Cold, rainy March. Ugh. Forget that. Yesterday I decided to get some coding done instead.

I got so wrapped up in it I completely forgot to write a post. That’ll happen, I’m afraid. Flash is a demanding mistress. So that’s what I did yesterday. All day. That flippy TwitPic image thingamahooie you see above is my post for Monday. If you’re reading this after March 23rd, or you’re not on the front page, that probably doesn’t make much sense. (Maybe if you visited more often :( )

Good day for indoor stuff anyhow. And today’s much the same. But you know what? I’m absolutely certain that spring officially started today, regardless of what any calendar says: they’re shooting something again.

Hmm. The notice looks strikingly familiar. The three-ring holes, the bright colour. The “we’re taking over your street”.

To be honest, I honestly don’t believe I’ve seen anything they’ve shot here. Doesn’t sound like the kind of stuff I’d watch anyway. “Lost Girl”, lost me at “Lost”.

However, I did get to watch the crew work. Seems like a pretty sweet gig. They begin by standing around, drinking coffee, and shooting the shit:

This goes on for some time. Okay, it’s still early (no idea why I was up), so that’s necessary.

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If, during the next few days, you come at just the right time of the evening, dear reader, you may notice that TCL suddenly looks completely different. Perhaps considerably worse. Perhaps better. Perhaps exactly the same. That’s because I’m playing around with new themes. Sure, they look nice in their boxes, but I have to take ‘em out for a spin – and I only have one blog. I’d like to add a TwitPic feed in there too.

If you look at the top of the sidebar you’ll notice the flipping Twitter feed and, occasionally, some of those updates link to TwitPic photos. These are taken by a spunky Samsung BlackJack the Second in the battlefield. Or the mall. Wherever the phone happens to be. Unfortunately, the quality could be better. Much better. But it’s a camera phone so all I can do is my best.

Besides, the TwitPic feed is meant as filler for, and sometimes preview of, the next post; not as a replacement. Something to look at while the blog takes a nap. I mean, if I don’t have that, I end up with posts bearing titles like, “A bunch of stuff I found on the sidewalk”, on a Saturday on which it’s obvious I’m just trying to fill up the hole in the pavement that is my blog.

Poor metaphors as well.

Oh, and I know it’s impossible to read the map (subpar photography too), but it has Church Street at it’s center with Yonge to the left and Jarvis the right. The northern city limit in 1858 was Bloor Street. It’s definitely not anymore.

Yorkville just seems like it’s been around forever. It’s probably that whole set-in-stone thing. It makes anything seem dignified.

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For some reason I always fail to properly explain why I think the name “Don Valley” is so much fun. It’s probably because I have a crap Italian accent, but imagine saying that name with a good one. By that I mean borderline comical. Call him “Don Valli” if it helps the imagination. Add about forty percent stereotype greezee gangster into the mix and you’ve got yourself a one spicy meatball.

“Don Valli don give no favers to no ones, see? Especially not to rat basterds like yous!”

Unfortunately, the Don is not currently in a position to make any demands. As a recent Star article points out, it’s mostly a heap of mud and rocks at the moment:

Yup. Not much to look at. But apparently what you’re looking at in the photo will be the tower on the left below:

I’m still not sure exactly how this is supposed to work, but this River City project sounds like a mix of for-sale condos, social housing, and rooms for athletes in the 2015 Pan-Am games. Once the games are done, those will presumably go up for sale as well. They’re expecting the whole 4-phase construction to take up to ten years. Which probably means fifteen. The scale of the project seems ginormous; “City” doesn’t seem entirely inappropriate.

They plan to create two parks in the area, one of them under the wide Eastern Avenue overpass. That should be interesting. Better than what`s there now:

And these tracks run both regular trains and GO trains. This one happens to go to Markham. The locals seem to put up with it but it’s woefully inadequate if we’re hosting guests from other countries.

We should be gracious hosts and show them it’s okay to spend their bolivianos / reals / guaranis / nuevo sols / bolivars / colons / quetzals / lempiras / cordobas / krones / pesos / euros / dollars here.

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I have to say, if you’re reading this sober on or about St. Patrick’s day, and you have no existing medical condition that would cause or necessitate this state (sobriety), I believe you’ve missed the point. Never is the Irish tradition of drinking more deeply ingrained than on this sacred day. And I can’t think of another day, with maybe the exception of New Year’s, where imbibing is an almighty imperative. Maybe Halloween.

And, while we’re talking Irish, let’s talk cops.

