'Dog. Saw. Man.'

This is what George labelled this picture when he sent it to Courtney from his iPhone. It was taken up at the Walker's cottage in Coboconk, home of WCONK - Conk Radio. The town opted for 'Coby' as a nickname - I still go with 'The Conk.' I think it's much more powerful.

Atticus doesn't like it when people he feels should be inside with him are outside, or when he is kept inside when he would rather be outside, especially when he can see those people through the sliding glass door.

I was building a cat tree for the kittens and didn't want to saw indoors with a giant puppy at my heels. There's no emergency vet in Coboconk.

I'm back in Toronto, as well. I took an early train back home. Ottawa got stale - rrreeeaaalll fast.

Suzuki Style: Check It!

So I was at LAC going through the 1977-1978 Annual Report of the now defunct Science Council of Canada, and they always have a list of that years members at the beginning of it so people can put names to faces. Who do I come across?

BAM! SUZUKI! Surrounded by the whitest of white males, and a few whiter than white females, there's this long-haired, goateed, wire-rim glassed, non-white male in what appears to be ... not a business suit, of all things. How 'bout that?

And when everyone else is looking like Mr. Harold L. Snyder from St. John's, Nfld, you tend to notice a guy like David a whole lot faster than usual. Also, I didn't even realize that 'Quirks and Quarks' had been around that long!

So here's to sticking out in a crowd, and the good work that Suzuki does, despite being a bit of an arrogant dick these days.  

Newfoundland Wedding!

I would like to thank Ms. Janice Molloy and Mr. John Crosby not only for getting married next year, and not only for generally being awesome Newfoundlanders, and not so much for getting married in November in the freezing cold, but mostly for invitin' me! So Congrats not only to Janice and John, but mostly to me for after having been invited!

Newfoundland weddings, pictured above, are known for their general good times, and I am greatly looking forward to November 12th, 2010. But not looking forward as much to getting there - in winter - around highway Moose and snow squalls. At least all the tree's in Newfoundland will provide some wind cover, right? All those tree's in Newfoundland?

And special thanks to Janice for being on the ball - and in Ottawa this past Monday night - so that we could catch up. We had a great time! I hadn't seen that girl in five years, and now she's getting married. They grow up so fast...

(P.S. Janice is the one dancing in the photo, and I think John is the burley man rockin' grey flannel on grey cotton checkin' her out. I'm the contemplative man in white flannel fastidiously studying her dance moves. Courtney may or may not be playing the accordion: or that could be Kurt Vonnegut's ghost, I don't know. Anything can happen in Newfoundland - it's Canada's Las Vegas! Good Newfoundland times. Can't wait!)

In Honour of the Namesake

Sir Robert Laird Borden: 8th Prime Minister of Canada, founder of Borden House, and one hell of a guy. (Note: only one of the aforementioned facts about Robert Borden is unquestionably true. The other's are heresay and estimations.) 

His statue is on the west side of the West Block of Parliament, facing the Supreme Court of Canada. I passed by it on the way to meet Farish for dinner and thought I would snap a picture or two to commemorate the man who our old street was named after and who, very indirectly, is responsible for the glorious blog you are currently enjoying. So don't thank me: thank this cast-iron likeness of a Conservative Prime Minister ranked #7th overall of Canadian PM's up to Jean Chretien. 

Strangely enough, as if assuming they would remain bitter opponents well into the afterlife, the designers of Parliament Hill placed the statue of Wilfrid Laurier on the east side of the East Block facing the Chateau Laurier, the exact opposite positioning of Borden's statue. If Laurier was unable to forget his loss to Borden in the 1911 'Reciprocity' election, their statue's will guarantee their legendary animosity continues well into a time when people have stopped knowing who either Prime Minister was, what they did, how they matter, or why we should give a good God damn.  

To Borden -  je mais souviens, brother; even when no one else does. 

Back to the Grind

So with Courtney come and gone, it's back to the LAC grind. The CAG starts up tomorrow at Carleton, so I'd like to get everything done at the Archives today if I can, so that if the conference is riveting (though how often is that ever the case?) I can stick around there most of the time. And since it's only around the corner from my place, it will be easy to get back and forth if need be. It's about a 5 minute bike ride.

