Launch Journal: Let the ride begin…
After a whirlwind beginning to our soft launch, we take a look back at our first three weeks of ups, downs, and complete system crashes...
April 26, 2015 The hardest part is starting. And that’s over. It’s been three weeks, and we’re a bit of a hairy beast. But we’re alive, and we’re standing… wet-nosed and a little wobbly, but also wide-eyed and full of wonder at the new landscape. Digital has lots of neat bells and whistles that make the whole endeavour feel like a video game, where suddenly it’s not about the writing, but about the clicks. There’s this thing called analytics, which have nothing to do with Freud at all. It’s just one of those IT words for data, presented in histogram form. And who knew histograms could be so exciting? Watching the roller coaster of consecutive lines unfold on the top of the screen was positively addictive in our first ten days: So many peaks. So many valleys. So many more peaks! So many more valleys… We were getting ...
Dispatches from Abroad: Miro Museum will be happy to see you
Jay Stone stops to smell the flowers, and use the washroom, en route to the Miro Museum, where he was greeted by the likeness of E.T. with an erection
By Jay Stone
Barcelona, Spain -- There's a mountain on the west side of Barcelona that would probably be the signature site in most cities, but is kind of afterthought in Barcelona. It's called Montjuic, and all it has is a castle, the Joan Miro museum, the stadium from the 1992 Olympics (the one where Ben Johnson almost won a medal), a terraced park filled with flowers and wild parrots, and the Catalan art museum, with its attendant waterfalls and dancing fountains. At the bottom is the old bull ring which has been converted to a shopping centre now that bullfighting has been banned in the city on the grounds of animal cruelty. We say "olé!" to the city fathers, and award them two ears and a tail. Oops. Wait a minute... Montjuic means "Mount of the Jews" for reasons I can't easily determine. However, it seems that Jewish ...
Dispatches from Abroad: The Picasso Museum
Jay Stone pays a visit to five stone mansions filled with sun-faced ceramics and sunburned tourists taking in once-outré art, now made safe by fame
By Jay Stone
Barcelona, Spain -- Among the many things the savvy traveller must do, once he has wiped the tapas crumbs out of his beard, is to tour the Picasso Museum, situated in the colourful El Born neighbourhood. El Born is reminiscent of Old Montreal: cobbled streets, ancient buildings, gentrified restaurants, the same duality of language. In Spain, Catalan is the language of the oppressed minority, and Spanish cereal boxes come with instructions in both Spanish and Catalan. My morning museli has "5 frutas" and "5 desecadas" and everyone's happy, especially me. But you were asking about Picasso. The artist (1881-1973) lived in Barcelona during his teenage formative years, and the museum, spread across five old stone mansions linked with cool courtyards, traces his early history. There's also a lot of stuff he did ...
Dispatches from Abroad: Jay Stone watches his wallet in Spain
When in Barcelona, be Barcelonan, or is that do as the Barcelonese? It can be hard for a foreigner to figure things out in the land of architecture that conjures thoughts of The Phantom of Opera's mask
Barcelona, Spain: Say you're going to Barcelona, and everyone has a story about how their pocket was picked or, in some cases, their passport stolen right out of their purse while they were buying something - a soccer T-shirt, perhaps, or one of the Dali ashtrays that made to look is as molten as one of his clocks - and not watching their wallet. Someone had their purse stolen right from under a restaurant table. Someone met a guy who had ketchup and mustard poured on him out of squeeze bottles and, while he was wiping it off, lost all his luggage. It's something of a relief, then, to report that I arrived from the airport with pocketbook intact, perhaps due to the fact that my passport and cash were tucked into a money belt that fit nicely just over my underwear. The only way to ...
Ex Machina dangles a divine equation
Movie review: Ex Machina
Writer Alex Garland makes an impressive directing debut retooling Greek tragedy with silicon parts, writes Katherine Monk
Fusing foodie fare with fancy film houses: A recipe for disaster – and salad
By Charley Gordon
One of those fancy movie houses has opened in Ottawa, where you can order food and wine and have them brought to your seat. Many people, not thinking it through, think this represents sophistication, but it doesn’t. It represents doom. And not just for the reasons you think. Drunkenness will be a bit of problem, but more of an inconvenience than anything. It just means that when people say: “What did he say?” they’ll say it louder, and similarly with: “Hey that’s the guy who was in that other movie, with the that woman who ran off with that other guy!” There may be bit of vomiting too but you’re probably used to that by now. There are published assurances that all is working well. You can believe those if you want. It is reassuring that for some movies, you can avoid the so-called VIP experience if you choose, and just watch the movie in the traditional way, without wine and calamari. It’s also reassuring that the wine-and-calamari ...
PROFILE: Bruce McDonald
BRUCE McDONALD Born May 28, 1959, Kingston, Ont. He’s made a lot of movies, but Bruce McDonald will go down in history as the man who announced he would buy “the biggest chunk of hash” he could find after winning the $25,000 prize for best Canadian feature at the 1989 Toronto International Film Festival (then called Festival of Festivals). “What can I say,” says McDonald. “I’ve never been all that interested in doing what’s expected of me.” A true Canadian maverick, McDonald’s career started in documentary and gradually shifted into narrative features after a solid stint as an editor on such films as Atom Egoyan’s Speaking Parts and Ron Mann’s Comic Book Confidential -- not to mention crewing on Norman Jewison’s nun story, Agnes of God. A proud Canadian, when McDonald originally set to work on his first road movie, Roadkill, he wanted to make sure it was a Canadian take on the romantic genre and made sure his characters pointed north -- ...
What did Singapore's late patriarch do during infamous UBC sit-in?… He just sat there…
Rod Mickleburgh reveals little-known encounter between Lee Kuan Yew, Jerry Rubin and hordes of hippies in the hallowed halls of The University of British Columbia - back in the day
By Rod Mickleburgh
So, farewell then, Lee Kuan Yew, grand patriarch of Singapore, who never saw a critic he didn’t want to jail or sue, or a gum chewer he didn’t want to fine. Much has been written extolling the great man, beloved of entrepreneurs and capitalists for creating a safe, uncorrupt haven for their money and by hordes of ex-pats in Asia for providing a tiny, perfect oasis for a few days’ R and R, coupled with a chance to down a Singapore Sling at the famed Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel. But none of the lengthy obituaries has included one of the more remarkable confluences of Lee’s long career. That occurred, of all places, on the scenic, normally placid campus of the University of B.C., where he encountered an invasion of raucous ragamuffins imbued with the heady, counter-culture tonic ...
What did Singapore’s late patriarch do during infamous UBC sit-in?… He just sat there…
Rod Mickleburgh reveals little-known encounter between Lee Kuan Yew, Jerry Rubin and hordes of hippies in the hallowed halls of The University of British Columbia - back in the day
By Rod Mickleburgh
So, farewell then, Lee Kuan Yew, grand patriarch of Singapore, who never saw a critic he didn’t want to jail or sue, or a gum chewer he didn’t want to fine. Much has been written extolling the great man, beloved of entrepreneurs and capitalists for creating a safe, uncorrupt haven for their money and by hordes of ex-pats in Asia for providing a tiny, perfect oasis for a few days’ R and R, coupled with a chance to down a Singapore Sling at the famed Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel. But none of the lengthy obituaries has included one of the more remarkable confluences of Lee’s long career. That occurred, of all places, on the scenic, normally placid campus of the University of B.C., where he encountered an invasion of raucous ragamuffins imbued with the heady, counter-culture ...
