Dirty Things

Throw out the other strips, the grim probabilities—the crime, the decaying infrastructure, the hardship all around, the heroin and the syphilis. What do we have left? The bright side: maybe Manhattan will become affordable again, and cool, and dangerous. Dangerous in theory, but not to you or your family and friends. Dirty, but in a good way.

-- Nick Paumgarten, New Yorker, September 29, 2008 (link).

Puppets Who Slay Me

This is pretty well the best thing ever.

Let me repeat. (Ever).

The Lakeview From Here

I bike past the Lakeview Lunch a few times per week. I remember going there when I first moved to Toronto, and really liking it. Then, inevitably, it went downhill. (I saw inevitably, because this seems to be a trend in Toronto. Utopia being one of the rare exceptions to the rule.)

Anyway, when the Lakeview closed a few years ago, just when Ossington was starting to heat up, I figured a savvy entrepreneur would snap it up, remodel it a la Shanghai Cowgirl, and make a killing. Instead, whoever decided to restart the place didn't even bother to scrub the goddamn walls before flipping the closed sign back to open.

Predictably, the place shut down again. But in the last few weeks, someone nabbed it and is renovating like heck.

I write today because I saw an upholstery van unloading new padded booth seats in a tasteful brown colour. This suggests to me that the walls have also been cleaned. That would be great. I miss the Lakeview, and provided they upgrade the menu and decide to serve decent food, that place will become a license to print money.

And I will be glad to contribute to said fortune in the making.

This Is Ugly

Really, really ugly.

On the plus side, the Imaginings in the above issue is actually funny, although I might be biased as I know the author.

Frank magazine suggests the Walrus is running low on cash, thus making it an endangered species.

Unabridged Transcript of the film Funny Ha Ha

I don’t know …
Ummm …
I guess …
Yeah …
[Awkward laughter]

Maybe like …
I don’t …
I mean …
[Awkward pause]

Just like uhh …
I was like …
I’m sorry …
I just ummm …
[Awkward awkward.]

Marx My Words

Tell us a secret.
Communism will win.

-- Zizek

(link).

No More Shock of the New

“The age of shattering people’s ossified expectations is long gone.”
-- Henry Baumgartner

(link).

Rules Rule

"Rules are not just restrictions, but also the armature of beauty."
-- Shelley Jackson

(link).

I Used to Blog About The Tenements, Before They Sold Out

A high-rise apartment building is going up next door to Mr. Sitek’s studio — actually two studios, since Stay Gold, where TV on the Radio made “Dear Science,” is in the rooms next to Headgear. “They build one skyscraper, and skyscrapers get lonely,” Mr. Sitek said in his three-pack-a-day rasp, lighting up in the alley alongside his favorite Williamsburg club, Zebulon. “So then they call their friends and more skyscrapers come, and they throw a party. And the next thing you know there’s a skyscraper blogging about the skyscraper scene in Williamsburg.”

-- From the Sunday NYT, September 7, 2008

(link).