Avi, cut it out.
I think you’re a great host, a good journalist and an incredibly smart man from an incredibly smart family.
But don’t let people take pictures of you like this.
I know, I know. The “thinking pose” has a long tradition, and nothing says intellect like ye olde hand on chin. It shows the weight of your enormous cranium.
Auguste Rodin made it famous, and doomed it to imitation by going so far as to call his famous statue “The Thinker”.
So anyone who thinks strikes this pose, right? Wrong! Thinking people shouldn’t pose, it’s antithetical to thinking.
More to the point, unless you are carved out of bronze, and actually standing before the gates of hell, you can’t pull it off without looking smug or effete.
At any age:
This old man can’t pull it off
Nor can this baby
Or this boy
Or these girls
Or this geek
Or this bikini model
Or this frog.
Celebrity doesn’t help, Avi.
Stephan Marbury can’t pull it off.
Neither can Jack Lord from Hawaii Five-O
or Kenneth Branagh
or Joseph Haworth
or Tiny Tim
or Jamie Foxx
or Peter Tork from The Monkees
or Eminem
or L. Ron Hubbard
or JFK
(Or Dodi Al-Fayed, in my previous post.)
So, next time someone from Communications calls up saying you need to do a photo shoot for your next show, say no to voguing. Your face is fine without your fist.
The other day, a cab driver told me I looked exactly like Dodi Al-Fayed. WTF?
I don’t see it. Or, I don’t want to see it. Unless he’s comparing our wallets. Which he wasn’t.
I told him to drive better than Dodi’s driver.
Can you tell I’m a little obsessed with this billboard, directly across from the CBC.ca offices? Well, these things happen when you have 20′ heads staring at you all day.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact they are the faces of our competition (I’m told we have a big billboard across the road from their digs too. How petty, and fun! Makes you long for the days of a good ol’ penny press newspaper war!)
I actually love this series of ads, because they really reflect my city, and my country.
Among the things I learned from CTV’s Thursday night lineup:
- 71% of us (5 out of 7) are doctors. The remaining 29% are detectives
- 86% of us (6 out of 7) have blue eyes [and get some coloured contacts, missy, or you’ll never work in this OR again]
- 86% of us (6 out of 7) are beautiful [you in the middle, would it kill you to lose the beard, and a few pounds?]
- 100% of us (7 out of 7) are white
- - 100% of us (7 out of 7) are Americans
So I was more than a little amused to read that CTV goofed up the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy, airing episode #2 by accident.
(In this photo you can see the dastardly Satellite Feed Thieves using a crane to steal the first episode, taking it off to the secret hiding place where they keep The Scream and episode 3 of The One.)
Millions of people were left high and dry, unable to find out the resolution to last year’s cliffhanger ending (something to do with George’s hair, I believe.)
For those of you who missed out, I’m here to tell you what happened in the premiere:
Spoiler warning! Skip ahead if you want to be surprised!
- A patient was sick with a bizarre illness. It was stranger than something out of P.T. Barnum, but less strange than an illness on House.
- A female doctor was bitchy, and a male one was cocky.
- Someone slept with someone they shouldn’t have. McDreamy and Grey looked at each other in an elevator. There was insipid, dithering romantic angst all round.
There, all caught up.
I’m glad it wasn’t CBC that aired the wrong feed for an hour - Bev Oda would have all our asses this time. Then again, such a slip would be unlikely - we do get most of our shows in-country, after all….
I have a new part time gig.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be filling in for Tod Maffin on Inside The CBC, CBC’s official (”but never officious”) blog. Tod is off on medical leave, and will hopefully be back soon, so I can give it back to him in one piece. In the meantime, I’m beaming good thoughts his way and I hope you will too.
Big shoes to fill, or at least keep warm. Tod was invaluable during the lockout, a contributor to the Manifesto, and I really think he’s done a good thing setting up Inside the CBC. It’s an interesting arm’s length experiment in letting CBCers tell their own stories, an investment in openness and one of the few good things to come out of the lockout. Contributing to it should be quite a learning experience. (Where else does the corp let you go live, nationwide, without any vetting?)