Hey, I just calls ‘em like I sees ‘em. The coppers were front and centre in the St. Patty’s Day Parade. I didn’t put ‘em there. But if that’s not supporting the Irish, I dunno what is. Then again, they do support Santa Claus.

By the way, all the photos here were taken this past Sunday, they seem more much apropos today, don’t you think? It was all green, white, and orange down Yonge Street then; today it’s mostly an excuse to get shitfaced.

Haha! I kid. Most of these people have been sloshed since Sunday. But it’s all in good fun. Not like anyone’s suggesting you go drinking and driving or anything.

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What a weekend, dear reader. And I don’t mean that in a good way. It’ll have to be written into the history books as The Great Umbrella Massacre of 2010.

My own, newly purchased brolly barely withstood a day before snapping. I won’t have to put it down just yet, but it’s limping, and that kind of umbrella doesn’t have long. Still, it fared better than some of it’s brothers and sisters.

I should warn you now, if you have a weak stomach for this sort of thing, you may want to look away.

I guess this is the time of year when spring starts to wrestle with winter. March is usually described as some kind of awful lamby-lion hybrid, it’s recessive and dominant genes leaving a trail of destruction in their path as they duke it out across the city. I’d say that this is an accurate description.

Naturally, I didn’t venture out much. But I did at least get to survey some of the carnage afterward; and I was mortified at what I saw:

To be cast off so ingloriously, what a horrible waste. And the indignities didn’t stop there; umbrellas littered the streets for some time afterward, even as the winds were subsiding and life was returning to normal:

The M.U. should be ashamed.

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I’ve been pounding away at the keyboard all day, dear reader, and I’m feeling comfortably frazzled. And I’m not even ashamed of what I accomplished today. The portfolio has started to co-operate and it’s doing some very nice things. One more piece and she’s ready for prime-time. I’ll have to juggle a few things tomorrow, some social engagements and such, so I’ll be keeping it short and sweet tonight. I do hope you understand. Not that I’d have anything else for you if you didn’t though. :)

Two things managed to break my bubble of steely concentration today: the weather was starkly beautiful again —

(Although this evening does smell an awful lot like rain. Kind of a mild, mildewy, wet dog smell.)

— and I’m rather pleased about this second one, I finally managed to capture my arch-nemesis! At least from behind. At least something.

Crafty crafty “organization” named Ornge Lift. Not Orange, Ornge. As in, Evl.They fly their aircraft around Ontario taking critically ill people to hospitals. Basically flying paramedics (so they get to do whatever they want).

They also airlift to hospitals downtown using these orange helicopters and landing on the roofs of places like St. Michael’s. St. Mike’s happens to be quite close to where I live, a few blocks maybe, and apparently the approach path is directly over my flat.

In the winter I hardly notice. But with the weather lately I’ve been keeping the windows open and “THUP THUP THUP THUP THUP THUP THUP THUP THUp THup Thup thup up p p p”. It’s an experience. Sometimes, I swear, that thing hovers over my street just for shits and giggles. Like, aren’t there people that need saving or something?

Haven’t caught sight of the pilot yet, but one day … one day …

Well, it’s happened. I’m getting antsy.

I was watching Breakfast Television this morning to see if Dina Pugliese would entice me into a passionate new day (and for the weather report). She didn’t; she’s just so dry (and it’s supposed to start raining tomorrow).  The over-boiled supposed-to-be-soft-boiled egg was digesting in my stomach, as was the thick, crunchy, crusty hunk of Vienna Rye (I buy it for a reason!) I was up early again and was feeling the need to get inspired. Portfolio’s a waitin’

Dina obviously wouldn’t do it for me so I decided to kill a few birds with one stone: head outside for a walk, get some inspiration, and take a few photos of it. I firmly believe that to solve a problem it’s best to walk away from it; just the excuse I needed.

My first thought when I hit Yonge-Dundas Square was to make the portfolio like a building. Each floor would house a project I’d worked on that you could fly into via the magic of Adobe Flash. The Woo building (I’m sure it has another name — but is it as catchy?), seemed like a suitable candidate. Lots of windows and spinny, twirly, moving things. Plus, I remember the Woo website being somewhat slick – the location must’ve worked for them.

Except that it’s been done, like, a million and one times already.  Every agency and creative somethingorother showcase their loft, or their building, or some nearby space on their web pages.

Okay, how about something like a construction site then?

I could have the shovels, umm, shoveling content. And the dump trucks … dumping … stuff. Hmmm.

That idea had two unfortunate connotations. First, the connection between trucks, dumping, and the intertubes. Not sure if that’s the image I want to give off. Second, this thing:

Ultra-cheese since it first appeared in a Netscape window. I haven’t used Netscape since I don’t even know when.

