I’m starting to close off the Comments after two weeks from posting. The Galleries will have sporatic comment availablility. I’m starting to get comment spam and I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life pressing Antispam buttons. Sorry kids. That’s the way the internet works I guess.

The 4yr old kid jams the business end of a thermal coffee container into his mouth and the mom lazily scolds him for it. Bored, the kid puts it back, slobber and all, and wanders off to the front of the shop. Mom glances at his departure and returns her attention to the goodies in line as we wait at Starbucks. I counted from the moment the mom watched her son wander away to the exact moment she realized her sprog was no longer bothering her by her side. Approximately 1 minute 30 seconds. You can lose a kid in shorter amounts of time.

She yells out the kids name as she’s trying to pay for her Grande bold. No response. She yells again. Nothing. “They can get away from you,” Says the barista, who’s seen this thousands of times a day. I wanted to pipe up and say “And in a store full of kids, this place is ripe for pedophiles,” but that would have been creepy and I don’t want that kind of attention.

Drama ensues. Mom is yelling and has abandoned her place at the cash, half way through her transaction, stalling up the line. I consider leaving exact change and taking my tea (they know me there and reach for a Venti Earl Grey without asking). Eventually she finds the larvae and the drama ends.

Now I may not know the subtleties of child rearing, being a gay man, but I do recognize parental burn out when I see it. This mom, affluent, well dressed, perfect hair (like most trophy moms at this particular Yonge and Lawrence Starbucks), was probably more concerned with how much extra she’d have to run off at the gym if she ate that pumpkin and cream cheese muffin.

I am so using this as an example the next time someone says “children need a mother”.

He’s hot. She’s past it. What gives? It’s like a Bizzaro World version of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, only he’s hot and she’s not.

Check out those pants!

And while you’re at it, Colin Farrel looks like a Church Street hustler looking for his next john.

(From Hollywood Rag, trashier than E Talk Daily with 100% less fluff)

I love movies, don’t get me wrong, but the Toronto Int’l Film Festival is beginning to grate on my nerves. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see The AGCO go after these big “schmoozefest” parties for liquor infractions like they did for the Church Street bars during Pride?

“Your honour, on the night of Friday September 9th, I did willfully see David Cronenberg walk between licensed and unlicensed zones at Sassafraz with an open container of alcohol in his hands. As well I observed a Mr Downey Jr. obtain an unspecified amount of cocaine from the stomach of a woman in the ladies’ washroom via his nose. Also, Nicole Kidman was wearing a gown that was in fashion last season and should be given a citation for that… just because.”

“Guilty! 30 day suspension! For all of them!”

11:30pm, Friday night. Sharkboy and I are eating our post-Bear night pizza on the steps at Church and Alexander.

A posse of 5 young men all approximately around 20 years old, their collective weight maybe 85Kg, noisily walk past us. Then walk back and park themselves in front of our pizza-noshing stoop. They’re all hootern’ and hollerin’ about something and its apparently everyone’s problem because they certainly aren’t at all concerned who might be overhearing their high drama moment. The kabuki phoniness of their gayness made me feel like we were watching some sort of street performance put on for the benefit of anyone who could hear them. Basically everyone within a mile, really.

A woman comes up to the group and starts to yell at the littlest of the group.

“Where where you!?!” she bellows.

“Don’t be getting in my face,” the tiny urbanite yells.

They continue on in this vein of MTV-like yammering and it becomes clear that the mini-fag is dumping the fag hag. As their conversation becomes increasingly heated, a group of three people try to pass the meelee, which has now expanded their stage to enclude the whole sidewalk. One of the passing three pipes up as they go around the schoolyard din:

“What are you? Five?”

Sometimes the simplest catty remark is the best.

I’m suprisingly without much to say today so I will post a bean recipe I’m making up off the top of my head:

• Fist full of fresh green beans, ends off
• handfull of almonds (chopped or crushed)
• a gob of butter (cover the bottom of your frying pan at least)
• half a lemon

Sautee the beans in the butter for about 10 minutes, medium heat. Add the almonds. Keep going for about 5 minutes. Near the end, squeeze the lemon into the pan.

Remove. Kosher salt to taste. Cracked pepper too if you’re so inclined.

Maybe Blamblog can find his blog soulmate now with Google’s Blog Search Beta?

Yes… I’ve Googled my own blog. I, loser.

Two weirdly theatre-related things happend to me recently: a dream and a regret.

The Dream:

I am sitting in a large theatre just left of the screen with Sharkboy. The theatre is filling up and suddenly there’s a cartoon short playing before the main feature. I love these. I wish they’d bring them back or at least make trailers more like them. Would you not remember a clever short film about a movie better than your usual cookie cutter trailer that starts with “In a world…”? I use the hard-done-by sabertoothed squirrel from Ice Age and Ice Age 2 as an example. Recently Apple Trailers have been releasing the first 5 minutes of certain movies as teasers, which totally rock.

