Tag Archives: blog

CP24 To Offer Breakfast Television Some Youthful Competition?

Celebs and Media, Toronto, You Stupid Dick

First, let me preface this post by apologizing to all my non-Toronto readers. Go look at my Flickr account, this post will not interest you.

I’ve steadily been having a big hate-on for Breakfast Television since it’s sale to Rogers and its long, slow departure from CityTV/CTV while remaining on CTV’s news channel. The choppy and awkward station ID/commercial flips between the two has been like trying to track a schizophrenic family member’s conversation who hasn’t taken their meds in months. For the last month or so, any fan of Breakfast Television who watches on the CP24 channel will have noticed that when BT goes to commercial, CP24 kicks in with “More On CP24!” teasers of weather and traffic.

Let’s just get past the fact that the bumper title is dangerously close to “MORON CP24!” if you’re not watching the screen closely…

Besides being utterly maladroit (like that? I have Thesuarus.com open), these extra reports of traffic and weather are an additional assault of already mentioned information (it’s fucking scrolling across the bottom already!!), jazzed up with an odd segment of Cam Woolley driving around town and talking about traffic (different idea but utterly useless: “Here’s a live feed of us stuck in traffic on the DVP!”).

I’ve posted before about how BT gets my ire: particularly Kevin “I Don’t Live In Toronto” Frankish and his need to revolve the show around himself. Even his post-show blog (full of terminology errors – he calls his video posts “blogs”), gets my blood boiling. I’m really glad he’s trying to get on board with the whole Web 2.0, new technology thing but it’s becoming unwatchable, like your parent trying to email a photo off their hard drive (no offense dad!!). I have to admit in the last while, I’ve hopped over to Canada AM and have become dangerously close to accepting their dry, conservative pap as my morning ritual.

Until this morning there was a ray of hope…

This morning during a CP24 bumper, in between the weather and traffic, there were two young somethings chatting amicably about their fantastic weekend and how great the weather was. I missed their names and the segment lasted only a minute, but they got my attention… They were young, well dressed, good looking, bright, smiling, energetic and so NOT like the current Breakfast Television crew, that my heart beat faster.

Is CP24 going to cut loose BT and have their own breakfast show of goodlookings 20-30somethings? I’m hoping that CP24 is grooming young bucks to offer a breath of fresh air from curmudgeonly Kevin “I’m Old and at no way at all a Metrosexual” Frankish? Can Dina transfer over to that show if they do? She’s the only reason I’ve hung on so long.

Blog Roll Ups!

General

I’m dry today so I thought I’d troll off my virtual friends.


Acid Reflux
relates a story of his French interviewer being highly interested in his erection while being HIV positive.

Blamblog relates how I felt in the 80s, but without the drinking.

Brokeass Weave posts a preeetteeee pickchur! (NSFW language)

Citywoof has a serious pain in the foot, a night of debauchery and a stolen tryst in the loo.

Got Cris posts an interesting mix tape.

WARNING! CulturalSNAFU hasn’t updated since Nov 5…

The Electronic Replicant has a post about… uhm. It’s a post where he talks about bluetooth… uh. He has nice colours on his site.

The Fortress of Solitude continues with his Bond Haiku Movie Reivews.

Sadly, From A to B hasn’t posted anything since October.

Fresh Ink for Gambrinous With Griffonage. And it’s about time too.

Hairy Fish Nuts blows a circuit when a right winged blogger shows some liberal backbone.

I Always Win riles against the machine that is City Hall. I wish I owned a car so I could get mad.

Just a Dude Talking About Life takes us on a locomotion ride. (rest of site NSFW)


Mid-Century Maudlin
is old! So he plays young!

WARNING: My Life in the YYZ hasn’t posted since October…

My Blog Rules Your Ass has his Xmas miracle gift online for all to see!

My Prozac Cocoon lists the things he’s thankful for… and he’s not even American!

Nice To See SteveieB proves to us that he is Mark Hamill / Val Kilmer’s love child.

You have questions? Phronk has Answers. But not as to why he’s wearing Family Guy underwear.

Planet Romach reminds us that Xmas isn’t about online porn. Wait… No… I mean “just ourselves”. Did I say porn?

Rainbow Dishes is also caught up in the 6×6 Flickr meme. Cute dog!

