Take Off! My Life and Times in Toronto
My life and work in Toronto, Canada.
My life and work in Toronto, Canada.
This from Salon:
William Hung butchered "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch of Sunday's matchup between the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers, much to the delight of 22,225 at SkyDome.The American Idol reject best known for his hyperactive, tone-deaf rendition of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs," shrugged off a brief smattering of boos and belted out the baseball classic off-key while fans egged him on. Some even joined in.
Hung's presence brought a gaggle of media usually indifferent to baseball to the game, including staff from Rolling Stone magazine. A team official said more media credentials were issued Sunday than on opening day.
The Blue Jays initially tried to bring Hung in opening day, but that conflicted with the release of his debut album, "Inspiration," which is nearing 100,000 copies sold.
"I still am surprised," Hung said before the game. "I can't believe it."
The record deal is certainly testing the limits on the Hong Kong native's 15 minutes of fame. A civil engineering student at the University of California, he's spending most of his time these days touring to promote the album.
This guy has taken a second mortgage out on his 15 minutes of fame, first with his horrendeous version of "She Bangs" on one of the retread "Gong Show" like reality TV shows. Now he's bringing life back to Baseball. What a world.
A two alarm fire broke out at the Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto late last night, forcing hotel guests out into the street from 11pm until 1:30am. The fire was started by workers who accidentally ignited lint in the duct system, which filled the bottom three floors with smoke.
 | Fantagraphics Books is publishing Vaughn Bode's son's The Lizard of Oz according to The New York Times this month. This should be quite an accomplishment. Fans of Bode's father's underground comix will greatly appreciate the work while the rest of you will scratch your heads in bewilderment.
Mark Bode (pronounced BO-dee), also a cartoonist, recently completed his father's interrupted work "The Lizard of Oz," a raunchy departure on the "Wizard of Oz" that features the older Bode's premier creation, Cheech Wizard. Fantagraphics Books of Seattle will publish the book next month.I look forward to this as much as the next Niven Ringworld novel which hits the stores Tuesday. No, really! |
I'm coming back to Dallas this Thursday (same flight time, same flight channel), which happens to be Alanna's 13th birthday.
That's right, I now have a teenager. What's that annoying phrase I use? Oh yeah ...
My life, as I knew it, is over (again!)
But enough about that. Alanna and I will be at Project: A-Kon 15 on Friday and Saturday. She's staying with the Amaya's at the hotel on Friday night, while Dad gets to ride DART back to Plano at night. Oh boy.
Sunday I take the whole family to the aeropuerto and we fly to Toronto, eh. Thus begins the two week trip to CA and NY ...
When I finished fiddling around Barbara's computer, I decided to drive home through the back roads in the hope of seeing scenery that I'd like to photograph.
I went up Route 79 to Ithaca, and then took Route 89 north along the largest Finger Lake (Cayuga), through towns like Ovid, Romulus, and Taughannock Falls State Park, which is really nice. The route ended up taking me through Seneca Falls, the birthplace of the Woman's Movement (why here? It's in the freaking wilderness!). I could see taking a day repeating the trip but stopping at Ithaca, the lake park, and visiting the Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. We could head back to Whitney Point via the Thruway and Syracuse.
After I finished the chores in Buffalo, I started back to Canada on Saturday afternoon. I got as far as the Grand Island toll bridge, took a look at the line, and decided to head to Barbara's afterall. It took no longer to drive to her place than it would have to claw my way back to Canada ...
I arrived around 6p, bearing a new Wireless G router. Around 8p, she dragged me off the computer and we went to dinner (and to Kohl's so I'd have something to wear today). I eventually got the router working, so she can share her DSL connection, despite the "tech support" of her ISP. Has anyone heard of the PPoA protocol? I think they were making it up as we went along ...
