Pavedover #2: The local scene without a herd

Wither the made-in-Toronto celebrity? Y’know, those personalities who never aimed higher than recognition on this turf, due to their own ingrained inferiority, with federal regulations ensuring steady paycheques for mediocre effort. Mary Jo Eustace must’ve noticed the dearth of faces filling those roles – fortuitously, her husband left her for Tori Spelling just in time for the inheritance, and Mary Jo was the most searched name in this past nine months of this site, as she resumed cultivating the kind of fame afforded an ex-cooking show sidekick. During this period, where a program reporting on celebrities became a more coveted gig than getting chased for a quote, being the editrix of rag mags known for using as few words as possible to deconstruct the physiological condition of famous people was enough for a homecoming parade – as Bonnie Fuller earned more media fawning than copies sold of The Joys of Much Too Much. (The attention did the trick, since Fuller renewed her contract for at least $2 million a year.) Weekly Scoop, a CanCon variant on Fuller’s formulae, concocted by Torstar, lasted no longer than a baby bump, likely for lack of original reporting save access to the McDonald’s where a drunk Ashlee Simpson hurled epithets at the counter help. Yet, the lack of compelling homegrown grist in ground zero of the Global Village oughta be regarded as more opportunity than crisis, if only the remaining vestiges of protectionism can finish getting clobbered by technology. For the time being, Toronto remains a hicktown starry-eyed at the notion of Broken Social Scene getting profiled in The New York Times Magazine, even though the idea of investigating trends for a broad national audience was deemed unsustainable at Saturday Night. Last fall’s CBC lockout generated its share of online soul-searching, especially once it sunk in that public broadcasters could just as readily spout their words through a file uploaded directly from a picket line. A quest to overcome narrowcasting leads to Peter Mansbridge dislodged from his 10 p.m. porch once a week this summer, as part of the CBC’s gamble on another dodgy singing competition, although the age when all sound and vision is digitally delivered might make the process of generating new ideas return to a calling higher than the exec whose job it has been to discourage them. For now, take comfort in the small print clarifying that Ben Mulroney’s alleged salary is still just 40 per cent of a million bucks.