GOD HATES MY PONY TAIL

Or something.

I'm not really sure what it is that god hates about me, but apparently, in some way, I've pissed him off. I mean, didn't his son have long hair and a beard? But I've never seen the messiah portrayed with his hair tied back (though you'd think this would be a practical accessory for a guy who was so busy healing lepers, tossing vendors out of churches and walking across water and all) so maybe my dubious fashion sense is seen as being profane ... Or perhaps this dislike is based on about 40 years of me denying his existence, questioning the need for such existence and just generally being a pain in his omnipotent ass

So I'm not really sure why god hates me, I just have proof that he does.

This past weekend I was scheduled to be held hostage by family and friends here at my house. It's a strange and devious act of terrorism that happens every year. It's like a dark ritual, somehow connected to the movement of the stars, the turning of the calendar and how much more grey my hair has become in the interim ...

The previous week or so had been perfect weather; sunny, warm, dry. This boded well, if the weather was warm I may be able to keep the invading horde out of my sanctum santorum Let them erect their yurts in the yard and keep them out of the house; this is always a sage strategy, let them in the house and they're prone to breaking the furniture and covering the wall with graffiti and replacing all my coffee with tea ... the horror!

So we cleared space in the yard and I erected a barbarous stone and wood altar to appease them (ok, it's a picnic table but Costco was all out of altars) and I set my two trained attack dogs on guard duty (they will actually bark when someone enters the house, then they will show you where the dog cookies are) and glanced up at the sky. All was well, the sky was clear ...

But the big ponytail hating bastard in the sky had other plans. And it rained. Roll back to last year's birthday blog ... more rain. If I live another 40 years and this pattern persists, then I predict a flood ... a really really really slow coming flood. Clearly, instead of buying a new picnic table, I should have invested in a few lifeboats.

But the one thing about invading pagan terrorist hordes, they have their own powers. While the rain poured down on me as I sacrificed meat on the fire to appease the rain gods, we built a fire and it scared god's rain back ... OK, technically, the rain had stopped by then, but if you thought this blog had anything to do with technical truth, brother, you're in the wrong place

The next day, the day the horde was leaving was, of course, sunny and hot. At least god was on my side at that point ... no excuse for them to stay ... not that I could have prevented them from hanging around. Nor would I want to

So another tussle with the cranky old bastard up there. Licked my wounds, pressed on, and showed him that year after year, the cranky old bastard down here will never tap

THE BLACK AND WHITE OF COLOUR

This is not a review of the recent movie The Last Airbender. I have not seen the movie, nor did I ever watch the anime series upon which it's based
However, this movie is kicking up a bit of controversy. The young actor who plays the titular character is white, yet the Airbender apparently is Asian, so everyone is kicking up a fuss
Again, I am not that familiar with the story but it's a fantasy, based in a fantasy land. I don't believe that any of the chracters are identifed as Asian. If you look at the images from the anime I wouldn't call the drawings necessarily evocative of an Asian person; most anime, although it originates in Japan, never look Japanese to me.

If you look at the picture above, the character does certainly seemed dressed in a style that reminds me of ancient China. But the kid is not Chinese. But is he supposed to be Chinese? Again, this is a fantasy world

I know in the past there has been a big issue with ethnic characters being portrayed by actors completely outside of that racial type. I think all of the original Charlie Chan's were white guys in atrocious make up and accents so horrible you wondered how this guy was supposed to be smart ...

For a long time in Hollywood movies, if a native American had a role that was something beyond drunken comedy relief or cannon fodder, it was almost always assigned to a Caucasian actor, usually with make up that made his skin look irradiated.

Then you just have some flat out absurdities like my man John Wayne as Genghis Khan ...
But these absurdities aside, this raises an interesting point. Where does acting end and reality begin. With the state of CGI as it is, with the aliens of Avatar seeming so real, it's possible we could make any race look like any other race in a movie ... should we? Isn't acting the process of being something that you are not? If a Caucasian actor should not play a Chinese actor, should a Gentile play a Jew, even if there are no immediate physical differences? Sometimes the difference between a character and an actor is the accent. Ralph Fiennes affects a German accent in Schindler's List and he's a Nazi. Mind you, Kevin Costner fumbles around with some kind of accent/speech pattern in Prince of Thieves and he was still no Robin Hood
I understand that a lot of these issues stem from the racism that permeated Hollywood for a long time where a white actor in ridiculous make up and ludicrous accent was seen as a better option than actually hiring an actor of the character's race. And I don't think for a minute that that mind set has totally disappeared. Obviously we are seeing more actors of "colour" on screen, or is it just that Denzel and Morgan get all the "black" roles. Is three or four black actors who are true stars much of an improvement over having none at all? In well over a hundred years of movie making?
But even if you have more black actors in the mainstream .. and there are still a lot of other races with almost no representation .... it seems to me that they are there because they are black. That they only play black characters. In other words, the script calls for a specifically black character but if the script says that Bob is just some guy, would a black actor get it? Or do we assume in our culture that "just some guy" is always going to be white.