What a short, strange trip this blogging has been. From Chairman Mayo to Official Blogger in three months. There are better CBC bloggers and better CBC blogs - Gushue’s is bigger, Mahoney’s is better, and Ouimet’s is more interesting - so while I’m flattered, I have a lot to learn (including the nuances of WordPress…)
Regardless, I’m very glad to see Inside back in play - it’s a terrible thing to leave a great blog to wither on the vine. With any luck, those with e-mail and RSS subscriptions will know it’s back in business, and spread the word.
Thanks to all those who helped steer me in the right direction. You know who you are.
My boss bought a new iMac last week - one of the really nice ones, with a 7,000 inch screen and a sextuple-core processor and the R2D2 welding arm.
All week long, he’s been pacing like an expectant father, and rushing back to his office to check the online shipping tracker. I get the hourly reports:
-It’s in Central China!
-It’s in Shanghai!
-It’s in the South Pacific, 0°13′N 176°31′W, moving at 30 knots!
-It’s at a truck stop in Tennessee!
-It’s in the Green elevators, level B4… B3… B2…
Well, it arrived yesterday - shipped to CBC, and he was working from home. So, when the tracker said it had arrived and been signed for, he immediately e-mailed me asking for a report.
Instead, we found an old computer box, gussied it up and beat the crap out of it. Then I e-mailed him the following series of messages and images:
Hi,
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you need to know.
Rather than try to put this into words, I borrowed a digital camera. Please see attached.
I’m so sorry. Did you buy it on a credit card?
Paul
Hi,
More photos. I think that documentation is important in these circumstances.
Paul
Hi,
We had an emergency meeting in your office, and you should know that we’re all behind you 100% on this. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.
Paul
Juvenile, I know. But this isn’t an office where people play a lot of practical jokes, and it was kinda refreshing. It’s not like we are going to start putting each other’s staplers in Jell-o or anything.
But - and bite off those “my tax dollars” comments - maybe we should. I haven’t seen or heard of a good practical joke in CBC’s halls in, well, ever. I seem to recall vague, black and white stories of them in ancient CBC history books by Knowlton Nash or someone. And I know of a certain joker at Hockey Night, who waits for his employees to leave their desks, then e-mails sincere sounding love notes to other employees using the unattended GroupWise account.
But in general the corp is one serious place these days. (Witness fellow blogger Joe Mahoney’s posted cartoon about jokes in the office today - though he also gets excited about a new Mac….)
Maybe all offices are like this, not the one on TV. Is there no room to play any more?
[Know a good office practical joke? Tell me about it in the Comments area! Please?]
Widows in every room
There’s nothing I like better than mistakes in posters of stuff for sale or rent. Particularly when they are posted in a building full of 1,000 journalists.
The Canadian Broadcasting Centre has bulletin boards by each elevator, each jammed with ads for various things for sale. People waiting for the elevators have plenty of time to mull them over, and plenty of time to make editorial suggestions.
Here’s one I noticed today, with the comments added by a helpful editor.
[Previous Signage entries: 1, 2, 3]
I’ve been bummed out the past few days. Two of my oldest and best friends from CBC.ca - Catherine Jheon and Chris Harris are fleeing the corp for greener pastures. Pasture, I should say, as they are both joining Alliance Atlantis - along with at least five others from CBC.ca. I know where that began, but we’ll see where it ends.
Not that I begrudge either of them the move - they jumped on amazing career opportunities, and I’m really happy for them. Just sad for me, and CBC, both poorer for losing them. They are both great journalists, and great people.
So, how to cheer myself up, I wondered as I paced around the building today at lunchtime. The answer, it turns out, was blowing in the wind: the irresistable smell of Don Juan’s french fries!
Anyone who’s been in downtown Toronto knows Don Juan. His aromatic chip truck has been parked outside the Metro Convention Centre (near the Skydome Rogers Centre and CN Tower - and CBC) for more than two decades.
