The Simpson Blog

My good buddy Sandra used to tell me how incredible it sounded when she'd go to musical performances. I'm not talking rock and/or roll bands, although they sound nice, too. She'd go to orchestras and choruses (chorii?) and such. She'd rave about them. I figured, meh, Sandra's all smart and stuff, and more cultured than I. She's probably right, but it doesn't sound like my bag. Well, Amanda told me she'd be going to a thing this past weekend at a church up the street, and I figured ... why the heck not? Friend-of-a-friend and super-nice guy we met at Laura's wedding, Andrew Killawee , runs a choral ensemble called Eventide. They were set to perform at Saint Patrick's Church on Brunswick Street . I saw Andrew at a party the night before and chatted a bit about it, and again figured ... why the heck not? Saint Patrick's is beautiful. I'm not into churches all that much, but, jee-zus, they's pretty. This one, especially. Building began i

I'm flipping around the teevee before sleepytime last night, and happen upon the local (local being Boston or Detroit, I think) PBS station doing their pledge drive. The show they're using to hook people between pledge breaks was one I'd seen bits of before. Some doctor-lookin' guy in scrubs explaining good concepts of "waist management." You know, eat this, do this, don't eat that. It's pretty straightforward and un-gimmicky, and very easy to digest, pardon the pun. I'd never watched it for any great length of time, but I watched enough last night to see something I'd never heard of before. What the hell is an "omentum"? I emailed myself a note with the Blackberry to look it up today. Turns out -- and this is vastly oversimplified, so anatomy nerds need not correct me -- the "omentum" is a fatty gob *under* your belly muscles, around your guts. When you're a fat guy, the omentum can get fatty and push your

Here's a followup to the first Bruce The Moose post. I've scanned three photographs taken by Little Sister back in 1996 at Waterloo Town Square. They're over in Flickr. ( One , two , three .) Email is out to the Square's management asking for more information. I came up empty trying to track down the Chatham mall. The mall's been demolished, so that'll be touch. A search of the Newmarket Era-Banner's online archives through the Newmarket Public Library came up nil for Bruce The Moose. I've posted queries on two Newmarket and Chatham message boards seeking information. A possible hypothesis so far is that there was only ever *one* Bruce setup -- first at Upper Canada Mall in the early 1980s, then on to Chatham, and ultimately on to Waterloo. Bruce's origins, history and ultimate fate are still unknown. But at least we now have a picture. Mind you, these pictures don't give you any sense of scale, movement or sound.... but it's a start!

What ever happened to Bruce The Moose? Bruce the Moose at the Quinte Mall in Belleville? At Upper Canada Mall in Newmarket? There are two follow-ups to this post so far: http://www.bigasssuperstar.com/2007/11/bruce-moose-followup-post-1.html http://www.bigasssuperstar.com/2009/03/bruce-moose-comeback.html You probably don't know Bruce The Moose. In fact, the only reference I can find to Bruce the Moose on the whole bloody internet is on this message-board posting by 'NorthernGrl': When I was a child, Upper Canada Mall in Newmarket, Ontario had "Bruce the Moose" He was this huge moose that played a giant piano and sang Christmas carols as you waited to see Santa. Then, in my teens, after the mall had huge renovations, Bruce was just gone.I was really upset, and still wonder where he went. I hope he was refurbished and sent to another mall, and not just trashed. I also grew up in Newmarket, and have the same story. Bruce was there on the lower level as

I've been meaning to write something about this for a while, but I don't really know what to say about it. The bottom line is ... some gay men enjoy pictures of my gut. Stop laughing. The picture on the right has had six people label it a favorite. That, as far as I can tell, makes it the most favorited picture in my Flickr library. The favoriters (word? is it? probably not) include men named tex - just tex, N!(K -- loveforphotography --, Cute_Boy_Wonder, bobjeffs00, matadormat_net, and, the name that seems to sum it all up, Overfed & Underdressed. Clicking on any of those names will show you their favorites. (I don't suggest doing it at work.) You'll note that they're mostly pictures of topless, hairy, fat men. I'm in good company. The picture of me with Randy from the Trailer Park Boys comparing big hairy bellies is also a popular choice among the same crowd. Actually, checking right now, I see it has 8 people counting it as favorite, includin

After posting the YouTube video of one of my old stop-motion films, I remembered that I shot some time-lapse video this past spring. Crews were cleaning all the gunge and filth off the concrete exterior of the Halifax Metro Centre. The power washing was interesting to watch in real time, but probably more enjoyable as a temporally compressed experience. We had a perfect view out the apartment window, so I perched the webcam on the edge of a vase and shot for two or three days. I stitched the videos together and added some Ween music, and the result is shown below.

Not so many years ago, people didn't have DVDs. We had videocassettes. We had the Betamax vs. VHS wars, which are chronicled so thoroughly on the interweb. And people who wanted something better than videotape had Laserdiscs . They were big -- like the size of records -- but they had great picture quality, fantastic sound quality, and often had extra stuff... the kind of extra stuff we take for granted now on DVD. This is a clip I found on an old VHS tape when I was doing some transfers at home. It's a clip from Buffalo's NBC affiliate, WGRZ-TV, Channel 2, on their evening newscast. It's a consumer segment asking whether it's a good idea to invest in a laserdisc player. I figure this clip is from early 1992, several years before DVD was introduced. I get a kick out of past predictions of the future, and old-time fascination with technology that we now view as archaic. And I'm looking forward to the days when the stuff we consider high-tech is considered embarras

I ended up sleeping through the storm, awakened this morning by a Blackberry email from my parents wondering if we'd been swept off the map because the Internet feed for the radio station was down. Yes, we survived. No broken windows. No leaks. The barbeque is still on the balcony. I was afraid we'd lost Amanda's cat, but she was just hiding in the closet in the Dungeon/Studio. We went out this morning to get material for more stories this afternoon. This low-rise apartment building on Monastery Lane, behind the Canadian Tire on Quinpool, lost its brick facade around 4am. Two cars parked in a no-parking zone were crunched. A third was damaged. A woman who lives inside says the most-damaged car looked like it was a pretty sweet ride...beforehand. A big tree tipped over at Quinpool and Rosebank, across from the Irving, next to the Ardmore Tea Room. It didn't snap the lines, but stretched 'em pretty good. I was lucky enough to find Nova Scotia Power'

I went out in the storm for a reporting stint ... will probably head out again soon for an update. Checked out the shoreline by the harbour ... lots of wind ... nearly lost my glasses coming back up Duke Street. I felt sort of like John Holliman on CNN standing in a hurricane -- and the storm is still 400km away. Chatted with some students at the Split Crow. They're hell-bent on drinking and partying no matter what the weather. The cover band was doing some Guns 'n Roses -- Sweet Child o' Mine, though November Rain would've been the obvious choice. I came back thoroughly soaked, despite having worn Amanda's Land's End raincoat. Forecast is for the peak winds to hit around 6am. We'll see about going out in the morning for more coverage. So much for getting an extra hour of sleep.

There's a big storm coming tonight. It used to be known as Hurricane Noel. Now it's post-tropical, and Halifax is in the crosshairs. The rain has started ... the wind has pickeded up ... and conditions are expected to deteriorate as the day and evening wears on. Peter Bowyer at the Canadian Hurricane Centre in Dartmouth is saying the peak of the storm will hit after midnight, into the morning hours, winds of up to 140 km/h. We're up in a high-rise building that suffered some window damage during Hurricane Juan a few years ago. We've strapped down the barbeque on the balcony and brought in the balcony furniture. Amanda is filling up extra bottles of water right now. We have plenty of food and water on hand. The scary part, for me, will be later tonight when I'm out reporting. The radio station is putting on a special show tonight, and I've drawn the "out there" assignment. "Out there" as in "not at the station" -- so it's not cle

I was flipping through the teevee the other night, and landed on a show called Style By Jury on the dubya network. It's similar, kinda, to Extreme Makeover -- only more Canadian in terms of budget and production. They recruit a mark, put her in front of a focus group which, behind a see-thru mirror, criticize her appearance. Not viciously, just "honestly." Then they set the mark up with relevant aesthetic and lifestyle services. In this case, a woman had laser acne treatment, porcelain veneers, laser eye surgery, a new hairstyle and makeup, and spa treatment including some much-needed romance time with her fiancee. Looked like the lady deserved it, caring for a special-needs son and all. Anyway, I got to thinking ... if I had a bit of money stuffed away ... which I do ... and I had some things I'd like to change ... which I do ... what would I do? I consider my reactions when I see pictures of myself: - Jee-zus, where'd my hair go?! - Holy crap, I'm fat.