Ripping Stitches says what I’ve been thinking last week: Bailout? No! Loan? Yes!

Sharkboy is also in the throws of the 6×6 meme. Of course it’s a picture of me in an ugly shirt.

StudioYVR has a taper worm. Ha! Not what you think…

The Mangina Monologues beats the pants off his Dad with a Wii. Er. Playing with his Wii. Uh. Video games. He beat his dad in video games.

Matias N Oz quotes my favorite holiday cartoon and posts a lovely pic!

bstewart23 wonders why there are two people a day infected with the HIV virus in the city of Toronto. I blame online ads.

Bizarre Christmas wishes are the order of the day at tomato transplants. Are you sure she actually wanted to be on a crappy reality TV show?

Turniphed posts the “Cop overdosing on pot” video.

Unsweetened posts about her numerous blogs being nominated for a Canadian Blog Awards category. I’m not bitter. No.

Yarraville posts arty shots that made me have some ‘splainin’ to do to the IT department.

Whew! That’s a long post. If I left you out you either need to post something or I missed you. Love to all!

Husband Meme

Distractions, Personal Bits, Queer stuff

Apologies to my single readers who sit there at their monitors with their bags of Collision Chips and Fantas while they wonder where their life went wrong as they look at blogs on the interweb and consider what to wear when they go to the next Bear bar night and oh god why can’t they find love why why por quoi???

From Gambrinous with Griffonage:

What is his name? Meesh to the family, Michel in Quebec (there’s already a Michele and a Michael in my family so he’s contracted to be contracted).

Who eats more? Me. But he eats more in bed.

Who said I love you first? Me. In his truck. I nearly puked.

Who is taller? I am when we’re standing in the tub.

Who drives most when you are together? He does. But I get bored faster. Mayblubablublabluuuu!

Who’s more sensitive?
I would say we’re equally matched. He’ll cry at movies, while I’ll cry at lottery ads.

Who does the laundry? I do. I expect a call from the police when ever he does the laundry because of his patience. He, however, folds.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Facing the bed from the foot, I sleep on the right hand side.

Who pays the bills? Our accounts are combined, but he does all the actual paperwork.

Who cooks more? I do. He’s a bit to meticulous when he follows recipes.

Who is more stubborn?
He is. Hands down.

Who is the first to admit they are wrong?
Me. I’d rather bask in incorrectness than fight.

Who has more siblings? I do. My four to his one.

Who wears the pants? We share a mu mu on Drunk Sundays. Clean up is a breeze.

What do you like to do together? Pretty much everything. He’s my best friend and husband. I’d not be all that interested if he’s not interested. I know that makes me sound like a creepy conservative housewife, but it’s true.

Who eats more sweets? He does, for medicinal reasons.

Guilty pleasures? Corn chips in bed.

How did you meet? Sly comments on gay.com chat. Then constant exposure due to both of us losing our 9-5 jobs.

Who asked whom out first? I asked him to come along with me to a lesbian bar outside the city. I wound up making out with another guy on the dance floor.

Who kissed first? It was mutual. In a truck. It was fun. Still is.

Who proposed? He emailed my parents for permission. He then sprung it on me in front of our campfire.

His best features and qualities? Have you seen his backside? Heaven. As for qualities: his anger, oddly enough. It reminds me not to take shit from people. And beneath that, there is a thoughtful, kind, smart person that thinks I’m pretty keen.

Battle In Seattle

Celebs and Media

A “docu-drama” of the 1999 WTO protest, so Americanly named the Battle In Seattle, seems a bit appropriate as the current economic melt down ripples through everyone’s savings right now.

Go back with me to November 1999. Everyone is already crazy with Y2K, so when greedy capitalists decide to meet at a highly concentrated liberal city on the west coast, VW vans are fired up and everyone who has an opinion about poverty and money converged on Seattle. Social consciousness groups came together in a peaceful attempt to “stop” the convention which turned into one of the largest riots the US as seen since the 60s. Somewhere, someone got pissed off and the riot ignited like a Spike Lee movie ending. You might remember video of riot police casually coating a passive, sitting crowd of protesters with a fire extinguisher sized can of mace. Or countless images of rugby scrums with black armored cops hunched over cotton/hemp wearing youths. Whoever you side with, it was a violent few days.

