If urban planning is the new rock ‘n’ roll, then it was punk against glam on West Queen West as the media launch for the WESTside Lofts was preceded by community association Active 18’s release of their report from the Queen West Triangle Charette earlier this month, where ideas for sustainable development of the area were hashed out. While the visually provocative sales centre across from The Drake Hotel was erected last fall, only now is it opening to prospective buyers, in spite of still awaiting approval – and Active 18 are now petitioning the Ontario Municipal Board to adjourn their pre-hearing about the construction until City Council can get an earful in June. All of this activism was a rapid response to the rapid desirability of the area, transformed over the past two years from a fleabag bohemia to an increasingly coveted neo-Annex. Those lobbying to put the breaks on the WESTside plan argue that the condo sales scheme is targeting transient hipsters with money, who might actually be better than transient hipsters without money. Rather, this opposing faction argues that West Queen West is a place where a generation of artistic-minded types oughta continue putting down roots; something that a bunch of glass towers isn’t going to encourage, especially when they’re erected at random, based on whatever derelict space awaits a windfall for the current landlords. The proposed triangle complex may be reconsidered based on a few technicalities – such as the private pedestrian bridge proposed to link Queen St. to King St. over the railway tracks, connecting the 400 mid-rise lofts to the 19-storey tower designed by starchitect Will Alsop. Behind the WESTside headquarters – whose permanent structure will get converted into a gallery later on – is 48 Abell St., a historic live/work space whose fate is also the subject of concern, with the design charette concluding it could ideally serve as the anchor for the area, rather than being overshadowed by a gruppie playground. John Sewell is characteristically arguing the Active 18 cause on the bureaucratic level, telling those gathered at the Lot 16 Bar how he longs for how planners were able to work directly with people in the 1970s. Need it always be the government’s problem, though? The unveiling of the WESTside Lofts was no less of an optimistic affair – as condo developer Landmark express much enthusiasm for renewal, boasting of their 15 year dedication to the area, not to mention a million-dollar splurge on local artwork as a gift to each suite buyer. Members of Local 18 were prohibited from snooping around the lime-bathed model suite, invited to return on April Fool’s Day to check it out themselves, along with the other chequebook holders.
Active 18 Association [official website + PDF-fest]
Hot Docs, slated for April 28 through May 7, features a program that manages to pack more curiosity into ten days than the average year year of multiplex fodder – not to mention satisfying those local nostalgic pangs for a broad-based cinematic assault uncorrupted by autograph hounds. The combination of increasingly cheap digital filmmaking tools, directors discovering wackjobs from around the globe via websites, and the increased commercial avenues for subtle observation have helped create a perfect storm of possibility. Not that the results don’t risk coming off as too self-indulgent; the shorter attention span bred by having quickie clips of everything online can lead one to wonder how many eccentric quests are really deserving of a 90 minute examination. The fest’s opening night flick, The Railroad All-Stars, deals with team of sex trade workers in Guatemala who take to the soccer field to gain the respect not afforded in their two-bucks-a-trick existence. More flamboyant obsessions are displayed in Mozartballs, directed by Larry Weinstein, which profiles a group of people obsessed with the composer on the occasion of his 250th birthday – and just in time for the 20th anniversary of “Rock Me Amadeus” hitting #1. Meanwhile, even though Atom Egoyan’s attempt to bring screening room pomposity to the Queen St. W. public via Camera Bar didn’t really succeed, a broader audience will get exposed to his traipsing around Lebanon, the birthplace of his movie star wife, in the camcorder diary Citadel. A few other meta elements of the Hot Docs programme include an onstage talk with Werner Herzog, a doc about CanCon filmmaker Allan King, and celebrity pest Nick Broomfield sniffing out neo-Nazi confrontations in South Africa. Bombay Calling is a homegrown candidate for mainstream success, given the topic of outsourced call centres. And for masochists, there is All Aboard! Rosie’s Family Cruise, which appears to confirm once and for all that a certain daytime talk show host didn’t really have romantic designs on a Scientologist movie star. (Brett Lamb, the festival art director, posted his pics from this year’s press conference, following up his own 2005 Hot Docs Blog.)
