Geezers. Betrayal. True and imagined cruelties.
Encounters with truly awful society swells.
She lay in a snowdrift.
Elton John gave her a diamond. Why? Just because.
And the shoes, the shoes, always the shoes.

I had no idea the terrible road she's traveled.
I say her name: Bar-ba-ra
My lips tickle.
I can only hope a celebrity book royalty is substantial.
It is my prayer.

Our love was humble. Unspoken.
Amiel was Toronto Sun editor in chief.
Smart. Exotic. Opinionated. Funny. Beautiful.
I was a fool. 
A weirdo-beardo typist in flannel shirts.
Different social classes, we were, to be sure.
But in all Great Romances, is it not always so?
Yob and Lady.
Mark's Warehouse and Givenchy. 
Peanuts and pate.
Beast and Beauty.
The Gamekeeper and Lady Charterly.
Weirdo and--okay, words fail me.
I was besotted. 
I took cold showers to get the sott off me.
How could this loopy one-sided love affair ever end?
It hasn't.

Yet how I still remember our stolen midnights, as you trot across the Sun city room in exercise sweatpants. You ignored me, Barbara. But I knew. That you knew. What I know. Which is love.
Capiche?

My heart went potato-potato to see you swan in from TIFF, the Windsor Arms or Winston's in elegant frocks made by men whose names I could not spell.  I was spellbound.

Late summer afternoons, as cicadas buzz outside the Sun offices, I stare, wondering if that amused look on your face was over your next Maclean's column...  or ME?

Too soon?
Forgive me, sweetness.
I hid behind the city room palm tree for years in silence.
But I am mute no more!
Barbara Amiel, you are my damsel in distress.
And I am Don Quixote.
My days of tilting at windmills are not over.
I ride on the West Wind at dawn. 
Leave a light on...

Perhaps, like Elton John, I shall call my jeweler ...
Demand he create some trinket to ease your pain.
I keep a spare diamond in my fork drawer.
My fever is cresting. My typing fingers ache.
Love is madness, we both see it now.
How could one of us have been so blind?
A curse on those who have wronged you.
Damn you, Manolo Blahnik.


P.S. None of this is in the book, right?
I trust your discretion. 

For a glimpse of Her Life in Amiel's own words, see 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8699261/BARBARA-AMIEL-takes-revenge-elite-spurned-her.html?fbclid=IwAR1p1-Ezd1QvZ-MV411usBBWS-5xFggX_YCCWpW5EZfs2Je4Nthphq8rLDk 

But ye gods, there is more!
What Barbara did for love in part two at ...
 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8703447/BARBARA-AMIEL-Lord-wanted-lover-like-clutching-death.html

Will her torment never end?
Social monsters lurk everywhere!
More cruelty than any human can bear in part three...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8707389/Conrad-Black-wife-BARBARA-AMIEL-reveals-confirmed-money-buy-true-friends.html 

Did I mention Amiel's Friends and Enemies (Signal) comes out October 13? She's one hell of a memoirist. 
Over 600 pages! 
Drop the book on a cat and that kitty's kaput.
I count the days, my beloved.

To the book, not the cat.


                                                 

Splish splash, were they takin' a bath?

Is comic Samantha Bee a psychic?

She pitched her hilarious take on The Pool Guy, the Falwells, Trump's lawyer, etc a year ago and had most details dead-on.

So that was the summer of 2019.

Now in 2020--a year and one million YouTube views later--so much has hit the news.

The Pool Boy has confessed all. Hanky panky with the missus. The evangelist in the corner watching. Multi-million dollar payments to pool stud. A gay-friendly hostel. There's a lawsuit.

Falwell had to give up his evangelical leadership.

Mrs. Falwell is in hiding.

Ted Cruz is Trump's bitch.

Tom Arnold's nose hairs have probably grown.

Michael Cohen is hustling a new book. Is this in it?

Finally, Bee's who-dunnit makes sense.

Sex. Politics. Chlorine. Delicious.