Today I embarked on a home repair mission. I attacked the guest bedroom with gusto, finishing the stuff that has been almost there for some time. I put cover plates on the wall sockets, installed a door knob on the bathroom (I had to carve the door a bit to get the hardware to line up), reworked the ceiling fan/lamp, reassembled the trim and handles on the casement windows, and vacuumed the floor to get the wood shavings up.
Then I went downstairs and repaired the shower temperature control.
I finished with cleaning up the wiring in the office, and fixing the file cabinet door that was jammed. I really wanted to sort out the guest room and the office before Anne and the kids arrived ... this way Alanna can use our laptop without disturbing Barbara's PC, and the guest room will be fully functional for Anne.
Fixing up around the house reminded me that I don't do this at my own home very often and I found (to my horror) that I missed doing it!
I took lots of photos around Whitney Point and Barbara's home, which I'll post tomorrow when I get time.
I had to go to Buffalo this weekend to do some shopping. I needed to replace my Golf's tires (they had an average of 2/32nds tread left and were getting pretty slippery on the wet roads), and I wanted to get a wireless NAT router for Anne's mom, Barbara, so her DSL connection can be shared. I shopped around Toronto fo r these items, but I couldn't get them financed at little or no interest for several months in Canada (my Best Buy and NTB cards don't work here), so I had to drive to the U.S.
This was the first full sunny weekend in Toronto since I've arrived (the weekend with Brian was sunny on Sunday), and I spent it in NY. Oh well. The drive was easy and quite familiar now. The line of U.S. cars seeking asylum, er, vacation in Canada at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo was astonishing. By contrast, I had a three car wait.
The guys at the tire shop did a so-so job on my car ... apparently VW uses stick-on weights that these guys couldn't handle very well. But the got the tires on and reasonably balanced, so I'm much better off than before (and Sears financed the deal for six months at 2.9%). By comparison, Best Buy was easy.
Got a scare yesterday. A manager said something that implied my contract was running out at the end of May, and not later as I had been assuming. It took about half a day to get it all sorted out, but I'm good until at least 6-30-2004, and probably much longer. I didn't need to be thinking about how to pull out of here and yet still have Anne and the kids up for vacation in the middle of June!
Ok, sometimes you stumble across a Canadian Fact that's just ... too bizarre.
This is the Institute of Household Science across the street from the Royal Ontario Museum. It turns out that it's part of the University of Toronto, but it's so conspicuously placed near a famous museum ... talk amongst yourselves!
Today Brian and I went to the Royal Ontario Museum, and visited the Eternal Egypt exhibit.
The exhibit was closed for personal cameras, so I don't have any shots of it. It is extensive, and composed of items from the British Museum that were taken from Egypt during the end of the British Empire and which are now highly contested objects (Egypt wants them back). Dating from 3000 BCE to the Roman era, the exhibit's items were truely amazing in their form and fabrication.
Ok, the truth is unless you're seriously into Egyptology, it was kind of dull. The exhibit was professionally done, and I learn a lot, but kids will be bored out of their minds here.
On the other hand, they do have beavers and other things Canadian.
And other things British.
The main hall has exhibit boxes that give you an idea of what exhibits are on each floor.
Outside the main building is a great view of downtown, and the CN Tower, somewhere kid's rather have a lot more fun.
Brian had never been to the Falls, so after we found Tesla, we visited the Horseshoe Falls from the American side (the same place that Barbara and I were a month earlier).
The lower (and closer) walkway was open, unlike earlier when Barbara and I visited, so Brian and I went down to get a better look.
Most of the time, I never get a photo of myself at these places. I asked Brian to take photos of me ... I'm "posing" in this one as a harried tourist photographer. Am I acting, or is it natural?
This time the Maid of the Mist was running.
Oh yeah ... we went to Love Canal.
Yeah. We drove right over it, apparently. I didn't remember where it was ... I looked it up one time. We drove to the end of the Moses Parkway, which passes over the "canal". I have wanted to "do the canal" while I'm up here, and Brian seemed so hep to the idea ;-).