The wisdom of Bonnie Fuller moves into the spotlight this week with the publication of The Joys of Much Too Much – a book geared to young women seeking elder approval to pursue an overindulgent existence – as the tables are turned on the formerly local rag mag editrix with a double shot of coverage in The New York Times. A magazine Q&A challenged her philosophy in the face of postfeminist Realpolitik: “Your house doesn’t have to be clean,” she responds. “You don’t have to have clean floors. Your drawers don’t have to perfect, and dishes can pile up in the sink.” Also, she’s decided that periodicals like her old workplace, Glamour, are “too much work” and ultimately make women feel inadequate – as opposed to her current primary gig, Star, which is dedicated to detailing celebrity faults. The NYT Business section peeks between the covers of Bonnie’s book, including her unabashed boast that she was reading proofs of the issues she was editing in the midst of giving birth. More about her upbringing is provided in a New York Sun profile – while admitting that she developed a “bossy” persona at an early age, Fuller also mentions that her lawyer dad would take her to civic hearings on the revitalization of downtown Toronto. Today, in her role as extravagantly compensated editorial director of American Media, she has the luxury of playing one tabloid against the other, lest the editorial integrity of Star be compromised. A tawdry photo of the 19-year-old who accused basketballer Kobe Bryant of sexual assault was handed off to the lower-grade Globe. And when Demi Moore pregnancy rumours turned out false, The National Enquirer came to the rescue with a miscarriage scoop. (Word of Demi’s latest spermination is the big headline of the latest Enquirer, whose sales have been foundering after a recent redesign.) But those tactics couldn’t keep Star from histrionically reporting “Brad & Jen Back On! IT’S BABY TIME” days after their split was confirmed – the “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” of our gilded age. So, when does it all end? Maybe it already has, calculates snark pioneer Kurt Andersen in the pages of New York, figuring the twilight of Paris Hilton’s career means celeb obsession is ready to fall apart along with the rest of mass culture. Bonnie Fuller may well get a two-decade head start on her aspirations to take up competitive gardening before she turns 70.
PREVIOUSLY: Tabloid queen fixes your lousy life
What are the chances that the term Web 2.0 will sound embarrassing by the time the municipal election rolls around on November 13? But for now, as the surrounding fervour makes the cover of Newsweek and is the subject of a two-day local conference in mid-May, there’s increased anticipation surrounding the possibility for a city council campaign or two – if not a genuine opponent of David Miller – to make a real splash via these 2.0 tools. Social Tech Brewing Co. have scheduled an April 6 event at the Centre For Social Innovation (215 Spadina Ave.), addressing the subject of local blogging and “location-specific content delivery” and how it can influence the polling process – interested candidates, techies and lurkers are expected to register in advance. Such possibilities seemed downright futuristic during the last such race, 2.5 years ago, when none of the five front-runner nor 39 so-called fringe mayoral candidates were focused on that kind of interaction. Dating back to 1994, however, are a few quaint newsgroup postings encouraged a vote for curbside psychiatric advice-giver Jenny Friedland as a prospective leader for pre-amalgamation Toronto: “She’s young, cool, highly educated yet barely employed, and besides – SHE’S ON-LINE!” (Her platform is archived here; she came in first place among the fringe candidates.) Flash forward a dozen years, where Let It Bleed blogger Bob Tarantino has kicked off his effort to serve as ringleader for a local conservative political movement. “The police need to be supported by elected representatives who are committed to getting criminals off the streets – not simply massaging the wounded feelings of the ‘excluded’,” he writes. “Our streets are filthy and our walls are covered in graffiti, but the city somehow finds the money to increase ‘culture’ funding by nearly 20 per cent and expand its bureaucracy – some fiscal prioritizing and discipline is called for; local government is trying to do too many things with resources stretched too thin – a re-thinking of the role of government is required.” A blog called Miller’s Follies has already been fired up by Brian Lemon, presumably on deck to echo the talking points of mayoral challenger Jane Pitfield during this week’s budget debate. Then how about a right-wing thinker filling one of the remaining vacant slots in Dave Meslin’s widely lauded City Idol contest? The idealistic competition promises to outfit debating victors with the resources necessary to ridicule Rob Ford on his own turf. But if there’s no trace of a conservative in that crowd, will it end up having any greater credibility than a VJ Search?
