On behalf of the City of Toronto, I’d like to welcome you back to our fair city for Game Five of the NBA playoffs. I know many of our residents have been eagerly anticipating your return - many have even prepared placards and chants just for you!
However, I know the playoffs can be hard work. You may even be tempted to quit half way through, or ask if you can leave town early.
Should this be the case, we’ve prepared an alternative entertainment package for you for Tuesday, May 1. Each stop on the itinerary has been carefully selected to meet your interests, as determined by your previous sojourns in Toronto.
To avoid disappointment, please let us know which event you plan to attend. We’ve included a self addressed, stamped envelope, as we are aware of your preference for “mailing it in.”
Itinerary for Vincent Lamar Carter, May 1st 2007
1) 10:00 a.m.:
Complementary MRI and X-Ray
Mt. Sinai Hospital
You will no doubt recall the excellent medical facilities Toronto has to offer. I’m delighted to tell you that staff of Mount Sinai have cleared a spot on their busy schedule for a complete left knee exam at no charge to you.
We ask only that you please cash in your unused, “Have 10 MRIs, Get 1 Free” card.
Also included is a meeting with Dr. James Andrews of Birmingham, Ala., for old times’ sake.
2) 3:00 p.m.
Honorary Degree Ceremony
Humber College, Toronto
We know how you like degrees, especially on playoff days.
You are therefore cordially invited to accept a Diploma in On-Screen Acting at one of north Toronto’s most prestigious polytechnic institutes.
Convocation ceremonies will take place at 3:00 sharp. Since this facility is some distance from downtown Toronto, you will be flown there and back by private jet, returning a few hours prior to tip-off time at the Air Canada Centre.
3) 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Raptors GM For A Day!
Air Canada Centre
Have you always dreamed of being a real NBA General Manager? Sure you have. That’s why we’ve arranged for a special one-hour online session where you can control the Raptors organization - for real, this time!
Among your options: Hire Dr. J to run the front office! Hire Nav Bhatia to do publicity! Milt Palacio can be our new point guard! Fire Butch Carter as many times as you like! It’s all up to you.
Note: Requires knowledge of Microsoft Access. A laptop has been generously provided by your teammate Marcus Williams.
4) 7:00 p.m.
Candlelight Dinner
We were truly sorry to hear that you and your wife Ellen are having marital difficulties - particularly since it was reported that it was she who encouraged you to ask for a trade out of Toronto. Funny how that worked out, huh?
But do not worry! As you have mentioned, Toronto is an “up-and-coming city” and now has more than a dozen restaurants open to the public!
We know you don’t like to rebound, but a night on the town is just the thing to cure a broken heart. In light of this, we have reserved a table for two at the romantic 360 Restaurant for you and a date.
You’ll be sharing a candlelight meal with none other than Joumana Kidd, who you may know via your teammate Jason Kidd. Coincidentally, Joumana will also be available soon too!
Ms. Kidd is looking for a less aggressive man, so we think you’ll get along famously.
Also present for dinner will be your mother. A parking space has been set aside for her.
5) 9:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m.
Concert Performance and Midnight Snack
Various Locations
We’ve arranged for a special concert by hip-hop artist Nelly! Once again, you’ll be invited to dance onstage while your teammates are on the court. Following the concert, you and your entourage will be treated to free donuts at Canada’s own Tim Horton’s Restaurants. (Dunkin’ Donuts is overrated.) Take it to the hole!
We hope this entertainment package meets your approval. However, if you instead decide to show up at the ACC (unlike in Games One and Two) please be advised of the following:
- Toronto has run out of Vinsanity. We do still carry Vinsenility.
- At the ACC, you may hear chants of “VC Sucks”. Most people in the Commonwealth know the “VC” as the Victoria Cross, a medal awarded for valour, bravery, leadership and selflessness under fire. Please avoid confusing the two.
New Jersey residents should be embarrassed. (In specific, not just in general.)
It’s Friday at 5:00 p.m., and Ticketmaster still has pairs of tickets for tonight’s NBA playoff game between the Toronto Raptors and the New Jersey Nets. The game is less than two hours away, but you can walk right up and buy tickets for $76. Ridiculous. You don’t deserve a playoff team, and soon you won’t have a team at all.
Contrast that to Toronto: There are no pairs of tickets left for the next game here, and there are only a smattering of single seats - $281 for Side Prime, and one courtside seat for $800. You might be able to buy them on eBay, where prices start around $150, or $400 for the lower bowl.
