Author: Joey deVilla

Photo by the National Post, with captions by Yours Truly.

Take a look at the photo above. Pictured on the right is Accordion City’s Peter Griffin-esque mayor Rob Ford at the press conference in which he said — a full week after the “crack video” story broke — that “I do not use crack cocaine nor am I an addict of crack cocaine”. In the middle is his protective older brother, Doug Ford, city councillor and co-star of a talk radio show in which they portray themselves as “everyman” types to the gullible sort that take talk radio seriously. Standing in the doorway, perhaps looking to the heavens for guidance, is Mayor Ford’s then-press secretary George Christopoulos. He’s now former press secretary George Christopoulos, because along with deputy communications officer Isaac Ransom, he quit yesterday. The CBC reports that the two left “on principle”.

If you’ve ever worked in a toxic workplace, you’ve seen this departure pattern before.

All this follows the Thursday firing of the Mayor’s chief of staff Mark Towhey. No official statement has been released to explain the firing, but reports say that it’s because Towhey suggested that the mayor “go away and get help”.

Other reports says that the firing was over football.

The Mayor has ducked out — sometimes during city council meetings, and even once during the trial in which he was being sued for libel — to do what he seems to really love: coach the Don Bosco Eagles, a high school football team. He’s shared the love with his staff, some of whom have been “voluntold” to help out with his football duties, as well as with Toronto commuters, after they were left stranded in the rain while a public transit bus was commandeered to whisk the football team away before a fight broke out with an opposing team. He’s even been brought to trial over a conflict of interest over this football team.

Unfortunately for Ford, the Toronto District Catholic School Board, who oversee the city’s various Catholic schools including that of my alma mater, chose to fire him last week. Ford’s various antics, including referring to the school’s neighbourhood as “crime-ridden” and some of the students as “gang bangers”, didn’t please the board, so they jettisoned him before he could do any further damage, phrasing it nicely in an official statement as “”This decision is based on what is best for our students, our school and the Don Bosco community.” Of all the things that have happened over the past few days, this one is likely the one that stung Ford the most.

A report in the Toronto Sun — home of Ford cheerleader Sue-Ann Levy — says that the firing was over a goodbye party that Ford planned to throw for the football team after his firing and that he was using his staff to put it together. The report says that Towhey suggested the party was a bad idea.

But worry not, football and Ford fans — there’s still a little football in the Mayor’s life. He recently hired Xhejsi “JC” Hasko, former Don Bosco Eagles football player and one of his old assistant coaches, to as a special assistant to the Mayor’s office.

In the meantime, the Rob Ford “Crackstarter” campaign — Gawker’s fund-raiser to collect $200,000 to buy the “crack video” from the dealers who claim to have it — has reached its target.

I have argued that the campaign is a bad idea, but the free market has spoken. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of giving money to people who thrive on misery and produce violence as a byproduct, as well as the “chequebook journalism” that my friend Ethan Zuckerman suggests this is. Enough people feel strongly enough to have donated enough money to make it a success — or a would-be success, as the people who purport to be in possession of the video have not responded to Gawker’s attempt to reach them again.

I think that journalist, friend and fellow accordionist Ivor Tossell hit the nail oh-so-squarely on the head when he wrote:

Years hence, we’ll cringe to remember that, for a few days, a cross-border scheme to funnel $200,000 in crowdfunded money to drug dealers was widely viewed as Toronto’s last, best shot at political accountability.

In the media brouhaha over Rob Ford is a non-story about his brother Doug. The Globe and Mail did an expose on Doug’s alleged days as a weed dealer back in the 1980s, citing unnamed sources. As much as I disagree with the Fords on any number of their policies (I also agree with a few), any stint he may have had selling marijuana 30 years ago is as germane to the issue of Rob Ford’s fitness for duty as mayor as his sister’s alleged flirtation with white supremacist groups (which was likely a misguided form of rebellion against her parents) or his former brother-in-law’s vicious knife attack that blinded a woman in one eye.

At worst, they tell the story of a family beseiged by a run of bad luck or a tendency to make bad life choices, but they have nothing at all to do with the way Rob Ford runs the city.

Image from The Bupner Report.

In the meantime, the federal government is probably thanking its lucky stars that Ford’s follies are providing excellent cover for weightier stuff, such as Senator (a nice word for “person who gets to make laws, despite being unelected”) Mike Duffy inappropriately claiming $90,000 in expenses, and then being written a personal cheque by the Prime Minister’s Prime Minister’s chief of staff to cover those costs.

Here’s one Queen Street restaurateur with a low opinion of the Mayor’s family (and the reasons why):

Found via Reddit.

Whether you’re part of Ford Nation or want to partake in Ford Defenestration, we can all agree that he’s a late night comedy gold mine!

“Rob Ford” appeared on Jimmy Kimmel to dismiss the allegations that there is a video showing him smoking crack with drug dealers. The guy playing Ford is a close-enough-for-sketch-comedy likeness of our mayor, but doesn’t sound much like him. Contrary to the stereotype, we don’t end every sentence with “eh?”.

I rather liked the “vertical video syndrome” they used in the first video clip they showed. This, unfortunately, is how a lot of people shoot videos on their phones.

The “other clips that have surfaced” that Kimmel showed were amusing:

And hey, it isn’t a Canadian party until a mosse waving the flag shows up!

Here’s the segment. Enjoy!

The Rob Ford “Crack Video” story made its way to The Daily Show, and wow, did they have fun with it:

Here’s a challenge from the “find a writer / be found as a writer” site Writer.ly:

That’s easy:

Taking up the accordion changed everything.

Also:

Nearly dying changed everything again.

Mention the ’60s rock band The Doors, and the only member most people will be able to name is this guy:

The Lizard King can keep his fans. The member of The Doors whom I admired wasn’t the front man, but the versatile keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, who passed away yesterday:

As The Doors’ keyboardist, Ray took up double duty, playing a Vox Continental organ (many people mistakenly thought it was a Farfisa) with his right hand, and the band’s basslines on a Fender Rhodes piano or Fender Rhodes bass keyboard. With both hands full and each one playing very different lines, Ray defined both the Doors’ instrumentation and the sound we now know as “psychedelic organ rock”.

I must confess that I steal a lot of my keyboard playing tricks from Ray’s right hand: the one-two rocking between single note and full chords, the I-IV-VII ostinato sequence that you’ll hear in Riders on the Storm, the glissandos and the willingness to throw the wrong chord in the right place by using the ol’ fist. I have tried — and failed — several times to emulate his amazing left hand, with which he played those Doors-y basslines. I’m still working on it.

Here are The Doors playing Light My Fire during their 1968 European tour. In this version, Ray throws in a little Latin jazz comping during his solo:

If Light My Fire is the definitive psychedelic organ tune, Riders on the Storm sets the bar for Rhodes piano. I’ve listened to this a zillion times driving down the 401 between Toronto and Montreal:

This one, as people from the 1960s say, blew my mind: it’s a video of the recording session for “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Craigslist, a Doors-themed song for which he invited Ray to play keyboards. Al posted it in Ray’s memory, and it’s always great to see the master at work:

Ray went on to become a music producer for a number of acts including Echo and the Bunnymen and legendary L.A. punk rock band X. Here’s X’s album Los Angeles:

On the Live From Daryl’s House video series, Ray and Doors guitarist performed some of their numbers, including People are Strange:

I’ll close with this video, in which Ray’s just being his affable self — he’s always great in interviews — talking about how The Doors got together, how he creates his sounds, how they wrote music, and how Light My Fire came together, all the while radiating with his love for playing music:

Requiescat in pace, Ray, and from one keyboard player to another, thanks for all the inspiration.