“In terms of demographics, this show is written and produced for Everyman,” argues Lord of the Rings producer Kevin Wallace, defending his debacle in a Saturday Star column by Martin Knelman which took bets on whether this behemoth can prove a critic-proof spectacle. The spin was in overdrive all weekend, following the rash of negative opening night appraisals throughout the international press. A reaction published in The Observer was titled Springtime for Tolkien and Mordor, evoking The Producers – another musical whose local staging failed to live up to advance enthusiasm. The review by Gaby Wood is favourable, but the changing is described as “reminiscent of an old British Airways ad”, while the duets “appear to have been inspired by a dream team of Michael Bolton and Enya”. The take in the L.A. Times by Charles McNulty threw in a comparison to Kevin Costner’s infamously overbudget Waterworld: “If the creators can get J.R.R. Tolkien’s mammoth epic down to 90 minutes from its current 3 1/2 hours, there’s even a chance it could one day reach Vegas.” But much as the opening of LOTR inspired puff pieces like the incredulous exhortation from The New York Times, headlined A Revitalized Toronto Pins its Hopes on the Hobbits, local stages with a budget of less than $25 million will gain some spillover coverage from the theatrical wags who’ve swung through town, like the Cleveland Plain Dealer recommending that a drama-enamoured tourist seek out anything but. Rachel Tolkien, the 35-year-old art gallery-owning granddaughter of J.R.R., had her endorsement of the play planted on the AP wire. While any fallout from the LOTR backlash apparently won’t be reflected in the box office until this fall – once all the advance ticket buyers and summer tourists take their turn suffering through 230 minutes of audience captivity at the Princess of Wales Theatre – what seems to be hinging most on the outcome isn’t the Toronto tourism industry, but J.R.R. sustaining a place on the Forbes list of top-earning dead celebrities.
The first Ontario Budget to be supported by a goofy cartoon featuring finance minister Dwight Duncan is “an exercise in paying more and getting less” says John Tory, it’s “another missed opportunity to make life better for working families” says Howard Hampton, and it was pronounced a letdown for those lobbying on behalf of long term care, publicly-funded physiotherapy and the municipal infrastructure whose taxes will continue to be diverted to those health and social services that argue they don’t get enough. Catholic school trustees feel their allocated funds are not enough, public educators think the situation looks peachy, and secondary school teachers give it a mixed review. Daycare expansion has met the axe, social assistance payments have risen a small notch, and the province has topped up funding for Toronto’s highbrow arts construction. (But forget about pleasing farmers, steelworkers, or post-secondary students.) The official party press release is headlined Experts Agree: The Liberal Budget is Good for All Ontario, and those responsible for medical research and innovation appreciate their injection of funds, reaffirming how there are plenty of projects being supported by the province beyond research into the sex lives of flying squirrels. But will this blitz change the fact that half of Ontario was ready to throw Dalton McGuinty out of office, according to a Leger Marketing survey, as if half the population can be bothered to pay attention to what happens at Queen’s Park? Well, the $1.2 billion flood of infrastructure funding for GTA public transit has dominated headlines – the promise of more harmonic service between each region will overshadow the TTC’s effort to spruce up its image with the Pizzazz campaign, promising subway appearances from a Lucille Ball lookalike or Mysterion the Mind Reader. Brampton is being granted the cash to start its rapid transit initiative, Mississauga is pleased to get their Hwy. 403 bus line, while Durham feels that Hwy. 407 was unrightfully ignored. But that subway to York University and beyond? Maybe not the surest thing, points out James Bow, especially since the promised $670 million will sit in a trust fund until the next election. The drawbacks of such a plan are dragged out in the pages of NOW, wondering why 90 times this year’s TTC budget shortfall should be splurged on six kilometres of subway track. The Globe and Mail speculated whether it was tied to former finance minister Greg Sorbara’s family-owned collection of unappealing apartment buildings that happen to be situated along the new route.
How much are Government of Ontario employees looking forward to their first weekday of not having to be open for business since January 2? Enough for two different ministries to issue press releases reinforcing labour practices and store closing laws more than three weeks beforehand. The Retail Business Holidays Act seems like an archaic concept in this Global Village, yet it still applies to both Good Friday and Easter Sunday, which represent one-quarter of the remaining days each year where store aisles are all but certain to resemble a bowling alley, with the exception of magazine stores under 2,400 square feet with a maximum of three employees, pharmacies under 7,500 square feet, flower shops and gas stations. A first offense fine of $500, or penalty of $50,000 or beyond, can also still be technically slapped on those who flout those laws that once applied in this province to at least one day of each week – with the exemption of designated tourist areas, which only came to include the Eaton Centre and environs once Sunday shopping became legal in 1992, after a decade of challenges that nonetheless failed to convince the courts that it was unconstitutional for the province to keep most shops locked on a day of rest. (This debate continues to be waged in Nova Scotia, where current poll numbers favour stores opening seven days a week.) Those employees corralled into working on Good Friday have the right to entitlements – although the long list of professions not covered by those laws make it seem like pretty much anyone who works hard for a living isn’t bound to reap the rewards of a government-enforced day off. Naturally, there are folks glad to be unleashed from their daily grind for religious reasons, although the complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission by Professor David Noble, who is “cautiously confident” that York University will discontinue their tradition of not holding classes on two Jewish holidays in autumn, should be an interesting battle to watch. The commission is hoping to mediate a solution to Noble’s demand that the practice get extended to all faiths, something that the York administration says would be too difficult, given how there are at least 100 such holidays each year.
With the launch of MTV in Canada, bombarding the media-about-media this week with details of its six-armed assault on the landscape, the 12-to-17 demographic has been subject to a crash course in how this country’s broadcast regulations work – stringent rules that will soon be heading the way of the Betamax. Viewer enthusiasm for the station’s refurbished digs inside the Masonic Temple will likely be confined to the small screen, though, since the Yonge and Davenport neighbourhood is destined to become more of a retirement village for aging yuppies – in spite of the resistance to a condo project to dwarf the LCBO store clock tower – than a hotbed of adolescent action. For that reason, MuchMusic’s noisy premises at the corner of Queen and John should help retain some clout with geriatric GenXers in the marketing industry whose idea of where to plant their messages is largely influenced by lingering fumes of where the action was back when they were tweens; by the same token, the MTV logo retains some exotic allure as one of those tired iconic brands that took a couple extra decades to successfully cross the border, not unlike Hooters or High Times. But all the hoopla about this new multi-platform launch, taking over CTV’s moribund talktv channel, could be somewhat deceptive: A shuffle on the Rogers Cable dial moves MTV from channel 64 to 59 – the same spot that multifaith network Vision TV petitioned to leave because it’s used for the security camera feed in many buildings; and the option of watching shows online via the broadband MTV Overdrive isn’t accessible to those who aren’t adherents of Microsoft. While these may not be inconveniences to many in the target audience for programs like a nightly teenybopper version of eTalk Daily, the idea of running across the efforts of “online street teams” recruited to infiltrate chatrooms and message boards seems like an unhappy accident waiting to happen. MTV has also launched their own social networking hub, with hopes that a flood of young consumers will put their subservience on display. First comment: “My name is Bryan, and I live in Vancouver. I am disgusted that the fact that MTV moved from Vancouver to Toronto. However if it had remained in Vancouver nobody would watch it in Toronto because Torontonians are jerks and think nothing but themselves. You know there’s places outside of Toronto. Anyways, at least they’re better than the snobs from Edmonton.”