In case anyone out there was wondering what exactly I was doing at LAC, here's an example. So far, I have snapped about 268 pictures just like this one, and I have a stack of books in my locker at the LAC which will probably total another 200 or so photos. Keep in mind that is most cases, each photo represents two pages. And after I take all these photos, then I have to actually READ them all at some as yet undetermined point in time.

So I got that going for me, right?

(Also, there is a video of an amazing 3-D simulation of how the human heart works for medical students on YouTube. It's pretty good. And the heart is kinda gross.)

"You Can Never Go Home Again - But You Can Shop There"

Now I have a greater sense about what John Cusack was talking about in Grosse Pointe Blank when his old home in Grosse Point, MI, has been torn down and replaced with a convenience store. He had the above witicism to share with Alan Arkin, who played his shrink.

When Courtney and I drove to Quebec City on Friday, I thought it might be fun to take a detour along the Ottawa River and go through Rockland, ON, where I spent a week shy of three months of my life back when I was 18 on Katimavik. I navigated my way through dimly (and sadly) familiar streets and found that our old Victorian house had been torn down, and the property sold to developers who had put up cookie-cutter box homes and a low-rise apartment unit. Annie had told me a few years ago that the house had been torn down, but I had to see it to believe it. And Christ was it a sad sight. And to be clear, the only reason why it was sad is because the only good thing about my stay in Rockland regarding Katimavik was the house itself: a giant, six bedroom, three floor Victorian-era house that seemingly had no end. It was beautiful. And now it's gone.

Not to say that I had fond memories of Rockland, ON, but damn: I will never willingly pull my car over and stop in Rockland unless I have a flat. And even then, I would just as soon ride on the rim until I get to the next, equally depressing town. And speaking of the town, a leopard cannot change its spots, which is a polite way of saying that Rockland, ON, once a dump, WILL NEVER, EVER, BE ANYTHING BUT A DUMP. Given one word  to sum up her Rockland experience, Courtney opted for "bleak" or "soul-crushing." I allowed for a tie.

So while I can never go home again to Rockland, ON, or shop there, I can opt for a sad photo of the space where my house used to be, and a passive aggressive rant about a pathetically small-minded and awful town that the government forced me to live in for a while back in '03.

Oddest Double Bill EVER!

It's official - if Mayfair Theatre was a dude, I would be totally gay for it. 100%. Without fail. Fo' sho'. But someone let the ball drop this week with a double bill featuring One Week with Joshua Jackson followed by Kung Fu Hustle. I spoke with a Mayfair staffer after the shows were out, and even she was left asking waada g'wan was up with the choice in features. So it wasn't just me.

One Week - I'll be brief. While definitely not as bad as I was expecting for a movie that uses Roll Up The Rim To Win as a plot device (thank you, Court), the movie relied much too heavily upon factors external to the actual writing of the movie. For instance, too much was invested in the Canadian landscape, the talent of Canadian musicians (not only for their music, but for their willingness to give cameo's in the movie, including Gord Downie smoking the sticky green and Joel Plaskett busking in T.O.'s financial district), and the knowledge that ladies would swoon at Jackson again, and again, and again as he stared off into the distant sunset pondering his fate. Without the music (which never stopped) and the beautiful Canadian panorama, there was a moderately interesting story behind driven by the scenery. Looks good on Canada, but not so good on the movie. 

Being away from home, the shots of Toronto and the fact that the movie was unashamedly Canadian did score points with me, in addition to the fact that it didn't give you everything that your sappy heart wanted that your logical mind was calling shenanigans on. 

Kung Fu Hustle was Kung Fu Hustle. What can I say? Ridiculous, amazing, funny, impressive: if I would recommend you see One Week on TV if its On Demand, Kung Fu Hustle would be worth paying for. Many times. It was my pleasure to see on the big screen for $5. An older man in his 60's was making his way out of Kung Fu Hustle and he turned to me smiling, and said: "What a great way to end the day!"

