September 24, 2010
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Best in Show

Best in Show (film)

Image via Wikipedia

Tuffy P turned on the television last night to discover that the Christopher Guest 2000 “mocumentary”  Best in Show was on. The film is set up as a documentary featuring five dogs and their owners competing in a dog show. That’s all you need to know going in. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a film that caused me to laugh out loud so much.

The cast is great in this film, and in particular Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy and Fred Willard were delightful. It was written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, but I understand that much of the dialogue in Guest’s mocumentaries is improvised by the actors.

If you haven’t seen this one, it’s an excellent renter.

September 22, 2010
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If God wanted us to vote….

she would have given us candidates

I suppose it’s about time I commented on the recent polls that put Rob Ford way way way way ahead of everyone else in the Toronto mayoralty race. I’m just kind of stunned by the whole business.

Rob Ford is an expression of the anger towards our last mayor and council. You might say they invented or caused the phenomenon called Rob Ford. I understand that. Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I too have been angry with the past municial administration, to the point where I have suggested that the best thing we can do is kick all the incumbents out and start fresh with a new bunch.

Ford, with his one line campaign (gravy train, gravy train gravy train) feeds on the anger.  None of the other candidates seem to be resonating with the public. I had expected that a new candidate or two would jump in to fill the void before the deadline but I was wrong. The choices we have are the choices we have.

The Rossi camp appears to have decided that voters are morons and so have produced some embarrassing radio spots featuring a guy with a sort-of-Italian accent talking about “wise-guys” and “goodfellas”. Maybe he thinks that by presenting a stereotype of an Italian gangster he can rustle up the Italian Canadian vote.  I think these ads pretty much finish him as a candidate.

With Smitherman, Rossi and Thomson crowding the middle, and Pantalone taking all the “things aren’t so bad the way they are” votes, it’s going to be an easy win for Ford – unless some candidates drop out. We’ll see what happens.

Let me say that I think Ford would/will be a disasterous mayor for Toronto. But then, as one commenter noted here a while back, we survived Lastman. The good thing is that the mayor only has one vote. Ford will try to rally up support and there may be enough opportunists around that he will be able to gather some. I think this week we’ll see some action and some endorsements. I wonder if politico-turned-radio-host John Tory is going to come out and endorse anyone. Considering there was some commotion about the possibility of Mr. Tory running this time around, he might well have some influence on the outcome if he decided to back a candidate.

It is going to be very interesting to see if the participation rate is going to go up this time around.  Perhaps the normally apathetic crowd will come out either to jump on the Ford bandwagon or to vote for anyone but Ford.

Just for fun, visit Torontoist and make your own Rob Ford funny.

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September 21, 2010
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A strangely compelling song…

Here’s an old song that came to mind today. It’s Lenny Bruce by Bob Dylan, here perfomed by Mr. Dylan and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. This tune has the oddest lyric in it: he never robbed any churches or cut off any babies heads??? Anyway, I like this song. I think it first recorded on an album called Shot of Love from back in the early 80s.

September 20, 2010
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The Oath

We trundled off to the Art Gallery of Ontario on the weekend to see the exhibition Drama and Desire: Artists and the Theatre before it closes on September 26. The exhibition features work by painters across a few centuries that include Ingres, David, Delacroix, Degas, Blake, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vuillard and more. If truth be known though, we went to see a particular painting, Jacques Louis David’s 1786 Oath of the Horatii.

The painting is pre-French Revolution. It depicts the three sons of Horatius swearing on their swords, which are held by their father. They are vowing to defend Rome to the death. What admirable patriotic duty to the state and all that jazz. We had studied this painting, or I should say images of this painting in art history classes back in our University days. The Oath was presented as a paradigm of the Neo-Classical period, and back in those days it was a reminder to me how much I was attracted to Romanticism instead.

Going to the gallery, I realized that while I could describe from my memory what was going on in the painting, I couldn’t recall a great deal of detail. In fact I didn’t even know how big the painting was. When you study paintings using slides or books, it’s easy to lose context. We don’t see the painting on a wall and we tend to have no sense of scale, even if we read the sizes.

I can recall two instances when I was quite taken by the size of a painting. One was on seeing a Salvador Dali painting I had studied. I knew the image at a glance, but I never thought of the size of the painting. It was way smaller than I had imagined it would be. The other instance was upon seeing Picasso’s Guernica when it was hanging at the Modern in New York. Pictures of this painting in books don’t begin to do it justice. I recall walking up the stairs at the Modern, turning, and seeing Guernica, 11 feet tall and close to 26 feet wide. It stopped me in my tracks.

I digress. I should say, going back to The Oath, that it is a fantastic work, even if it isn’t my cup of tea, so to speak. I’m really glad to have had the opportunity to see it up close and personal. In fact the whole show was really well conceived and presented.

While we were at the AGO, I was reminded that they also have a stunning permanent collection these days, in particular the Thomson collection. If you visit Toronto, I would say that collection is in the must see category.

Filed under: Art
September 19, 2010
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A Forest Day

This morning, I packed a bit of a lunch, loaded the dogs in the car and drove up to meet up with my brother Salvelinas in a forest an hour or so from home. Salvelinas is very knowledgeable when it come to mushrooms and when it comes to trees and other forest plant too. I always learn something when I spend a day in the woods with him.

Today we saw a number of unusual mushrooms.

I’ve seen the big vase-shaped mushrooms  before, always in the same forest. I haven’t figured out what they are yet. If these mushrooms are familiar to you, please contact me or comment.

We observed many species today, but best of all, we picked a couple good baskets of mushrooms that included Hypomyces latifluorum (lobsters), Hydnum umbilicatum (hedgehogs), and Hypsizygus ulmarius (the so-called elm oyster).

Here’s two other interesting finds. The first is a nice specimen of the Northern Tooth (Climacodon septentrionale) growing on a mature maple.

I saw a couple examples of these when I was up in Muskoka recently. The other unusual fungi we saw were white elfin saddle, Helvella crispa. This is the first time I’ve seen these odd looking items.

As usual, we also came across some specimens we couldn’t identify with casual observation, so I have three mushrooms set up for spore prints tonight.

I also have the dehydrator going, drying a load of lobster mushrooms for winter. I had a very enjoyable day.


September 18, 2010
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Connectivity

I’m having some connectivity issues…my computer connects me to the inter-webs but then disconnects and connects and disconnects again. I have the inter-webs high priest technicians coming to fix it soon. In the meantime, If I don’t post as much as usual, have patience please. Sometimes I can’t get on for hours. It’s working right this second and hopefully I’ll have it fixed up soon.