                                                                  --Cindi D. Powers

Captain Obvious

 
So I see a flick in which one of the characters observes: 
"As people grow older, their true selves--their insides--become more and more visible on their outsides. The grumps have a permanent scowl, the optimists have friendly faces. Didn't Richard Nixon have exactly the face he deserved?"

So what you are is what we see? 
You can judge a book by its cover?

Cascades

 --northernscavenger.com 

The wilderness trippers at northernscavenger.com have a new store on their website, already a handy one-stop for anybody scouting trip reports.

I liked this shot of their Barron Canyon run.... 

 

 Sad.

Summer 2020

Yech...

Tent caterpillars are having a banner year in cottage country.
Short of burning or drowning the ravenous woolies, not much can be done in fall.
But next spring, when each caterpillar becomes a gypsy moth, you can break the life cycle.
The trap below, containing a bait irresistable to the moths, catches hundreds of moths every few days. 
You dump them out, dead.
And put the trap back up again.
For every moth you catch, there are about 1,000 less eggs 
that become tent caterpillars.
Hanging a trap in a bush from May thru September, you 
kill thousands of moths, and umpteen zillion tent pests.
Perfect gift for cottager or neighbour.
About $20.

 

Inside the NBA bubble life ...

Fred VanVleet's kids reunite with dad inside the 
Toronto Raptors' bubble, after not seeing him for
a few months... 

Hello! COVID-19 calling!

A warning about COVID-19 scam calls in Toronto appears on a Facebook page I follow:

And so it begins!
Just to let you know these phone calls are going round.
‘Good morning, According to our system, you are likely to have been in close proximity to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. This means that you now need to self-isolate for 7 days and take a COVID-19 test.'
'OK. Can you tell me who that person was?'
'I'm not able to tell you that. That is confidential information.'
'Right. Um... so ....'
'But you do need to be tested within the next 72 hours. So can I just get the best mailing address so that we can send a kit to you?'
'Ok (gives address)'
'Thank you - and I just need to take a payment card so that we can finalize this and send the kit to you.'
'Sorry - a payment card? I thought this was all free?'
'No - I'm afraid not. There is a one-off fee of $50 for the kit and test results. Could you read off the long card number for me, please, when you're ready.'
'No - that's not right.
'I'm afraid it is. Can you give me the card number please - this is very important, and there are penalties for not complying.'
Puts the phone down.
This is how scammers work. 
And vulnerable people will fall for it.
Don't fall for it! 
Watch out.
Don't get scammed.


Scams. Hustlers.
A mask won't help.

Will we be watching "gently used" TV this fall?
This hilarious term for re-runs and already-seen shows appears in a fall season preview. Most series return in November.

"That means the next few months will be filled with a mix of reality and game shows, international acquisitions and 'gently used' shows from sister networks and streaming services," Brian Lowry writes.

So "gently used" means there's a funny smell about this, but you're not supposed to notice it.

What's good for the goose...

I see that nearly 70%of customers at Toronto's
Brass Rail strip club give fake names or incomplete 
information for co-vid tracing purposes.
That must explain what's going on above ....
No name?
No mask? 
No bump. 

A kid on a kite

z

Forget David Blaine and his balloons.
Here's a kid on a kite, upside down.
The tot soars airborne at the :50 mark in the video.

Theme park slingshots are a thing.
Whee!

 

OWLS!

z

Owls are weird.

I'm weird.

I like them.

He's on Diet Coke

Put a ring on it

The Trump and the Pussycat went to sea
 In a beautiful pea-green boat
They took some honey, and plenty of money
 Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Trump looked up to the stars above
 And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
 What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are, you are!
 What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

Pussy said to the Trump, 'You elegant lump,
 How charmingly sweet you sing!
Oh, let us be married; too long we have tarried,
 But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away,  for a year and a day,
 To the land where the bong-tree grows;
And there in the wood, a Piggy-Pence stood,
 With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose, his nose
 With a ring at the end of his nose.

Trump gave Puss a hug, yanks Pence with a tug
 And the Piggy froze, offering the ring.
So soon they were wed
 But Pussy in bed, cried
'There's snot on this Piggy-Pence thing."

   ---Edward Lear, 1812-1888
       (mostly)