JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

BBC election coverage, 1970 Monty Python skit, 1970 Given some of the swings predicted for Monday night's election, shouldn't one of the broadcasters following the results resurrect BBC's swingometer?

Illustrated by Betty Maw. Originally appeared in the April 1942 issue of The Canadian Forum . - JB

Back in the mid-1960s, Dad played hockey in a recreational league in Leaside. He seemed to have enjoyed it, though I did wonder why I had never seen him strap on a pair of skates. He occasionally talked about the experience, including stories of other players who'd had a cup of coffee in the NHL. But one story stuck out. The way I remember him telling me the tale, someone in the league got their hands on a pair of skates Detroit Red Wings star Alex Delvecchio left behind at Maple Leaf Gardens. The future Hall-of-Famer's skates were passed around either Dad's team or the league and whoever was able to fit into them gave them a go. True? Hard to say. Dad was full of tall tales that proved to have a grain of truth in them. Or my memory is fractured for having paid half-attention to them rather than etching them in full detail on my brain. Not sure what the trophy that Dad is holding in this picture from early 1963 was awarded for. It might related to his lifeguard dut...

"Mirror of Your Mind" appears to have been a syndicated piece of filler that tackled the tough social (and social perception) issues of the day. Source: Weston Times , January 3, 1969 - JB

When you have nine-to-five schedules, making a tasty, healthy homemade dinner can feel like the worst chore in the world, especially if it's been a rocky day at the office or a busy night looms ahead. The eating out option is fine occasionally, but your waistline and wallet will complain if you do it too often. You want something speedy yet nourishing. That's when cookbooks like Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express have come to our rescue. After successfully testing a few recipes while we borrowed it from the library, we knew we had to have our own copy...which would up under the Christmas tree. Organized by season (a structure we've ignored), the cover promises that any of the four hundred plus recipes inside take twenty minutes or less to whip up. Of the dishes we have tried, Bittman's Lemony Red Lentil Soup with Cilantro has made the most return appearances on our table. Cook a chopped onion in olive oil in a saucepan until soft; add one cup of red lentils and f...

Note that the meal pictured, a footlong sub loaded with lettuce, tomato and cheese, is not accompanied by a recipes on these pages. Perhaps a hearty sub was considered a manlier dish in 1970 than a cold vegetable soup favoured by the likes of Lisa Simpson ? Also impressive: that the sub does not appear to have been crushed while stuffed in the businessman's suitcase. Maybe subs were all he carried in that particular suitcase (the papers on the side were coupons for his favourite sub shops)...which reminds me of a story I read the other night. During the first decades of the 20th Century, the president of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team was a colourful local politician named August "Garry" Herrmann . According to Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella's book The Ball Clubs : Even for a business renowned for its outsized personages, the new Cincinnati boss seemed like a character out of Dick Tracy . Called a "walking delicatessen" by some, he seldom ventur...

Photo taken on Augusta Avenue, March 20, 2011. - JB

Found on King-Vaughan Road a week ago, these signs would have been leftover from the Vaughan federal by-election back in November. Given the reaction of the opposition parties to today's federal budget, this supporter of the current Minister of State for Seniors may as well leave them up. Though not officially declared, it's all-but-certain now that Canada is heading into a full federal election campaign by the end of this week. Picture taken March 14, 2011 - JB

No illustrations to accompany today's first batch of recipes. Though stroganoff has many elements I like in a dish (saucy beef, mushrooms, a bed of egg noodles), it's never been a dish that's tempted me to order it in a restaurant or make it on my own. Possible reasons: 1) One of my favourite dishes as a kind was Mom's sauerbraten (aka "steak and noodles"), which is a distant cousin. Main differences: instead of mushrooms and sour cream, brown sugar and worcestershire sauce were key ingredients. 2) Any Noodle Roni/ Lipton Noodles & Sauce sidedish marketed as stroganoff tended to be crappy (Romanoff noodles on the other hand...). 3) Seeing students down mass quantities of stroganoff at Creelman Hall during my university daze. Blue cheese dressing? Back in the early 1980s, Malibu's Le Grand Cochon restaurant served up a tasty, extra-creamy version...and plenty of it! Sample some chocolate cake prepared by the chefs of Crowded House. ...

One of the highlights of going to the Elora Festival's book sale every spring is surfing through the tables of formerly-loved (or never-used-despite-all-good-intentions) cookbooks. For as little as a quarter, dedicated browsers will find flip past every Better Homes & Gardens cooking guide ever published to find recipe books ranging from local women's institutes to collections of Len Deighton's swingin' Sixties cookstrips . It was at one Elora sale that I discovered Betty Crocker's vision of the diet a North American male should enjoy, complete with the cutesy illustration style beloved of book designers and board game makers circa 1970. It's interesting to contrast the cartoony style used by artist Murray Tinkelman in this book and the work he has done for clients like the New York Times . We'll keep the table of contents under wraps, so that every dish comes as a surprise (this series needs an element of suspense to keep readers coming ba...