Of course, everybody knows you can’t buy any Leafs ticket without selling your firstborn to the mob. Even soccer is selling like hotcakes: they haven’t even played a home game yet, but all 14,000 season ticket packages for Toronto FC (0-3 so far) are already sold out!
Shame on you, Nets fans.
And a very un-Canadian gesture goes out to Richard Jefferson, who cracked a joke about Toronto fans supporting the Nets: in Game One, all 20,000 of us wore red shirts to support the Raptors, but the Nets decided to wear their alternate red jerseys.
Which leads to my suggestion for a Nets promotion, which I e-mailed to Raptors play-by-play man Chuck Swirsky. Chuck printed it in his Chuck Checks In blog today, as the first item in the Mailbag:
To the Mailbag!
Emailer Paul, Toronto: Hey Chuck, I’ve got a suggestion for Richard Jefferson and all those who doubted the red-clad fans that rocked the ACC over the past two games: Perhaps the Meadowlands can have a similar promotion… all the fans can dress up as empty seats!
(PG: Hat tip to Casper, who came up with this joke when we were at Game #2.)
You may have heard about this little tempest that busted our collective teapot last week. CBC.ca used a photo of smoggy Toronto to run alongside a story about the Kyoto Protocol. An iffy selection, but then the image was put through a “warming filter” in Photoshop, giving it a “smoggier” look.
Avast! That’s a no-no. Readers of the Small Dead Animals blog, which uncovered the altered image, took this as proof positive that everything CBC has reported on since 1936 is a fabrication, that global warming is a communist plot, and that al-Qaeda is being directed by the ghost of Barbara Frum.
CBC.ca has its own policy about when images can and can’t be altered, and conceded a mistake had been made. I, however, have my own image policy for this blog: EVERYTHING MUST BE PHOTOSHOPPED. I have some photoshopping experience, and I think CBC.ca could take a lesson from my more liberal policy.
GRAPHICS ARE EASY
For instance, CBC claims that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses are difficult to photograph. Bah. I used to have CO2 for my BB gun - what’s wrong with that?
Don’t like it? Well, how about an “artist’s impression” of a CO2 molecule:
OK, so it looks a little cheery, not at all like the impending doom of our planet. But that’s fixable, if you have a more liberal photo policy like I do.
What about greenhouse gas? Well, I could have whipped this one up for them in a heartbeat:
But Paul, you say, isn’t such flawless digital manipulation too difficult for harried newshounds? Not at all. Allow me a creative demonstration.
Greenhouse Gass! That took all of two minutes. We should never have to look at a generic image of a former smokestack, or the environment minister of the minute, ever again.
Need an image for Kyoto? What’s wrong with the city itself?
Now, I don’t know what a “protocol” is, but how about a picture of Procol Harum?
Child’s play. In fact, it’s like those Rebus puzzles children enjoy so much. How’s this for a fun, brain-developing news graphic?
Get it? Carb On Di Oxhide. Carbon Dioxide! Utter genius. And it beats the hell out of another John Baird headshot. What wouldn’t?
DISCLAIMERS ARE EASY TOO
Of course, it has beensuggested that manipulated images should have some sort of label or icon to inform the gullible. That was also suggested to me (see my response) and it’s one of the reasons I started tagging my photo manipulations with my trademark (but not trademarked) [g] icon.
Good idea. So good, in fact, that I’ve already prepared a handful of useful icons that CBC.ca can use to indicate when images have been manipulated. Here’s a sampling:
Image Has Been Cropped
Correct usage:
File Photo
Correct usage:
Warming Filter Applied
Correct usage:
A Bit of a Stretch
Correct usage:
Now, I’m not suggesting that CBC.ca is alone in its need for a more clear approach to identifying news graphics. Not at all!
Here are some graphics that may be of help to CBC’s competitors:
Image contains cute animal to attract viewers
Image contains boobs to attract viewers
Image or story has been shovelled onto site from third-party supplier
Photo or story contains obvious bias
Photo or story contains unobvious bias
If successful, I can imagine rolling out these helpful pictograms to my blog as well. Stories and images for my posts might be branded like this:
A little while back, Tod Maffin of the excellent Inside the CBC blog invited employees to take pictures of unusual signs at CBC locations.
Since nobody had posted any from CBC Toronto, I decided to shoot a few and upload them to my Flickr. You can see them in this set, or watch them as a slideshow. I’ve also installed a new plugin to let you browse them here, but I’m not sure how well it’s going to work. Plus, you’ll miss all my witty captions! So check ‘em out on the Flickr set if you are interested.
On the street car home yesterday, I travelled with a fellow CBC.ca employee who lives near the intersection of King Street and Queen Street in Toronto’s east end.