What makes me curious about this movie is that it seems to be “Crash”-like in its structure: multiple viewpoints, perspectives and storylines converging to one point: downtown Seattle, just in front of the riot police. But in reading reviews from it’s TIFF showing, the movie hammers home it’s hatred for the WTO within the opening sequences, so it seems biased more towards the protesters. Another clue is that Woody Harrelson plays a cop. I think his acting default is set to “Villain” lately so he may be swinging a truncheon with abandon.

I’m also curious about the Massive Attack soundtrack. But that’s probably another blog post. Battle will be playing in limited release in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver October 17th.

In Which Dead Robot Turns Chrimson With “Gwarsh!”

Celebs and Media

Robert, who has been coming around this here blog for a couple months now, recently started up Canada Blog Friends, a review site of Northern webzines (ha! when was the last time you heard that? Webzines! hmmm…) that:

…is a celebration of life in Canada, as manifest in many different blogs, across many different genres from every part of the nation.

The coolest Canadian blogs are profiled here, and sometimes extra passionate posts are condensed in compelling story briefs and further digested in comments.

Well I got featured yesterday and I have to tell you, I’ve never had a stranger say such nice things about my blog/hobby who didn’t want money or sex. Go read the review. I rarely toot my own horn on here but the post is so well written I feel like a proud parent at a grade 2 musical and my child just nailed “I Don’t Know How To Love Him”.

Thanks Robert!

Family, Secrets. In Repose and Response

Personal Bits, Queer stuff

Weekend Pictures Here

What can you learn of someone within 3 minutes? 30 minutes? 3 hours? 3 days?

This long weekend, we ventured up into the Gatineau area to visit SharkBoy’s “Summer Place” – Notre Dame Du Pontmain to be exact.

It’s a tiny village nearly smack dab in the middle of a massive amount of small lakes about an hour and a bit north of Ottawa, in the Gatineaus. NDdP makes it’s living on the one hotel, the one depanneur and one boat launch and a lot of video rentals. I’ve never been before and I hope I go back. A lot. Mountains rise up out of so many lakes it’s like visiting BC but without the weed. Every morning and evening the sun puts on a display of colours you become drunk with the spectacle. Deer peer at you with those creepy eyes from the sides of the road. Bears have been seen. It truly is one of Quebec’s hidden treasures from the English.

We left late on Friday night to a wall of traffic that spanned downtown Pickering to Brockville, where after 6 hours in the car at 2am, we desperately tried to look for a hotel. All the details of the travel can be found on Sharkboy’s blog. One thing I did enjoy was playing “Senator and the Hooker” in the divey-est hotel on the outskirts of Ottawa that had stucco swipes as wall decoration and other 70s Swiss Chalet motifs (“Spank your bottom? That will be $5 extra, Senator!”).

On the drive we talked a lot about family. The one we started ourselves (cat included) and the ones I was going to meet. As usual, but not so much this time, I felt the apprehension of meeting up with the in-laws and not being able to communicate as much as I’d like. But that always disappears within moments of getting past the front door because SharkBoy’s mom is always so welcoming and friendly (inbetween the “tabanac” and “câlisse”) and we generally communicate in elaborate hand gestures, drinks and the odd translation assistance from SharkBoy’s sister, Syl.

We did eventually meet up and make our way over to SharkBoy’s uncle’s extremely secluded compound after a long drive up, down, through, along swamps and riverbanks. Oddly enough we could see the house we were staying at from his dock, which would have taken 1/100th the time it took to get there if we had walked directly from door to door. Unfortunately the two places are separated by a large river, so unless you’re Jesus, that’s not possible. Visible but secluded. For a reason. He owned the entire mountain behind his house.

Leasing the road to the top of the mountain for a cell phone tower, he’s sitting on a developer’s wet dream of prime cottage land that overlooked the lake. But he wants to keep it to himself for now. That kind of power you don’t come by easy. As we were to learn when the pictures came out. Images of SharkBoy’s dad and his two uncles were presented in all their black and white glory and I got to learn how Romuald became the person who gave me SharkBoy. We also learned of some other stuff that I will respect a certain person’s embarrassment due to certain childhood behaviour, but let’s just say that it involved a chicken and a horse.

