RAINing on Won's Parade

Bi is his name in Korean, which is also the Korean word for rain, and so he's known, in English, as Rain.

I know he makes me wet.

Won Bin is my first celebrity obsession, of course, (see earlier blog), but he's in the army at the moment, and I'm fickle and can't wait for him any longer, so this singer, actor (currently in a film directed by Park Chan-wook, who did "Old Boy"; one of a trilogy of revenge films -- all must be seen movies, as an aside) and commercial actor.

His real name is Jung Ji-hoon. If you're thinking you've never heard of the guy, consider that Time magazine. in April 2006, called him the world's second most influential entertainer.

He Who is Here Now has called off his hit men on what'shisname Won, for the moment, and is now gunning for Bi, although He Who is Here Now admits Bi is one of the best dancers ever.

Oh, and this sort of blog posting easier than actually writing on the several personal topics I've been meaning to write about... :)

Moms and History

What follows is ABC's account, drawn from the letters and papers of Rose Kennedy made public this week, of what is now well within my top two favourite historical anecdotes of all time. This is many things, lovely and suberb among those things:
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Rose's correspondence was not limited, however, to family members and friends. In 1962, she took it upon herself to write to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, asking him to autograph nine photographs of his historic meeting with her son, President John F. Kennedy, for her children. Soon after, JFK drafted this note to his mother from the White House:

"Would you be sure to let me know in the future any contacts you have with heads of state, etc.," he wrote. "Requests of this nature are subject to interpretations, and, therefore, I would like to have you clear them before they are sent."

"I am so glad you warned me about contacting heads of state," the president's mother replied, "as I was just about to write to Castro."

The Internet

I put one of those tracking thingys on my blog. The number of hits is horribly disappointing -- so much for my 15 minutes of fame via the World Wide Web's exposure (ah, kidding!).

What I have enjoyed about the tracking is the out-of-the-blue hits from the most unexpected places. Today someone from Iran came visiting my blog -- hillariously, the person's first google hit was my blog as they searched for info on saffron. The searcher used, it seems, a string of search words that matched exactly a phrase I used in a blog on saffron.

Hi Iran.

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Oh, and in case you've been in denial, summer is over. The trees know.

Keylime Auto Lust

I can't imagine I'd ever resist, should I win big bucks, the lure of buying an obscenely expensive car, even though the right thing to do would be to buy a small hatchback and give the difference to charity.

Take the Lamborghini Gallardo (named for one of the original breeds of fighting bulls from which modern fighting bulls can trace their heritage) with its aluminum frame and aluminum body and it's approximately $200,000 (American) price tag. And in lime green. WAH.

Here, I photographed it perched atop, and its weight supported by, four bone china cups outside William Ashley on Bloor Street. There is no William Ashley, by the way. The owner of the continent's most successful (and apparently the world's most exclusive) china shop is actually a (now) elderly Jewish woman who, when the store was founded (decades ago), understood, sadly, that no one would take a woman business person seriously, and few of Toronto's rich would, sadder still, buy retail from a Jew. All that according to a Globe article some years ago on the store. If memory serves correct from that article, the single location in Toronto, (there is an Ashley boutique in another Toronto store, and another in-store boutique out West somewhere), generates, according to analysts' predictions (a private firm, so no public books sharing) revenue of $60 plus million annually. From a single retail outlet!

Anyway, the car is damn hot. Lamborghini admits it's a sports car but says it is designed for everyday use. Which may be why winter tires will be available as an option next year... Its rear spoiler is automatically engaged. It has two radiators and separate gear box and engine box coolers.

Oh, Ashley's is damn hot too. I could spend days in there.

"...in times of war and peace."

For the first time in 66 years, on the date of the Battle of Britain, and on the anniversary of the first parliament of the province of Upper Canada, a new memorial was dedicated on the grounds of Ontario's legislature.

The Veteran's Memorial is a "30-metre long granite wall etched with scenes from Canada's military history since Confederation" and also includes inscriptions from poet Jane Urquhart and historical Jack Grantstein. A red maple tree is also part of the memorial--"it's bright red fall colour [to] symbolize the sacrifices of soldiers" and the "annual falling of leaves [to] represent human loss."

Way too many people at the ceremony today to get close enough to take in the etchings, but it's nice -- although I'm more of the sculpture school of memorials.

However, the ceremony was -- minus the 7 or 8 officials who took the opportunity to talk and talk and talk -- impressive. A lancaster bomber flew over, some WWII era fighter jets, AND two CF-18 Hornets, which was both terrifying (imagining them dropping bombs) and an adrenaline rush (they were low and moving oh so so fast with such an incredible sound). I know, I know, weapons they are, but it WAS a military dedication of a memorial, after all.

The weird looking photo is a shot of a large video screen as Richard Rohmer, General and author of a few books of fiction (if memory serves correct a couple are about Canada whuppin' the Americans' asses ) speaks to the crowd. He as a driving force behind getting the memorial built.

The artist for the wall was Allan Harding MacKay.

Gotta go back when I can get up close.

Lots and lots of soldiers on hand too, today.

