Strollerjacked!
In our neighbourhood, you need never throw out anything that someone might find a use for. Just put it out by the curb with a "free" sign, and it'll disappear within an hour. Reused or recycled, no questions asked.
So when our kids finally outgrew our trusty Graco double stroller - too beaten to sell, but still roadworthy - we figured someone would find a home for it. Both our sets of grandparents bought used strollers to keep in their garages, and new ones are expensive, so why not?
Well, after a day on the sidewalk, it was no love for Graco. I figured it would be gone by morning, but instead ... somebody boosted the rims!
Of course then nobody wanted it without wheels, so it ended up in the garbage, where perhaps it was always destined.
It's not that I mind or anything - it was free pickings, after all - but I wonder what someone wanted the back wheels for? Maybe to replace their own bald ones? Making a cool go-kart? More power to you, whoever you are. But I had to snap a picture - the poor thing just needed some cinder blocks under the axels.
Where credit is dew
I was waiting for a subway train the other day, and after a few minutes of sightlessly staring at the ads between the platforms, something occurred to me: Why do movie posters always devote so much space to the production credits?
Take a look at any movie poster (such as the one pictured here) and you'll see that up to a third of the space is devoted to listing the people who made the movie (I've outlined this in yellow.)
With the exception of the cast and possibly the director, I'm guessing nobody cares about any of these people or their involvement in the film.
Are you going to go see Get Smart because the Director of Photography was Dean Semler, A.C.S./A.S.C.? No? Well, Jimmy Miller was one of the six Executive Producers! And damn, if it doesn't have music by Trevor Rabin! Now you'll see it, right?
This is an advertising convention that has been around almost as long as the film business, although it seems to have gotten worse of late - check out some classic movie posters, and you'll see most of the credit space is devoted to those in front of the camera, not behind it. A quick pixel count shows the Get Smart poster is approximately 7% product title, 4% cast, and a whopping 30% production credits. Yikes. (At CBCNews.ca we're still lobbying to get bylines on big stories.)
And it doesn't apply to anything but movies. Other posters don't credit the guy who designed the tread on your Nikes, or the people wrote the code for Windows Vista (OK, maybe they should remain nameless.) Even posters for TV shows focus on the actors, not the crew, even though most of the postitions are the same as those for a big screen production.
Imagine if all marketing devoted as much space to the people behind the scenes who you couldn't give a toss about.
Take Coke, for example (since I'm currently reading Max Barry's Syrup).
Here's what the Hollywood version of the can would look like.
A little space for the name of the product, a tiny space for what's in it, and a LOT of space for the people who designed the can and mixed the syrup.
Not useful, and not appealing. But apparently Hollywood doesn't agree. Vanity, maybe? Say it ain't so!
The perils of parking too close to a construction site
Spotted at King & Jarvis last week.
Actually it's a used car dealership, but still... I'll bet the sticker price is reduced on this model. If you could see the sticker.
Nice billboard placement too. Family getaways are certainly NOT right next door. That's an oozing wall of cement next door. And your family won't be going anywhere.
A band that should have existed
To illustrate the CBC Digital Archives topic on Draft Dodgers, we found this great image of U.S. Army deserters on the always impressive Library and Archives Canada site search. But! Wouldn't this have made a great band, and album cover?
If the image were square I'd print it as is. "Draft Dodgers" would be a great band name, and Seeking Sanctuary is a pretty good album title. The first track and hit single would have to be Hell No. Who do you think plays what instrument?
The fur flies
You know what this is, right?
It's a squirrel catcher, of course. At least, it is to my six-year-old girl, whose current fixation is anything of the family Sciuridae. She chases them across the park, wants one as a pet (wants seven, actually) and is pretty certain she's a squirrel whisperer.
You may recall that she recently exhorted me to come to school to be on her "squirrel catching team". Well, apparently you can't catch squirrels without a squirrel catcher.
For weeks, she asked me if we could go into the basement to make a squirrel catcher. (It's with three parts delight and one part guilt that I tell you she has the same blind faith in my woodworking abilities as I had in my father - the difference being that he actually *could* make anything out of wood - furniture, canoes, secret rooms - whereas I just slap together some particle board and give it a fancy name.)
I was able to put her off for a while with lame excuses - we're out of wood, the wood store is closed, squirrels are out of season. And then one day she learned a new word, a magical word of power:
"Daddy. I have something to say. I COMMAND you to build a squirrel catcher. That means you have to do it."
Well, how do you argue with that? So I grabbed some particle board and a jig saw, and slapped this monstrosity together - a cartoon mouse-hole screwed to an antiquish Canada Dry box.
Apparently I got it right. I told her we'd go squirrel catching on the weekend, but she'd had enough of my excuses. The next day she told (commanded, probably) her babysitter to bring it to school with her so she could catch squirrels at recess.
So, she lugged the contraption to school and made her ed assistant put it out in by the baseball diamond - and she even found some peanuts to put inside. (Peanuts are of course verboten in all parts of North America that may come into contact with anyone under the age of 20, but these rules are flouted by the crazy old guy that feeds the urban fauna in the schoolyard after hours.)
She didn't catch any squirrels - but she did trap one of the teachers.
My daughter eventually tired of the way the squirrels loudly ignored the box, and she wandered away after them. But then the gym teacher brought her class to the diamond, and stopped short of the mysterious, abandoned box... stared at it, and concluded it must be...
A suspicious package.
She whipped out her cell phone and called the office, who called the custodian, who considered calling the bomb squad.
And then the poor ed assistant figured out what all the hubbub was, and owned up to the squirrel catcher.
The troops stood down, relaying the message that it "was just the ed assistant's squirrel catcher." That's now probably on her permanent record somewhere, and I fear for the next time she tries to cross the border.
I invited her to keep the squirrel catcher, but she declined. Let me know if you want it.
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