The magic pan

British combo The Magic Numbers are the latest acclaimed pop hooksmiths inevitably crushed beneath the weight of the superlatives used to describe their derivative sound. But the two pudgy pairs of brother and sister are the only ones to ever storm off the set of the BBC show Top of the Pops because of the introduction from the host – during rehearsals back in August, presenter Richard Bacon likened them to a "fat melting pot of talent". The band explained on their website afterward: "We didn’t take this decision lightly but we stand by it." Compare that flap to recent circumstances surrounding contrarian Michael Coren, sacked from Newstalk 1010 CFRB following listener complaints about a segment where he berated a fake guest for only being able to lose 150 of his 500 pounds: "This is the hypocrisy that I was trying to expose," the wide-waisted Coren told the Star. "If only the professionally offended would become so upset over the homeless, the war in Iraq and general injustice." Anglophiles lamenting one less accent braying on the radio can watch The Magic Numbers take to the stage of Lee’s Palace (529 Bloor St. W.) on Thursday (Dec. 1). Just don’t think of pelting them with jelly babies, or Kraft Dinner, or edible underwear.

The Magic Numbers [official site]

All the king’s horses

Humpty Dumpty Snack Foods is closing its plant in Brampton, putting 188 people out of work – citing the trend toward healthier eating as a factor. Pursuing that market requires some geographical reshuffling, evidently. The media coverage from the last several years, as preserved on Humpty Dumpty’s own corporate site, reads rather bleak: A plunging U.S. dollar, the higher cost of frying oil, and an outdated brand that seemed to exist only as an afterthought on store shelves. Demand evidently didn’t increase after commercials depicting it as the preferred snack of blasé emo boys – caught swabbing cheese powder on a woman’s underwear in the laundromat, and circumstances leading to ketchup chip residue ending up on pubescent female breasts. (Watch them here.) Products bearing names like Cruncheez and Nachoz also seem like a lost cause, and anyone who can read the nutritional information on those pseudo-high-end Maine Coast bags can only feel better about sucking back a few artery-filling Frappuccinos instead. The salty snack obsessives at taquitos.net cover some of Humpty Dumpty’s output – which will continue in three other facilities east of here – rating 48 different flavours, and noting the company produces both "Ridgies" and "Ripples", plus several varieties available only along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. Humpty Dumpty BBQ Nachos (with an "s") currently stand among the top ten snack foods ever; the more exotically regional Sour Cream and Clam Artificially Flavored Ripple Chips curdle among the all-time worst.

The stitchless district

Body Blitz, a new water spa for women on Adelaide St. W., seems to be an innovative place for pampering: Pools filled with sea salt and hot green tea, an aromatherapy steam room, etc. But articles written about the place can’t help but zero in on the fact that clothing is optional for patrons – making it sound more like a perpetual Santa Monica hot tub party minus the floating chest hair, people wearing nothing but gold medallions, or the need for copious amounts of chlorine. Parkdale Pictures blogger J.T. points to a press release for a neighbouring new outlet peddling licentious self-improvement, Flirty Girl Fitness: "Just in time for Christmas the girls have added this bonus class: Stripping for the Holidays," J.T. relays. "Nothing says Christmas cheer quite like your girlfriend awkwardly sliding down a pole and breaking her neck in a thong. Nothing." The main studio on Wellington St. W., decorated by famously swinging bachelors, The Designer Guys, contains eleven brass poles, while an adjacent room is filled with leather lap dancing chairs, perfectly suited for feminist conferences. Meanwhile, local demi-celeb Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene offers Americana music mag Harp his list of preferred Toronto locales, refusing to identify his favourite strip club by name – although it’s geographically pinpointed as For Your Eyes Only on King St. W. – as he doesn’t want to "support" the industry. Yet, he admits to buying lap dances for the conversation: "I end up feeling more like a documentary filmmaker than a customer."

Eighty-sixed

Given this week’s music stories, the nostalgia circuit ain’t what it used to be, leaving acts made in the ’80s to find a 21st century niche. The pioneering efforts of eccentric local fixture Jane Siberry to take the reins of her own distribution culminated in the shuttering of her online emporium last spring – a decade of juggling art and commerce may not have been fruitful. Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (via Boing Boing) picked up on the fact that, after some online soul-searching, unrestricted MP3s of all Siberry’s work have been unleashed, priced at a self-determined sum remitted at the listener’s leisure, ranging from free, to the industry standard 99 cents per track, or more. The praise heaped at Siberry’s liberation effort contrasts with a visit from aging Australian band INXS, inexorably parading their Mississauga-born, reality show-winning, Michael Hutchence-replacing, hunkalicious frontman J.D. Fortune before a hometown crowd – bellowing the national anthem at the hockey game, sharing dewy-eyed anecdotes about sleeping on the streets, and claiming the adulation has left him feeling "like the mayor". But can all this schlocky sentiment possibly sell records? The music business stopped throwing money at these PR blitzes for a reason, although recent coverage of Mr. Fortune’s fortune has temporarily drowned out consumer backlash leveled at INXS’s distributor Sony BMG for spiking all of their compact discs with that pesky computer-infecting rootkit.

INXS enjoys its good Fortune [Toronto Star]

Subways refreshed

The insides of three forlorn subway stations along the University line have been pitched a new look by the Toronto Community Foundation, currently seeking approval from the TTC to implement the images. Extreme makeovers proposed for the Osgoode, St. Patrick and Museum stations (click for the virtual visuals) will be inspired by adjacent cultural landmarks like The ROM, The AGO, OCAD and the Four Seasons Centre, with interior design reflecting elements from each institution. The opening of the Sheppard stubway line three years ago was noted for its implementation of self-referential public art, and while there are installations elsewhere in the system, there isn’t much blatantly inspired by what’s currently outside – case in point, Charles Pachter’s hockey murals at College, paying homage to a rink that isn’t there anymore. So, what other stations need a look that lives up to their environs? Describe where, what and why in the comments below.

Parachute club

Michael Ignatieff has secured his candidacy for the Liberals in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, as the last-ditch attempts to challenge his parachuted nomination have been rendered ineligible. Ignatieff’s support for war in Iraq kept the Liberals from steering the Harvard academic into a riding with a prominent number of Muslims; instead, he’ll spend the next eight weeks having to deflect his own words about the Ukrainians of yesteryear, published in the 1993 book Blood and Belonging, in a riding sufficiently populated with their descendants. "It’s a contemplative, moving, almost astonishingly honest passage," writes Colby Cosh. "Exactly the kind of thing that will get you killed in Canadian politics!" (Ignatieff issued a statement explaining he’s no Ukrainophobe and circulated quotes are out of context.) The decision by current riding MP Jean Augustine to not seek re-election wasn’t made final until Saturday; riding association president Ron Chyczij scurried over with his papers challenging Ignatieff before the 5 p.m. deadline, telling The Globe and Mail he found himself hammering the locked entrance so hard "I thought I was going to break either my wrist or the door". But the Ontario party president, Michael Crawley, determined Chyczij was out of the running for failing to resign his executive position. The other eleventh-hour aspirant, Marc Shwec, was disqualified because he wasn’t a Liberal Party member to begin with – presumably, he’s in no hurry to get a membership now.

New role a gamble, Ignatieff admits [Toronto Star]

Spaced in

A bid to make UFOs the biggest issue in the federal election debate has gained its share of attention – at least on blogs south of the border. Amidst the calm of American Thanksgiving, a press release detailing a two-months-ago speech at the University of Toronto by 82-year-old Paul Hellyer, defense minister during the Lester Pearson years, warning of intergalactic war between the American government and the aliens. Smirking stories from Eye and NOW, linked on the Exopolitics Toronto symposium website, didn’t seem to be nearly as alarmed – but, since Hellyer’s remarks on September 25, three non-governmental organizations have allegedly been spurred to lobby the Senate to follow their investigations into same-sex marriage and medical marijuana with an effort to "lift the veil of secrecy" on George W. Bush deploying weaponry to the moon The response from the Senate indicated their 2005 dance card was already full, leaving the Vancouver-based Institute for Cooperation In Space hopeful they can get around to hearings on ethical extra-terrestrial societies when Parliament Hill activity resumes in 2006. Thanks to blog Random Numbers, a tinfoil leaf has already been designed for those lobbyists.

m&m’s&$&¢’s

The plummeting M&M’s balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was most prominently caught on tape by Alar Allas, a spectator from Toronto whose recording of the 515-pound dirigible toppling a 30-pound light fixture in Times Square thankfully hasn’t turned him into the Abraham Zapruder of character mascots. Moreover, the father of the two lightly injured by the falling debris declared he has no intention to sue the City of New York or anyone else, instead accepting the invitation to sit in the VIP section with his daughters next year. By contrast, a column in the New York Daily News points out NYC doles out some $500 million a year in settlements – $50 million alone to folks who slip and fall on the sidewalk – goaded by adverts from personal injury lawyers. The accident wasn’t necessarily a surprise to Macy’s officials aware of the crosswinds gusting around the Broadway intersection where past mishaps occurred with Sonic the Hedgehog and The Cat in the Hat. Most criticism related to the accident is being leveled at the NBC network, who failed to report on it during the parade coverage, instead switching to a clip of last year’s M&M’s – Al Roker wondering, "Will these classic candymen get out of this delicious dilemma?" (The accident as captured by Allas – who evidently works in video production locally – can be viewed here.)

Spent force

Buy Nothing Day is supposedly being observed in 65 countries today – coinciding with America’s biggest shopping fiesta of the year – although its novelty is waning, even for the fella who started it all. Locally, a zombie walk through the Eaton Centre was beaten to the punch by a similar event with less diabolical intentions before Halloween. BND founder Kalle Lasn is now expressing contempt for the kind of sedition nurtured by the internet: "There are a number of people who think they are activists if they start a blog and talk sustainability," he tells Wired. The publisher of Vancouver-based Adbusters now wants to encourage the younger generation to step away from their computers. Well, the Canadian malls will only be more crowded according to this week’s survey from the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft, conveniently crowing that 40 per cent of people in this country are too paranoid about identity theft to shop online – compared to just 24 per cent stateside. This clashes with a study from the Retail Council of Canada, who claim "a meaningful number of Canadians are showing interest in online shopping during the holiday season". But less interest in meaningless statistics from companies helping news outlets whip people into a holiday shopping frenzy, given how the political pollsters will be taking precedence this year. As for the founder of Buy Nothing Day, tells Wired he’s ready for a brand new beat: "We are definitely going to try and launch social-marketing campaigns that encourage people to just unplug, just to pull out of the virtual electronic environment and try to live more than half their lives in the real world." Sounds like he’s run out of half-witted media-baiting gimmicks like the Blackspot sneaker and TV-B-Gone.

Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is [Wired News]

Crossing guard

Hossein Derakhshan – better known by his online handle "Hoder" – who sparked a wave of blog activity in his Iranian homeland over the last couple years by developing Persian-language computer script while perched in Toronto, has been banned from the United States for six months. Hoder has recently been staying in New York City, but on a bus ride routed through Buffalo, he disclosed to a border guard that he was headed to a blog conference, and a search ensued: "He was ecstatic," writes Hoder. "My blog made his day, or in this case, his night." The red flag was raised when the Homeland Security employee happened upon a somewhat sardonic post explaining to readers what actions they chould take if he ended up being detained by authorities during his June trip back to Iran; Hoder’s reference to getting money from the CIA was then understood to be a joke, but the guard’s discovery of an issue of Newsweek on his person with an NYC address label prompted a refusal of entry. The guy who earned global attention for inspiring thousands of Iranians to circumvent the Mullahs being arbitrarily prevented from visiting the U.S.A. has riled the Committee to Protect Bloggers, for which Hoder is an advisor, adding one of their own to the list of those hamstrung due to online expression.

Goodbye to America [Hoder.com]