Film Fest

Went, armed with my camera, celebrity hunting today in Yorkville. Gave up waiting for Ashton Kuscher (sp?) to come out of Roots on Bloor St (might have been Kevin Costner, the driver wasn't saying).

Much to my surprise however, I did spot Jesus just hanging around -- there was some fundamentalist Christian parade, which, no word of a lie, ended (a la Santa at the end of the Santa Claus Parade) with a float with bloody jesus on the cross.



The day also provided this candid photo of the effects on a carnivore Korean of several months of living with a vegetarian. He Who Is Here Now was stopped, mercifully, before shattering his teeth on the bronzed beef. I calmed him down with a tofu salad at Whole Foods...

Forgive me, this topic!

Okay, all the fuss, the idiot father and perhaps entrapped mother -- all that media intensified crap aside -- the new Tom/Katie baby is just so, so damn beautiful.

Oh wait, the photo above is NOT the Tom and Katie's baby, no, no. That's a very expensive member of the new computerized, responsive, simulated family of teaching aids to be used this year to train nurses at the college where I work. Cool eh? Okay, so I chose a freaky picture -- I was taking some pictures of the simulated baby -- the first family member out of the box. He can be programmed with with various symptoms and responses, for example his tongue turns blue and lips too if he's not getting enough oxygen.

As for the freaky, but in her remarkable beauty, baby produced by Tom and Katie, go here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/pressroom/

The Yellow Peril

The father of a good friend of mine thought his son and I nuts to agree, as radio news guys, to accept freebie flights in a formation of Harvard aircraft. This was in the early 1980s, Brandon, MB, and Harvards -- which I saw fly overhead as I went to work Friday, because of the CNE air show -- were in Manitoba, also for an air show. That particular group of the planes were owned and piloted by a family.

The Brandon airport had been a training airport for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (I think) and I'm sure a bit out of nostalgia and a lot out of promoting the air show (surely in Winnipeg, but perhaps Neepawa, which was part of the training airports; again, I think) they brought the Harvards to Brandon and offered up a few rides to media types.

My friend's father thought us nuts since he was a mechanic on the planes during those training years of the war and as he described it, he'd watch young pilots "take 'em up, and then at the end of he day we'd see a spot on the prairie, which would grow bigger and bigger until you could see it was yer pilot walking back from a forced landing...."

The wings and wheels of the plane are very far forward. This results in the plane's nose being very high when the plane is taxiing, requiring a serpentine approach of quick winding turns to the runway so the pilot can see where he's going. The noise (roar!) is incredible -- "caused by the tips of the plane's 9 foot long propeller reaching supersonic speeds," according to the Cdn Harvard Aircraft Association).

The plan is highly acrobatic, apparently, but on my ride we did not do loops, although I'd begged for one (while on the ground, I'll point out!). Seeing other aircraft SO close in formation and being in one of the planes is damn cool though. And we did do what I called slices in which the plane would seemingly struggle for altitude at a 70 or 80 degree angle to the sky, then the pilot would drop one wingtip so the wing plane was perpendicular to the ground and then just let the plane "fall" sideways like that. One wears a helmet for such a ride -- good thing too since my head was banging from side to window side with each turn and maneuver.

Today, I saw the Snowbirds roar over downtown, again a sign the air show was on. I had a missed chance to fly in the Snowbirds, once. Missed because my boss at that particular radio station in Sarnia, gloatingly took the one seat we were offered for a media fly at the London Air Show. Pathetically, the asshole backed out at the last minute, too chicken. He was dressed and ready to go, got through the what to do if you throw up speech, but put a foot on the ladder to climb in and chickened out. Bastard. The only consolation I got was he had to tell people he didn't fly, since he'd been bragging about hogging the seat for himself for weeks...

I waved at the Harvards on Friday morning, like a goofy idiot I waved.

A Deep Green Snot

Oh my, it's a new month. Been a long while since I've bothered to blog. Dang.

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Unbelievably (to me, at least) I'm just getting over a week long SUMMER cold. Into the final stages though, as marked by the fluorescent arrival of heavy green snot.

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Speaking of nasal drips, Jack Layton suggested recently we should negotiate with the Taliban. Sigh. Yes, yes, they had "legitimacy" as the governing power of a country, but surely in a fanatical way -- I was "for" military intervention long before 9/11 given the Taliban's treatment of women and the final straw of bombing the Bamiyan Buddhist statues -- any regime that systematically persecutes their citizens (and specific groups of those citizens especially) or has negative respect for cultural artifacts... Well, what (better) reason to send in the Marines, perhaps. Anyway, if fanaticism is marked by a single thing it's the refusal to listen to any other position, let alone move toward compromise. So, Jack? Negotiate what? We'll stop attacking their positions in Afghanistan and they'll do what, believe in secular government, the rule of law and offer 36% female composition in their interim government cabinet (but all other women will be subject to arbitrary violence)?

I hate when bad strategic (absent) thinking pushes me right along the political continuum.

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Been meaning to blog about the time I quite nearly killed my father. Next time, maybe.