Lenzr – A Win/Win Contest

Distractions, Lenzr, Toronto

lenzrlogosmallThis might excite RodTO a bit…

Lenzr is a new photo site that I am proud to say I’m going to help market for the next while. “What is it, other than a rift on the Flickr name,” you inquire? Glad you asked. From their promotional email:

Lenzr is a local photo contest that awards real prizes to people who upload the most popular photos as graded by the membership. Photographers gain exposure + links and the chance at winning cool prizes. Public gets free entertainment (and coupons in future cycles) and access to archives
full of local photos.

Three summer contests launched earlier in July will end midnight August 31st 2009.

So imagine it’s a “Hot or Not” contest where companies offer prizes for the best photos, ensuring their marketing presence online, while we the public get to look at a ton of cool pics while we’re bored at work. Registration is not necessary to vote, but it’s a great way to know when things are changing on the site.

Currently there are three contests going on:

best_summerSummer in Toronto:
What does Summer in the big city mean to you? With the strike I am sure it means big piles of steaming garbage but let’s go past that… Regardless what is posted, the winner gets their choice of smartphone like the iPhone, Blackberry or Pre (and more).


best_emsEmergency in Toronto:
Don’t waste your pics on useless CTV or CityTV web uploads that offer little in return (ooo my name was mentioned on CP24! BAH!). Post your EMS worker bolting into action and you can win a Esquire Verve men’s watch. Got a great arrest shot from that drunk party that was busted up? Was your car rolled on the 401 and you have a nice picture of the Jaws of Life cutting you out? Post it! Time is money!


best_skylineBest Toronto Skyline:
This is the first official Lenzr contest. Simply put, take an amazing shot of our fair city’s profile, post it, tell your friends to vote and bingo bongo, a brand new Pentax Optio P70 compact camera (that shoots 720HD video too!) is in your hot grubby hands.


Want to get a hint on what might be coming up? Want to comment or contact Lenzr? Visit Lenzr’s blog for insider info and schweet schwag! Wanna talk about it? Toronto Forums has made their own section for Lenzr. Chat it out people!

In each contest there are minor stipulations and provisions which you need to read, but you’re not signing over your first born. I wish to damn hot goo I could enter some of these contests. But I will be voting so leave nice comments, people.

Get out there and get clicking!

Calvacade of Weekend Movies

Distractions, General

marina1Since we’re down 52% less paycheque these days, SharkBoy and I have been staying in, mostly watching unopened videos from purchases past or pay-TV channel gems before Rogers shuts them off for late payments (just kidding… for now…). Here is a list with a one sentence review of the last few movies we’ve watched:

The Black Hole: Ernest Borgnine dies as the story bleeds logic while the set design steals the show.

Norma Rae: Plucky actress Sally Fields broke an extra’s rib in one scene.

Push: William Gibson could have wrote this twisty story, but it was terribly shot.

Paul Blart – Mall Cop: Avoid.

Eyes Wide Shut: Guiltily turned it off 45 minutes into it.

Carousel: Wide wide screen reveals extras standing around doing nothing in this overlooked classic.

Stingray (Episodes 1-5): Marina kills me laughing as I’m constantly reminded of Team America.

Blindness: Not enough disaster porn, but it’s a nice deconstruction story of morality and civility.

Mutual Of Omaha Animal Kingdom (Episodes 1 and 2): This show would not survive 10 minutes if shown today due to all the staged animal cruelty.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Why did I wait so long to see this pure Kevin Smith film?

Unconditional Fail

The Bad, Toronto

Green pass cardBetween Bathurst and Spadina Streets, on the north side of College Street, there are 21 restaurant/cafes of various states of trendiness. I counted this morning while walking to Aunties and Uncles for breakfast (nice food, wasn’t all that impressed with the service) and while I counted I made note of how many of those 21 have Health Code inspection violations: little cards in their window with check marks beside PASS, CONDITIONAL PASS, or CLOSED.

