TOO MUCH DOG FOOTAGE, SO LITTLE TIME

Yeh. It's another dog video. Get over it. You do know where you are, right


This summer/fall we spent 7 or 8 days up at Springhaven Lodge at Nares Inlet. I've produced several videos covering those trips. I even made a video starring the girls alone

But, you know, I shoot a lot of footage. Gosh, Vic, do you? Shut up

Normally after I cut one of my little amateur videos I'm left with a lot of footage, some of which is left for a reason (as in it sucks) but some of it viable shots. So I'm trying to be prudent in exploiting this footage

So you will be seeing new videos cut from this Leftover footage. Yay, how lucky are you. You can thank me later. With beer

Anyway, here's a Leftover video of the dogs up at Springhaven Lodge

Yeh

Ain't you lucky

So Many Dogs, So Little Time from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

A NON POLITICAL POST ABOUT POLITICIANS

As a federal election here in Canada shows up on our door step like a one eyed three legged cat with dubious toilet habits, just some random non partisan and certainly non important, non thought out, non relevant and non impactful thought about politicians

WHY DO ALL POLITICANS WEAR SUITS: Oh sure, every now and then they break out a sweater to appear more "common" but let's be honest, they always look as if they just lost a bet. Why do they have to wear suits. Why can't hey wear moo moos. Or motor cycle leathers. Or lederhosen with a propellor beanie and teddy bear slippers. Yeh, I'd vote for that guy

WHY ARE POLITICIANS "HONORABLE": You know what I mean, the Right Honorable this and the Right Honorable that. Why are they Honorable? Did they make the honour role In high school I made the honour role, and trust me, I ain't gots no honour. Are they judges? As in "Honestly Your Honor, I can't really honor you cuz under your robe you are totally necked; if you was wearing lederhosen then I'd honour you" And this Right Honorable stuff, aren't Lefties honourable? OK, they are not, never mind

WHAT IS WITH THE HAND MOVEMENTS WHEN THEY SPEAK TO THE CAMERA: Yeh, not at all coached or fake. Elbows cocked, hands almost clasped but not quite; the right hand aimed at you, not pointing exactly cuz you know, that would be emphatic; hands spread in disbelief "Can you believe that I expense hookers? Wait, I can't? Really? How about the lederhosen, can I expense those?" C'mon guys, be original. Put your hands behind your head, hook em in your belt like Anthony Quinn in that Mickey Spillane movie The Long Wait. Or just hook one finger in your nose and shove the other one down the back of your pants. You know, relate to the common man

JUST TELL US WHAT WE WANT TO HEAR: We all think politicians lie. Not because they keep breaking promises, but because they never really cough up about why they want to run the country. "I want to improve your lives, I want to make Canada great again, I want to protect your family" Yeh, right. Be honest "I want to be the PM because holy mother of god I get to bathe in maple syrup with a supermodel!"

Wait, they can't do that? Huh

Well, they really aren't worth talking about then

THANKSGIVING 2015: THANKS MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU'RE FULL

The year turns. The days shorten. The leaves change colour. The wind comes thin and cold with promises of snow on its back. The geese begin to fly south. And some of them fall out of the sky and land in ovens and we stuff them with bread and cranberries

OK, mostly its turkeys and they don't really fly but you get my point. Thanksgiving is here and for us, that means Thanksgiving on Nares Inlet

And for the girls, it's holiday time too of course. This was Panda's second trip up to Springhaven Lodge and it's fair to say that she is fitting in just fine

We've discovered how much she enjoys the water but she's a little bush baby too. She loves going off and exploring and proving that old girls still know how to do some rock traversing.