By now you’re probably aware of the reports of the existence of a video that Toronto’s Peter Griffin-esque mayor, Rob Ford, smoking crack with two dealers. Gawker made the initial report and described the video, which was quickly followed up by a more in-depth description by the Toronto Star.

It has been reported that the dealers in possession of the video want at least $100,000 for the video and that they want to use the money to move to Calgary. Perhaps they’ve heard of Calgary’s infamous late-night spot for drug- and other criminal-related activity, Crack Mac’s, or perhaps they just like the fact that Calgary has a much better mayor, who most likely doesn’t smoke crack.

Suddenly the strange accusation by former mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson — who alleges that Ford made a pass at her and groped her derriere at a fund-raiser back in March, and made a seat-of-the-pants diagnosis that he might have been on cocaine — doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. So does a comment I remember from Toronto Mike’s blog, in which a reader going by the nom de plume of Rinse claims to know someone whose mother smokes rock with His Worship (and yes, that is the proper honorific for the Mayor of Toronto, even if it is Rob Ford). Mike explains what he knows about this comment in a recent post.

Gawker has started a fund-raising campaign — a “Crackstarter” — to raise $200,000 to purchase the video, after which they’ll post it online and we’ll all finally see what’s in the video. Perhaps it’s the Victoria Day weekend, but at the current rate, it may not make its goal by the end of the ten-day period that was set. Most successful campaigns of this style follow the “80 – 20” rule, making around 80% of the goal within the first 20% of the time allotted. After that, interest fades away.

As of the time of this writing, the Crackstarter campaign has made less than half of the target amount of money. That bodes ill for the campaign, but that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s manifestly the opposite.

The problem with the Crackstarter campaign is that it’s rewarding some of the worst people in Toronto. Crack dealers are the end-of-line customers of the Gun Pipeline, the way by which most guns used in crimes end up here. Guns purchased legally in the U.S. are brought illegally to Canada by “mules”, where they become part of a pool of guns that are rented out or shared, Zipcar-style, to thugs who seem to be living the Grand Theft Auto lifestyle, right down to the terrible life choices that characters in those videogames always make. If the Crackstarter raises the money to get the video, the odds are pretty good that some of that money will eventually feed the Gun Pipeline or that shared armory, which in turn will create our next gun crime victims — either ones who are lucky to be alive, such as Connor Stevenson, or less fortunate ones like Jane Creba or the Danzig Street shooting victims.

Rosalind Robertson, in her Tumblr The DIY Coutourier, makes an excellent point in a post titled Fuck You, Gawker:

Let me talk to you a second about drugs, criminality, poverty, gangs and guns. I was a reporter for years – and they’re all related. One big criminal family. The gangs, the guns – it all comes from drugs.

Gawker wants to write these criminals a cheque for more money than most of us can imagine having access to in our lifetime. And not a cheque of their money – of *yours*.

All you who bitch about taxes, who need public health care, who are on a waitlist to see a doctor, who work day in and day out, who work hard in crap jobs that don’t pay well – you, joe citizen, who have never broken a law in your life – they’re asking YOU to give this huge amount of money to a group of people who are a violent plague on my city, who risk the lives of both addicts and innocent bystanders on a regular basis.

…

Rob Ford may or may not have smoked crack. There is a video in the hands of the people who are involved in ripping my city apart. And instead of turning it over, like good law abiding citizens, they want TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS.

She’s right. Her reasons are the same reasons why I haven’t chipped in a dime to the Crackstarter. I don’t like who the money will benefit and don’t want to end up funding the next shootout or the death of an innocent bystander.

Hey, I’m all for getting to the truth of the story, and I believe that Rob Ford is a blight that needs to be removed from City Hall ASAP. But there’s a right way to do so, and funding merchants for whom collateral deaths is just a part of business isn’t it.

If you’ve contributed to the Crackstarter, please consider giving at least the same amount of money — or even more — to a good, local, community-building cause.