Don (his first name really is Don, and he really is Spanish) is quite a character, and lives up to his namesake. He chats up the ladies, insults the men, and bare-hands fresh-cut fries directly from the boiling oil to your tray.
Here’s our conversation today:
Don (to middle-aged tourist lady in front of me): Thank you so much, my beautiful, you come back and see me soon, maybe tonight OK?
Tourist lady: Titter titter.
Don (to me): Hey ugly, what you want?
Me: Fries and a hot dog, please.
Don: Hey, check out that beauty behind you! Hiya gorgeous! You coming to see me? Maybe later, Ok? What you want on the hot dog, ugly?
Me: Well, I’d…
Don: Never mind, you get everything on it, shut up!
And I did, and I got everything, and it was delicious. Never mind that I don’t really like relish, or fried onions, or hot peppers on my dog - it’s part of the charming package.
But the real draw is those fries. God, they smell fantastic! They are a comfortable old standby for CBCers. When someone takes them back to their desk, the scent carries you floating past security, up the elevator shaft and to their workstation, where the buyer has already been ripped to pieces by coworkers in a feeding frenzy.
The aforementioned Catherine Jheon - CJ, to me - described the narcotic aroma in a piece she did for Beyond Burgers on Metro Morning.
You can listen to her Don Juan’s review here.
This olfactory experience almost makes up for a the way my nose was ruthlessly violated on Saturday.
I was taking my wife and kids on a walk through “second Chinatown”, not far from our house. There was a delightful Chinatown Festival going on, with dragon dances, food stands and so on, and we were having a hoot.
Until we got to the corner of Dundas and De Grassi. All of a sudden, a wall of stink knocked us to the ground, sent both children into tears, tore off my nose and killed my wife (well, she got better.)
The culprit: an abomination known - officially! - as Smelly Tofu.
This horrific product is charitably defined as “tofu which has been marinated in a brine made from fermented vegetables for as long as several months.”
But ask anyone who has smelled it - and lived - and you’ll get more colourful descriptions. My favourite describes it as “a biohazard delight“:
My wife Diane, who has survived a close encounter with stinky tofu (or phonetically in Mandarin Chinese - tsoh doh-foo), describes it as smelling like a used tampon baked under the Death Valley sun. When I hear that I have to roll my eyes and wonder, “Why the restraint?” Come on, for schnoz sake, it smells much worse. It’s like making a smoothie out of durian melon, Limburger cheese, kim-chee and nuoc mam then letting it fester inside a porta-potty for a month and then, as you have a taste, your dickhead big brother enshrouds a thick blanket over both of you and rips the worst fart ever.
I’m told the taste is relatively mild, and overall it’s no worse than, say, blue cheese. Anyhow, the locals were lined up ten deep to get at the stuff. As for my poor family, we crawled out of Chinatown on our hands and knees and slinked home to bathe ourselves in tomato juice.
I’ve only seen one “food” item more offensive than smelly tofu: Surströmming (Sour herring):
a Swedish delicacy consisting of fermented Baltic herring. Surströmming is sold in cans, which when opened release a strong, foul smell….similar to fish gone bad or garbage left out in the sun for a couple of days
Surströmming is rightfully called “one of the world’s strangest dishes“. I heard about it when I was in Stockholm in 1998, building a website for Global Village.
We were attending Womex ‘98, a giant world music festival, and I was building a “live” website from the location. Turns out it’s still online, inexplicably.
Anyhow, one of the features I proposed was a “Swedish Chef of the Day” (props to the Muppet Show!) One of the locals told host Jowi Taylor (to my delight, they called him “Yowi”) about this legendary dish of fermented herring, which would rot in the can and release clouds of noxious fumes when opened. (Surströmming is aparently banned in many places, including hotels and airlines.)
