Author: Joey deVilla

First of all, to all my Jewish friends and relatives, Happy Chanukah! In honour of the eight-day holiday, here are a few Chanukah-related tidbits.

Pictured above is Matisyahu, the musician who mashes up his Orthodox Judaism with reggae, at his concert on Sunday, the first night of Chanukah. The Rastas – and hence reggae culture — borrows heavily from Judaism,  so it was only natural that someone would borrow in the opposite direction. There’s more in this New York Times story.

Photo from BlogTO.

See the frying pan in the photo above? They’re latkes, which are potato pancakes. The story of Chanukah involves lamp oil miraculously lasting much longer than it should have, so the holiday tradition is to eat fried food – and what’s better than fried potatoes?

While I was aware of competitive hot dog eating, I was unaware of competitive latke eating until I saw this link in BlogTO to a story about a citizen of Accordion City winning one. Bodybuilder “Furious” Pete Czerwinski won by eating 46 latkes – seven pounds in all – in 8 minutes at the National Potato Latke Eating Championship in Grove Lake, New York.

And finally, a gift idea: Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe, which I gave The Missus for Chanukah this year. My favourite bit so far is the comparison between Jewish and Goyish things, especially the last item:

Happy Chanukah!

For your enjoyment, here’s Master Thespian (and former schoolmate) Keanu Reeves showing his versatility through his 2.5 facial expressions, as seen in his many films:

Photo montage courtesy of Turbanhead via Miss Fipi Lele.
Click the montage to see it at full size.

Photo by Axel Bührmann.
Click the photo to see it on its Flickr page.

By now, you’ve probably read at least one article about how the credit crunch has affected people’s gift-buying this holiday season. The one that stuck in my head is Sorry, kids, Santa’s tightening his belt, which appeared in The Globe and Mail a couple of weeks ago.

Here are the opening paragraphs from the article:

Fat tears rolled down Logan Roberts’s face when his mom said Santa was cutting back on gifts this year.

The 10-year-old desperately wanted an iPod, his mother says, and he asked Santa to slip one under the tree to save his parents from buying one.

“He said, ‘Christmas is my only chance to ask Santa to buy it instead of you,’” says Mindy Roberts, a 40-year-old mother of three.

“My kids just think it’s the greatest because Santa gives [gifts] for free so that if they ask for them for Christmas, then it doesn’t impact me. It’s really very cute.”

I was under the impression that kids by the age of 10 had figured out the real story behind Santa Claus, either through their parents, via logic, their friends, accidentally stumbling into a hidden cache of presents or in a particular case that ended in a suspension, a teacher. I think this would be especially true in the age of the internet –  I’d wager that child safety content filters are focused on adult content and not searches for phrases like “Is Santa real?”.

“Warm welcome and friendly atmosphere?” I’d hate to see their idea of what “great service” is…

Photo by "DD TV".
Click the photo to see it on its Flickr page.

The houses on Gothic Avenue this morning.
Click the photo to see it at a larger size.

Yes, Accordion City is going to face two consecutive large snowstorms this weekend – the one that’s been happening all morning and another one on Sunday – but to call it “Snowmageddon” is the sort of thing that only a wuss who didn’t make the cut for Dalhousie University’s Quidditch Club would do.

It’s one thing for local TV news to use the term “Snowmageddon”, and I was quite surprised that the National Post – a paper whose origins are in the rugged Canadian West – would play along, but for Environment Canada to join in the hype game is pretty sad. They released a bulletin that contained the phrase “Could this be snow-mageddon?”

(Perhaps not as bad, but still annoying, was the innumerate statement made by an Environment Canada meterologist in this article about Wednesday’s, today’s and Sundays storms: “Things come in threes,” he said. Dude, if you wait long enough, things always come in threes.)

I’m with Torontoist on this one:

It looks like Environment Canada has come to its collective senses; the term (and explanation of its use) is missing from the current version of the statement. In other news, two storms are expected to bring some wind and snow—perhaps even a lot of snow—to Toronto and much of southern Ontario tomorrow and Sunday. You may have trouble driving, the TTC may be a little slow, and your neighbour probably won’t plough his walk. Snow-mageddon? Sounds more like plain old winter to us.

Besides, it looks like a Christmas card out there!

I know that parodies of Successories’ motivational posters are old hat, but the facial expressions on this one are priceless:

Poster courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.