So that pretty much put an end to the construction idea.

For some reason, fire trucks were racing along Yonge Street the whole morning. I didn’t see a single emergency (no smoke or stretchers), but they did spark off an idea.

Maybe I’d been over thinking it. Maybe I could just use one complex, rotating, 3D object in the middle of a pristine white web page. The object could be something like a fire truck, the Swiss Army knife of vehicles. Or a Swiss Army knife. I imagined it would be kind fun to poke and prod this thing on screen, having each prodable doohickey act as an activator to some portfolio piece that would pop up beside it.

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To be perfectly honest, there’s nothing I enjoy more than having someone tell me how to operate my own equipment. I mean, a suggestion is one thing. That I don’t mind at all. It doesn’t make any presumptions. But when that short, older man (wearing a Yankees cap!) told me, “you can’t shoot directly into the sun, son”, I could scarcely contain my rage.

I took him to the nearby corner of Yonge-Dundas Square and I showed him a few things.

“You see, sucker”, I thought to myself. “There’s enough ambient light on the sidewalk”, now out-loud, “to illuminate subjects from the front. They’re kind of shadowy, but I think that’s kinda cool. All thanks to this iContrast thingie.”

“Ah!”, he marvelled. “What camera is this? I have an EOS Rebel XSi at home. Is that a Rebel too?”

“No”, I replied, “it’s a … umm …”. I’d forgotten the name. Flipped it over. “Oh, yeah, a Powershot … SX 10 … IS. Fixed lens (can’t stick another lens on there) … but what a lens!”

I went on to extole the virtues of the camera and its lens while flipping through the other photos.

“So, it has all the same software?”

What an odd question.

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It’s been a helluva few days around here, dear reader. I’ve been cleaning the flat, apologizing to Ollie, and getting some stuff for my fridge. That last part I was once again pleased to be able to do at St. Lawrence Market There really is great stuff there that I haven’t seen anywhere else around town, and the neighbourhood locals are unparalleled. The one old lady I bumped into this time happened to be buying a loaf of bread from Future Bakery. I lucked out (one Vienna Rye still left!), and she seemed pleased / perplexed with her purchase.

The rest of this story I’ll narrate around the walk that I took shortly after that conversation. That talk propelled me into the walk, as it were. I pulled the shopping cart behind me the whole way (surprisingly, pears: unharmed), along Wellington Street. Just headed directly west. And  don’t know about you, but that’s one sexy street. Even just the way it begins!

The old city basically starts to spread itself open here. Wellington is an old-time street, it’s near enough to the lake to belong to the original town, I figure, plus there are enough old buildings left along it to suggest the same thing.

I love walking down here in the late afternoon; with the sun almost equally aligned between the pillars; it’s über-dramatic.

But I was discussing the old lady, wasn’t I? Right.

So, as we were waiting to pay for our loaves, she mouthed something imperceptibly. She’d done the same thing earlier when she saw me helping myself to the few bagged breads remaining on top of the display case (they’re loosely cordoned). She held up her own and said something. I’m not sure if she was proud of her ability to have heaved her shriveled frame up that case to retrieve her own bread, or if she had been finger-wagged by the staff for the same offense. Or both. Her face was an uncertain mix of smiling and frowning. At the same time. And she spoke so softly, I couldn’t make out anything she was saying.

It was a bit unsettling.

I thought she’d left by the time I’d finished pawing the merchandise, but she suddenly reappeared at the cash counter around the corner. Holy shit!

“You know zat voman? Zat funny vun? Wis ze sree uzer guys?”

This time, I guess, she’d cleared her throat or something, and was finally able to speak. Okay, but seriously, what an awkward opener? Zat woman? My mind jumped to Catherine O’Hara when she’d been on SCTV. But ze sree uzer guys? I’m pretty sure there were more than sree guys on SCTV at that time.

That’s where my thought train made its last stop. I was just left standing in the billowing steam at the station with a blank expression on my face.

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…continued from previous part.

You know, dear reader, the most aggravating thing about this whole affair lately has been that it got me off kilter. Weren’t we talking about Regent Park or something? Dang.

Unfortunately that seems like a lifetime ago now. And, also unfortunately, I’ve recently very much enjoyed re-connecting with the city again (i.e. more frickin’ pictures). So I’m going to pull some academia out of my butt here and am calling this final installment a “photo essay”. Haha! Wicked. Whoever thought of that one gets a high-five from me!

This implies there will be no words. *snicker*

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