Actually, he was pretty up on the EPA and SuperFund sites. Since this is SuperFund site #1, it seemed only fair game. At one point we passed a big green field with a huge cyclone fence around it. Brian declared it the most likely candidate ... and he was right. When we got back to the RI, I compared our GPS track with the map site and voila, we went right over it and then back past it.
I can check that one off my list of "things to do when the wife isn't around".
I'm just kidding! -- Fericito
Before I left this morning, I was AIM chatting with Bosney. He casually asked me if I was going to see the Telsa statue on Goat Island, NY (at the Falls). I hadn't heard of any Tesla statue, so I immediately looked it up on Google. To my horror, I discovered that all three times I've been to the American falls, I missed it!
So, on the drive from Waterloo to Niagara Falls, I mentioned it to Brian. He agreed we had to cross into the U.S. and see this monument to Ultor's prophet.
The government of Yugoslavia (yes, Tesla was a Serb) gave the U.S. this statue in honor of his invention of essentially all the components of alternating current generation, transmission and usage (e.g. motors). Why was it here, on Goat Island? Because this was the home of Niagara-Mohawk, the first hydro-electric power generation facility in the United States, if not the world.
After much undignified behavior, I was able to climb to the statue's base and pose for this shot. The statue shows signs of many a tourists' visit to his lap (I want a shot of Leo and Alanna in his lap now).
Remember, to EEs this statue is like Jim Morrison's grave to groupies. "Nay-nu, nay-nu!"
How did I miss it three times in a row? Because from the parking lot, you see this.
After leaving Niagara-on-the-Falls on a secret mission (codename: Anne), we stopped at the Sir Isaac Brock Memorial.
The centerpiece of the memorial park is a monument to Sir Brock, who lead the initial defense in the Battle for Queenston Heights in 1812, when American forces crossed the Niagara River and took possession of Queenston Heights.
Leading the American contingent was none other than the man who founded my college, Stephen van Rensselaer (Note: the Ontario plaque misspells Rensselaer's name!). When we found this plaque at the base of the memorial, we were both wearing RPI hats and I had my best RPI shirt on. Talk about wearing the wrong dress to the party.
That's when Brian got the brilliant idea of walking up the inside of the memorial's column. It contains a spiral stair case that slowly gets smaller and smaller as one ascends.
By the half-way point, we were both feeling very, very old. Brian was huffing, and I was clearly enjoying all the benefits of not working out daily like I had planned.
The top of the memorial contained a small room with portholes to look out of, and a small rail and a lamp. It was like a prison lighthouse. We were both so winded, we could barely do anything but wonder how to get down.
Still, the view was spectacular.
Brian and I spotted this on the highway to Niagara ...
I think it speaks for itself. Kudos to Brian for taking the photo at the last second, just before I cut off an SUV at 120 KPH.
For lunch, Brian and I stopped at the Black Badger in Cambridge, ON. It was a fairly authentic pub, with "Bangers and Mash" and "Liver and Onions" on the menu, World Cup Soccer on the telly, and the usual grubby look-and-feel of a real Cambridge, UK pub. But mostly, the name caught my eye.
Click here for more badger madness.
The company that runs The Breeze ferry between Toronto and Rochester called Anne today and told her that they won't be running before June 19th, which pretty much wrecks my plans to ride it with the family to Rochester. This means I have to drive them all to Whitney Point on the 2nd weekend, instead of meeting Barbara on Tuesday. It also means that Barbara probably cannot ride it back from Toronto on the last Sunday the family is in town.
