One Post, Two Links

Wishing Toronto had a Gawker: (link).

Here's why not: (link).

Not Boring, Ordinary

But it isn’t the stereotype of Don Draper that is so attractive; it’s his desperate need to break out of the stereotype. Much like the characters in Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road and Tom Perrotta’s Little Children—both recently made into films—he suffers from a classic case of upper middle-class suburban angst, adults petrified by how ordinary they’ve become. With his taste for strong women living outside the very rules he feels boxed in by, Don Draper seems as though he just might understand all angles of the domestic equation. “His sense of yearning, his sense of being confined by the home yet also craving that confinement and comfort, I identify with it,” said a Brooklyn mom of two and Draper-phile in her mid-thirties whose husband, a “screenwriter,” works from home while she commutes to a publishing job in Manhattan.

From the New York Observer (link).

Thank You Bougatsos, Your Candor is Most Refreshing

Ms. Bougatsos is ready for the attention. “There’s no such thing as selling out in my mind,” she said, adding that she would love to have her music featured on a TV show soundtrack: “A Jeep commercial, a tampon commercial, anything,” she said. “We’re a band, we make music, and that’s what we want to be known for.”

From an October 20, 2008 NYT interview with the band Gang Gang Dance. (link).

Really?

Check this out, from the November 2008 issue of Toronto Life:



Can you see the two flaps on the Audi ad?



That's right, the comic memoir by Lorenz Peter that began on the opposite page of the November, 2008 issue of Toronto Life continues underneath the Audi ad.



Yep. There's the rest of the comic memoir of working at the AGO, buried beneath the second Audi ad flap. Words fail me.

Awesome Stumble Across

Just discovered The Believer has the full text of the Tim and Eric interview online.

(link).

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.]