JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Went for my first walk around town since coming back from Montreal. Stumbled upon the celebrations for the official opening of Toronto's latest attraction, Dundas Square (see here for local newspaper coverage ). The new landmark has been the source of endless debate in the local media for the past few months, from those trying to defend its future potential to the majority who see it as an ugly concrete slab that fails to live up to the hype (this being Toronto, the centre of the universe, everything has to be world-class). I wandered over after loading up on Japanese food on the Danforth, wandering down through Cabbagetown to walk off the excessive amount of sashimi I'd downed. Lesson learned on the way: if the call of nature strikes hard, and you're scrambling to find a men's room on the Ryerson campus, good luck! Noticed the chess tables by Sam the Record Man have been replaced by a sidewalk cafe, as part of that landmark's ongoing modernization. It'...

1) Sunday is the ideal time to drive into downtown Ottawa - it's dead. 2) As in Toronto, the American embassy appears to have cramped traffic, blocked off by concrete, a forlorn-looking guard protecting the compound. I later saw an elderly man walking back and forth yelling out (with a pitch that bore an uncanny resemblance to a megaphone) that Dubya was a mass murderer. 3) It's nice to have old friends in far-off places. Had dinner with a couple I hadn't seen for a few years. Time has been kind to both of them. Had a great roast chicken dinner, plus got to see the wedding pix. 4) When I walked into the hotel lobby, I had a familiar feeling. I think I stayed at the Crowne Plaza before, under a different hotel name, on a grade 9 field trip to the nation's capital. Main memory - my room slept through an early morning fire alarm. Also seem to recall somebody making a real ass of themself at a sugar shack in Rigaud by pretending to be very swishy in front of Americ...

A mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly 1) The traffic - as snarled, if not more so, than Toronto. I've always managed to get stuck on the Metropolitan. Even surface streets on a Sunday afternoon are terrible (Jean-Talon and Cote-des-Neiges...arrgh!) 2) The turn signal does not exist. You're putting along, maybe 10 km/h at most, when unexpectedly somebody darts in front of you. 3) Maps lie. Sure, it looks easy to get from point A to point B. The mapmakers never factored in that on many routes, it's impossible to turn anywhere. A 5-minute jaunt turns into a 20-minute quest. Heaven forbid if you miss the correct turn... 4) Stopping on a red light at the top of a steep hill downtown is cause for anxiety...especially when being tailgated. 5) Franglais works! 6) Useful feature inside the subway cars - each has a pixelboard that not only shows the next station, but the connecting bus routes. 7) The panhandlers are more animated than in other locales. 8) Ma...

Where was I before conking out the other night...on the way back to Amherstburg. Got back for dinner Friday night, then rested out for the family weekend roadtrip to Toledo... Started off with the first of many nods during the day to past trips. On a whim, we went over to Grosse Ile (the chunk of the States directly across the river from my hometown) to check if the bakery we used to get great sugar cookies and pudding cakes from was still there. Went 2 for 3 - the bakery was there, as were the cookies (bought the last half-dozen - polished the last one off tonight), but no pudding cakes this day. Downtown Toledo is one of those city centres where the city planner had a malicious sense of humour. Every street is one way and never goes the way you want it to. We missed most of the confusion this time around, as the freeway leading into downtown (I-280, notorious for its traffic jams) was closed for construction. The exit we took led us directly to our destination, the Libbey ...

Chateau Cola Availability - mid-to-late 80s, SW Ontario A&Ps My father used to bring this stuff home from the local A&P - he really enjoyed it, probably due to an uber-sugar rush. Chateau was an anachronism, being the only pop I remember that had to be opened with a can opener. No tabs or push buttons for the Chateau folks. This was appropriate, since it had the viscosity of motor oil. The can itself had a vague drawing of a castle, with a generic font for the flavour name. The taste was sickly sweet, close to pure syrup. It was the kind of stuff that could give a kid a psychedelic experience, like that episode of the Simpsons where Bart and Millhouse go for the pure syrup Squishy. There were other flavours - the ginger ale was watery but OK. There may have been orange and grape flavours. But Dad liked it, and it was cheap, so we drank it. Attempts to find any information on the web for Chateau have turned up nothing. Anybody know who made it or how long the c...

( full size version ) A selection of photos taken around Arts House circa 1995.

Waited with the gang in the drizzle last night to see the Matrix Reloaded at the Uptown. The theatre took awhile to fill up, as it was still half-empty minutes before showtime. The Uptown will be a loss when it closes in the next year, the last of the old major chain palaces. Signs have gone up indicating it's future as, what else, condos. Its demise was sealed when Famous Players decided to close it rather than comply with a legal request to provide handicapped access, along with the Plaza and the Eglinton. The ideal way for the theatre to go, and take advantage of its ample space, would be to show a classic silent with a live orchestra. Gone...the last theatre not to show advertising slides and star puzzles before the movie. The movie itself? A mixed bag - the second half, with the freeway chase, worked better than the first, unless you're a fan of bump n' grind hippie dance sequences. The theatre helped, as the acoustics in the Uptown allow you the feel each k...

...and not succeeding at it :) Maybe because it's the lull before a busy week-and-a-half here. Going to see Matrix 2 with friends Thursday night, going back home to Amherstburg Friday afternoon, down to Toledo on Saturday, back to T.O. Monday, company discount sale next Wednesday, then a weekend vacation split between Montreal and Ottawa. And only a few months until the Great American Roadtrip. I'm one of those people (probably looked at as crazy by the likes of the National Post ) who's happy to see a higher loonie, if only for a cheaper vacation this summer and better deals cross-border shopping. It's one of those habits people look puzzled about when I mentioned, like I'm some sort of nut. Having grown up close to the border, I'm used to crossing it to pick up things I can't get in the Great White North, like Pepsi One, Rice and Beans mixes, cocoa rice-krispie type cereals and decent baked beans. Back at the height of cross-border shopping in the ...

OK, so I wound up here by accident in the midst of my web-surfing adventures...but a web blog sounded like a neat idea, perhaps a way to finally let those pent-up creative impulses go somewhere...or bore people to death. :) What'll be here? Whatever strikes the old noggin. Rants, raves and the odd inspiration. A chance to finally follow through on things friends have suggested. Blah blah blah. Welcome to the Warehouse and Curio Emporium. We hope you'll be a repeat customer. WHERE'D THE NAME COME FROM? In my teens, my sister and I got hooked on SCTV reruns. One recurring bit was "Tex & Edna Boil's Prairie Warehouse and Curio Emporium" featuring Dave Thomas and Andrea Martin as a bizarre pair of piano salespeople who rambled on about odd things. Something about the name stuck with me...a few years later, I landed a spot DJing on CFRU at the University of Guelph. It took awhile to figure out a name for my show, which I usually described as ...