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Garage Sales - Week 4 - 2011

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 24 May 2011

Hits: 2066

Now it's a long weekend, and usually the pickings are slim, but I've checked Kijiji and found no less than 7 pages of garage sales this weekend and so I made my map.

1st Stop - Thorncliffe, I'm off at 8:00 hoping to catch the early worms.

But after a quick ride about the neighborhood I discover that I'm the only one up, and so head back downtown to grab a coffee to go. 

By the time I'm back there are a few underway, and a few more setting up.

It's nothing but junk. All junk. Junk junk junk. The best find is a cat tree and house someone has left in an alley by the trash, and while I'm deliberating picking it up (it'll need recovering) I remind myself that I'm not here trash picking today, it's business, and a few more of these useless garage sales later I've abandoned all hope and start heading out to Springbank via Bowness.

Not a thing purchased in Thorncliffe.

All along the way I stop and follow signs, nothing, nothing, nothing. In Bowness there's a couple big ones on the street, again nothing and nothing, one a few pieces of cheap costume jewelry, otherwise nothing. A reuse - recycle store is going out of business, some big concrete planters in the back, open to offers, but at 200lbs apiece I'm too discouraged to dicker or try and load them into the car. The inside of the store is a mess, possibly, if I dug and rummaged, but the water and power has been turned off and the smell of an overused and underflushed toilet puts me off a more thorough search.

And on and on, eventually arriving on Old Banff Coach road, there's a sale out in Springbank that used the word "Antiques", and while usually that's a caution that the prices will be high I just need to rest my eyes, find something half-worthwhile....

I find the sale, one of those telescoping distance roads, "4 KM ahead" signs warn you, then when you've clocked your 4 KM there's another sign "2 KM ahead", and so it goes, Zeno's paradox brought to life, eventually I arrive, antique tools and hurricane lamps, mismatched china and vinegar cruets, the proprietors of the sale discussing the treasures they've already let go (better by far than what remains) ...

From here home, vary the route, more sales, by 1:00 I'm home having spent $6.00 on coffee and $12.00 on garage sale items ($5.00 of which went to a new phone, the last 2 I bought proved not to work...)

An absolutely fruitless day.

***

Sunday it's the Hillhurst flea market, the dealers, it would appear, had as rough a go of it as I did, a pair of cufflinks for a dollar, a blue Medalta beanpot, (blue being rare, otherwise I have too many beanpots as it is...).

***

All in all it's a no-star garage sale weekend. Time would have been far better spent sleeping in, reading a book, anything but garage saling....

Alligators in NY Sewers

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Ideas & Questions

Published: 20 May 2011

Hits: 1790

"Did he remember the baby alligators? Last year, or maybe the year before, kids all over Nueva York bought these alligators for pets. Macy's was selling them for fifty cents; every child, it seemed, had to have one. But soon the children grew bored with them. Some set them loose in the streets, but most flushed them down the toilets. And these had grown & reproduced, had few of rats & sewage, so that now they moved big, blind, albino, all over the sewer system. Down there, God knew how many there were. Some had turned cannibal because in their neighborhood the rats had all been eaten, or had fled in terror."

- Thomas Pynchon - V

A favorite legend of mine as a child, that there were alligators in NY sewers, and that one day when I grew up I'd go and hunt them.

Of course no one believed me, and even I don't remember how I came by the fact, only that I was ridiculed nonstop for spreading the news.

But you know, you grow up, and I didn't even think to go hunting alligators in NY sewers when I was there last year. Foolish me. But reading my urban legends guidebook I'm inspired again...

Especially by the note:

According to May, sewer inspectors first reported seeing alligators in 1935, but neither May nor anyone else believed them. "Instead, he set men to watch the sewer walkers to find out how they were obtaining whisky down in the pipes." Persistent reports, however, perhaps including the newspaper item discovered by Coleman, caused May to go down to find out for himself. He found that the reports were true. "The beam of his own flashlight had spotted alligators whose length, on the average, was about ten feet."

May started an extermination campaign, using poisoned bait followed by flooding of the side tunnels to flush the beasts out into the major arteries where hunters with .22 rifles were waiting. He announced in 1937 that the 'gators were gone. Reported sightings in 1948 and 1966 were not confirmed.

Read More: Sewer Alligator's on the Wikipedia

IFN - The Youth Animation Project 2011

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Film

Published: 19 May 2011

Hits: 1934

We were in Kensington to take in the charm and ambiance of the Roasterie, followed by a quick bite at Higher Ground Cafe (It's Global Vegetarian Night, a 3 course meal for $19.00), followed by ... ??

I give the boy a choice, there appears to be a free Youth Animation Shorts across the street at the Plaza, of which I know nothing, and a play at the Pumphouse, of which I know too much.

He chooses the film.

And so, after dinner we make our way across the street to the theater. Now it's advertised as free and I'm not too hopeful, guessing it's a showcase for student work.

Which it is, the lobby is full of people chatting and the theater is as full as I've seen it, there's tables full of information (which I dismiss, entirely happy in my ignorance, why ruin it?) and we find our seats and wait for the film to begin.

My desire for ignorance is thwarted, however, by the abundant speechifying that goes on before the film. It is, apparently, a "workfare" project sponsored by the Calgary Police Force, Public Library, Alberta Fish and Wildlife, the Plaza Theatre, Alberta Government, etc.... the gist of which is that unemployed/unemployable "Youth" (ranging in age from, say, 20 to 35 years of age) are taught remedial job skills in the production environment of an animation studio.

So the animated shorts we're about to see aren't born of any overwhelming creative urge to tell a story or work in a new medium so much as they are medium to teach "Youth" relevant job related skills, like working a cash register or how to safely handle fast food (important if you have any hopes of working or making a career in the arts...I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP!!!!).

Once that's out of the way the film begins.

Not the shorts, no, first there's a short documentary on the workfare program that's gotten these people out of bed to tell their stories.

It's an upbeat, well done little documentary that introduces you to the directors and cast of this evening's show. All of whom are present in the audience, by the way.

Now the shorts, they're unreviewable. They range from the absurdly, comically bad to the half decent sort of thing one might find on the NFB website.

This is good. Some are so bad, soo WTF that we can barely restrain our comments and laughter. The directors are in the audience, after all, and the rest of the audience are taking it quite seriously, the worst of the shorts generating the kind of applause that would make even Tim Burton proud ....

It's good because how often do you see work this bad? And, bearing in mind that it's student work - and "Workfare" student, not people who chose this, it's amazing. You have no idea of how bad things can get.

And it's good, after it's own WTF fashion.

And, surprisingly, some of the pieces are actually not too bad. Good, even.

Here is a trick. I'm used to seeing bad painting (the author of this myself), appreciating even the work behind a bad piece of art, I understand (somewhat) bad prose, but you seldom, if ever, see bad film or animation. It's too demanding, the equipment, the time, the effort, even the worst sitcom on TV has a bigger budget, staff than these productions, has - well, a polish, a thousand years of combined experience behind it. But each of these shorts, each of these films, they're a a world unto their self.

And at the end all of the directors take the stage to talk about their film, their experience making it, how the program changed their life, fielding questions from the audience, and for this alone it's excellent.

The boy, he's now profoundly depressed and his future career in the performing arts has never, ever looked so glum. This is a side to things he's never seen, and despite my reassurances that most of these people didn't "choose" the program, most of them will (hopefully) never make another film in their life, all of them were assigned to the program to teach them basic life skills that somehow or other life overlooked, he's not seeing it, he's seeing, well....

It's made him think.