shots on goal

Pat St. Clair, brave warrior of the Rename Canada Front took these pictures.

He has also thoughtfully provided captions.

There are more on some other site somewhere, by a guy who seemed very professional, but I can't find the address at the moment.

Steve: will you please email those GI Joe links? Those were ridiculous.

Some thoughts on my first visit to Toronto:

Best movie ever on a plane: Lost in Translation. Even if there was the incessant pinging of the radar audible through the headphones. I don't usually ever watch movies on planes, mostly because they're usually really lousy movies, but this was a must-do.

I couldn't quite put Toronto in context. Not that I should need to, but I kept finding myself juggling reminiscences of Brooklyn meets Copenhagen meets Chicago meets London. On the surface of my short stay, it feels something like a mix of those. I liked it a lot. Weird though hearing perfect north American English and realizing that I was in another country. Kind of cool. I dig that actually.

The highlight of the night was actually being forced--FORCED I tell you!--to rewind a tune by an artist notoriously resistant to the rewind: Polar. Other rewinds included J Majik's "Your Sound" remix (that was for you John! (yes, I owe you a phone call)), rising star Cartridge's "Light Cycles," and one other I can't recall.

Speaking of rising Canadian son Cartridge, it was an honor to be the first DJ to play Cartridge tunes in front of the man himself, descended from his desolate home of Edmonton. He claims that he's never left town, nor flown before this weekend. Welcome to the bright lights Scott. Your future is assured. With smarts like that, anything is possible.

Highlights of the weekend included plumbing at 3 a.m., the decidedly shady Greek Quentin Tarantino and the pinstripe possee skulking around the all-night souvlaki joint while watching a transplanted New Jersey Guido with his pimped-out atrocity of a white pick-up truck get busted by the cops for crimes against fashion and good taste. Mike the Russian Jewish kid with a soul as old as Siberia is cold (whom I greatly enjoyed hanging out with; thank you for the rides Mike), the entire Slavic drinkfest crew who amassed a collection of counter-top bottles that will remain unrivalled for years to come, the house DJ upstairs who was kind enough to thank me for the latest Palette release; meeting the original owner of London's Blackmarket records and the same guy who first brought Nicky Blackmarket over here years ago, and partnered up with Carl Collins of legendary Hardleaders fame.

Had a wonderful chat with a cellist from Ithaca that ranged from Charlie Parker to Mstislav Rostropovitch (with whom he'd taken a master class. Dope.), and included a respectful debate on the merits of Clint Eastwood's Bird.

Toronto has a strange fascination with wraps. I do not understand this.

Toronto is also home of the Extreme Haircut®. There were more girls with assertive hair than a Peaches concert in Williamsburg. All those sharp edges made the dancefloor a perilous place.

The CN tower is pretty amazing. We didn't ascend it, but stood around beneath it. Too much money for the whole group apparently. It is a marvel of engineering I think.

"Spadina" has to be one of the stranger names I've ever encountered for a street. It's pronounced spuh-dye-nuh, accent on the middle syllable.

Seeing the longest uninterrupted street in the world--"Yonge Street"--was worth note. I dig worthless bits of trivia like this.

Oops. The time. Must work, and then return to my monk's cell.

See ya!