There are several major condo developments going up at that corner, another sign that my part of town is going respectable.
The biggest, a “boutique community” (shudder) called Corktown District, uses the street names at that triangular intersection in their advertising.
Of course, this sort of lifestyle imagery - a community of young, handsome white folks looking to hook up - isn’t exactly in touch with downtown Toronto.
A more accurate “King Meets Queen” ad for this neighbourhood might look like the one at left.
Not sure if that’d sell as many lofts, though.
Anyhow, this brings to mind another, more famous “King Meets Queen” event that I came across in the CBC Archives.
In 1939, George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later the beloved Queen Mum) launched a major royal tour of Canada. The story goes that when they were in Winnipeg, the King and Queen were greeted by Prime Minister Mackenzie King, Winnipeg Mayor John Queen and his wife, Mrs. Queen. The poor announcer tries a play-by-play describing the King, Queen, Mr. King, Mr. Queen and Mrs. Queen, end ends up cursing in frustration.
We get e-mailed requests for this clip all the time. Problem is, it probably never happened. There are no records of it in CBC, or in the newspapers of the time - and every aspect of this visit was covered to death.
There are several re-enactments, and they are certainly amusing, if not exactly archival. Here’s a little piece of one:
Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 04-17-2007 | 09:04 PM
Posted in: CBC | Toronto | Comments (0)
Does anyone else live near one of those crazy houses that feature “junk art” on the front lawn?
I do. A few houses up the street, you’ll find this place, at 68 Empire Ave. (And no, it’s not snowy there any more.) This house features and ever-changing display of statues and decorations made from junk found objects. In the winter, it’s augmented by intricate monuments and ice candles, which burn through the night with a rather magical quality.
The house was featured in the Toronto Star in 2004:
Some gardens inspire inertia. Kassa Dabreo’s garden makes you think.
The 38-year-old Rastafarian, a native of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, came to Canada in 1985, bringing with him a love for the outdoors and a respect for the Earth. He’s committed to environmental protection, and it shows in his front yard.
Dabreo also likes to laugh, and humour shines through many of his arrangements, which involve recycled household goods such as faucets and toys interspersed with wood, stone and other natural materials, such as sliced coconut shells.
At the front, at little-people level, Dabreo leaves an assortment of toys. “Kids come by and play with them. Sometimes they take them, but they always bring them back. I don’t mind … I leave stuff out, like plates, that people can take if they want,” he says.
My little kids used to really enjoy those toys that Kassa left out - at one point they had names for them all. When the Star photographer was out taking pictures, he snapped a few of my little one playing with a crab-shaped sand toy that she called “Pinchy the Crab” (to my amusement, the young photog then asked me how to spell “Pinchy”, then thought about it and retracted the question.)
Myself, I quite enjoy the junk statues (as opposed to the smattering of “junk piles”, houses with broken furniture and garbage from the previous tenant tossed out on the porch.)
Amusement aside, it’s probably not the best thing for property values - the house beside this one finally sold after about six months on the market; on our street, houses sell in around 10 days. But I’m not selling, so I’m still enjoying the creativity.
A few weeks ago, as I came home in the dark, I got a sneak preview of Kassa’s latest creation: a junk-statue bicycle replete with a canopy, LED lights and spinning propellors! The junk art has gone mobile, and may be coming soon to a neighbourhood near you.
Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 04-16-2007 | 01:04 PM
Posted in: Toronto | Comments (7)
You may recall my recent screed about how crappy MySpace is, particularly if you are Canadian.
I set up a MySpace account a while back, as an exercise in soul-flagellation, but I have to confess I don’t check it much. But the other day, I got an e-mail alert saying that I’d received a MySpace message from my new “friend”, “Marlene”. So I logged in to check it out.
And thank goodness I did! “Marlene” said she was surfing around, was interested in my profile and wants to get to know me better! Which is great, because according to her picture, Marlene is a really attractive blonde!
Best of all, Marlene said likes the way I look. Which is funny, because this is my avatar:
There was some sort of promise that we could get to know each other better if I visited her website in Russia. But before I could get to know her better, they made Marlene disappear:
I guess she really was from Russia after all.
Anyhow, I did find something interesting when I was logging in. Before I could access my page, I was presented with this announcement/message/disclaimer from MySpace:
If that’s too hard to read, or if you can’t move your eyes past the blonde (which is NOT my long lost Marlene*) here’s what it says:
Hey folks
Welcome to the beta version of MySpace Canada. We’re featuring more Canadian music and some of the features should work better with local postal codes, etc.
