Category: Uncategorized

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but this ad with a faux date of 1965 (it’s actually brand new) makes me proud to be a rye and whiskey drinker (although I prefer Crown Royal to Canadian Club).

Click to see the ad at full size.

I thought I’d give a quick bloggy salute to Paul Raven, who died from a heart attack on October 20th in Switzerland.

Raven played with Killing Joke during their most successful period, contributing low notes to the albums Fire Dances, Brighter than a Thousand Suns and Night Time, on which the classic 80’s alt-rock/goth anthem Love Like Blood appears. I remember when my buddy George heard this tune at a Toronto dance club for the first time; he was so taken with it that he bought Night Time the very next day. Here’s the video:

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Here’s another track from Night Time: Eighties. Many rock pundits believe that Nirvana borrowed its guitar riff and incorporated it into their song, Come as You Are:

Can’t see the video? Click here.

I wore out two Night Time cassettes in the ’80s and finally bought the CD. It’s that good.

Raven later joined Prong, playing on the albums Rude Awakening and Cleansing, which featured the closest thing they had to a hit: the woefully underappreciated single Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck. During my DJ days at Clark Hall Pub, as soon as Raven’s opening bass notes from this song came on, the moshing would begin in earnest. Here’s the video:

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Rest in peace, Mr. Raven, and thanks for the great tunes.

…for your ability to add kinky weirdness to anything, including Pokemon:

[found via David Janes who found it here.]

So whom does this guy work for? And did they get to the Toronto Star?

The Toronto Star has yanked both the pieces about the parking lot scheme I wrote about in this entry, replacing it with a cryptic correction that leaves only questions. More here.

The Star are either fools (for getting such a simple fact-check wrong) or spineless (for caving). Which is it?

Click the photo to see it at full size.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Chris Turner, my friend and fellow DJ from Crazy Go Nuts University, is doing a small tour of Canadian cities in support of his new book, The Geography of Hope. The first stop of his tour is good ol’ Accordion City and it happens tonight at C’est What (67 Front Street East, a short walk east of Union Station) at 8:30 p.m.

According to the book’s blog, the other events will happen in the following cities:

• Calgary: Wednesday, October 24th from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at Broken City (613-11 Ave SW)
• Vancouver: Monday, October 29th from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Chapters on Granville Street (2505 Granville)

Once again, here’s the publisher’s description of the book:

After the fierce warnings and grim predictions of The Weather Makers and An Inconvenient Truth, acclaimed journalist and national bestselling author Chris Turner finds hope in the search for a sustainable future.

Point of no return: The chilling phrase has become the ubiquitous mantra of ecological doomsayers, a troubling headline above stories of melting permafrost and receding ice caps, visions of catastrophe and fears of a problem with no solution. Daring to step beyond the rhetoric of panic and despair, The Geography of Hope points to the bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel.

With a mix of front-line reporting, analysis and passionate argument, Chris Turner pieces together the glimmers of optimism amid the gloom and the solutions already at work around the world, from Canada’s largest wind farm to Asia’s greenest building and Europe’s most eco-friendly communities. But The Geography of Hope goes far beyond mere technology. Turner seeks out the next generation of political, economic, social and spiritual institutions that could provide the global foundations for a sustainable future–from the green hills of northern Thailand to the parliament houses of Scandinavia, from the villages of southern India, where microcredit finance has remade the social fabric, to America’s most forward-thinking think tanks.

In this compelling first-person exploration, punctuated by the wonder and angst of a writer discovering the world’s beacons of possibility, Chris Turner pieces together a dazzling map of the disparate landmarks in a geography of hope.

Wendy and I will be attending the event tonight.