Terra, of course, is a Springhaven pro and although she also loves the bush, there is nothing better than hunting frisbees on the beach

Back on the human front, the family gathered for the annual Thanksgiving tradition of boating out to an island to enjoy food, games and the environment. The day was sunny and warm but the wind was up and Dennis determined it was too risky to go out to the open bay. Instead we invaded, I mean, visited a public paddle tennis court built on it own rocky little island

A bit of food (OK more than a bit) a bit of game playing, a bit of beer (OK more than a bit) then it was time to go back to the lodge, more food lay ahead in the form of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Yeh, I'm gonna need a nap

Play the video but keep the sound down, I'm still napping

Thanksgiving on Georgian Bay 2015 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

I KNEW HIM WHEN, WHENEVER THAT WAS

This may be a six degrees of sort of thing but it does not involve Kevin Bacon. Not that I know of. I suppose it's possible. Dude be slippery like that

Back when I was churning out corporate videos the way Tiny Tom churns out those little donuts at the fair, we used a few professional voice over guys to do the narration My favourite was a guy named Roger King

Roger would come into my studio at one in the morning, do a quick read of the script and burn through it flawlessly, usually in one read

He quickly got to know the rhythm of my writing and could give me what I wanted, no fuss no muss. Always a good guy too

I knew that Roger was not just a Voice, he also ripped a lot of other voice people. Well apparently he's a film maker as well

He has created a documentary. Roger has made a movie called I Am What I Play, focussing on a handful of famous radio DJs from back in the day when the voices you heard on the dial actually were responsible for the music they spun

I have yet to see the film, I certainly will, not just for my connection with Roger but the subject matter appeals to me. I grew up at the tail end of that era, when the DJs had influence about the music they played (can we spell Payola) and just before the music was programmed by the same sort of commerce oriented computer that picks the flavours for the McFlurry

Wasn't there a WKRP episode about that? Yes, Virginia, there was

At any rate, that's today's sortofkindofinaway brush with celebrity

Check out the trailer if you so desire. And you desire. You so, so desire

PSSSST, WANNABE FILM MAKERS ONLY

Just a quick redirection post

Anyone who has any kind of interest in the creative process (or lack thereof) in creating videos/films may want to check out my video creation blog Idiot With a Camera. Starting a new series of posts on my first attempt to make a documentary

YES IT'S MO BUT IS IT BETTER?

No, this is not a review of the Spike Lee film, Mo Better Blues

It is a review of Motown the Musical.

I think in the past I made a distinction between a stage musical and musical review. (Were you paying attention? Clearly I was not, otherwise I would remember) A stage musical is a story told in music and dance, usually original music and dance, like Les Miz or Chicago or Kinky Boots

A musical review is a showcase of established songs strung together with minimal story telling. The stage version of Buddy Holly was like that, the second act was pretty much a Buddy Holly tribute concert

I would never see Rain, the long running Beatles tribute but I very much enjoyed Backbeat, a musical that the Stu Sutcliffe story with, of course, Beatles songs It was a musical, Rain is a musical review

When I first heard about Motown the Musical I very much feared that it would be a musical review. It is not, it is a musical, and overall an effective one. But it poses some challenges.

First of all there's the music itself. Iconic, classic, so well known most of it, these days, provide the backdrop for TV commercials. We all know this music, every song, every melody

Then there are the artists. Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Jackson Five: Icons, legends, voices still heard sometimes decades after their deaths

Take for instance the Temptations, a group of guys with perfect harmony and slickly developed dance moves whose musical style continuously morphed over time. Get up there, sing those iconic songs and dance your ass off ... yeh, no challenge there

Overall the actors of Motown the Musical are up to the challenge. The Temptations were, indeed, very effective. As was Jarran Muse as Marvin Gaye. Besides capturing that voice, Muse was given to meat to work with as Gaye attempted to sell Motown's first protest album, the now classic What's Going On. His apace version of Mercy Me raised the hair on my arms.