Anyway. In my dream, during the short, people are still milling about and talking in the theatre, ignoring the film. I yell “Get down!” and “SHHH!” a few times but to no avail. I’m getting pissed. Sharkboy is getting pissed. Out of the blue a woman sits next to Sharkboy and hogs his arm rest. With a flourish, he gets up out of his seat and says “If we get seperated, I’ll meet you by the entrance.”

He makes his way through the people wandering in the isles, up the incline to the back of the theatre. Pause. “BLAAAT! BLAAAT! BLAAAT!” The fire alarm has been pulled.

Brilliant. If he can’t see the movie, nobody can. I wake up smiling.

The Regret

During The 40 Year Old Virgin, there was a young couple down and to our right who insisted on talking through the movie. That was sort of ok because they were too far from us to actually bother us. It was the phone call she made during the midway point in the show that got a crowd of people yelling at her. Me included. “Shaddap!” “Sssshhhh!” “Do you mind?!” etc.

She finishes the call and looks over at the couple sitting directly in front of us. “What are you looking at?” she whines, like a 5 year old school yard bully.

“A rather stupid young girl,” the man says.

She remains silent until near the end when she opens her phone again close to the climax (ha!) of the movie and makes like she’s going to make another call. She doesn’t but her blue glow made me miss a couple lines. Damn her.

Now here’s the regret: I worked out in my head that I was going to get up early and run down to management and tell them that there was a couple in the theatre recording the movie, give her description and sit back and watch the fun. “We could clearly see the blue glow from their camcorder!” Given the current sketchiness of theatre managers these days, they would have stopped her on her way out, detained her and checked her purse and *precious* phone. But she left before the movie ended. Dang!

Weird. Like a pop culture singularity.

I have stumbled across three “John Carter of Mars” websites today without use of search engine or actively hunting them down. Once = “Cool!” Twice = “Hum. That’s interesting.” Thrice = “yeeks!”

I read (I think) three of these books as a kid. Swords, loincloths, Martians and honour.

Never really bought the whole “gettin’ tuh Mars sans spacecraft” though.

This morning, Toronto was treated to 5 light aircraft dragging huge banners behind them extolling the new services Air Canada has to offer. I’m sorry I didnt get a photo, I havent worked out taking clear shots using the camera on the new phone (yeah we broke down and got one each).

The first aircraft was dragging an Inuit bird design. The second was a cropped headshot of the Statue of Liberty. The third a cowboy. Fourth: a cropped “OLLYWOO”. And lastly, AC’s URL.

Nice stunt. The one colour illustrations were clear enough to be seen from that height, but I am sure the Inuit bird might have been lost on some. It took me a while to realize that in context of the other banners, it was to represent B.C. or Vancouver or Emily Carr’s floating ghost. Or something. The Liberty head could have been replaced with a stinky cab driver and they could have dropped garbage on the city with NYC verve and attitude, while the Calgary Cowboy banner plane could have just dropped bombs on our overly-Liberal Toronto. Lastly the OLLYWOO banner was a nice touch for all the industry types in town for the TIFF.

Now. About that whole bankruptcy thing a couple years back…?

While this was effective (Im writing about it, yeah?) I think Im starting to get Ad-fatigue while scooting around Toronto. Dundas Square isnt done yet and I dread going there because I’m either so dazed at all the crap to look at, like some Eastern Bloc European let loose at Costco, or Im bumping into Eastern Bloc Europeans dazed at all the crap to look at. At Yonge and Isabella, by my Da’s condo, up on the side of the ever deteriorating Church of Scientology, there’s a video billboard that makes his livingroom look like something from Blade Runner on good nights. If they’re shilling anything using bright and gaudy images, his condo is lit up like an acid trip. When circuit parties roll into town, advertisers have taken to spraypainting the URLs of the event on the sidewalks of Church Street. Now keeping your head down to avoid a constant barrage of ads while out for a stroll is no longer an option. While trying to drive by Yorkville during TIFF, I was held up at a light by one of those roving billboards, the midsized trucks with nothing on their flatbeds other than a poster for a movie or some such nonsense. The truck had t-boned the intersection, not allowing north bound traffic past it. I leaned out my window and yelled “I am SOOO NOT going to see that movie because you’re blocking traffic!” I got the finger.

Dont get me wrong. I think the anti-postering law was a foolish waste of debate. I like street posters when they’re put up with respect of property and other posters. But the large stuff like the blimps and the planes and the video walls are making me think we’re living in a city of booming carnies vying for your attention.