Author: Joey deVilla

Yipee!

I got my hair cut this afternoon, and they did a nice job. There was something odd, though.

When the stylist was finished with my hair, she took a look at me and asked “I’d like to trim your eyebrows. Would you like me to trim your eyebrows?”

My reply: “No way! I’m going for the ‘Asian Scorsese’ look!”

(Or maybe the Asian “Roger Sterling” look.)

The guy who shot this footage and provided the whiny, “I’m telling” voice-over reminds me of this H.L. Mencken definition:

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

To further drive home the point that he’s a dick, he shot a vertical video. Is there no end to this man’s faults?

Photo found at AcidCow.com.

There’s some interesting scaffolding outside the Gladstone Hotel’s Art Bar.

Things like this are why I tend to bike whenever possible, even in the winter (it doesn’t snow too much here, and much of the winter season is quite bikeable with the right jacket). In addition to being cheap, about as quick as public transit, and flab-fighting, it also lets me get a closer look at things I might otherwise miss.

Some quick Googling revealed what it was all about: it’s promoting this weekend’s Grow Op art-and-ideas exhibition, which is described as follows:

The Gladstone Hotel is pleased to announce the inaugural year of Gladstone Grow Op: Exploring landscape and place, a four-day event to celebrate innovative ideas and conceptual responses to landscape and place across a broad range of creative practices. Grow Op 2013 will facilitate a cross-disciplinary forum for landscape, garden design, art and place making within the vibrant setting of Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood.

Grow Op will explore new territories and uncover new ways of expression and meaning through projects that represent a wide range of approaches from the prosaic to the poetic, the elemental to the ephemeral.

Last night, I attended 2013’s first After Work Drinks Toronto party, a regular gathering of Accordion City’s downtown working folks for food, drink, and most important of all, getting-to-know-you-conversations. It took place on King West at Fynn’s of Temple Bar and featured some tasty strawberry-basil mojitos and killer fruit-infused beer from Innis and Gunn (I’m pretty fond of the ginger). They also had a couple of guys onstage doing the guitar-and-cover tunes thing who invited me to join them for Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, which worked out so well that they brought me back onstage for their subsequent set. Jon Gauthier and Anne Mackenzie caught bits and pieces of me with the six-second-repeating-loop-video app Vine, and I’ve included their videos below.

Among the numbers I got to play with the guys, who were incredibly cool and accommodating, were:

• Don’t Look Back in Anger by Oasis
• Moondance by Van Morrison
• Night Moves by Bob Seger — were these guys even alive when this song came out? I was nine.
• House of the Rising Sun – traditional, but I believe we’re all thinking of the version by The Animals
• Blister in the Sun by Violent Femmes

It was good fun, and it was easy. While I’d never played Moondance, Night Moves or Don’t Look Back in Anger before, I knew the tunes and only had to be told what key they were playing in. They even let me have a solo on most of the numbers; the one I’m most proud of was the one where I duplicated the line from Don’t Look Back in Anger. I probably should add some Brothers Gallagher to the repertoire!

I had a great time — thanks to Amanda Blake and crew for putting the event together. I’m also looking forward to seeing the photos Casey Palmer shot at the event.

While covering yesterday’s press conference on the arrest of the suspects involved in the VIA Rail terror plot, FOX News’ Shepard Smith found the whole thing lacking in that FOX-y oh-god-the-ferriners-are-coming oomph and a bit too heavy on a language he can’t understand:

“Let’s get the details, in English and in French, it’s how they roll, they are still saying ‘hello’ over there and they are going to say ‘hello’ for a long time,” said Smith, as the RCMP spokesperson spoke in French. “God love Canada, but they’re not great at the television. I don’t know what else to say about it.”

God love FOX News, but they’re not great at the journalism.

In Case You’re Wondering…

The title for this post comes from the episode of The Tick titled That Mustache Feeling: