Author: Joey deVilla

Identity theft is the new fashionable white-collar crime.

The latest victim in my circle of friends is fellow cool Filipino blogger Rannie Turingan, who runs the Photojunkie weblog and is the heart and soul of the GTABloggers (Greater Toronto Area Bloggers) group.

Rannie’s a very cool guy who takes amazing photos, and his weblog is one of the best-known photography blogs out there (it got mentioned in a story in today’s edition of the New York Times). He’s so cool that someone decided to pose as him on the community web site AsianAvenue, stealing not only his identity, but his photos and writing. Rannie’s skill with both cameras and words got this impostor named as AsianAvenue’s member of the week.

He wouldn’t have found out about it, if not for another cool Filipino blogger and friend of ours, Jeremy “Jeremiah Newbie” Cruz, who discovered the identity thief as a result of perusing his referrer logs.

Once again, an eagle-eyed blogger with a little tech-fu saves the day!

Ananova reports the latest news in Michael Jackson’s descent into madness:

Michael Jackson has burst into the office of his local Congressman wearing a Spiderman mask – to complain about the lack of fast-food restaurants near his Neverland ranch.

The star wore the superhero’s disguise when he made an unannounced visit to US Representative Elton Gallegly in Solvang, California.

He asked the politician’s deputy, Steve Lavagnino: “How come Solvang doesn’t have any fast-food restaurants?”

After Jackson was told the town’s only eaterie was a Subway sandwich shop, the disappointed singer said he loved food from the Taco Bell chain.

Excellent. More ammunition with which to taunt my Taco Bell-addicted brother-in-law!

Solvang is short on fast food restaurants because its residents and powers that be understand what they would do to the town’s “Little Denmark” character. Surely someone’s tried to explain this to Michael. Maybe someone should send him a copy of Fast Food Nation.

Last night, I was walking home from my friend Kevin’s house after a nice dinner. Kevin lives in a neighbourhood adjacent to Accordion City’s High Park, a semi-suburban area that’s a ten- or fifteen-minute subway ride away from the downtown core.

The rain was coming down so hard that I didn’t notice the car creeping along the road beside me. Its occupants rolled the passenger-side window down, revealing two women wearing sweatshirts and baseball caps (and the baseball caps were on backwards, no less). They had this look that said “potential Jerry Springer audience members”. Hell, maybe even “potential Jerry Springer guests“.

“Hey,” the driver said in a stage-whisper-like voice. It sounded as if she had laryngitis. Her friend in the passenger seat opted to stay mute. “Do you know where the nearest strip bar is? The nearest female strip bar?”

“You’re in the wrong neighbourhood. The nearest one is probably House of Lancaster [warning: link not safe for work!], on Bloor, just east of Landsdowne. It’s a five minute drive.”

(I surprised myself with how quickly I could rattle off that answer. Really, I’m not much of a strip club goer. It’s rather like being a starving famine victim, going to a theatre where they hold cake tantalizingly close to your face, and then they kick you out at the end of the night without giving you a bite to eat.)

“How ’bout just plain old bars?” she rasped.

“There’s at least four right by the end of this street, when you hit Bloor,” I answered.

“Too hoity-toity,” she said. Hardly true. The bars on the street were neighbourhood pubs that showed the hockey game on TV, not yuppie wine bars full of Armani suits.

I’m being asked for directions to bars by Eminem’s mom, I thought.

“Go to Bloor around Landsdowne,” I said, trying to be helpful, “the bars there are down, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

“Thanks,” she croaked. She put her Chevette in gear and sped off towards a less Pottery Barn, more 8 Mile neighbourhood.

Central Park has its sesquicentennial anniversary this year, and it’s covered in this New York Times article, A Garden for All as Private Eden.

In the film The Cruise, a documentary about Tim “Speed” Levitch and his oddball tours of New York, Levitch says it was the intention of the park’s builders to build a place for relaxed leisure and romance. He points to people playing sports in the park and says that they’re not being historically accurate; he then points to a kissing couple and says that they are.

In twenty-odd years of travelling to New York, I can vouch for my historical authenticity: I’ve gone to the park pretty much only to make out. Okay, I like watching the polar bears in the zoo too. But seeing the bears is always a prelude to making out.

Actually, it’s not. It’s a Reuters photo of a protester at a May Day anti-war protest in London. It’s just that the picture is so perfect, from the tower and riot police in the background to the priceless expression on the punker’s face.

(I notice that punk fashion has remained relatively unchanged. This guy wouldn’t look out of place on the Queen Street West of today or 1983. I wonder if he listens to the old stuff too.)

Hey — isn’t the gesture the “V” sign in the UK, and not the middle finger?

I’m taking my 18-year old neighbour Hector to his driving license exam this afternoon. He’ll be using my Honda CR-V for the test, which is the standard battery of driving exercises performed while the examiner takes notes in the passenger seat. Hector’s a pretty decent driver and if he simply remembers to fight that younger man’s urge to lean heavily on the accelerator, he should do just fine.

Good luck, Hector!

Every now and again, I get calls on my cell phone from someone trying to reach Downtown Legal Services. It turns out that their phone number is differs from mine by one digit, and that digit is easy to misdial.

Lately, it’s been getting worse and I’ve just discovered why: a typo on a web page says that you can book appointments by calling my cell number. Most of the calls are just annoying, a couple are interesting, and one I got barely five minutes ago was hilarious:

Caller: Hey man, I gotta big problem and I was told to call you guys.

Me: Problem? Is this about software development?

Caller: No man, this is about charges against me.

Me: Hang on, this isn’t —

Caller: You see, I just got charged with theft under $1000 and dangerous operation…

Me: Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Stop right there. Don’t say anything more. This isn’t legal services.

Caller: It’s not?

Me: This is a private cell phone number.

Caller: And…you’re not a lawyer?

Me: No, so you shouldn’t be telling me about…um, whatever it is you did. There’s a typo on the Web site. Call Directory Assistance for the right number.

Caller: Oh shit.

Me: It’s okay. I don’t know your name, and I’ll wipe your number off my call display. And hey, it was under a thousand dollars.

Caller: Thanks, man! You rock!