It was a serene winter Friday afternoon. Bellevue Square Park was quiet, perhaps the quietest I've ever seen. Perhaps it was due to my visit happening on a workday. Maybe regular visitors were seeking refuge from the snowy landscape in one of Kensington Market's shops and eateries. Or maybe people were afraid of the recent change in one of the park's landmarks. At first it was the odd bird or two found drained of all of their blood. Then larger urban animals were discovered in the same state. You might think a raccoon is a nuisance, but nobody wants to see one, or any other creature, drained of their life fluids for no apparent reason. All of the deceased animals were found within the immediate vicinity of the Al Waxman statue on the west side of the park. Was there a secret ritual going on at night under the noses of the residents around the square? It was after the third report of foul play that investigators noticed something odd about the statue's head. Th...

The last in a series of testimonials from famous, semi-famous, and not-at-all-famous users of Vidal Sassoon products which, unlike the others, was printed all by its lone self. Guess the non-user had to be isolated to strengthen the punchline. Not that we mean any disrespect to Mr. Holder , whose half-century artistic career has encompassed acting, choreography and painting. He may be best known for two roles: James Bond villain Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die , and the white-suited 7UP pitchman who extolled the virtues of the non-cola during the 1970s and 1980s. Holder didn't see doing commercials for as a comedown. "I'm no snob," he noted in a 1975 interview with People magazine . "The commercial is an art form unto itself. After all, you are seducing people." View all of the ads we've found in this series . Source: a 1985 issue of Rolling Stone (forgot to note the date) - JB

Two more testimonials from famous, semi-famous, and not-at-all-famous users of Vidal Sassoon products. We wonder if the police officer was teased by his colleagues for his puffy do. More to come... Source: a 1985 issue of Rolling Stone (forgot to note the date) - JB

More testimonials from famous, semi-famous, and not-at-all-famous users of Vidal Sassoon products. Today's testifiers: a member of Woody Allen's stock company (who appears ready for a day at the country club) and a gold-medal Olympic gymnast. Source: a 1985 issue of Rolling Stone (forgot to note the date) - JB

One in a series of testimonials from famous, semi-famous, and not-at-all-famous users of Vidal Sassoon products. One presumes Warhol was amazed by the artful way the spray kept his wigs in place. As for Animotion , their lasting legacy is a tune that was used for years as the theme music for CITY-TV's Fashion Television . More of this campaign to come... Source: a 1985 issue of Rolling Stone (forgot to note the date) - JB

In light of the current kerfuffle over Bell's pursuit of usage based billing (UBB) for the internet, here's a story I stumbled upon while researching something else that shows protests in Toronto against Bell's practices aren't new. Source: The Globe and Mail , August 22, 1957 - JB

When watching late-night reruns of SCTV on Windsor’s CBC outlet during our teens, Amy and I expected that most of our laughs would come from the fake ads on the Canadian comedy classic, not the real ones during commercial breaks. One exception was Woody Pontiac, located across the border in Hamtramck (a suburb of Detroit surrounded on all but one side by the city of Detroit). Their pitchman was dealer Woodrow W. Woody (1908-2002), an elderly gentleman whose on-air demeanour came from an earlier era. Mr. Woody wasn’t a hard sell salesman, nor did he use gimmicks like flying around in a cape (hi Mel Farr!). No, Mr. Woody reached out to potential customers by stressing his long involvement in the car business as a genial, slightly doddering old man whose eyes were fixed on a teleprompter might do. We imitated his exit lines for years afterward. The cheerful reassurance we’d like his dealership. The quaintness of seeing any TV pitchman from the late 1980s/early 1990s say to viewers “s...

In the midst of winter cleaning at the Warehouse, we've uncovered a treasure trove of romance comics from the 1960s and 1970s. Here's one of the gems we found. After a near-death experience with a perfectly spherical boulder that charged at you on an idyllic cliffside beach, what pair of stiffly-drawn young lovers can't resist a touch of in-law humour? John and his unnamed lover soon returned to the picnic, where everyone had a good laugh as if it was the closing minute of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. When the lovebirds wandered off to change their clothes, the in-laws had a quiet conversation... MOTHER : I told you not to buy a boulder from the Acme catalogue! FATHER : But it was the only one I could afford! SMERSH's boulders cost too much! MOTHER : (sighs) I knew I should have brought the arsenic. None of the major comic book databases have a clue as to who the uncredited writer and artist of this one-page filler were. Source: Just Married #102 , October 19...

The golden gateway for several generations of snowbirds... *** I rarely use the Ambassador Bridge whenever I visit the Detroit area these days. The view is nice, and it makes more sense to use it to head to certain destinations, but I like to line the pockets of the Detroit International Bridge Company as little as possible (it was nice to see, if only briefly, the president of DIBC taken away in handcuffs for contempt of court after the company refused to comply with a court order to demolish various structures that never should have been built). Currently cars coming from the south on the American side have to follow a long, looping detour that seems designed to tempt you into buying gas from the DIBC before returning to Canada than serve as a practical detour around construction and the remains of a bait shop on 23rd Street. My most recent trip across the bridge was over Christmas, when I packed several family members into the car for a daytrip to Ann Arbor. The border guar...

Over thirty years later, Conn used many of the same selling points that Mr. Sousa stands by when they produced a short promotional film called Mr. B Natural . Forty years after that, Conn's efforts to promote the fruits of their quality craftsmanship provided the material for one of the funniest segments of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 . With a tagline like "cultivate your musical bump" this ad cries out for MST3K -style riffing and/or groan-inducing double entendres from hecklers at the back of the town square or orchestra hall. Ad source: Photoplay , November 1923 - JB