Now that MySpace is beginning to look more Canadian, my lawyers told ME what I have to tell YOU: we are still running our site from the US, all your data still resides in the US, and that MySpace’s data management practices are still governed by US laws.
- Thx, Tom
Note: MySpace Canada is available in French and in English. However, MySpace remains a worldwide community. Your choice will not prevent you from making friends and viewing content from users in other countries or using another language.
Anyhow, I believe I can translate Tom’s disclaimer into Canajan:
Even though you claim in your profile to be from Bouvet Island, we aren’t stupid. We can read your I.P. address and know that you are Canadian. This means we think you are stupid, and if we feed you some automated ads and a clip of the Tea Party, you’ll believe MySpace is Canadian too. But it isn’t. So don’t try to access our corporate health plan, or send PayPal payments to Osama bin Laden through our site. Rupert Murdoch will personally kick your hockey-loving ass. Also, we now know how to use Babelfish. Zoot alors!
Still, I appreciate the effort. They’ve even got a new domain:
Actually, that’s a subdomain. Those are free. They still haven’t forked over the cash to buy out the schmuck that is using www.myspace.ca as his own blog. Actually, any self-respecting media agency would have just unleashed the legal hounds and just tried to extort any domain they wanted to own.
And MySpace Canada has a new logo, too:
Of course, this looks more like a logo for CanadaBETAmyspace… mmm, perhaps I’ll go register that domain myself. I’d appreciate a nasty lawyer letter, or a bucket full of money too! (I wonder what Joe Clark would say about that logo.)
They’ve certain made some improvements to the registration process, such as recognizing that Canada has “provinces” instead of “prefectures.” When you do register, they hit you again with the disclaimer: “…you consent to the transfer of your personal data to the U.S. , where your personal data will be subject to U.S. law and where the level of data protection is different compared to your country.” Which makes me really curious to know what particular data the Americans are so antsy about.
Anyhow… I was excited to check out this “more Canadian” content - fingers crossed for a video of Jason Priestley and Bonhomme getting married in the cockpit of the Avro Arrow!
Well, today’s “more Canadian” content includes:
-four videos (made by people in New York, Florida, Missouri and Mississippi)
-a band from Brooklyn
-an American ad
-and a Robbie Williams video (it’s the Brits who are obsessed with him. All others say “huh?”)
However, there are three Canadians in the “Cool New People” area. (That name always makes me laugh. New people? Like, infants? And how would you grade their “coolness”?):
Randall <3 (less than three? Certainly numerically confused: “Male, 21 years old”; “I’m a 17 year old senior.” Not senior citizen, presumably.)
And a Toronto charity, Skate4Cancer, apparently won some MySpace award, which may or may not be a coincidence. (This charity is insane: the dude skateboards across the continent whilst hopped up on painkillers and sleeping in ditches - but their website is absolutely stunning.)
Not a bad start, CanadaBETAmyspace. (If my name were Amy, I know what URL I’d register…) But now my colleagues are coercing me to join the dreaded Facebook (I see that Facebook.ca is already squatted. That sounded rude, didn’t it?)
I’m sure I’ll be squatting all over Facebook in a future post. Say, maybe that’s where Marlene went…
———————–
* I do appreciate the offer to “Find girls in Toronto” (not women, but girls!) Fortunately, I have two already, ages 3 and 5. But I’ll check this site if they are ever lost, and I need to find them. However, I’m betting the mostly-nekkid model probably resides in the US and is governed by US laws too. Pity.
If it weren’t for a last-minute find at the cafe at the Riverdale Farm, this would have been my first Easter without having a hot cross bun.
Everyone knows hot cross buns, right? Those soft, sweet, raisin-filled buns they trot out for Easter, with a “cross” that looks more like a “plus sign” welded onto the top with something that looks like icing but tastes like nothing at all?
I like these buns. Of course, I like raisin toast, and anything with flour or sugar in it, so it’s no big surprise. My mom made or purchased the buns for us each year when I was a kid; as an adult I usually grab a bag or two of generic grocery store hot cross buns - hell, they go on sale around Valentine’s Day (I presume they bake new batches as Easter approaches, but I should probably check the tags.)
In recent years, the kindly and old fashioned neighbour of my inlaws has sent a few home made buns our way, but now that my wife and I are raising two ravenous-yet-finicky beasts, perhaps she’s given up. So it looked like this year would be bun-free.
I was shopping at a high-end supermarket on the Danforth on Saturday and couldn’t find any, but then noticed a pack of six Ace Bakery hot cross buns that looked really delicious. Then I noticed the price: $6.99! And the buns were the size of a silver dollar. At that price, I presumed they were made with actually pieces of Christ’s cross, but I still left them on the shelf. What ever happened to “one a penny, two a penny?”