Out of the 21 foodies, 10 had “Conditional” passes, 9 had full passes, one had no check mark and one restaurant didn’t have their sign displayed in the window (which is against the law).

The City of Toronto website posts the infractions on their site but they’re not linkable. Searching on “College”, “Conditional Pass” and a full year from July 08 to July 09 comes up with 47 infractions either active or in the past year, with 23 of them between Spadina and Bathurst. These postings are as current as can be in a city strike – the user has to click an acceptance that the information might not be accurate before searching. But within this search criteria, half the length of College street violations are within the Annex area.

50% seemed like a high number to me. I imagine the inspector was having a bad day with the spouse, screeching into their cell phone as they go from door to door and harshly marking down each incredibly minor infraction just because they were in a bad mood:

“(Shouting down a cell phone) Honey, stop calling me at work! No I will not call the school… (to a waitress) Did you wash your hands? (to the phone) No! I know you wash your hands because we pay so much for fucking Williams-Fucking-Sonoma soap… (to waitress) Not you. (to phone) You! Yes you! What is he doing now? Locked in his room? (to waitress) Way to wipe that counter with that rag! (to phone) I said ‘rag’. Not to you! But I think you are! (to waitress – ripping off a fine notice) Clean up your fucking act (to phone-exiting) You too!”

Probably not, but still, 50% over a solid “city block” area certainly makes you wonder.

Gold Is At An All Time High

Celebs and Media

Okay listen up people. I am completely sick of the influx of “gold for cash” commercials on TV these days. Toronto television is beset with these low budget commercials depicting shady looking people urging you to come to their strip-mall outlets with your family memories in hand to get rich quick.

The commercial for “Jewellery For Cash” (original, eh?) has an obese bald dude getting out of an 80’s Ferrari in front of his second story walk up store front, emblazoned with “Cash for Gold” neon in the windows, while the voice over proudly offers loans up to (and I shit you not) “$1,000,000”. Okay first off, if they can offer that much, why are they in a commercial row-house, second floor office? Security for all that cash, I guess. And secondly, you’d think this guy could afford a tailor instead of a Sears XXXL t-shirt. By the way, isn’t it illegal to carry more than $100K out in public? How’s he going to get you $1M in cash? Under his shirt?

Second up was Sharkboy’s favorite, is Harold the Jewelry Buyer, where people gleefully confess their greedy desires after selling off their heritage to this dirty nailed, greasy midget. “I love my new TV!” shouts a gap toothed couch potato (it’s small). “We’re going on a cruise!” bellow a lonely housewife as her partner dances in an ugly Hawaiian shirt behind her. And the best scene: a bag laidened shopper is videoed in front of some mall stairway as she does the most awkward dance ever, while lamely shouting “Woo hoo.” I can only describe the lameness of it by saying imagine Rida Rutner cheering and dancing. I’m sorry there’s no video to accompany this one because the best line (probably delivered by Harold’s off-the-boat Romanian mom) is “It was so easy. Now I’m ready to shop!” with “shop” coming out as “chop”, evoking zombie fantasies.

Third up is Buster’s Brampton where judging by the utter tounge-in-cheek directorial wetnoodleness of this video, the next budding Judd Apatow/Kevin Smith is probably brewing right now. Slovenly, fat clerks promise “Maximum Cash!” at the tops of their lungs as their guts flap in the breeze. Watch the chubby guy on the right at the beginning of this clip – he’s wishing there was a snack truck on this shoot:

Of course, I can’t mention awful gold commercials without a nod to the grand daddy of Cash For Jewelry hucksters: Russel Oliver. To be fair, he’s got to be the most creative. Even after DC Comics tried to sue his ass out of existence for using a Superman costume and calling himself The Cashman in one of his commercial, he still manages to churn them out. If he’s not pedophilically scaring Halloween kids (he dumps money into their treat bags) then he’s dancing with Ho’s. Truly he is the Michael Bay of Cash For Gold commercials. Not to mention topical: he pulled this commercial just days after Diana died:

And finally, my current fave: Oren. So casual he doesn’t need a tie. So suave the ladies gush as they hand over their belongings. So sure he’ll give you the best price he leaves his shirt dangerously unbuttoned like it was the 70s. I love how he watches the cougar leave his store with a leer frozen across his unshaven face and akimbo stance that says “I’ll see you later, ladies! Ka-chow!”. I made a remix of the part that makes SharkBoy sit up and take notice:

Cleaning out my Canals

iPhone, Tech

About three weeks ago my Shure iPhone earbuds stopped functioning. I could still hear music ok, no issues there, but the pause/answer call/forward/backward button suddenly became a large unusable knob on the earphone wire. I replaced the headphones with other iPhone jacks and still nothing.

I tried the #1 popular “reset earbuds solution”: insert and remove the jack swiftly 5 times and nada.

I even restored from a fresh OS download, etc. Nothing. By this point it’s a hardware issue, somewhere within the iPhone. I take it to the Genius Bar at Apple.

The counter at the Apple store is the most chaotic yet civil mess of human activity I’ve ever experienced. People wander around the counter like plankton to sunlight, yet there is no discernible line to the cashiers. While I’m getting asked if I’m in line for purchases, I’m wedged between a woman with a sick MacBook Pro and someone with a dead 16G white iPhone. And I mean wedged. I’m sideways on to the counter while the Sick MacBook lady has to stick her knees into my personal space due to the “Bar” not having space for human legs. Apple design sometimes isn’t human. Thankfully the customer service is excellent.

After explaining the above to the Genius, she instantly takes out her trusted paper clip and gets to work. All Apple employees have one on their lanyards. Have a looky see next time you go in. The lowly unbent paper clip is the universal screwdriver, CTRL-ALT-DEL and a spoonful of sugar to Apple techs. Is there nothing it can’t do to an Apple product?

I digress. She takes the paperclip to the earphone socket like Julia Childs whisking a bowl of eggs. As she does, I’m eerily reminded of times when my father would painfully dig into my ears with his perfectly manicured nails and haul out gobs of wax just to show me the importance of good ear hygiene.

And then I think: “gunk”.

Holy shit there’s gunk in my headphones socket and these two people on either side of me are going to know I put my iPhone in inappropriate places…

“Does Apple cover …gunk?” I offer.

“Oh sure. You’d be amazed at what we have to clean out sometimes.”

“I bet keyboards are the worst,” offers the woman with the MacBook. The Genius helping her smiles without looking up. His non-look alludes to unspoken horrors. He’s seen things that would make Chuck Norris cry like a baby.

I get my iPhone handed back to me in perfect working order.

“So, a paperclip? And lots of digging? What about using an air can?”

“Don’t use those compressed air cans in the earphones canal. You can void the warranty because they generate water when they blow.”

Lesson learned.

Disclaimer

General

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Pride Annoys the Neighbours

Queer stuff, Toronto

When I lived on Gloucester and Church a few years, I didn’t mind Pride at all dumping portapotties on my front lawn. I didn’t even mind the constant thumping of disco from beer tents. Nor did I mind the crowds just outside my door or the late night revelry.

The biggest problem I had was lesbian poetry at 8am the Saturday of the dyke march. One Pride they had a “morning ritual” where some flowerchildren decided to greet the dawn of a lesbian new day with a bull horn and uterus filled lyrical (?!) poetry. At 8am. When the night before I got home at 5am after a bar shift.

Behind the South Stage at Mutual and Wood Street sits a poor lowly Co-op that we walked by every day of the celebrations this year. For the most part, people were hanging out on their front door step and partying right along in their own manner (one unit had their music so loud, it nearly drowned out the stage act in the parking lot).

Today, all around the co-op someone is playing scrouge:

Judging by the usage of Comic Sans, redundant hand written “Sign our petition!” and the use of “ipetition” it’s a straight person.*

*I’m kidding. For all I know it could be a tranny who needs her beauty rest.