Later, SharkBoy’s cousin and her girlfriend piled us into their lesbian truck (who knew it was rampant in his father’s side?) and took us 1/3rd the way up the mountain on the maintenance road to the cell tower. Then we walked the rest of the way. Nearly straight up. For a solid hour. That’s right, this fat, office cube chubbo walked up the side of a mountain to get utterly drenched in sweat (thank god they’re all family now). I also got to spend my first really private moments with Syl and we discussed ex-boyfriends and how sometimes a family’s responsibility is not to mention that we’re dating a jerk. Nothing new or shocking but she managed to make me feel like a brother in those few moments. I also snapped a few shots:

After bombing around on ATVs, we went tubing. First time for me behind a boat where I didn’t fall down within the first couple of seconds of it taking off (I suck at waterskiing).

That night, after saying our bon soirs, we discovered that seclusion has a price: the road back to the highway was washed out in a freak flash flood that came down from the side of the mountain after a short rainfall. Who knew that a mountain could “retain water”? This is where SharkBoy’s family shone: they all came out to the site on their ATVs and trucks to see the damage and within an hour, we had “rebuilt” the road, moved a down tree and scouted ahead the 3 miles to the highway on the ATV to make sure that the road was clear. It was an adventure, to be sure (we could have been at that part of the road during the flood), and his uncle and cousins were actually apologetic for the delay.

The next day the “kids” (without Sharkboy’s mom and aunt) set out to discover the waterfalls at Windigo, a swanky time-share like resort that I’d love to spend a week at some summer time (hint hint). There I saw a frog. Hold your Quebecois jokes. But before leaving, I was struck with the biggest stomach pain right between breakfast and the time we got into the car, which I kept mostly to myself until it started to subside. I wasn’t too chatty that morning. But it passed and I don’t blame anyone’s food…

At this time it was becoming quite evident that one of the guests was not feeling the same emotions for being away for the weekend and would not put down their cell phone for all the texting that was going on. I kept on remembering that when I was their age, I was yearning for not being at family outings either, and would sulk annoyingly over in some corner with a comic or tv show. Kids today (ugh. shoot me. I just wrote “kids today”) have better ways of sulking the fun from the moment by tapping messages to their friends on a small keyboard. I wanted to take them aside and tell them that family time is extremely precious, especially at 40something, and that they should savour the time they have. But of course, I kept my nose out of it. But I did felt old remembering how I behaved exactly the same (sans electroniques). This led to the weekend being cut short by hours (thankfully not by a day) and we managed to get back to Toronto at an extremely decent hour, so thanks teen angst!

In all, a good weekend. I’d love to go back again!

MiniBook Expo On Again!

Celebs and Media, Distractions, General, Hobbies

Lex, over on Unsweetened.ca has fired up her magical blog MiniBook Expo! Go claim your absolutely free books. The catch? You gotta blog about the book you choose. Choose wisely!

Claim It.
* watch for a book you want
* click through to claim it
* make sure it’s not already claimed by someone else
* leave a comment to claim it (max 2)
*
Get it.
* we’ll confirm you claimed it in the comments.
* then email you for your address
* send me your address
* Canada Post will bring you your book.
*
Read it.
* can you really say anything if you haven’t read it?
*
Blog it.
* Post something about the book within a month of getting it
* include a link to the publisher and the author if possible
* if you don’t have a blog, send me your review & I’ll post it here for you

My past books were:

The Grays – Whitley Strieber:
…there are moments of incoherence where you shake the book to see if pages have fallen out from it.

And

Relentless – Robin Parrish:
Relentless is written in a more looser, somewhat melodramatic style, all the while watching it’s language: the strongest curse word in all of it’s pages is “damn”

The Earth Shakes From Approaching Hoards

Queer stuff, Toronto

Went for ice cream last night and stood in awe as the crowds started their swell into the village like blood into a sex organ. (eh. best metaphor I could muster after dinner and an ice cream)

Here’s Joe! He use to have the best blog on the internet. Sadly he got bored and left. The brightest stars burn …um… bright and fast… quick. ly.
Joe

A big row of Dyke’s Bykes.

Bless her large heart…

We’ll be at O’Greedy’s tomorrow night at 730pm for “It’s Thursday, Damn it!!” Drinks. All welcome! (No. No food.)