As Diana Ross, Allison Semmes has the entire diva attitude nailed perfectly, even as the teenage Diana she allows you to see the strength and determination that would, in time, morph into a kind of stubborn bitchiness. Diana's is a difficult voice to capture in a stage production, at first hearing fragile and whips but capable of soaring power. Overall, Semmes is able to capture it though when fronting the Supremes it sometimes gets lost

Special mention must be made of Nathaniel Cullors; a very young man who is tasked with performing the young Stevie Wonder and the young Michael Jackson. Yeh, no big deal at ... well it wasn't for Mr Cullors. His Jackson is a show stealer, he has the voice down perfectly and his dancing left me exhausted just watching

The show's best voice, though, ironically belongs to the character who was not a singer. Josh Tower's Barry Gordy is the heart of the story. We first meet the founder of Motown Records in 1985 as ABC is preparing to air a live concert event commemorating the 25th anniversary of his record company. He does want to attend and through flashbacks we learn his story and the story of Motown

Barry Gordy was a songwriter and early on he sings some classics-to-be and we first here Tower's voice. It is a superb musical theatre voice, capable of expressing the nuances of emotion in the song. Besides Motown standards, the Gordy character sings original songs to motivate the story.

There's a bit of rub here: In a show filled with classic songs we are now treated to originals. Such was the case in the stage version of Wizard of Oz, sandwiched around Over the Rainbow and Yellow Brick Road we had several original tunes whose duty was to move along the story. It comes across as being a bit awkward. In Motown, Tower's voice and performance are strong enough to make it work

The story of Motown is a fascinating one and not just as a tale of a man with no musical background who built up one of the greatest musical entities of all time. As time goes on and the society of the US begins to change, as race relations and the war in Vietnam fill the evening news, Motown had to change with it. The play does not shy away from these issues. A group of Black Power protesters serve up Edwin Starr's War (What is it good for) and it is indeed a spine tingling moment

There is a lot of story here that lifts it above the musical revue category: Barry's relationship with Diana Ross, his struggle to keep the artists whose careers when built from leaving the company, the pressure place upon him as one of the most successful black businessmen of his time. Through it all, through most of it, Smokey Robinson is Barry's right hand man, as powerful a relationship as the one he has with Ross

Like a musical revue the show ends with a concert, the Motown Anniversary show. It works though, the entire story leads us up to this point as Gordy is acknowledged not only by the artists he helped make into superstars but also buy a public who, at that point, probably were not truly aware of who this man was and what he had created

So, the show is indeed Mo, as in Motown. Is it better? Better than the original? No, of course it isn't how could it be. The music that came out of Motown was some of the greatest popular music ever created. Sitting there I did not think that I was actually watching Stevie Wonder and Mary Wells but I was still very very happy to watch the actors portraying them

YOU DRIVE, THEY'LL SHOOT

Welcome to Toronto, lots of people, lots of traffic, lots of things to do.

Weather can vary from extremely hot to unpleasantly cold but lately, the climate around here, it's been a little shooty

Shooty and blue. Blue uniform that is. As in, the police

Last year here we had a cop standing in the middle of an intersection in Cabbagetown shooting at a coyote. He missed, by the way. Then we had the cop who emptied his pistol and his tazer at a kid on a stopped streetcar. Unfortunately, tragically, he did not miss

Yeh, our cops sure do like to shoot. When faced with the reality that during encounters with mentally stable and lightly armed (ie a knife or a hammer) people, a study found that the TO constabulary used just a tad too much deadly force.The cops came up with a solution: Let's find things that we can shoot that may not be quite as deadly But hey, we still want to shoot

But I don't want to be unfair here, the police in my city are not all about shooting their Glocks. They also love to drive their cars. Really fast. And chase shit

A few years back when we lived on Hillmount St in our nice quiet Jewish hood, some young punks robbed somebody and drove away. Huzzah said the cops and gave chase. They chased so fast and ardently that the bad guys mounted a curb on the sidewalk about 40 feet west of our house, slid sideways right past our lawn and breached their SUV on the other side of the house, crashing into our neighbour as he pulled out of his driveway. Neighbour was shook up but OK. But the scumbags bailed and took off on foot. Oh, huzzah and tally ho! Cops gave chase on foot and now we had a bunch of people running through the back yards with guns in their hands

