June 24, 2019
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American Splendor – the film

Having read a double anthology of American Splendor comics, I had to also watch the film of the same name, from 2003. It’s a wonderfully creative and entertaining effort – highly recommended, even if you don’t care even a little bit about underground comics.

Pekar wrote comics about his own life and had various artists illustrate them, so when you read his work, you see him depicted differently depending on who did the drawing. The film emulates this. It stars Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis as Harvey and Joyce, but the real Harvey and Joyce are also in the film, as are animated versions of the characters.

Today there are so many movies based on comics, but mostly they are all about superheros saving the world from evil with plenty of special effects. Harvey Pekar was more of an anti-superhero. He worked what he called a “flunky” job as a file clerk. He was obsessed with collecting jazz records. Even when his comic-writing work began to gain in popularity, he wasn’t making much money from it. He had problems with relationships, and problems coping with his every day existence. He wasn’t saving the world. Instead, he was just trying to get by.

The film is charming and funny and sad and clever all at the same time. It is also ambitious but in a much different way than the epic and bombastic superhero flicks which dominate today. I have no idea how I missed this movie when it came out. Brilliant work.

June 23, 2019
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American Splendor

I never imagined I would find myself writing a graphic novel. After all, I was never really into comics as a kid nor did I get excited by more literary comic book efforts as an adult. It wasn’t until Jacob Yerex read my little book, Squeeze Box Man and suggested it would work really well as a graphic novel, that I really turned my attention to the genre.

Not so long ago, I had lunch with my friend Scott Childs, and when I told him about what Jacob and I were doing with Squeeze Box Man, he loaned me a copy of an anthology called The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, a book that combines two comic anthologies, American Splendor and More American Splendor – sort of an anthology of an anthology.

As I began reading this book, I found myself drawn right into Harvey Pekar’s world. Pekar wrote these comics and had various artists, such as R. Crumb, Greg Budgett, Gary Dumm, Gerry Shamray, Kevin Brown, Sean Carroll, Val Mayerik and Susan Cavey do the artwork.

Harvey Pekar lived in Cleveland. His comics featured himself in his day to day life. He wrote about is work as a file clerk, about writing comics and collecting jazz records, about his relationships with women and his marriages, about his friends, and people he met along the way.

The stories seem sometimes insightful and at other times mundane. Sometimes the stories are simply Pekar talking to the audience, leaving the artist to cope with a total lack of action. R. Crumb nailed it in his into to this anthology, when he wrote, “Pekar has proven once and for all that even the most seemingly dreary and monotonous of lives is filled with poignancy and heroic struggle.” I strongly empathize with this as my own Lazy Allen stories deal with a guy who used to be something, who used to lead a band, now working the line in a bottling plant, drinking heavily after work, night after night after night.

I gobbled up this anthology, which to my mind is simply brilliant. I enjoyed the different artistic approaches taken by the various illustrators as well. I enjoyed the variety and found all the illustrations to be compelling.

There is a film based on American Splendor, with Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis. I’ve not seen it but at risk of ruining things, I’m going to watch it soon. Here’s the trailor. It’s from 2003 – it takes me a while to get around to things.

…and here’s Harvey Pekar on Letterman.

June 23, 2019
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Long Branch Mosaics at the Mississauga Garden Festival

Sheila is at the Mississauga Garden Festival today showcasing our mosaics. She brought a selection of small butterfly mosaics along, which she will be selling at a modest price. If you’re going to the festival stop by her table and say hi. We do all kinds of custom mosaic work for home and garden, everything from big birds and butterflies to life-size bears to garden benches to custom planters. You can see a broad selection of our work on our mosaics page.

June 23, 2019
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Perfect day for the Long Branch Garden Tour

kickoff flower-toss

Sue – setting up this morning

Sean James give pruning tips

Jeff Mason answers questions about summer containers

Toronto artist Bruce Parsons with his labyrinth
drummers

George meets young Arthur Gregory

back garden

Greg, Brenda, Arthur, Steph, Luke & Viv
Visitors
more visitors
Jack Antler playing Old Time music
Cedar waxwings hung out all day

by the bear

June 21, 2019
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Stop and Smell the Roses

Long Branch Garden Tour featured in the Etobicoke Guardian

If you’re in our area and you get the Etobicoke Guardian, you will have seen the Long Branch Garden Tour featured on the front page of the paper yesterday! The Long Branch Gardeners really appreciate the support of our fantastic community newspaper. You can read the entire article, by Tamara Shephard here.

The Long Branch Garden Tour – the biggest FREE garden tour in the country – takes place tomorrow. For people in the GTA who have never been to Long Branch, we’re nestled in the SW corner of Toronto by the lake. If you’re driving here, we’re roughly east of Brown’s Line and west of Kipling, on both sides of Lake Shore Blvd W. All gardens open to the public 10:00 am – 4:00 pm.

Visit the website for a map of participating gardens. The map is set up on Google Maps so you can navigate from garden to garden using your phone. If you prefer a paper map, you can pick one up on tour day at garden tour HQ – 85 Thirty First St (The Branch Church) or at any of the following spots on Lake Shore:

There are lots of FREE events taking place during the day. Here’s a list:

At 85 Thirty First St (The Branch Church):

9-9:45 – learn about pruning with garden expert Sean James.
9:45-9:50 – kickoff ceremony.
12-12:45 – learn to make super summer planters with garden expert Jeff Mason.
10:00-4:00 – interactive art event – Elemental Time by Bruce Parsons. Artist in attendance.
10:00-4:00 – kids gardening activities.
10:00-4:00 – Etobicoke Master Gardeners – info table about gardening for kids and families.