PREVIOUSLY: ‘MTV Juvies’ to infest Masonic Temple
Prince’s fondness for his part-time residence in Toronto may have been overestimated, given how there’s no specific local promotion connected to the release of the album 3121 – or perhaps it’s simply more prudent to arrange midnight personal appearances at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard than try drawing a crowd on these frigid streets. The release of 3121 on 3/21 follows the numerological pattern that found Prince announcing his comeback effort back on 12/13, when news of a record deal with Universal Music, and a syrupy music video directed by Salma Hayek, forecast renewed mainstream ambitions in a year where Barry Manilow and Johnny Cash have been selling the most CDs. But despite getting a stage for his guitar chops on Saturday Night Live, new Prince music hasn’t been emanating from many airwaves, so it’s unclear how 3121 will be heard as widely as its predecessor, Musicology – which was given away free with concert tickets to Prince’s previous tour. The Smoking Gun backhandedly revealed that the artist hasn’t spent much time of late at the Bridle Path estate purchased in the name of his Toronto-born spouse – instead, he was wreaking havoc at the Hollywood mansion of Carlos Boozer, the Utah Jazz player who sued his $70,000-a-month tenant for installing purple carpet, beauty salon chairs, and covering the exterior with 3121 graffiti. The action was evidently dismissed, and album buyers can now win a chance to attend a private concert there. Prince’s wife, Manuela Testolini Nelson, has established her own web presence in her role as founder and president of Gamillah, Inc. which “exists for only two reasons … first, we aim to build a family of globally-recognized, lifestyle brands to create evocative experiences for our consumers that engage the senses and uplift the soul … but, most importantly, we aim to fulfill our social responsibility to actively seek opportunities to positively impact, support and protect the beauty of the communities we serve”. At least she’s making an effort to be more gregarious than her 47-year-old husband, whose idea of fulfilling an exclusive interview request amounts to smugly subliterate e-mail responses like this wisdom: “People tend 2 project on2 U whatever they want 2 c.”
A provincial grant of $150K for a five-year study of mating habits of northern flying squirrels at Laurentian University in Sudbury gave the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario something to squeak about in advance of provincial budget day, although a piece in the Sunday Star and subsequent press release via PC leader John Tory was rehashing a Liberal-bashing factoid from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s annual Teddies Waste Awards – a round of annual grandstanding from the attention-starved advocacy group. The provincial funding for squirrel sex, one of many awards granted by the Ministry of Research and Innovation, was nominated alongside debacles related to auto insurance rate hikes in British Columbia and provincial funding poured into a bankrupt pulp mill in Saskatchewan. But this particular waste award category winner was the government of Manitoba, who the Winnipeg Sun accused of providing vain residents with free access to “tummy tucks and fat reducing surgeries”. The taxpayers federation later withdrew this accusation after the Manitoba health minister explained that only procedures that were medically necessary were being covered by medicare, and the hysterical CTF were forced to extend an apology “to the victims of multiple scoliosis, cerebral palsy, cancer, burn accidents or any and all other inflictions for which these procedures were necessary”. So, perhaps understanding how climate change may affect the ability of rodents to procreate in Algonquin Park isn’t a waste, especially a year after the federal government were sending police officers to the home of a Mississauga naturalist who had a pet flying squirrel imported from Indiana – the refugee “Sabrina” eventually won the fight to remain, despite fears of monkey pox that prompted Canada to turn such critters away at the border. As for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, their biggest local publicity rout of the past six months involved shredding a New York Times report that lauded Ontario for a $2.5 million investment in the stage production of Lord of the Rings – the advance box office receipts of $15 million before its official opening would suggest they’re well on their way to recouping the amount from provincial sales tax alone. But between the doctors, farmers and college folk all riled up at Premier Dalton McGuinty this week, not to mention a provincial wealth-sharing system reported to be on the cusp of implosion, picking on a $30K a year grant for an assistant biology professor is quite a curious Conservative complaint.
