Beautiful Bathrooms

...or washrooms, depending on your bent.

The NCC has built some seriously beautiful washrooms in Vincent Massey Park. Now, I know, no one usually gets excited by washrooms, especially public ones, but these are gorgeous. Yes. Gorgeous. URBsite has posted on this already -- go there to see details about the pavilions.

 Not only that, they're green, using the newest technology to keep them running with minimal impact on the environment. The cost of these was likely pretty steep, but as I'm always complaining about, Canada needs to take a more European approach to public architecture: if you're going to build a bus stop (or a washroom), why not make it a beautiful one?

The new Skateway chalets are also pretty swell -- and expensive. At 750K a pop, I hope they smell better than the old ones.

Also, not scary.

That would be Stephen King.

For readers of this blog, you might think that I listen to nothing but the ever-distracting and difficult-to-spell Jian Ghomeshi. That's not true. I also listen to the ever-distracting and super-difficult-to-spell George Stroumboulopoulos (I'm memorizing that one for Pub Trivia night).


But yesterday, my friend Jian had Mr. Scary King on Q. To my surprise, King was fun, thoughtful, humble and interesting. The sort of guy I'd probably want to invite over for dinner, or to my Oscar Night Party(c). I suppose he can afford to all those things, because he's richer than God, but I found his words reassuring. Which is not what you usually associate with Stephen King.  


In fact, I listened in the car, sat in the car after I parked it, still listening, ran inside so I didn't miss anything, and then stood by my radio to catch the end of it. And now I'm blogging about it.


Thank you, Mr. King. I read your short stories when I was in grade 11 and working at Fable Cottage in Victoria, where when evening fell and the tourists were all gone, your stories scared the shit out of me. For the first time in 30 years, I might pick up another one of your books.

Rethinking Shatner

Bill Shatner was on Q  with Jian Ghomeshi today -- I just looked up that link and I always forget how astonishingly handsome Ghomeshi is, it's very distracting, thank God he's radio otherwise the laundry would never get done, it would be like the Kratt Brothers all over again -- and I gotta confess: Shatner doesn't peak out the scare-o-meter. Nope, not at all. He's loopy, sure, but not as scary as all that. In fact, he says a bunch of smart things, is very charming and...okay. I was maybe just a little smitten.

I may have to modify my blog's tagline, though I'd still keep the Shat there.

I listened to a lot of CBC today; Canada's mothercorp is marking its 75th birthday. I heard a dynamite clip of Barbara Frum taking out an unforgivably sexist Harold Ballard. She was the very definition of class.

The vitriol displayed by Ballard is what is truly scary. This was 1979, not that long ago, an age where women "had come a long way, baby" and we were a generation past the Mad Men-esque office gropers.

Shatner may be a product of his age, and Ballard too, but the former is full of life and inquisitive joy, while the latter is merely bitter and hateful. And dead.

Musically Impaired Thieves

Really? There was something about a 2002 VW Golf that screamed, "Take the parking change! Mebee there's gold in that thar glove compartment!"

While I appreciate you didn't break in (I guess I left it unlocked), and that you didn't take the decrepit Nintendo DS or my "You say tomato, I say fuck you" car freshener, I find it rather unnerving that my car isn't safe parked in my back laneway. And that now I have no parking change.

But you didn't take my CDs. What's wrong with my music? You don't like my music? WTF is wrong with you???