Don't Believe Everything You See And Hear

Did someone send you this image a year or two ago?



I remember a friend sending it to me a while back. I laughed out loud when I saw it. It screamed Photoshop yet it was being sent around as though it really happened. People are so gullible.

Speaking of gullible, I think a lot of people have a false impression of what it's like to be a certified Leisurologist. They think the Leisurologist is a man of culture: wine taster extraordinaire, poetry writer/reader, fashionista. No, that's a flaneur. There are regular flaneurs, and then there are dandy flaneurs, like this...



This in not me. I am not a dandy flaneur. I'm not even a flaneur, really, it's just that in Toronto there's so little adventure for me that involves danger or elevated heart rates that I resemble a flaneur in my approach to city life (though not in my approach to fashion).

In Cambridge-Narrows everything is different. I am a true Leisurologist. Just take a look at this morning's image....

So you took the garbage out...big deal. The whole world knows that Monday is garbage day in Cambridge-Narrows. How does this make you a world renowned Leisurologist?

This picture doesn't, but what happened leading up to it does.

More details, please.

Everyone takes the garbage out except Klever O'Leary and Toe-nailed Drump. What separates the Leisurologist and everyone else is the manner in which the garbage disposal is executed. I decided this morning that I would celebrate the ritual of taking the garbage to the end of my driveway. But how to celebrate it....

By making a movie!

I recently purchased a device known as a Dolly Kit Skater for D-SLR. Translating into English for those of you who speak hinglish as a sick hound lang gwidge, it's a mobile roller-skate-like device to which you can attach a camera and make forward or reverse movement.

Okay, lousy explanation. Here's a picture of the g-d thing....



I thought that I'd make a movie to show the Leisurologist lifestyle. The lifestyle is not the action of taking the garbage out, rather it's the action of making a movie about taking the garbage out. It's a celebration of the mundane. That is what a life of leisure has given me....an appreciation of the ridiculous (and also the odd windsurfing adventure).

So where's the movie, Steven Spielbum?

Well, I set everything up almost perfectly. The camera was mounted on the Skate Dolly. I tied a piece of fishing line to the dolly and held the other end in my hand in order to tow it as I walked up the driveway. This was to be an 'action' film. I pressed start on my camera to get the movie going and then I walked up the driveway, garbage bag in hand, dolly and camera following and filming my every step. The camera fell over once and swiveled backwards once. I made adjustments and comments, thinking it would make for hilarious cinema. When I finally deposited the garbage at the end of the driveway I had some witty repartee with the camera, then went to turn the video off....

Shit! It's at that point I noticed that I hadn't put the camera on video mode, but rather it had been set to take one single underwater image. Sigh. My movie got two thumbs down, mostly because it wasn't a movie.

Then what?

I had a decision to make. Do I walk the garbage back down the driveway an re-film my blockbuster movie? I decided that if my neighbour was watching me walk my garbage up the driveway while towing a small roller-skate with a camera attached, then she would think that I'm very odd. If I did it twice then she'd think I was completely insane.

Ultimately I decided not to re-film my garbage adventure. I settled for a still shot of me posing next to the garbage bag. This morning's adventure was a good lesson for me. I am still not a professional Leisurologist...there is room for improvement. Though my actions may be leisure-like, there must be proof positive that I am really what I claim to be. That said, things could have been more unbelievable...

Taffy

Could there be a better image to signal the arrival of spring? To me, maple taffy on snow is as iconic as it gets.

Weekend Mourning and Saddle Addle

I can think of three things that I don't want to hear when I wake up in the early morning hours:

1) someone shouting 'fire, fire'.

2) Deputy Doug saying 'Mystery vocalist number one'.

3) Oscar Pistorius wanting to play hide & seek.

I woke up early, at 6-something, but I didn't have a clue what time it was because I've yet to acclimatize to New Brunswick's morning light. I think I may have even forgotten where I was because I rolled over and turned the radio on thinking I'd get the CBC news. The first words I heard were 'mystery vocalist number one'.

"Shit!" I said out loud, then my brain focused on the cutting reality that I was at home in the Maritimes and it was the weekend. I had completely forgotten about Can The Shrew's Weekend Mourning show. Of all the things I missed when living in Toronto, Weekend Mourning (not a typo, btw) was not one of them.

