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Flotsam & jetsam from the web

I’m finally relaxing again, and that includes catching up on the backlog of blog reading. (I could coin a new term “backblog”, but 188,000 google hits beat me to it.)

  • Torontoist had a hilarious picture of a mounted police officer collecting parking tickets, courtesy of torontogal on flickr.
  • Spacing Wire had a post on a video projection by Xavier de Richemont at Nathan Phillips Square. It sounds like a well-executed, simple piece of public art: project onto the facade of an interesting building (Old City Hall), and turn the building into a cartoon version of itself – like colourizing an old movie. It’s got the hallmarks of good public art: dramatic, clever, simple, and easily understood.
  • Both of these blogs referenced Santarchy, who I saw milling around outside the Gypsy Co-op (sorry, “Gypsy and the Hooch”).

  • Former city councillor Gordon Price wrote about a Katrina moment in Vancouver following the recent windstorm, and the CBC also had a story on the impacts to Stanley Park.
  • Gordon Price also posted a funny video showing what happens when traffic calming fights back…
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The unexamined life is not worth living

I’m not sure that I agree with that antique greek’s quote; I could live quite well without next week’s exams.

Things are under control, but it is amounting to a lot of work, and relatively little activities other than sitting in my office, eating at home and having a few drinks with friends.

The only real news is that today I broke out my winter bike in honour of the start of the snowy season and the vicious road salt that accompanies that season. Oh, and I’m dipping my toe in the online dating world, but that’s not a story for this forum.

Eventually, I’ll have a story for you about the Spadina streetcar. Meanwhile, I’ve posted two pictures from the archives on Flickr.

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Canada by stereotype

I just have two small anecdotes to recount, both in the “stereotype of Canada” vein.

1) I was just listening to a few more episodes of the CBC Radio 3 podcast, and I must say I loved the concept of their See Vous Play edition. The two co-hosts banter back in forth in English and French, seamlessly switching and never translating their discussion of the latest in hipster Canadian and Québécois music. Only in Canada, and only on the CBC.

2) I went to a show at the Rex on Saturday, and I still really love that place. Yeah, it’s a bit of an older crowd, and it’s jazz – given those two, it should be a stuffy, snotty affair, right? But the musicians played upbeat improvised, solo-stuffed jazz with no dull crooners, the bar was jam-packed with standing room only and the crowd was talking loudly but still really into the music. And the Rex itself is so utterly unpretentious: Labatt 50 signs on the walls, battered wooden tables everywhere, and a television with the hockey game a few feet from the bassist’s head. Lesson to the musicians: keep the crowd’s attention, or you’ll lose out to the hockey game. Lesson to Vancouver jazz bars like the Cellar: loosen up, lose the red tablecloths, and make jazz fun. Damn, I’m glad the Rex’s owners didn’t sell out to the new condo building that now occupies most of the block.