Remember kids! Tonight’s the opening night Media night for my brother’s play at the Royal Alex! Make sure you go and have a durned good time! Go help him put his daughter through UofT.
Mervish Home page for The Innocent Eye Test
I’d link to Winnipeg reviews (where it opened) but they’re all paid subscriptions.
I’m beginning to log all my bad Tim Hortons experiences. Therapy? Bitterness? Old Coot-ism? Who can say. It’s certainly a wake up call (and makes for interesting blog content).
I’m on my way to my character voice class seminar (it was ok, heavy on the science and training of the voice, light on the character-making) and I’m on the 506 along Gerrard to Broadview. At Parliament and Gerrard, a boisterous family (I’m assuming – could have been summer camp. Dont know dont care) of 6 get on with a huge pizza box. The car is fairly full so they are forced to scatter themselves over a few seats with two standing. Mom breaks out the pizza and they all start to chow down. Nothing like family dinners around the ol’psycho passenger! I’m sure a few of you out there find eating on public transport vaguely embarassing. Not for this group. They devoured that pizza like a pack of hyenas at an abandoned gazelle carcass.
After leaving the class, I’m on the 504 streetcar, southbound to Gerrard. 6-7 twenty something girls are in the back couple rows passing around a small bottle of water. They’re discussing the best way to make a fruity drink and do you remember when Angela puked and that was funny and she went home with that guy who held her hair and god that was embarassing, and it’s then that the smell of schnapps from the water bottle hits me. I remember my first drink!
TTC! The better way for family/friends to bond!
Even more video for you today, dear readers!
Jim Monroe, writer of one of my favorite Sci Fi books, Angry Young Spaceman, has created a trailer mix of Million Dollar Baby and Dance Dance Revolution. Go see Million Dollar Gamer! Cute!
You should check out the rest of his site. It’s dense with good things to read.
TTC, Yonge and Bloor Station, 9am. People everywhere. Busy. But the goof in the booth doesn’t have a line up which is surprising for a Monday morning and I step forward to purchase a weekly pass. I look into the glass booth to see my ticket collector with his finger wedged up his nose. This was no Seinfeldian “scratch”, no this was an unmistaken, prolonged dig into his nasal cavity with his pinky. How refined.
I am sure my face flashed utter disgust. “Uh. Can I get a weekly pass…?” I ask. His tool hand reaches over and grabs a stack of cards. My eyes are fixed at his pinky as my stomach flips. His pinky never touched the cards but I still burped out “Could you… uh… wipe your hand first?”
Apparently I’ve just asked him to do some insurmountable task because his face flashes pure annoyance. I’m tempted to spit on his protective glass and say we’re even.
This is the new TTC, people! They have to protect their image!
Parliament and Winchester, 7pm
Street guy: See that? They’re ripping out all the good stuff from the Winchester and putting in a Tim Hortons.
Street gal: Guh.
Street guy: Yeah soon they’re going to put cameras all over the building outside (his arm gestures to the facade). Tons of them! All over!
I swear if the Terrorists get the formula for apple cruller Timbits, They’ve won!!Â
Perspective is a curious thing. To the general public, you can be a successful newscaster struggling up the corporate ladder, but to a PR agent, you’re a poor orphaned immigrant. Brett Lamb shows us two interesting points of view of Mr Chin.
From Cabbagetown to Lawrence and Yonge there are…
Number of puke puddles: 4
Number of puke puddles being nibbled on by pigeons: 0 (thankfully)
Number of people walking with their mouths open like sinus-deficient grouper fish: 3
Number of posters I see that I desperatley want to deface either with marker or stickers but probably won’t because I’m a good boy: all of them.
Number of near-death step off the curb experiences: 1
Number of people I’d shag while riding on the Subway: 0 (okay, 0.5 if I was drunk. He looked like Philip Seymore Hoffman)
Number of Starbucks employees I’d shag: 1 (angrily)
Number of Tim Horton employees I’d shag: 0
Number of songs it takes to get from Bloor/Yonge to Lawrence Station: 2 (long ones from Snivilization, by Orbital)
Number of Tetris Ultra (highest score in a 3 minute game) I can play from B to L stations: 3.4
Number of twits looking over my shoulder probably judging my brick arrangement choices: 1
Number of nail spas/hair salons from Lawrence Station to work (4 regular blocks): 7
Number of nails I chew: 10 (please, I leave my feet alone)
Number of Tetris Ultra games I can play while waiting for and travelling on the company elevator to go up 5 floors: 2
Number of hellos I get when I walk in: 9
…and I’ll tell you why.
In the days when the last of the large cinemas were deemed money black holes (bye bye Uptown!), the Cumberland should have been the first to be taken out to a secluded field and glocked in the temple.
The Cumberland’s sound system has the worst sound leakage of any theatre in Toronto. You can hear the Alliance Atlantis promo from adjacent theatres during moderately quiet moments. While Brokeback Mountain was far too quiet for us to understand what Ennis was mumbling, Caché was so loud at times we were pushed back into our seats harder than that poor Memorex ad guy. Apparently the heating is erratic because there are Canadian Tire baseboard plug-in heaters in the aisles (is an electric appliance sitting in a fire route a bad thing?) but the night we went, the room was somewhat warm, making me doze off. And finally, the crowd that goes there, while seemingly more educated than say… oh… a Scarborough multiplex movie viewer, are exceedingly thoughtless and self centred.
At our viewing of Caché, in our row, there was as a woman holding 5 seats in the centre of the aisle. No problem. Three times people pushed past us without asking if the seats were taken only to discover that they had to push back to get out. That wasn’t so bad. When a woman pushed past me and knocked the top of my popcorn bag into my face with her purse I judged that to be pretty bad. No apology. If you’ve been to the movies with me, you know I love extra flavour powder. Sharkboy turns to sit down and looks at me, covered in faux cheese powder from forehead to nipples and takes a kernel from his bag and sops some powder off my shoulder and laughs.
Later, the one of the two women who came in behind us decides it’s snack time. Up she jumps and hits me in the back of the head with her purse. No apology. She did the same thing at the end of the movie too. This time I got a hand on my shoulder and a “Oh sorry, dear” in my ear. Better late than NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.
Finally, I have never been in a theatre where 1/3rd of the audience arrives at least 10 minutes into the film. We’re talking past the opening credits here, people. Not during the ads but during establishing shots. Parking SUVs in the area must be a darned pain.
I guess I am expecting more sophistication from a theatre that shows fine art slides instead of ads before the show. But I know better now. Never again will I go near the Cumberland unless it’s to see bulldozers raze that hell hole flat.