Now, you might think 'what's today's picture have to do with waking up on a Saturday morning'? I see today's image, which was taken yesterday afternoon, as a pictorial metaphor for an 'icy reception'. I was hoping to start my day with some worldly news, instead I got an impossible contest hosted by both ends of a horse named Duke. Of course I'm just angry because in five years of 'accidentally' listening to Weekend Mourning I've yet to correctly guess a single mystery vocalist. I always answer 'Ron Hynes' to every vocalist even if I know it's a woman. Every now and then I'll change my answer to 'Rita MacNeil', but that's when the mystery vocalist turns out to be Ron Hynes. Sigh.

Well, I've survived one bout of Weekend Mourning. There can be little doubt that I'm officially 'back in the saddle' now.

The Homecoming

I've been gone almost three months and this is what I found upon my return. Not bad. I was expecting worse, given the outrageous amount of snow New Brunswick received this winter (10 feet). In contrast to today's image of my place, my dad's property looks as though a glacier had formed. I half expect snow to be there in August. My place was far less snowy. Infinitely less snow. Parts of my lawn, particularly under the mighty pines, are bare.

The lake is still frozen solidly, though there is a small patch of open water under the bridge. It's going to take a long time before it feels like spring here. I'll be curious to see what sort of a flood we have this year. It could be a big 'un!

My Toronto Skyline: 14 hours In 30 Seconds

There must be some irony in the fact that I suffered through Toronto's coldest winter in 25 years, yet, on the day I'm returning to New Brunswick, it's forecast to hit 16 degrees and be gloriously sunny. Ah Toronto, how you toy with me.

Maybe this shift in the weather is a sign that there is a localized god: malevolent and vengeful. Generally hateful of outdoor enthusiasts, and specifically of windsurfers like me. Did I mentioned that five out of seven days in Toronto this winter had enough wind to blow the chinny-chin-chin off Mulroney Sr.? What a waste!

You mean the wind or Mulroney Sr.?

I'll not touch that one with a ten foot chin! I think the localized malevolent god also hates Toronto hockey fans, but so does everyone else so that's not such a big deal. Of course the Maple Leafs didn't make the playoffs this year. Yawn.

Yesterday was also a glorious weather day in Toronto, practically t-shirt worthy. I set my camera up on the condo balcony and shot a time-lapse movie to capture the rapture. The film begins at 8 a.m. and finishes at 10 p.m. I probably won't see this scene again until November, but I'll learn to deal with it.

Heroic Toes

A few years ago a good friend of ours, let's call him Homme
Libre to protect his identity, told a story about a student giving him the most wonderful foot massage. I don't tend to remember things like this, except that the foot fondler described Homme Libre's toes as 'heroic'.

Heroic toes. Now that's a memorable descriptor.

During our Sunday walk, Wendy and I stumbled past a podiatrist's office. Outside of the office was a small billboard (see image). Seeing those heroic toes resting upon a field of daffodils was almost too much for us. It reminded us of you-know-who.

Sadly, you-know-who's field of daffodils is probably still buried under two to three feet of snow. I know for a fact that this will make him miserable since he is not a fan of winter, but I feel no sorrow for him as he just spent two months in the sun. During those same two months, Wendy and I suffered through winter in Iqaluit. Oops, I meant to say Toronto.

I think Toronto will see daffodils before anywhere in New Brunswick will. The snow is 99% gone here, and little green shoots are sprouting up in gardens. Ironically, or moronically, I'm about to go back in time, seasonally speaking. My meek toes return to New Brunswick tomorrow. It's going to be a shock to the system, but I'm ready for some shock therapy.

Mini-Mootha Marching Marathon - Don Valley Edition

This past Sunday was the nicest day we've experienced since I arrived on January 16. It was a true spring day: birds sang, the sun shone, and Torontonians put down their pistols for a day. It was like a climactic truce with the bitch we call winter.

Ahhh....it's good to be alive!

Wendy and I agreed that a walk somewhere was in order, so we departed from our Vervacious condo and headed east along Wellesley Street until we butted heads with Parliament Street (Cabbagetown). North on Parliament Street took us up to Bloor Street, where we cranked a right and headed east again.