Needless to say, I agreed.

Unrelated but funny P.S.: I was stuck waiting in line today at LAC for an archivist to be available, and I was in line behind this Rastafarian guy with the big hat and the long beard. We must have waited in line, just the two of us, for about 15-20 minutes while these two douchebags in the office just kept blathering away. We were both getting really tired of waiting, and without thinking, in my post-Grand Theft Auto IV days, I muttered "waada g'wan" without thinking that I was waiting behind an honest-to-God Rastfarian. He kinda looked back, but didn't say anything. Dodged that one...

 

No - Thank YOU International Museum Day 2009!

I thought Erika was full of crap the other day when she mentioned that we all should hit up some Ottawa museums because Monday, in addition to being Victoria Day, was also International Museum Day. It sounded too made up to be something that people would actually have lobbied to have recognized as a real day. Live and learn, I guess. This years theme: Museums and Tourism, though an explanation as to what this means, exactly, was hard to come by.

So while this could also be BOG Pt. II, it's not titled as such, but is labeled accordingly. I set out on my bike without eating to make sure I had enough time to check everything out. I had destinations, but the route was undetermined. So I headed out towards the new Canadian War Museum (pictured above in artists rendition mode) and the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull - and saved over $20 by going today, thankyouverymuch. Both of them were jam-packed, the Civilization Museum especially. The new war museum was really interesting and well done, but I can't help but feel that they wanted to pander to children a little too much. (A funny example - they had a '24 - CTU' board game in the gift shop. WHY?) They managed to incorporate all the large vehicles they had in storage at Vimy House into their new museum building in the Le Breton Gallery which was neat. Also, the veterans puttering around with canes and scooters talking with visitors and providing personal stories to accompany the artifacts was a nice touch. 

I did leave a note at their suggestion box saying that their effort to address the Dresden bombing controversy by claiming that "this was a source of ongoing controversy" was not quite good enough, and that while ample time was spent describing the heroism of the pilots (which I dont doubt for a minute), no time was spent talking about the consequences and those then and now who have condemned the acts of fire-bombing demanded by Allied Bombing Command.

The Civilization Museum was nice, too. Very well done, but maybe a free day on a holiday Monday was not the best time to hit these places up if I had qualms about crowds. And screaming children...

The Killing & Paths of Glory Double Bill

First off, and I wont say much - lotta dudes at a Stanley Kubrick double bill of The Killing and Paths of Glory on a Sunday afternoon; whole lotta dudes. I wont say it was a single guy sausage-fest, but I will say this: 17 people in the audience for The Killing - - zero chicks. You do the math.

Second, double bills are tiring, but the movies were good. I hadn't seen The Killing, but as far as late-in-life film noir goes, it was pretty good. Wouldn't write home about it, but I would kill time between movies and dinner writing on my blog about it. But that's different.

I saw Paths of Glory when I was 15 I think, and while I would say that I got it, as a movie message, it was great seeing it on the big screen. And Kirk Douglas is Kirk Douglas: amazing, but always in a hokey kinda way. Like he's trying too hard, all the time, to be Kirk Douglas, actor.

Still - two movies for $5 aint bad. And I might be wrong, but one scene in the movie with Kirk Douglas and George Mcready as Gen. Mireau looked familiar, like it was shown as the memorial image at the Oscars after the actor died and they wanted to commemorate them. BUT - after having looking it up on imdb.com, Geogre Mcready died in July 1973, largely on account of having been born in 1899. So the odds of me seeing his Oscar tribute montage a few months ago are pretty slim. And since Kirk Douglas is still alive and kicking, it wasn't him. 

Huh... That's gonna bug me...

Sir Sam Hughes and I

My answer to Marley and Me.

I had to break one of the rules of our relationship that I wouldn't abuse my power and pick him up, but dammit - as I said to Court, I knew this picture would be too good to pass up. So now I've got to win back Sir Sam Hughes trust. 

And I've only got two weeks left to do it.

Christ, I've still got two weeks left here? Damn...