At 15 Thirty Sixth Street – 1:00 – 2:00 Drumming by the Lake – drum circle at the Titan Heritage Tree.

At 15 Twenty Seventh Street – 2:00-2:45 Jack Antler will play Old Time music in the back yard.

At the Long Branch Library 3500 Lake Shore Blvd W – The Gardens Pod Project in South Etobicoke will have an info table. The library hosts one of the community veggie gardens which are part of this project.

We really hope you have a chance to come visit our gardens and our community. If you plan to make a day of it, there are some really great lunch spots along Lake Shore for every taste. When you’re exploring the gardens, be sure to ask local residents for their fave places for a bite.

June 20, 2019
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Jack Antler performing twice

As most of you know, I play in a little Old Time duo called Jack Antler, with Ted Myerscough on guitar. We’ll be playing a few tunes tonight at the Fair Grounds Open Mic at 3785 Lake Shore Blvd W (near Brown’s Line). the open mic gets underway at 7 and goes to 9.

Then on Saturday, we’ll be playing a set at the Long Branch Garden Tour. We’ll be playing in the back yard at 15 Twenty Seventh Street, 2:00 – 2:45. Everyone is welcome!

June 18, 2019
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Long Branch Mosaics at Mississauga Garden Festival

On Sunday, Tuffy P will be at the Long Branch Mosaics table in the Marketplace Artists and Artisans zone at the Mississauga Garden Festival with a variety of butterfly mosaics. The festival is at Riverview Park Sunday 10-4. Stop by our table and meet Tuffy P!

Butterfly mosaics will be on sale, and Tuffy P will be happy to talk to you about custom mosaic work for your home and garden. Check out our Long Branch Mosaics pages to see pics of many of our mosaic projects.

June 17, 2019
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Lonesome Dove

My friend East Texas Red recommended Larry McMurtry’s 1985 novel, Lonesome Dove to me, and mailed me his copy. I just finished it this evening. It’s a beast of a book, 842 pages, but all written in very readable prose. At some point while reading the novel I learned it is one of a group of 4 novels, which I guess can best be called Westerns. I also learned there was a television mini-series based on this book, of which I know nothing.

Lonesome Dove is an historical novel, a frontier epic, and from that standpoint, it’s very interesting to catch the flavour of a difficult cattle drive from Texas to Montana, to catch a whiff of cowboy life. I enjoyed reading it, but although the depiction of the drive rang true, the human relationship stories driving the novel seemed somewhat melodramatic.

I found it difficult to understand why these guys started their cattle drive in the first place. I guess it was as much a big romantic adventure as anything else. The characters were pretty interesting. Some were far more developed than others, but maybe that’s to be expected.

Some severe editing would have helped Lonesome Dove, in my opinion, but in reading some reviews about it (which seem to all heap praise on the book), I didn’t once see that opinion shared.

I read a good chunk of this novel in a screened shelter in a campground near Massey Ontario in the rain. This book was perfect for the situation. I wasn’t for instance, going to finish it in one sitting and wish I had brought a second novel. It moved along at a pretty good pace, and the story and characters were engaging enough to keep me going. I think I’ve had my fill of this author, though, and I’ll leave the remaining books in the series to other readers.

June 13, 2019
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Can we live with less plastic?

Our federal government has announced plans to ban single-use plastic containers at some point in the near future. That will be quite a challenge, but I think collectively we can live with less plastic in our lives. There will be mis-steps and difficulties along the way, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the effort. A good start would be to do away with those plastic mineral water bottles I see littered around our parks.

Here in Toronto at least, we have really good drinking water. When I go on nature walks and want to bring water along, I fill my re-usable water bottle from the tap and off I go. Works fine.

I became more acutely aware of the problem of plastic junk littering the planet when we visited Vietnam. We visited Halong Bay, a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Site. Even in what appears at first to be a pristine landscape we saw plastic junk floating around in the water again and again.

Later on our trip our tour group went out on the Mekong River, and all along the shoreline, we saw plastic litter – a lot of plastic litter. This is not just a problem in far away parts of the world, though. Regular readers know I go on a lot of nature walks in parkland throughout the GTA. A trip does not go by when I do not see litter in these lovely areas.

The number one variety of litter I see on these walks is the ubiquitous plastic water bottle. This is followed closely by Tim Horton’s cups, which I’ve learned are not recyclable. In some parks, such as Sam Smith Park near our home, beer cans are in 3rd place.

There is also the problem of plastic over-packaging. How many times have you bought a small item packaged in a much larger chunk of plastic. It happens all the time, doesn’t it? I wonder how much packaging could be reduced if collectively we put our minds to it.

We have become habituated to using far too much plastic. To really reduce it, we’ll have to do some things differently and that kind of change is difficult and I have no doubt there will be costs attached to it. Many people will resist change and some will no doubt use the opportunity to attack the government for this initiative. I’ve already read Tweets suggesting it is an election ploy, and maybe it is, but still anything we can do to raise some awareness and begin to reduce the amount of plastic we are using has to be a good thing, don’t you think?