Feh!
 | Saturday and Sunday I'm hosting Professor Brian Borchers in Toronto at the exclusive Residence Inn Markham, Ontario ;-}. I'll drive out Saturday morning to Waterloo and gather him up. We're likely to go down to Niagara Falls during the afternoon, and then Toronto in the evening. I'll try out one of the roll out beds at the RI Saturday night as Brian will stay over with me. I'll take him to Pearson Airport on Sunday, saving both of us a round trip back to Waterloo. |
Apparently Brian is trying to "Star" the "Circle", an old mathematician's occult practice in this exclusive photo. :-P
These photos of Leon Wassall, my parents, and his two grand kids were taken in June, 1964. I think these were taken at our home in Dallas on Buchanan Dr., near Ferguson Rd. and LBJ. The cat in the foreground is Natasha Ling Lee, according to Ray.
Some of you gave money to me just before I left for the Great White North to buy a slide scanner so I could scan some 3,000 family slides. The work is tedious, slow and exacting (around twenty minutes per slide). Here is a "gem" from some of the earliest slides, without a date but labeled "Randy and Jinx before wedding" which would place it in 1960, I believe.
More to come. [NOTE: the scanner can eliminate scratches but large region blemishes it cannot clean up mechanically, hence the gunk in the sky in this slide]
I took the kids to the newer (but no longer the newest) Snuffer's Restaurant for lunch with the Schmalrized's. Kim arrived first and then Charles showed up with Claire.
Today I braved a long bus ride, band concert and my own impending doom to spend 10 hours trudging through Six Flags Over Texas with my daughter.
Actually, I wanted to go ... I love the Park.
We had to get up at 5:45am to make the 6:30am roll call for the buses. I had to ride on a different bus than Alanna, which upset her and horrified me -- the bus I was on could quaintly be called the "boy bus of terror". As I climbed on board, two 8th graders were beating each other heartily. The father "in charge" was the dad of one of them. Memories of bullies and their dads flashed before my eyes. This same dad was on his cell phone almost the entire day ... if he couldn't leave work behind why did he volunteer?
Before the park the Dowell MS Wind Ensemble performed at a UIL event. They played three pieces and were the first to compete. As we left for Six Flags, one of the parents was carting out two large trophies, which Alanna took to mean that her band won the competition -- if so, that was the fastest competition I've ever seen. A group photo was taken by a photography firm that used all digital SLRs so I talked shop while the photos were taken.
Did I forget to mention how proud I am that she's in Band?
The Park ... ah, the Park. It was a beautiful day, mild (low 80's, a miracle in May) with some clouds but no precipitation. I signed up to be the contact parent from 1-2p (figuring I'd be eating some kind of lunch then, which is what I did). Alanna's friend Kelsey's dad was going to escort her and her friends around the park, but it turned out that the kids were let loose. I tagged along with Alanna's group, which meant they were the only escorted group.
We rode Titan, the log ride, Mr. Freeze, Batman, the Shockwave, Yosemite Sam's Mine and the Vibora. For being at the park as long as we were that's not all that amazing a list. But we were all dragging by the afternoon (none more so than I), so a lot of time was spent in an arcade, which normally I wouldn't step foot into. Alanna even found a DDR machine but she was so tired she couldn't just blow it away like she normally does.
The bus ride back was more fun as I rode with Alanna, but most of the kids collapsed in sleep for the first half of the ride, only to erupt from sleep to talk, scream and sing the whole rest of the way back.
I'm just glad I got to go with my kid on this oh so special right of passage for Texas kids -- their 7th grade band trip to Six Flags. Click here to see the photos I took of my trip in 1976.
  | I've booked passage on the Breeze, Lake Ontario's newest ferry, for June 15th. I'll join Anne and the kids for a ride across Lake Ontario to Rochester (from Toronto), spend the day in Rochester with them and Anne's mom Barbara, and then return to Toronto on the 7:30pm leg. Looking forward to this "minicruise" on Canada's inland sea, and to visiting Rochester and seeing the Eastman Museum. |
Today's The Globe and Mail has a story about four homicides this weekend in Toronto, two occuring down the street from the RI where I am staying (in Richmond Hill, Ontario). Apparently the shooting occurred a few hours after I got home from skating, so I was probably snoring as loudly as the gun shots rang out. The staff at the RI said that hundreds of locals were there when it happened, yet the police are having trouble getting witnesses to testify.