I didn’t actually have to smell Surströmming, but I met its first cousin. The Swedes are crazy for herring (strömming), and you can buy it on the street corner at one of the numerous fried herring stands. (They love hot dogs, too - Don Juan would be proud.)
On Day Two of Womex, Jowi and I visited one of these stands. Think he enjoyed it?
I still have the video of Yowi’s experience, which I’ve now uploaded. It’s hopelessly small and crappy RealVideo, but hey, this was 1998, and besides it’s only half a meg to download.
And they say that Scottish food is based on a dare!
Like you, I was horrified and disgusted by the shooting spree that took place in Montreal on Wednesday.
And let me also state for the record that I’m irritated and bored by the boilerplate efforts to pin the killer’s actions on some cultural phenomenon: Goth made him do it, or video games, or the media, or blogs, or websites, or gun control, or the lack of gun control, or poor gun control.
No, don’t blame politics or pop culture. I’m inclined to agree with Rosie DiManno: Kimveer Gill was just a jerk.
That said, I was a little freaked to flip channels last night and see A-Channel airing The Crow - the most iconic Goth movie I know, about a creepy guy dressed in black who goes around killing people. No knock on the film itself - but the timing was unfortunate and insensitive.
But it wasn’t unusual, either. Here’s a snapshot of last night’s TV schedule:
I’m the last one to blame the media, and I’m not saying the items circled in red are any worse than “Survivor: Race Wars” or “My Name is Trash” (aww heck, I’ll admit I watched both those shows.)
But the theme is certainly pervasive, no?
That’s me, as a spaceman.
A friend of mine, mulling over my last name, once told me that if I was an evil supervillain I would be called GORBULON.
(He was drunk, and rather impressed with himself for only replacing one letter; he then went into gleeful elaborations on what my superpowers might be, and then I hit him.)
I’ve used Gorbulon for a few logins and such, but I’ve always wished I had a cartoonist friend to actually draw “Gorbulon” - it’d make a killer avatar. (Maybe I should have gone to the Doug Wright Awards last night to see if I could make a friend?)
But then I stumbled across this drawing while I was cleaning out a drawer, and I remembered that I do in fact have a talented illustrator colleague. It’s just that she’d never admit it. She’s now a manager at CBC, and so busy with grown-up managerial stuff that I fear she doesn’t draw much any more. In fact, I’m not going to use her name here without checking first. I think that was part of the Manifesto.
Anyhow, she did this illustration in 2000, when I was working for CBC4Kids. We had just published a book called Write 2000: Stories by Canadian Children. It was a Y2K project that asked children to write stories about life in the future, pick the event of the millennium, and tell us what they would put in a time capsule to be opened in the year 3000. There were prizes, and the best entries were put into the book.
The book was illustrated by CBC Radio’s Kevin Sylvester, and my colleague did the cover. She also did a version of it just for me, for which I’m eternally grateful (and eternally young.)
Per Ardua ad Astra! To infinity and beyond! Make it so!
I noticed this oddity on my way to work today: Sir Adam Beck sporting bling!
The statue of Beck was erected in 1934 at the intersection of Queen & University. I have no idea who decked out Beck (Buck?) with the classic dollar sign chain, but it was visible enough to cause me to get off my streetcar a two stops early.
(Again, apologies for the crappy Palm photo - wife has the digital camera today. For a nice photo of the statue sans bling, try here.)
For those who don’t know, here’s the Wiki on Beck: “Sir Adam Beck, (June 20, 1857 – August 15, 1925) was a politician and hydro-electricity advocate who founded the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario.”
Beck’s name also graces the giant hydroelectric stations at Niagara Falls, as well as the gigantic Niagara Tunnel Boring Machine that is currently tunneling under the city of Niagara Falls. It’s known as “Big Becky”. And there’s an interesting story that came out today about Beck’s original “electric circus”: a 1912 demonstration of electricity in farming.
But why the bling? It it a protest against rising hydro rates? Is he dressed up for the film festival? Pimpin’?
Dunno. But now, unfortunately, I have to get back to my own “boring machine.”
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