I’m not the only one who had bun trouble this year.
My sister, who has a new job, went shopping at the predominantly Jewish supermarket near her workplace. Slinking along amongst the Passover food shoppers, she was too embarassed to ask if they had gentile pastries.
My mother finally found somewhere that sold them, and when she asked for them at the bakery counter, she was presented with the flabbergasting, heretical question, “With or without chocolate chips?” Is nothing sacred?
Actually, it’s their very sacredness that makes me surprised you can even offer non-secular baked goods in this day and age. The cross has been removed from most public places, so why are we still able to mark our buns with them?
(In some places, you can’t. Today I found that in recent years, hot cross buns have been banned in some schools in England, and are not served at schools in York for - not banned, just removed for “no particular reason.”)
To keep them on the market, I wouldn’t be shocked to see their name changed to something more neutral, like “Hot Spring Buns.” Or maybe that “cross” could be formally changed to another character, like “Hot Plus Buns”, or “Hot X Buns”.
Of course, they’d be more marketable as “Xtreme Buns”. Which would make a good workout video title, too.
I took my three-year-old to tonight’s Toronto Raptors vs. Chicago Bulls basketball game. First time either of my kids had been to a professional sports game, so it was a bit of a gamble. But she doesn’t mind noise and crowds, had watched the Raps with me on TV a few times, and has a decent crossover dribble (for a preschooler.) So she came to the Air Canada Centre, and had a hoot.
She had some interesting observations, though. Here’s a sampling:
Dad, pointing to the capacity ACC crowd of 19,800: “Have you ever been in a place with so many people?” Child: “No. It’s even more than my pre-school!”
Dad: “Who do you think will win, the Raptors or the Bulls?” Child: “Maybe they both will win!”
Child, a minute later: “I think Chris Bosh will win.”
Dad, after Bosh blocks a shot: “The Raptors stopped the Bulls from scoring!” Child: “No, WE stopped them. Our pom-poms were louder.”
Child, taking her lead from the crowd: “De-Fence! De-Fence!” Child, a minute later: “Dad, what’s De-Fence?”
Child, watching the Raptor mascot rollerblading down the stairs: “He knows how to do that because he’s a grown-up.”
Dad, watching the half-time act, Quick Change: “How do you think they change their clothes so quickly?” Child: “Dad, that’s magic. “
Ever wonder if there was an easy way to save videos you find on YouTube or Google Video, so that you’ll have them in case they are later removed? There is (of course there is - that’s why it’s so easy for people to repost clips that have been removed. It’s like chopping off a hydra head.)
The next time you are watching a video on Google Video or Youtube, you can click the appropriate bookmark and a window will pop up that will begin downloading the FLV (Flash video) file (you may need to rename the file, and give it a .flv extension.)
There’s another shockingly simple website called KeepVid that saves files for you.
Just paste in the URL of the YouTube (or other) video in the box, and hit download. It creates a “download link” which you can right-click on to save the file to your computer (you might have to rename it first.)
*** Update! My sister discovered another site that lets you simply type the word “kiss” in front of the “youtube” in the url of any YouTube clip and it’ll let you save the file:
e.g. http://www.kissyoutube.com/whateveryourvideoscalled
Just remember to rename the extension to .flv ***
Once you’ve saved the file, you’ll need a media player that can handle FLV files. Here’s a great one - it plays just about all media files that exist (if you want it to):
On behalf of the City of Toronto, I’d like to welcome you back to our fair city for Game Five of the NBA playoffs. I know many of our residents have been eagerly anticipating your return - many have even prepared placards and chants just for you!
2) 3:00 p.m.
We know you don’t like to rebound, but a night on the town is just the thing to cure a broken heart. In light of this, we have reserved a table for two at the romantic 360 Restaurant for you and a date.
5) 9:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m.
You may have heard about 
CBC.ca has its own policy about when images can and can’t be altered, and conceded a 
Of course, it has 
Image or story has been shovelled onto site from third-party supplier
A little while back, Tod Maffin of the excellent 
There are several major condo developments going up at that corner, another sign that my part of town is going respectable.
A more accurate “King Meets Queen” ad for this neighbourhood might look like the one at left.
We get e-mailed requests for this clip all the time. Problem is, it probably never happened. There are no records of it in CBC, or in the newspapers of the time - and every aspect of this visit was covered to death.
If it weren’t for a last-minute find at the cafe at the 
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