Is it racist to hire a white actor to play a Chinese character? Is it racist to hire a black man to play only "black" characters? Is it racist to care about race at all? Should Denzel be able to play Mao? Should Jackie Chan be able to play Malcom X? Well no to both. But still, it is acting, it is all make believe.

Then you get into the area that still exists today: that a character of a specified Asian race can be played by any Asian. I grew up in a time where you say Asian actors on TV, but the same guy would play Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese. In the recent movie Blood, the Last Vampire, also based on an anime, the lead character is clearly identified as Japanese, but she is portrayed by a Korean Actress. Is that right? Isn't this one race being portrayed by another race? Or is that "close enough"

There are some real issues at play here, no doubt about it. But I think Last Airbender is a poor platform from which to express them. Just as Avatar was a poor platform to address the portrayal of native Americans in movies .. these are fantasy films. But they are popular and people try to shoehorn in their perspectives on the back of that popularity. Unfortunately, it makes their opinions seem a tad specious and insincere.

Now the Duke as Genghis Khan, there's a serious issue for you ... "Let's circle the yurts, pilgrim"

TALL SHIPS TORONTO 2010

Argh, me hearties, reef that sail, mount the mizzen mast and keep ye hands off my poop deck ... Um, no I'm not doing a Pirates of the Caribbean imitation. This past weekend the Tall Ships returned to Toronto Harbour
It's been two years since we've been to this festival and a few things have changed. One, they moved the date up later and it resulted in some of the best weather of the summer thus far. The other thing that changed was that the festival now has commercial sponsorship, which meant there were a few more boats but it cost you to board them. Yay commercialism
But let's not dwell on that. Let's dwell instead on a hot sunny day, a nice breeze blowing through the Gap into the Inner Harbour, and all manner of sailing craft spread along the quays.
There was a pretty good collection of ships on display. A combination of Great Lakes ships and ocean going replicas. One of them was a ship we've seen before, the Pride of Baltimore which, strangely, is out of Baltimore Maryland and the Niagara

There were some sea going ships as well... sort of. They brought in the Bounty. Well not THE Bounty, the one that was the scene of naval history's most famous uprising (not mutiny) but a replica. But the replica that was used in the Marlon Brando version of the movie.

The real story of the Bounty is pretty interesting with very little relationship to that told in at least two of the movies. There is no real evidence that Captain Bligh was quite the tyrant he was made out to be; some in the British Admiralty thought him too lenient. It seems more likely that the crew of the Bounty, once they got a load of Tahiti's natural resources .. those being breadfruit and half naked women .. had no desire to return to dreary old England, and wives, debts etc. So they set Bligh adrift in a dinghy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and didn't he manage to get himself right back to England with just the most meager of supplies and navigational gear; to this day it's considered one of the most amazing feats of ocean navigation. Not that this replica had anything to do with that, but it is still a very pretty ship

Pretty as well is a tall ship when she is under sail, tacking over towards the Island
We took a little harbour cruise to see the ships from the water and to gain a view of the city that we are normally denied. The boat we were on didn't really allow for good video, but Collette managed to get a few pics but then, she always does

There were a couple of unique ships, like the Empire Sandy billed as the largest sailing ship currently on the Great Lakes ..
... and the Unicorn, with its all female crew
And for me, there was a blast from the past, the brigantine St. Lawrence II a youth training ship that sails out of my hometown in Kingston Ontario
All in all it was a great day down by the harbour. Living in the center of the GTA as we pretty much do, surrounded by our large parks and hiking trails I sometimes forget that Toronto is, indeed, a harbour town. The harbour was a huge part of this city's past and had a great deal to do with its growth. On our tour we saw that much of this city's industry was built along the harbour where they could be serviced by Great Lakes traffic; bringing in supplies and taking away merchandise. While we there the Redpath Sugar Company, the last factory in the harbour, had several boats at its docks, bringing raw sugar cane from South America. I'm glad that most of that industry has left the harbour now and what remains are the quays, the gulls and this weekend at least, the sussurus of the waves against wooden hulls.
So here's the video, the music is by Rivertribe out of Australia

Tall Ships Toronto 2010 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

DAMSELS AND KNIGHTS AND VIKINGS, OH MY!