The article makes a remarkable assertion: that Texas is responsible for the guns!
The sharp rise in gun violence has prompted police to create a Guns and Gangs task force that is investigating why so many guns are turning up on the streets of Canada's largest city. Inspector Rick Gauthier, a task force member, told The Globe and Mail earlier this year that most of the guns used in crime are smuggled in from the United States, where they are easily available in states such as Ohio, Texas and Kentucky. After the firearms cross the border, Mr. Gauthier said, they are sold on the street. In some cases, gang members rent the guns out to friends for $100 per night.
You tell me I'm wrong. I think the old boy just kicks back and soaks up the sun in Toronto during the off-peak season. It's still cool enough here to keep him from getting heat stroke, and the Canadians are too polite to hassle him for autographs or early gifts. He just trims back the beard, a voila! a nice incognito appearance. We report, you decide.
For the record, Kris wears a toque and Mrs. K has gone in for the "street lady" look.
 | I'm coming home this weekend (May 6th - same Bat Time, same Bat Channel, Melanie!) on American Hairballs on Thursday afternoon. Should be in around 6pm; expect to be home by around 7pm. The image, btw, is an American Airlines billboard I see downtown all the time, that reminds me how I get home. |
One thing I love about Toronto is the large quantity of VW Golfs on the road. I was downtown this weekend and this scene of two Golfs caught my eye.
It's great being in a city in a country where VW Golf TDIs roam freely and without fear of being eaten by Hummers.
The arty photo I took this weekend is of the United Methodist Church, just off of Yonge Street (across from Henry's huge photo store). This somewhat rural looking block is surrounded by large buildings, giving the area a surreal look and feel. Nice to see some more pastoral views remaining in a very urban setting.
Well I'm delighted to report that I was able to skate almost the entire session. I was exhausted by the end, to the point where I almost could not stand up, but I comported myself rather well on the rink, and I didn't take a single fall.
I wore my loudest Hawaiian shirt, iPod, and my glow-laced Riedell speed boot skates. I had the bearings checked on my trucks and the repair guy on duty said they were fine, I just needed to use them (the last time I rolled in them was at RPI with Alanna in 2002) to open up the grease which had become a bit gummy. They worked fine once I got going. I listened to music on my iPod that would have made the kids there run shreiking from the building ... yes, ABBA and ELO. The hip hop that the rink DJ played on turntables was deafening, but (since almost all the signal is entirely below 120 Hz) didn't interfere with listening to music.
Needless to say, I was an odd sight to the teenagers there. And since when did teenage girls go to skating rinks barely clothed? Those of you who went to RPI will recognize this battle cry: Get the Net!
I had a blast and look forward to going back after I try out the rink closer to home in a couple of weeks.
One last bit of ribald humor. The logo painted on the wall (it's on the Rink's website -- look at the right side wall) is "Cooter". Somehow, that just seemed all too appropriate (and I don't mean as in "old coot").
One of my favorite lines from Moxy Fruvous' song My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors is about the streetcar driver who was too busy "reading the Toronto Sun" to look where he was going.
These street cars are just great. They can take out any Hummer (at last count, there are five of the automobile equivalent of Sasquatches on the road in town) but play nice when the little cars are around. Driving around them is an intimidating experience. Perhaps that's why Toronto drivers are so polite.
I made my way downtown today, and visited one of the larger shopping malls (ok, that's not 100% true. I was going to Henry's main store to get some Fuji Velvia slide film and the easiest place to park is Eaton). I took this series of photos inside:
At the north end of the Centre is a large mobile of Canada Geese. Quite spectacular. I was hoping they didn't move and do the other thing Canada geese are notorious for.
I drove past Le Select on the way out of Eaton Centre and took this little photo of my favorite bistro in Toronto in the daylight. The photo really doesn't do anything for the place ... you gotta go inside.