We discovered the Rosedale School For The Arts which was teetering on the edge of the Don Valley. We then walked across a long bridge which traverses the Don Valley. Underneath the upper deck of the bridge we could feel/hear the rumblings of the Bloor Line subway. At ground level below us, the Don River made its way south to Lake Ontario, bikers enjoyed a paved path and cars whisked along the north-south corridor of the Don Valley Parkway.

As we reached the other side of the valley, Bloor Street became the Danforth, part of which is home to Toronto's noted Greek community. We, however, took an immediate right after crossing the valley and we headed south along Broadview Avenue. This long street became the eastern flank of the Don Valley from the Danforth down to the lake. With the Don Valley in the fore to mid-ground, this area offered sweeping panoramas of the Toronto skyline to the west.

We noticed a sign which offer us a map to the Don Valley as well as some historical background. It made for interesting reading, but what stuck in my mind was that bears (bears!) once roamed the valley. Cougars too!

Hopefully you can read the text if you enlarge the image to your left. If not, then you only need to know that bears are no longer a threat in this neighbourhood.

Though there was no mention of it on the sign, in all likelihood some wee mannie arrived in Toronto a few hundred years ago and said 'auch aye, it's a bonnie great glen', then welled up, played the bag pipes, shot a pheasant, grumbled about this and that, then started hatching plans to make money...or find someone with some! Oh, he may also have named the river after the River Don which runs through Aberdeenshire. It makes sense.

There are efforts underway to return the Don River Valley to something more historically accurate. I applaud these efforts, though having a six lane freeway running through the glen more or less precludes anything truly pastoral. It would be nice to see ducks swimming in the Don River, and not sneakers, beer cans and plastic bags.

Wendy and I carried on down Broadview, past a satellite Chinatown at Gerrard Street, to our favourite coffee shop which was tucked away on a side street in the neighbourhood of Broadview and Queen Street East. We enjoyed libations and sweeties. I was hoping for a buttery-rowie but had to settle for a coconut macaroon. I washed it down with a cappuccino. It's hard to find good Scottish food in this town. Wendy had tea and a muffin, though she briefly considered a scone (Scottish!).

We then headed west across the Don Valley on Queen Street, back to Parliament Street where we turned right and went north. We meandered our way through a slightly Muslim block, then back to Cabbagetown. One final push west got us to our neighbourhood, known as St.James Town. In total, 7.2 km. Strictly speaking, we're not in St.James Town, we're just a little too west (and gay) to be considered part of it.  We're part of 'The Village' which is fitting since I'm a Village Idiot. St.Jamestown, just to the east of our condo, is an interesting place. It's either an urban planners dream, or nightmare. Not sure. Here's just a tidbit of info:

St. James Town is the largest high-rise community in Canada. It has been identified as one of 13 economically deprived neighborhoods within the city. It consists of 19 high-rise buildings (14 to 32 stories). These massive residential towers were built in the 1960s. Officially, approximately 17,000 people live in the neighbourhood's 19 apartment towers and 4 low rise buildings; but the number is thought by residents to be 25,000, making it Canada's most densely populated community, and one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods anywhere in North America.

St. James Town was originally designed to house young "swinging single" middle class residents, but the apartments lacked appeal; many prospective tenants instead moved to suburban houses in the developing areas of Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York. The area quickly became much poorer. Four buildings were later built by the province to provide public housing. Today, the towers are mostly home to newly arrived immigrant families.

In 2006 a census of the neighbourhood show that, after English, the most common languages spoken were:

1. Tagalog - 8.1%
2. Tamil - 5.5%
3. Unspecified Chinese - 2.5%
4. Mandarin - 2.5%
5. Korean - 1.9%
6. Spanish - 1.8%
7. Russian - 1.8%
8. Serbian - 1.4%
9. Bengali - 1.4%
10. Urdu - 1.4%

What? 1.4% Urdu but no Doric?!? Immigration certainly is different than it was two hundred years ago, isn't it? It makes for interesting neighbourhoods and great cultural experiences. The selection of food experiences, even within our short walk, was wonderful unless you had a hankering for a buttery rowie, in which case you're royally fuskered.