The beginning of July means it's time to dust off the jerkin, polish up the mail, sharpen the bodkin and head off the Renaissance Fair at Casa Loma ...
OK so Collette and I didn't dress up, it was too hot and we really don't have the gear, but lots of other people did, as they do every year for this annual event held at Toronto's very own castle.
This year's fair had some of our returning favorites and a few new attractions. One of these were the Brothers Grimm, billed as "twins separated at birth". And like all brothers, they seemed to never agree about anything

What they offered was an energetic and fairly funny stunt show with hand to hand, sword play and even whips, as you'll see in the video at the bottom of this post ... yes, of course there's a video.
A returning favorite was Zoltan, a magician and stunt man. Now, Zoltan is no ordinary magician. He is not Zolan the Magnificent or Zoltan the Incredible .. no, he is Zoltan the Just Adequate
What he had were some card tricks, a little self humiliation, fire eating and a fairly twisted sense of humour ... so yeh, we like Zoltan.
There was a bit of conflict at the Renaissance Fair. The Lords and Ladies of the Castle were in a generous mood, inviting all us commoners to their lovely manse but they took it a bit too far. I mean, really, who's idea was it to invite the Vikings?

At any rate, there were Vikings camped on the lawn. I think they were out of beer. Why else would they have stolen the fair maiden?

Well, the knights of the castle took some exception to this .. in typical medieval fashion as you'll see from Collette's photo's and in the video

Even after the Lady was rescued, the carnage continued as the Vikings began to squabble amongst themselves. I heard something about "lost honour" but frankly, I think they just ran out of beer.

Besides the new shows there was also the familiar, such as gypsy dancers ...
... and the guys from the Barrie Swordplay Association
In the video I just gave a few highlights of their performance but they really do put on a great show. To see more of it, check out the video I did last year, the Assc. is about half way through it
So a day in the sunshine, in and out of this unique urban castle, surrounded by damsels and knights and vikings .. oh my! Seriously, what's not to love

Casa Loma Renaissance Fair from Collette Scale on Vimeo.

THE G20 PUNKATHON

This is it, my last G20 post. Yes, I feel the same way you do. Thank god. I just can't let this go to bed till I comment on the events that transpired here in Toronto this weekend. It was, all said and done, a weekend of punkish behavior. And I don't mean a cool sneering Joe Strummer kind of punk. I mean a cowardly, petulant, uncaring kind of punk

Here are the punks in question:

THE BLACK BLOCK:

These are the guys who they told us would come: The hardcore professional protesters bent on violence and anarchy. Of course, they really aren't protesters. What they were protesting god only knows. Clearly they are just a bunch of over educated, underemployed, living on their student loan spoiled brats with a bad case of boredom and a sense of entitlement.
These people, and it seemed a fairly small group, are punks not only for the fact they are into violence and anarchy for the sake of violence and anarchy but as violent anarchists go ... they suck! Oh sure, they trashed a couple of cop cars, set them on fire, and they threw billiard balls through bank windows .. this is shocking by the standards of my lovely staid Toronto but really, look at the rest of the world and all the protests that happen on a weekly basis. These guys are rank amateurs. Makes me think they are homegrown rather than the rumoured imports. They just come across as third rate

THE TORONTO POLICE DEPT:

Yup, these guys had punkish behaviour too. OK so we spend a billion dollars on security. We knew this kind of thing was going to happen. There were thousands of cops out in the street, from regular uniforms to riot squads, to undercover cops. All of them were there Saturday when the violence went down. It was not a surprise. The black block came downtown with a larger protest group, then did their presto chango to their superbady guy black pants and bandannas then announced where they were going and what they were going to do.

On the live TV feed you could see that there were cops there when windows were being busted and when the cop cars were set on fire.

By all accounts, the entire black block was comprised of about 70 individuals and it didn't look like that there were that many of them working together at any one time. And to repeat, there were thousands of cops down there. Yet all these cops did was stand and watch. Sure, the official version was that they were "containing" the situation. Yet they were not. The hooligans were able to move and strike at will. One of the cop cars was allowed to burn for more than an hour before the cops even let the fire dept in and the black block was long gone by then.

What's up with that? The cops say they did not want to inspire even more violence. Yet I clearly saw scenes where less than five people were actively observed by dozens of cops in the middle of committing crimes of property damage. In the Entertainment District on a Saturday night, if three drunken dudes toss a beer can they are jumped by half a dozen cops ...

But here is where the real punkish attitude comes in. The next day. Today. Today the cops made hundreds of arrests around town. Early this morning they raided the U of T campus and arrested 70 people. Today, at the detention centre, during a peaceful protest, dozens of people were bum rushed by heavily armed cops and carried away.

