Take Off! My Life and Times in Toronto
My life and work in Toronto, Canada.
My life and work in Toronto, Canada.
 | Tom called me tonite from the Boston concert in Austin, Texas. Now he's been to see the band twice and I haven't seen them even one time. Then again, I can still hear so maybe I'm not so disadvantaged. |
He said he'd pick me up a concert T-shirt, so if you see me wearing it, be sure to remind me I wasn't actually there. Because I'll insist I was, and that the "contact high" blurrred my memories.
On my way back to Toronto on Sunday, I stopped in Buffalo to attend a MoveOn sponsored event where we viewed the documentary Outfoxed, a scathing expose of Fox News. The host of the party, Jayne Harnisch, is a local activist and is delightfully gung-ho about re-defeating Bush this fall.
After we watched the documentary, we logged onto MoveOn's website and participated in an interactive bull session vis a vis the film.
Jayne is sitting at the keyboard and looking directly (with eyes closed) at the camera. I didn't get the names of the other guests ... but you can assume they won't be contributing to the GOP this fall.
Got this in an email from my Texas house rep:
In response to feedback from Texas drivers, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) will begin the installation of free wireless Internet access at all state rest stops and travel information centers by August 2004 to encourage drivers to take more frequent breaks. The Texas Transportation Commission (TTC) made this project a priority in 1999 by authorizing federal enhancement funds to restore the State’s aging rest areas and to fulfill TxDOT’s mission “to provide safe, effective and efficient movement of people and goods.”Once the program is fully implemented, anyone with wireless laptops or similar devices will be able to send e-mail or browse the Internet free of charge. Travelers without wireless equipment will be able to connect to the Internet at kiosks for a reasonable fee collected on site by the vendor.
This project is slated to supply all 84 state rest areas with wireless Internet service within five to seven years. More than 50 million people currently visit Texas’ highway safety rest areas annually
Texas will become the first state to host free rest area wireless hotspots as well as fee-based Internet access, at no cost to the State. TxDOT will review bids from a number of businesses this month and award a contract by the end of July to the most qualified single vendor. A vendor must provide service and equipment without cost to TxDOT and achieve its profit by kiosk fees paid by travelers without personal computers, who can utilize the Internet in 15- minute increments by swiping their credit cards.
The program is designed to improve highway safety by offering an incentive for tired drivers to take a break, thus reducing fatigue-related crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that 1,500 people die in fatigue-related crashes each year in the United States and 77,000 are injured.
This is the first piece of e-mail this man (Ken Paxton Tx. House Rep.-R (duh)) has sent me that didn't piss me off.
No, I'm not talking about Anne's mom!
The Granada Theater is being reborn as a music venue. Apparently it's been sold, which means that the guys who own Snuffer's have unloaded it, to the fellow who created CD World stores.
"It's going to be a complete music resort," Schoder wrote by e-mail later that day, "where everyone is about making our customers feel like they've come home." Schoder knows about resorts; he spent 12 years working in one before starting CD World. Whereas most downtown clubs coast by on bad attitude and beer tabs, Schoder wants to bring in the lessons of aesthetics and big comfort he learned in resorts and working at the Anatole hotel, where he handled guest services for five years."I feel there is a demographic that has been lost in the concert-going public, because they don't know what to expect when going to a concert," he continues. "You go and don't know what time the show starts; you don't know if there's going to be a seat for you, what the volume level is going to be. The food, if it exists, is hot dogs. There's no quality or care there. Let the music be the pleasant surprise, not the venue and the service and products offered."
Seating will be available for almost all shows (at a higher cost, natch). The venue will have three levels of sound, which will be indicated in the ad for each show: One Woofer (acoustic, coffee-shop level), Two Woofer (most rock bands) and Three Woofer ("Huge. Period."). Schoder has hired chef Billy Galyean, who worked at the Anatole and Beau Nash at Crescent Court, to create a menu of mostly easy, to-go food like pizza and tacos.
Ok, I found Major Thomas' gravesite in Troy's enormous Oakwood Cemetery. This time, instead of driving all over looking at individual gravestones, I went looking for the fence around the site. This proved to be a far better strategy.
Mike Jones tells me that Six Flags Over Texas was evacuated thanks to flash floods today! I'll wager the Roaring Rapids were ... well, you can finish the joke. Apparently all the rain during the week has swollen all the creeks that drain out of the park, so it was all but inevitable if it rained hard today (which it did).
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.
Check out this editorial in The Globe and Mail today. It's hilarious. Someone in San Antonio, TX accidentally cooked a revolver with Jiffy-pop results. Film at 11.
I'm missing Texas already. What's the emoticon for sarcasm?
Tooling around Richmond Hill tonite, I passed this joint and just had to stop and take a picture. Mind you, this place is 1400 miles from Texas. There sure as hell weren't any Texas license plates on the vee-hick-eels parked out front (except for mine). Before you ask, I did not doctor this photo.
Before I took this contract, I signed up to be an election clerk in my district in Collin County, for the Democratic Primary. The last Presidential election cycle, I walked into my local polling place (Glen Oaks Elementary), signed in, and went to vote in the primary. The Republican primary. It didn't occur to me that I couldn't vote in the Democratic because there was no Democratic polling place for my district, and that worse yet, I had inadvertantly registered myself a Republican. So this year, while I didn't get to volunteer directly, I did at least vote in the Democratic primary (and hopefully, I'll stop getting GOP literature and my close personal friends will stop teasing me about being a "closet Republican").
Tom White informed me (this evening) that thanks to Tom DeLay's ugly power grab in Texas, he had to vote in a residential garage down the street from his own home. Thanks to redistricting, he had no school or church polling place. It even made the local news in Austin. Tom says it was a nice, clean garage, but the idea that a Democrat had to convert their garage to a polling place thanks to this insidious coup is a sad moment in the U.S. and for democracy everywhere.
This is the first entry in my Ain't in Texas No More category. This category is for commentary about the contrasts between America and Canada, and especially Texas and Canada. Be warned, I'm going to be more political here than elsewhere in the blog. Some of you may be surprised by what I say ... others will just roll their eyes and say "oh that Steve!" ... again.
The TV show Sliders (for those of you who never saw it) was about a group of people from our time who "slide" across timelines into alternative versions of reality. They always ended up on an Earth of some kind. But it was different. Maybe the Cold War never happened. Or the Moon landing.
Well, I put it to you that Canada is like America where Ronald Reagan never got elected President and as a result, banished the liberals and the Metric System. The newspapers here are (except for The Sun) written by adults for adults. The TV news is cogent and not about the "if it bleeds, it leads" angle. And the scandals are about real scandals and not who is sleeping with whom. And all the road signs are Metric. It's too cool!