global warming

from the Toronto Star:

Residents who donned their shorts Sunday won't be surprised to find it was a record-setting warm day.

Temperatures at Pearson airport hit 26 C, more than twice the normal high for the day ...

So far October has seen an average of nearly 16 C, while around 9 C would be a normal.

“It’s almost seven degrees warmer than what it should be in October and that is quite amazing,” said Phillips. “We should have had a frost by now and we’re not even close to it.”

The lingering frost is why many trees still have their leaves, and in some cases, they’re even green.

“We need a frost or some kind of cool temperature to shock the leaves ... the leaves are faked out.”

tomorrow's forecast: 24 C and sunny ... but the 'faked out' leaves are freakin' me out

oh no!

Gardiner (but my stories never take the express way ...)

the last time i was at Heathrow i noticed that Wallpaper magazine had a new series of travel guides. i like the magazine, and thought "hey, they would have some interesting insights into their destinations." well, wasn't there a city guide for Toronto! i couldn't resist, of course (i always like to read what outsiders have to say about my favourite city.) i flipped it open and it's tabbed style allowed me to immediately notice the heading 24 hours in Toronto (i.e.'if you have one day to spend in the city, hereis a sample itinerary of highlights you should hit')

St. Lawrence Market ... cool, yeah
the 'formal gardens' at St. James Park .... okay, thought that area was kinda sketch
the Toronto Sculpture Garden ... i didn't know what this was at first, but it turns out to be a little square surrounded by office buildings where my cousin and i used to smoke up on his lunch breaks from his job as a collections agent! ha
the Gardiner Musuem ... i had never even heard of it?! but this gem is why i'm writing today .....

the Gardiner is Canada's only museum dedicated to ceramics. it was completely renovated last year and transformed into a beautiful modern exhibition space. i went today and caught a tour with a docent. i was extremely impressed by their current special exhibition Portraits: Gertrud Möhwald, as i was by their collection of contemporary ceramics

how it is with James and me

[me to james]: so let me summarize. my nothing is your three .. my three is your four .. and my four and five are 'codes' which combine to form your five ....
[thinks] ... [laughs]: yes

ittwas i

welcome to a new segment, ittwas (invite trevor to write about something)

Reena is writing an essay and wants my support (as opposed to my help, which would be difficult to give to a non-first-year psych major)

she writes:
... it's kind of a fun topic to write about, i'm just a procrastinator by nature so i haven't started yet. your writing clearly isn't gonna help mine, so this is obviously for interest's sake only, but ... define your social location and how it shapes your ideology. please & thanks :o)

well, first of all, i realize that psychology has very specific definitions, so i'm sure 'social location' means something very succinct ... and something completely un-intuitive, if my experience in the field tells me anything

but to improvise .... my social location: well it's kind of strange, because sometimes i feel like i'm in the centre of everything, and other times i feel like i'm completely on the fringe .. socio-locationally speaking, that is

so i'd say my position is just like that of the edge of the universe .... there is no edge of the universe, so you could argue that it's a combination of both the end and the beginning and/or the centre
(to quote a favourite band: the universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go straight along enough you'll end up where you were)

yeah, so that's my social location ..... either that, or matriarch (the world sipping from my proverbial teet but i feel so used?)

how does that shape my ideology? fuck! even if i tried to answer that, what would it mean?

i·de·ol·o·gy [ahy-dee-ol-uh-jee, id-ee-] –noun.
1. the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual

oh, i like the "etc."

so how does my social location shape my belief system?
well, there is actually some correlation between my stated social location and my belief system, in that sometimes i believe in people, in humanity; believe in their capacity to love and to grow; believe in my own capacity to love and to grow. and other times i fucking hate people; think they are useless and mean ... sometimes i fucking hate myself

fin.

feel free to submit further ittwas requests! ;)

concerts i'm attending ... [updated]

ROCK PLAZA CENTRAL w/Jetplanes of Abraham @ Sneaky Dee's. Oct 6
and the award for best new (to Trevor) Canadian band goes to .... Jetplanes of Abraham! switching vocalists (and instruments) for almost every song, the Ottawa-based indie collective kept us on our toes with their catchy and complex tunes. next came headliners Rock Plaza Central, who recreated their brilliant album Are We Not Horses? (a concept album about mechanical horses who think they are real) with style and presence. but sersly, i'm getting tired of writing reviews like this .....
i really enjoyed the show. check out the bands. fin. ;)

THE NATIONAL @ Phoenix. Oct 8
SHOUT OUT OUT OUT OUT @ Lee's Palace. Oct 27
BATTLES @ Lee's Palace. Nov 10


past shows:

THE VEILS @ El Mocambo. Sept 5
well this is a story: Brett and i knew we would have to leave the show at 10:45 in order to make the guestlist of a festival party ... so of course the Veils went on at 10:40! the one song we heard ("Nux Vomica", the title track off their latest album) was phenomenal! then we hoped in a cab and left :(

YEAH YEAH YEAHs @ Berkeley Church. Sept 7
okay, this concert season it's going as smoothly as i expected ... Vee and i are not attending this invite-only, catered event (at a church) because one of us has had a hair disaster! i won't say which one of us, but i can say that the situation is worse than it sounds in that her dad's wedding is tomorrow ......... oh well. in lieu of this, we are going to see a documentary together at the film festival on sunday ... and we got to perform evil thought experiments on paris hilton on wednesday night! muhaha

RILO KILEY @ Phoenix. Sept 18
i prefer Rilo Kiley's older albums to the new one, so i was expecting at least momentary 'stage apathy' during this show. i couldn't be more wrong. Jenny Lewis is one of the most engaging performers i've ever seen: sexy, sweet, playful ... you couldn't take your eyes off of her. and what an amazing voice, captured perfectly on the Phoenix's great sound system. even their renditions of the new songs worked, providing context and emotion not adequately captured on the album (imho.) it was a great night, made all the better by the fact that it was my birthday, i was with some of my best friends, and the band sang happy birthday! ... to their keyboardist. ;)

OKKERVIL RIVER @ Lee's Palace. Sept 21
there is no denying that this was a great show .. inasmuchas the band performed very well and have such incredible songs. it's the second time i've seen them at Lee's and, incredibly, one of my biggest issues with the last show was repeated during this one: a handful of idiots in the crowd thought it 'cool' to shout out completely inane things during any and all quiet moments ... including the emotional meanderings of my favourite song! (another distraction was the butch dykes going at it directly in front of me for seemingly the entire show (and it would have been so un-pc to complain, right?!)) the band focused on their more up-beat material and, perhaps as a result, didn't play my favourite song ("Savannah Smiles") from the new album :(
but really, i'm being picky here: i certainly got my $14 worth! :)

MINUS THE BEAR @ The Opera House. Oct 1
meh.

FUJIYA & MIYAGI @ Lee's Palace. Oct 3
great show! the venue was (embarrassingly) half empty, but this only served to give each of us the space we needed to shake our butts to the band's incredibly catchy songs, all of which were presented flawlessly by lead man David Best. i'm often surprised when i see the makeup of a band i know little about and what instruments they use to recreate their sound (e.g. i flipped when i realized that Tortoise has two, and sometimes three, xylophonists!) while i knew that F & M were not Japanese (they apparently took their name at random from The Karate Kid and a brand of stereo equipment) i had no idea that they were a three-piece, or that only one of them uses a keyboard, the others sticking almost exclusively to their guitar and bass.