Shooty shooty

Earlier this year a couple of hoods did a little smash and grab, mounted their getaway vehicles and sped off through Regent Park. And you guessed it .. tally ho! Only, the cops were huaazhing in their cruisers and the bad guys? Um they were on bikes. Not Harleys. Bikes. Bicycles. Chains, gears, little metal bells. Homeboys tried to elude the cars by rolling across a brand new community basketball court. Cops stayed in their cars, busted through a chain link fence and went all Audy Murphy (in Hell Bent for Leather) across the basketball court, fucking it up

Huzzah

Where is all this coming from? Well, from yesterday actually. I have a client dog down in the Distillery District. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Distillery District is, well, an old distillery dating from Toronto's Victorian past, a huge complex of cobble stone lanes, red brick Gothic buildings and black shuttered limestone edifices. It's quite elaborate and quite beautiful. And unlike most of Toronto's history it was not paved over into a parking lot or immediately filled with terribly banal condo high rises

The Distillery has been preserved as public space with shops, pubs, bakeries and a theatre; concerts and events of all kinds are staged there. It is indeed surrounded by coma inducing condo's but the bones and the heart of the place has been maintained for us to enjoy

And lots of people enjoy it. It is a major tourist attraction, south of Front Street, not far from the Lake. Recently it was right beside the Athlete's Village (the ugliest of all condo's in the cities, as if Ugly Condo was a Pan Am event) for the Pan Am Games

It always seems to be busy but naturaly it is teeming on a hot summer day. As it was the other day. My client dog Gracie lives right beside the main entrance to the Distillery, on Mill St, a short block away from Parliment

That intersection itself is always busy. There are parking lots there where people park to walk across the street into the district. There is a school there, its fenced playground looking towards the Victorian structures. I enter Mill Street from Trinity, looking down towards Parliment; and what I saw that day was the yellow caution tape fluttering in the balmy breeze

I had just missed, by about 30 minutes, a very chasey shooty day in my city.

Some dude stole a car. The cops somehow actually got on to him as he sped along in his little grey Toyota. Huzzah! Tally ho! Several cruisers gave chase. Right up Parliment; teeming, pedestrian laden Parliment. Lots of cars here too, and a lane cut off by road work. And kids playing over there in the school yard

Perfect place, the cops seem to conclude, to block in the stolen car and force him up against the curb. I missed the event itself but I've seen the video. Two, perhaps three cruisers jam the car in, wedging it between the two cop cars Cops jump out, pistols in hand

Home boy's car is not moving, it ain't going nowhere. And there are three cops, two right by the driver door. So huzzah you motherfuckers, Cop Three jumps over to the front of the car, staring at the windshield and what does our fine constable do? Aims his semi auto at the hood of the stolen car and empties the mag into it

Yeh he shoots the car. Pop pop pop. Ten or more rounds into the hood of the car. Yes, these are soft nosed 9 mm rounds, less likely to ricochet but there are people all over the street. There are kids fleeing across the school yard. And there are his fellow officers right there by the passenger door

Shooty shooty

The official explaination for this is that the cop wanted to disable the stolen vehicle. Two points. One, that car wasn't going anywhere. And two, many many mechanics have agreed that where the cop was shooting was not going to "disable" that car. Probably he shot up the battery

But you can see him, crouched in the classic Weaver stance, two hands on the gun, just blasting away. As the other cops yanked open the driver's door, Dirty Harry is actually ejecting his expended clip and slapping in a fresh one

Yeh. There's a Sequeway parked over there. Never know when you may to shoot that too

So, a gorgeous hot sultry sunny September day, one of Toronto's most quaint tourist locations, locals and tourists alike enjoying the light breeze skirling off of the Lake ...

But the weather suddenly changed. Dark blue skies, with a high degree of shootiness