Some of these were clear cases of people who were barely protesting, they were down at the centre, milling about, questioning the goings on. For that they were jumped by multiple cops and hauled off to the detention centre. Anywhere today where a group gathered, no matter what they were doing, people were being shot with gas and in some cases bum rushed. Several members of the media were treated thusly.

It seems to me that a lot of people were being targeted and I just don't mean members of the Black Block. I mean legitimate activists were being raided and hauled off to the detention centre .. yesterday criminals ran at will in the street. Today, those who dissent the government has their rights trampled.

That's being a punk. Yeh, we looked really bad yesterday, so today we are going to prove how macho we are by jumping on whomever we can. Really, this seems like it was done out of spite. By the police. Nice work guys.

PRIME MINISTER HARPER & THE LEADERS:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the biggest punk of all. He's a punk for:

Holding an event that endangered my city without a clear individual mandate to do so

Spending more on hosting this event than what he's pledged to en better the lives of women all over the world

Hiding safely behind his fence and his armoured cars and his military helicopters while businesses are damaged and cops are put into the line of fire

Granting police and security forces "special powers" that seemingly enabled them to target legitimate social activists (like during the U of T raid) as well as the hooligans .. and where do these powers end and when? He isn't saying. Can we remember the FLQ crises? Yes we can

So in conclusion: The G20 summit. Businesses suffered for about a week before from having no customers, some businesses and institutions had to shut down. Property damage. Real injuries to people. Something on the order of 500 people arrested in two days and god knows where that data is being stored and for what ....

Let's call the whole fucking thing a punk

THE FENCE

There is a fence around the heart of the city. In front of the fence are thousands of uniformed men, all of them armed. They are not looking inside the fence, they are staring outwards .. at you. If you approach the fence, out of curiosity, the men will approach you, demand your ID. They will search you. You cannot refuse them. If you do, you'll be arrested

While you are being arrested your image will be recorded by one of dozens of hidden security cams. Your image will be sent to rooms filled with more men, some of them uniformed, some of them in plain clothes. It will be stored in data banks, all over the world. You won't know where that image is sent. You don't have the right to ask

If you are arrested at the fence, you won't go to one of the police precincts in the city. You will be sent to a special "detention centre". There you will be held and you will be questioned. You may not even know who exactly is questioning you

If you approach the fence in numbers you may be greeted by water cannons, or sound cannons, designed to immobilize you.

While you are being assaulted, you will be watched by dozens of helicopters flying above the city, many of them unmarked. Surely, they will have cams too

If you are injured for your curiosity, you won't be taken to one of the city's hospitals. You will be taken to one of several emergency health centres, trauma centres, created for this purpose, to deal with people injured for being in the middle of the city

This is not fiction. It is not a dystopia, it is not a post apocolyptic vision. This is this week. This is my city. This is happening now. A beautiful, sunny warm day and downtown Toronto is virtually deserted. Except for the men with the guns

Who stand by the fence .

THE G20 PISSING CONTEST

The G20 Summit madness here in the Toronto area continues.

Like millions of dollars spent to "secure and prepare" a nearby airport .. that will never be used by any of the participants in the G8 or the G20

Like Toronto District School Board cancelling its buses for this Friday. Which means that the special needs kids Collette teaches will not be able to go to school

This weekend we were downtown and saw the fence. An easily 10 foot tall chain link fence that will enclose several blocks in the downtown core. A fence. Why did I have visions of Soylent Green, or Wild in the Streets?

They removed all the public trash cans and replaced them with plastic garbage bags taped to poles. I'm not really sure why. To prevent protesters from picking up trash cans and hurling them over the fence?

Speaking of protests we had our first taste today. A protest march that went up Yonge Street, choking off traffic. Cops were there in force, and could not stop it. They even tried making a "fence" with their bicycles .. there's some irony for you. In the areas outside of the fence they still tried to use fences. But it didn't work. Police sources said "We couldn't stop them"

Really? A week away from the summit and you couldn't stop a bunch of people trying to march up Yonge Street ...

Now they are talking about bringing in water cannon. There will be medical helicopters constantly circling the city looking for wounded. Triage and emergency aid stations are being set up all over the city.

What the fuck.

The USA is advising their citizens not to travel to Toronto right now as it may be too dangerous. Oh yeh, the US is attending the summit

What the fuck. Again

All for what? A pissing contest among the suits who rule the world. For a summit that will be addressing issues like climate control and the world health of women, including their access to safe abortions ... both are topics by the way that Prime Minister Harper really doesn't want to discuss ...

Collette and I had to spend some time at an ER today. There was a big issue of not having enough wheelchairs for all the patients. Yet this summit is costing our country in excess of a billion dollars

Sorry Stephen. In this pissing contest that you've arranged, you haven't even been able to get open your fly